onnected. Yet we think it shows gleams of higher poetic talent
than anything he has yet published. It contains eighteen poems. 'A Death
in the Desert' is an imaginary portrayal of the death of St. John in his
old age in a cave, to which he had been taken by some faithful adherents
to save him from persecution. It is a sketch of power and originality.
St. John is supposed to speak:

'If I live yet, it is for good, more love
Through me to men: be nought but ashes here
That keeps awhile my semblance, who was John--
Still when they scatter, there is left on earth
No one alive who _knew_ (consider this!)
--Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first the Word of Life.
How will it be when none more saith 'I saw?''

Very original and very disagreeable in its highly wrought and subtile
Realism is 'Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island,' a
study from Shakspeare's 'Tempest.' It is a curious exposition of the
philosophy of such a being. At the close, when Caliban, who speaks in
the third person, is beginning to think of Setebos, 'his dam's god,' as
not so formidable after all, a great storm awakes, which upsets all his
reasoning, and makes him fall flat on his face with fright:

'What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes,
There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze--
A tree's head snaps--and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this mouth
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!'

'Mr. Sludge, the Medium,' one of the longer poems, is intended,
according to rumor, to demolish Mr. Home, and includes some sharp
thrusts at various persons who still patronize him after having found
him guilty of fraud.

The story runs that a lady and gentleman of eminence, devout
spiritualists, residing at Rome, confessed to Mr. Browning that during
Mr. Home's stay at their house they once forbade his putting his hand
under the table, and the spirits wouldn't rap, and Home burst into
tears, and confessed that _on that occasion only_ he had deceived them;
that on one other occasion he had put phosphor