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The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets once remarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that no one can live for three days without poetry.  This, however, can hardly be said to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiously uncommon quality which is called common-sense.  I fancy that most people, if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like their culture to repose on a basis of good cookery, and as there is something to be said for this attitude, I am glad to see that several ladies are interesting themselves in cookery classes.  Mrs. Marshall’s brilliant lectures are, of course, well known, and besides her there is Madame Lebour-Fawssett, who holds weekly classes in Kensington.  Madame Fawssett is the author of an admirable little book, entitled Economical French Cookery for Ladies, and I am glad to hear that her lectures are so successful.  I was talking the other day to a lady who works a great deal at the East End of London, and she told me that no small part of the permanent misery of the poor is due to their entire ignorance of the cleanliness and economy necessary for good cooking.

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The Popular Ballad Concert Society has been reorganised under the name of the Popular Musical Union.  Its object will be to train the working classes thoroughly in the enjoyment and performance of music, and to provide the inhabitants of the crowded districts of the East End with concerts and oratorios, to be performed as far as possible by trained members of the working classes; and, though money is urgently required, it is proposed to make the Society to a certain degree self-supporting by giving something in the form of high-class concerts in return for subscriptions and donations.  The whole scheme is an excellent one, and I hope that the readers of the Woman’s World will give it their valuable support.  Mrs. Ernest Hart is the secretary, and the treasurer is the Rev. S. Barnett.

(1) Etudes et Souvenirs.  By Madame Ristori. (Paul Ollendorff.)

(2) The New Purgatory and Other Poems.  By Elizabeth Rachel Chapman.  (Fisher Unwin.)

(3) Hithersea Mere.  By Lady Augusta Noel, Author of Wandering Willie, From Generation to Generation, etc. (Macmillan and Co.)

(4) Margery Merton’s Girlhood.  By Alice Corkran. (Blackie and Son.)

(5) Women and Work.  By Emily Pfeiffer. (Trubner and Co.)

(6) Treasures of Art and Song.  Edited by Robert Ellice Mack. (Griffith and Farren.)

(7) Rhymes and Roses.  Illustrated by Ernest Wilson and St. Clair Simons.  Cape Town Dicky.  Illustrated by Alice Havers.  The Deserted Pillage.  Illustrated by Charles Gregory and John Hines. (Hildesheimer and Faulkner.)

THE POETS’ CORNER—­IV

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 20, 1888.)