s the author of 'Katie's Letter' and 'The Irish
Emigrant's Lament.' These pieces are distinguished by true human
feeling, and hence their continued popularity. Of Adelaide Anne Procter,
daughter of 'Barry Cornwall,' it is not necessary to say much, for
certain of her lyrics are familiar (in feminine mouths, at any rate) as
household words. Everyone, alas! knows 'The Lost Chord;' many of us
wish that we did not. That the 'Legends and Lyrics' of Adelaide are
considerably more widely known than anything produced by her father is,
it is to be feared, only too true; and yet, full as they are of
tenderness and grace, they have not the claims to attention possessed by
the songs and dramatic fragments of 'Barry Cornwall.' The latter are
unduly neglected; while the songs are among the most virile and vigorous
in the language. The father's was altogether the stronger nature; the
daughter set an example of gentle lachrymoseness, which has been
followed, unfortunately, by too many female rhymers.

Of more recent years, several examples of heredity in song have been
vouchsafed to us. The younger Hood had his father's fluency, but,
apparently, very little of his imaginative power. Philip Bourke Marston
was, in the lyric vein, as successful, perhaps, as Dr. Westland Marston
had been in the dramatic, and it is probable that he will always be more
largely read, 'sicklied o'er' though his poetic outcome be 'with the
pale cast of thought.' The works of the present Lord Lytton and of Mr.
Aubrey de Vere are too well appreciated to need much characterization.
These writers would no doubt deprecate any comparison of their products
with those of the first Lord Lytton and Sir Aubrey de Vere, but it is
one from which, on the score of absolute merit, they would have no
occasion to shrink. Mr. Oscar Wilde and Mr. Eric Mackay have written
verse, no doubt, because Lady Wilde and Dr. Charles Mackay wrote verse
before them; and the Hon. Hallam Tennyson has shown, in a rhythmical
version of a nursery tale, that some measure of poetic faculty has been
meted out to him.

STINGS FOR THE STINGY.

Few frailties of mankind have been more bitterly scouted than that of
meanness in money matters. Of the two, prodigality has been thought the
better. The man who is poor has not been censured for being careful;
rather has he been praised for not being ashamed to own his poverty. But
the spectacle of the rich man hoarding his wealth and not living
accord