That the contents of The Germ are the production of no common minds the following extracts will sufficiently prove, and we may add that these are but a small portion of the contents which might prefer equal claims to applause.

“My Beautiful Lady,” and “Of my Lady in Death,” are two poems in a quaint metre, full of true poetry, marred by not a few affectations—­the genuine metal, but wanting to be purified from its dross.  Nevertheless, it is pleasant to find the precious ore anywhere in these unpoetical times.

To our taste the following is replete with poetry.  What a picture it is!  A poet’s tongue has told what an artist’s eye has seen.  It is the first of a series to be entitled “Songs of One Household.” [Here comes Dante Rossetti’s poem, “My Sister’s Sleep,” followed by Patmore’s “Seasons,” and Christina Rossetti’s “Testimony.”] We have not space to take any specimens of the prose, but the essays on art are conceived with an equal appreciation of its meaning and requirements.  Being such, The Germ has our heartiest wishes for its success; but we scarcely dare to hope that it may win the popularity it deserves.  The truth is that it is too good for the time.  It is not material enough for the age.

Art and Poetry:  being Thoughts towards Nature. Conducted principally by Artists.  Nos. 3 and 4.  London:  Dickinson and Co.

Some time since we had occasion to direct the attention of our readers to a periodical then just issued under the modest title of The Germ.  The surprise and pleasure with which we read it was, as we are informed, very generally shared by our readers upon perusing the poems we extracted from it; and it was manifest to every person of the slightest taste that the contributors were possessed of genius of a very high order, and that The Germ was not wantonly so entitled, for it abounded with the promise of a rich harvest to be anticipated from the maturity of those whose youth could accomplish so much.

But we expressed also our fear lest the very excellence of this magazine should be fatal to its success.  It was too good—­that is to say, too refined and of too lofty a class, both in its art and in its poetry—­to be sufficiently popular to pay even the printer’s bill.  The name, too, was against it, being somewhat unintelligible to the thoughtless, and conveying to the considerate a notion of something very juvenile.  Those fears were not unfounded, for it was suspended for a short time; but other journals after a while discovered and proclaimed the merit that was scattered profusely over the pages of The Germ, and, thus encouraged, the enterprise has been resumed, with a change of name which we must regard as an improvement. Art and Poetry precisely describes its character.  It is wholly devoted to them, and it aims at originality in both.  It is seeking out for itself new paths, in a spirit of