she cries, and proceeds to tell how

   Imagination paints old Egypt’s former glory,
   Of mighty temples reaching heavenward,
   Of grim, colossal statues, whose barbaric story
   The caustic pens of erudition still record,
   Whose ancient cities of glittering minarets
   Reflect the gold of Afric’s gorgeous sunsets.

‘The caustic pens of erudition’ is quite delightful and will be appreciated by all Egyptologists.  There is also a charming passage in the same poem on the pictures of the Old Masters: 

      the mellow richness of whose tints impart,
   By contrast, greater delicacy still to modern art.

This seems to us the highest form of optimism we have ever come across in art criticism.  It is American in origin, Mrs. Davis, as her biographer tells us, having been born in Alabama, Genesee co., N.Y.

(1) The Story of the Kings of Rome in Verse.  By the Hon. G. Denman, Judge of the High Court of Justice. (Trubner and Co.)

(2) Tales and Legends in Verse.  By E. Cooper Willis, Q.C. (Kegan Paul.)

(3) The Poetry of South Africa.  Collected and arranged by A. Wilmot.  (Sampson Low and Co.)

(4) Chess.  A Christmas Masque.  By Louis Tylor. (Fisher Unwin.)

(5) Poems of Nature and Life.  By David R. Williamson. (Blackwood.)

(6) Guilt.  Translated from the German by J. Cockle, M.D. (Williams and Norgate.)

(7) The Circle of Seasons.  By K. E. V. (Elliot Stock.)

(8) Songs of Adieu.  By Lord Henry Somerset. (Chatto and Windus.)

(9) Immortelles.  By Cora M. Davis. (G.  P. Putnam’s Sons.)

SOME LITERARY NOTES—­IV

(Woman’s World, April 1889.)

‘In modern life,’ said Matthew Arnold once, ’you I cannot well enter a monastery; but you can enter the Wordsworth Society.’  I fear that this will sound to many a somewhat uninviting description of this admirable and useful body, whose papers and productions have been recently published by Professor Knight, under the title of Wordsworthiana.  ’Plain living and high thinking’ are not popular ideals.  Most people prefer to live in luxury, and to think with the majority.  However, there is really nothing in the essays and addresses of the Wordsworth Society that need cause the public any unnecessary alarm; and it is gratifying to note that, although the society is still in the first blush of enthusiasm, it has not yet insisted upon our admiring Wordsworth’s inferior work.  It praises what is worthy of praise, reverences what should be reverenced, and explains what does not require explanation.  One paper is quite delightful; it is from the pen of Mr. Rawnsley, and deals with such reminiscences of Wordsworth as still linger among the peasantry of Westmoreland.  Mr. Rawnsley grew up, he tells us, in the immediate vicinity of the present Poet-Laureate’s old home in Lincolnshire, and had been struck with the swiftness with which,