"Gold Hair," notwithstanding its picturesque lines, is weak and inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee" is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We suppose it tells the story of love that exaggerates a common nature, clings to it, and shrivels away. What can be finer than the way in which an unsatisfied heart makes the wind the interpreter of its pain and dread? This is the sixth poem, "Under the Cliff." "Or wouldst thou rather that I understand Thy will to help me?--like the dog I found Once, pacing sad this solitary strand, Who would not take my food, poor hound, But whined and licked my hand." But in this very poem the figure of the nun is artificial, and interrupts the pathetic feeling. And we cannot make anything out of the piece, "Beside the Drawing-Board," unless we first detach it from its position in the series, and like it alone. On the whole, many fine lines are here, but no real person and no poetic impression. Neither the dramatic nor the lyrical quality appears in this volume as it did once in the splendid "Bells and Pomegranates," which gave us such vivid shapes, and emotions so consistent and sustained, even though they were so often flawed by over-reflection. In this volume the purposes are less palpable, and the pen seems to have pursued them with less tenacity than usual. It has the air of having been scraped together. Yet how charming is "Confessions," and "Youth and Art," and "A Likeness"! Besides these, the best pieces are those which touch upon the highest themes. "Mr. Sludge, the Medium," cannot be called a poem. It would not be possible to write satire, epic, idyl, not even elegy, upon that "rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts are trying to pretend that their first-born vibrates to them through a stranger's and a hireling's mind. It is not even grotesque, but it is gross, and flat, and stale; its messages are fatuous, its machinery the rickety heirlooms of old humbugs of Greece and Alexandria. No thrill, no terror, no true awe, nothing but "goose-flesh" and disgust, creep from the medium's presence. Pegasus need not be saddled; summon, rather, the police.