elqu'un. And so
it is easy to see that Mr. Irwin is a fervent admirer of Mr. Matthew
Arnold. But he is in no sense a plagiarist. He has succeeded in
studying a fine poet without stealing from him--a very difficult thing to
do--and though many of the reeds through which he blows have been touched
by other lips, yet he is able to draw new music from them. Like most of
our younger poets, Mr. Irwin is at his best in his sonnets, and those
entitled The Seeker after God and The Pillar of the Empire are really
remarkable. All through this volume, however, one comes across good
work, and the descriptions of Indian scenery are excellent. India, in
fact, is the picturesque background to these poems, and her monstrous
beasts, strange flowers and fantastic birds are used with much subtlety
for the production of artistic effect. Perhaps there is a little too
much about the pipal-tree, but when we have a proper sense of Imperial
unity, no doubt the pipal-tree will be as dear and as familiar to us as
the oaks and elms of our own woodlands.

(1) Low Down: Wayside Thoughts in Ballad and Other Verse. By Two Tramps.
(Redway.)

(2) Rhymes and Renderings. By H. C. Irwin. (David Stott.)

A RIDE THROUGH MOROCCO

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 8, 1886.)

Morocco is a sort of paradox among countries, for though it lies westward
of Piccadilly yet it is purely Oriental in character, and though it is
but three hours' sail from Europe yet it makes you feel (to use the
forcible expression of an American writer) as if you had been 'taken up
by the scruff of the neck and set down in the Old Testament.' Mr. Hugh
Stutfield has ridden twelve hundred miles through it, penetrated to Fez
and Wazan, seen the lovely gate at Mequinez and the Hassen Tower by
Rabat, feasted with sheikhs and fought with robbers, lived in an
atmosphere of Moors, mosques and mirages, visited the city of the lepers
and the slave-market of Sus, and played loo under the shadow of the Atlas
Mountains. He is not an Herodotus nor a Sir John Mandeville, but he
tells his stories very pleasantly. His book, on the whole, is delightful
reading, for though Morocco is picturesque he does not weary us with word-
painting; though it is poor he does not bore us with platitudes. Now and
then he indulges in a traveller's licence and thrills the simple reader
with statements as amazing as they are amusing. The Moorish coinage, he
tells us, is so cumbersome that if a man gives