all very good and
fresh,--and showed a true feeling for nature, and some knowledge of
humanity as women see it. In this second volume, however, she abandons
her maturer admirers to their fate, and seeks the favor of the young
ladies and gentlemen who have begun to like verses since Mr. Tennyson's
latest poems were written, and the old balladists and modern poetical
archaists ceased to be read. In fact, it is amazing to see how this
author, who had a talent of her own, has contentedly buried it, and gone
to counterfeiting the talents of others. The "Story of Doom" here given
is an unusually dreary copy of the unrealism of Mr. Tennyson's "Idyls
of the King," and makes the history of Noah more than ever improbable;
while "Laurance," mimicking all the well-known effects and smallest airs
and movements of the laureate's poems of rustic life, is scarcely to be
read without laughter. "Winstanley" presents an incident that, if told
in simple contemporary English, would have made a thrilling ballad; but
what with its quoth-he's, brave skippers, good master mayors, ladies
gay, and red suns, it is factitious, and of the library only,--it came
from Percy's "Reliques" and "The Ancient Mariner," not from the poet's
heart. It seems worthy of the sentimental purpose with which it was
written; but we doubt if any child in the National School in Dorsetshire
learned it by heart as his forefathers did the old ballads.

In pleasant contrast with its affectations is the beautiful little song
entitled "Apprenticed," which the author tells us is in the old English
manner, but which we find full of a young feeling and tenderness
belonging to all time, expressed in diction quite of our own. This, and
that one of the Songs with Preludes entitled "Wedlock," seem to us the
best, if not the only, poems in the book. Miss Ingelow's forte is not in
single lines and detachable passages, and her efforts are apt to be
altogether successful or unsuccessful. In the long rhyme called "Dreams
that came True," there is but one inspired line, and that is merely
descriptive,--

"In eddying rings the silence seemed to flow"

round him that waked suddenly from an awful dream. There is an
inglorious ease in the sarcasm, but we must express our regret that Miss
Ingelow did not leave this story in the prose which she says first
received it.

We suppose we need scarcely call the reader's attention to the fact that
certain faults of Miss Ingelow's first book a