Review_,
but the selfish editor, Mr. Cross, said that he preferred to keep it for
himself!

"Hints to Pilgrims" is the essence of the modern essay. Strangely
enough, it sent me back to the "Colour of Life" by the only real
_pr['e]cieuse_ living in our world to-day, Alice Meynell; and I read that
with new delight between certain paragraphs in Brooks's paper "On
Finding a Plot." Why is not "Hints to Pilgrims" in its fourteenth
edition? Or why has it no _claque_? The kind of _claque_ that is so
common now--which opens suddenly like a chorus of cicadas in the "Idylls
of Theocritus"? After all, your education must have been well begun
before you can enjoy "Hints to Pilgrims," while for "Huckleberry Finn"
the less education you have, the better. Mr. Brooks writes:

Let us suppose, for example, that Carmen, before she got into that
ugly affair with the Toreador, had settled down in Barchester
beneath the towers. Would the shadow of the cloister, do you think,
have cooled her Southern blood? Would she have conformed to the
decent gossip of the town? Or, on the contrary, does not a hot
colour always tint the colder mixture? Suppose that Carmen came to
live just outside the Cathedral close and walked every morning with
her gay parasol and her pretty swishing skirts past the Bishop's
window.

We can fancy his pen hanging dully above his sermon, with his eyes
on space for any wandering thought, as if the clouds, like treasure
ships upon a sea, were freighted with riches for his use. The
Bishop is brooding on an address to the Ladies' Sewing Guild. He
must find a text for his instructive finger. It is a warm spring
morning and the daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A
robin sings in the hedge with an answer from his mate. There is
wind in the tree-tops with lively invitation to adventure, but the
Bishop is bent to his sober task. Carmen picks her way demurely
across the puddles in the direction of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn
modestly toward his window. Surely she does not see him at his
desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is quite by accident. It
is the puddles and the wind frisking with her skirt.

"Eh! Dear me!" The good man is merely human. He pushes up his
spectacles for nearer sight. He draws aside the curtain. "Dear me!
Bless my soul! Who is the lady? Quite a foreign air. I don't