This is the only really inspiring working-creed, and our author's utterance of it justifies her claim to having the distinctively artistic mind, more forcibly than her not infrequent shortcomings in the direction of an artistic _ensemble_. Many persons will probably pronounce "A Minor Prophet" the gem of this little collection, and it is certainly interesting, for a great many reasons. It may seem to characterise the author on a number of sides. It illustrates vividly, in the extraordinary ingenuity and flexibility of its diction, her extreme provocation to indulge in the verbal licence of verse. It reads almost like a close imitation of Browning, the great master of the poetical grotesque, except that it observes a discretion which the poet of _Red-Cotton Night-caps_ long ago threw overboard. When one can say neat things with such rhythmic felicity, why not attempt it, even if one has at one's command the magnificent vehicle of the style of _Middlemarch_? The poem is a kindly satire upon the views and the person of an American vegetarian, a certain Elias Baptist Butterworth,--a gentleman, presumably, who under another name, as an evening caller, has not a little retarded the flight of time for the author. Mr. Browning has written nothing better than the account of the Butterworthian "Thought Atmosphere":-- "And when all earth is vegetarian, When, lacking butchers, quadrupeds die out, And less Thought-atmosphere is re-absorbed By nerves of insects parasitical, Those higher truths, seized now by higher minds, But not expressed (the insects hindering), Will either flash out into eloquence, Or, better still, be comprehensible, By rappings simply, without need of roots." The author proceeds to give a sketch of the beatific state of things under the vegetarian _régime_ prophesied by her friend in "Mildly nasal tones, And vowels stretched to suit the widest views." How, for instance, "Sahara will be populous With families of gentlemen retired From commerce in more Central Africa, Who order coolness, as we order coal, And have a lobe anterior strong enough To think away the sand-storms." Or how, as water is probably a non-conductor of the Thought-atmosphere, "Fishes may lead carnivorous lives obscure, But must not dream of culinary rank Or being dished in good society." Then follows the author's own melancholy head-shake and her reflections on the theme that there can be no easy millennium, and that "Bitterly I feel that every change upon this earth Is bought with sacrifice";