"`O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows, And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows; But 'tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind, Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!'" "Ah! Very nice indeed! Thank you, Lady Dasher, thank you!" said the vicar, when she had got thus far, and succeeded in arresting the progress of her ladyship's melody; otherwise, she might have gone on the live-long summer day with the halting ditty, for it consisted, as she subsequently told us, of no less than five-and-forty verses, all in the same pleasant strain! "I don't think," said I, to change the conversation, "that poetry is nearly as highly regarded in the present day, as it was some forty years back or so--if one may judge by the biographies of literary men of that time." "But, it sells more readily," said Mr Mawley; "not only do fresh debutantes appear, but new editions of the old poets come out daily." "That may be," said I. "But they are not nearly so highly appreciated. I suppose it is because poetry is not so much a rarity now. We have so many mediocre poets, that our taste is more exigent. I dare say, if a very bright, particular star should arise, we would honour him; but we have no bright particular star; and, thus, we learn to read poetry without reflection. Forty years ago, people used to talk over the last production of the muse, and canvas its merits in coffee-rooms all over the town; now, we only dash through it, as we would take up the last new novel, or the evening paper, thinking no more about it!" "When I was younger," said Miss Spight--she didn't say when she was "young," mark you--"no young gentlewoman's education would have been thought complete without a course of the best poets, such as Milton's _Paradise Lost_." "Which nine out of ten of the people who speak about it now, never read," said I--and, Miss Spight did not reply. "What queer people poets are, generally speaking," said Mr Mawley. "Do you think so?" said I. "Yes, I do," he replied. "I would divide poets into three great classes, which I would call respectively the enthusiastic school, the water-cart school, and the horse-going-round-in-the-mill school." "O-oh, Mr Mawley!" exclaimed Bessie Dasher, in the unmeaning manner common to young ladies, in lieu of saying anything, when they have got nothing to say: the exclamation expressing either astonishment, horror, alarm, or rebuke, as the case may require. "Instance, instance! Name, name!" said I, keeping the curate up to the mark. "Well, I will give you Horner, and Dante, Goethe, Byron, and, perhaps, Tennyson, from which to take your choice amongst those whom I call the enthusiastic school; Mrs Hemans, and others of her tearful race, in the second; and, in the third order, the majority of those who have spoilt good ink and paper, from Dryden down to Martin F Tupper." "What, no exceptions; not even my favourite Longfellow?" asked Min.