"An alien!" he exclaimed; "why, in the name of all the affectations of the present day, should a young man with fifteen thousand a year, and one of the finest estates in Midlandshire, call himself an alien? 'An Alien's Dreams'--and such dreams! I had a look at them this morning, without cutting the leaves. It's always a mistake to cut the leaves of young people's poetry. Such dreams! Surely no alien could have been afflicted with anything like them, unless he was perpetually eating heavy suppers of underdone pork, or drinking bad wine, or neglecting the ventilation of his bedroom. Imperfect ventilation has a good deal to do with it, I dare say. To think that Roland Lansdell should write such stuff--such a clever young man as he is, too--such a generous-hearted, high-minded young fellow, who might be--" Mr. Raymond opened the volume in a very gingerly fashion, almost as if he expected something unpleasant might crawl out of it, and looked in a sideways manner between the leaves, muttering the first line or so of a poem, and then skipping on to another, and giving utterance to every species of contemptuous ejaculation between whiles. "Imogen!" he exclaimed; "'To Imogen!' As if anybody was ever called Imogen out of Shakespeare's play and Monk Lewis's ballad! 'To Imogen:' 'Do you ever think of me, proud and cruel Imogen, As I think, ah! sadly think, of thee-- When the shadows darken on the misty lea, Imogen, And the low light dies behind the sea?' 'Broken!' 'Shattered!' 'Blighted!' Lively titles to tempt the general reader! Here's a nice sort of thing: 'Like an actor in a play, Like a phantom in a dream, Like a lost boat left to stray Rudderless adown the stream,-- This is what my life has grown, Ida Lee, Since thy false heart left me lone, Ida Lee. And I wonder sometimes when the laugh is loud, And I wonder at the faces of the crowd, And the strange fantastic measures that they tread, Till I think at last I must be dead-- Till I half believe that I am dead.'