It did attract some critical attention, however. _The Critic_ wrote: "We cannot contemplate this young and rising school in art and literature without the most ardent anticipation of something great to grow from it, something new and worthy of our age, and we bid them godspeed upon the path they have adventured." Others remarked that the poetry in _The Germ_ was all beautiful, "marred by not a few affectations--the genuine metal, but wanting to be purified from its dross"; "much of it of extraordinary merit, and equal to anything that any of our known poets could write, save Tennyson...." Well--the situation demands a philosopher. We might undertake the rôle ourselves, except that we're too near the situation, having just started a magazine with certain high hopes of our own. On the cover of each issue of _The Germ_ appeared this poem by William Rossetti, the mastery of which, some one said, would require a Browning Society's united intellects: When whoso merely hath a little thought Will plainly think the thought which is in him-- Not imaging another's bright or dim, Not mangling with new words what others taught; When whoso speaks, from having either sought Or only found,--will speak, not just to skim A shallow surface with words made and trim, But in that very speech the matter brought: Be not too keen to cry--"So this is all!-- A thing I might myself have thought as well, But would not say it, for it was not worth!" Ask: "Is this truth?" For is it still to tell That be the theme a point or the whole earth, Truth is a circle, perfect, great or small? Patmore's _The Seasons_, Christina Rossetti's _Dream Land_, Dante's _My Sister's Sleep_ and _Hand and Soul_, Woolner's _My Beautiful Lady_ and _Of My Lady in Death_, Tupper's _The Subject in Art_, William Rossetti's _Her First Season_, and a long review of Clough's _Bothic of Toper-na-fuosich_ make up the first number. In the others are _The Blessed Damozel_, Christina's _An End_ and _A Pause of Thought_, Patmore's _Stars and Moon_, John Orchard's _Dialogue on Art_, and many other things of value, concluding with a review of Browning's _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, in which William Rossetti establishes with elaborate seriousness, through six pages of solemn and awesome sentences, that "Browning's style is copious and certainly not other than appropriate"; that if you _will_ understand him, you shall.