onceptions and artistic renditions.
"Retrospection," by Kathleen Baldwin, is likewise a poem of high order,
and of fairly regular metre, evidently following comparatively recent
models in technique. "The Faithful Man," by I. T. Valentine, shows
growing poetical talent, but is cruelly injured by the anticlimactic
line. Not that there is any anticlimax of sentiment, but the colloquial
mode of expression shocks the reader who has been perusing the more
dignified lines which go before. "The Stonework of Life" is an excellent
prose sermon by Joseph Ernest Shufelt, which displays great ability in
the field of metaphor and allegory. Mr. Shufelt possesses an admirable
style, unusually well fitted for didactic matter of this sort; indeed,
it is regrettable that he should ever depart from such congenial themes
and turn to the wild sensationalism which he shows in _The Badger_. In
demonstrating the beauties of morality and religion, he has few
superiors, and a task so appropriate to his genius ought to claim his
whole attention. True, his thoughts may follow strange courses in their
quest for truth and beauty, but were he always to curb them within the
bounds of probability and conservatism, as here, he would never lose the
confidence of his public, as he has done with his strange war theories.
"The Autocracy of Art," by Anne Vyne Tillery Renshaw, is the leading
article of the magazine. Herein the author proclaims the supremacy of
spiritual utterances over all restrictions created by the mind, and
urges the emancipation of the soaring bard from the earthly chains of
rhyme and metre. That the inward promptings of the poetic instinct are
of prime value to the poet, few will dispute; but that they may give
final form to his soul's creations without some regulation by the
natural laws of rhythm, few will agree. The metric sense lies far deeper
in the breast of man than Mrs. Renshaw is here disposed to acknowledge.
After this article, the perfectly regular stanzas of "Fellow Craftsman,"
_by the same author_, are refreshing. The typography and form of _The
Looking Glass_ leave something to be desired, but the riches within make
ample compensation for outward crudity.

_The New Member_ for May, edited by William Dowdell, contains but one
credential, yet doubtless paves the way for a resumption of the
enterprise so ably conducted by Miss Hoffman last year. "Melancholy," a
poem by I. T. Valentine, shows traces of the beginner's crudeness, y