Here and there, the Nationalist newspapers and the Young Ireland societies have trained a writer who, though busy with the old models, has some imaginative energy; while the more literary writers, the successors of Allingham and Ferguson and De Vere, are generally more anxious to influence and understand Irish thought than any of their predecessors who did not take the substance of their poetry from politics. They are distinguished too by their deliberate art, and by their preoccupation with spiritual passions and memories. The poetry of Lionel Johnson and Mrs. Hinkson is Catholic and devout, but Lionel Johnson’s is lofty and austere, and like De Vere’s never long forgets the greatness of his Church and the interior life whose expression it is, while Mrs. Hinkson is happiest when she puts emotions, that have the innocence of childhood, into symbols and metaphors from the green world about her. She has no reverie nor speculation, but a devout tenderness like that of St. Francis for weak instinctive things, old gardeners, old fishermen, birds among the leaves, birds tossed upon the waters. Miss Hopper belongs to that school of writers which embodies passions, that are not the less spiritual because no Church has put them into prayers, in stories and symbols from old Celtic poetry and mythology. The poetry of ‘A.E.’, at its best, finds its symbols and its stories in the soul itself, and has a more disembodied ecstasy than any poetry of our time. He is the chief poet of the school of Irish mystics, in which there are many poets besides many who have heard the words, ‘If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,’ and thought the labours that bring the mystic vision more important than the labours of any craft. Mr. Herbert Trench and Mrs. Shorter and ‘Moira O’Neill’ are more interested in the picturesqueness of the world than in religion. Mr. Trench and Mrs. Shorter have put old Irish stories into vigorous modern rhyme, and have written, the one in her _Ceann Dubh Deelish_ and the other in _Come, let us make Love deathless_, lyrics that should become a lasting part of Irish lyric poetry. ‘Moira O’Neill’ has written pretty lyrics of Antrim life; but one discovers that Mrs. Hinkson or Miss Hopper, although their work is probably less popular, comes nearer to the peasant passion, when one compares their work and hers with that Gaelic song translated so beautifully by Dr. Sigerson, where a ragged man of the roads, having lost all else, is yet thankful for ’the great love gift of sorrow,’ or with many songs translated by Dr. Hyde in his _Love Songs of Connacht_, or by Lady Gregory in her _Poets and Dreamers_.