able heavenly host, and even the voice of God
repeating her mandate. He kneels, and she bids him pray, and, as before,
all the celestial voices repeat her bidding. He prays and is saved.

Such is the story of Kathrina, or rather of Kathrina's husband, for she
is herself scarcely other than a name for a series of arguments, with
little of the flesh and blood of a womanly personality. We have too much
reverence for high purposes in literature not to applaud Mr. Holland's
good intent in this work, and we accept fully his theory of letters and
of life. Both are meagre and unsatisfactory as long as their motive is
low; both must yield unhappiness and self-despite till religion inform
them. This is the common experience of man; this is the burden of the
sayings of the sage from the time of Solomon to the time of Mr. Holland;
and we can all acknowledge its truth, however we may differ as to the
essence of religion itself. But we conceive that repetition of this
truth in a long poem demands of the author an excellence, or of the
reader a patience, all but superhuman.

How Mr. Holland has met the extraordinary demand upon his powers is
partly evident from the outline of the poem as we have given it. It must
be owned that it is rather a feeble fancy which unites two vital epochs
by the incident of the truant lambkin, and that the plot of the poem
does not in any way reveal a great faculty of invention. A parable,
moreover, teaches only so far as it is true to life; and in a tale
professing to deal with persons of our own day and country, we have a
right to expect some fidelity to our contemporaries and neighbors. But
we find nothing of this in "Kathrina,"--not even in the incident of a
young gentleman of fourteen sporting with a lambkin; or in the talk of
young people who make love in long arguments concerning the nature and
office of genius and the intermediary functions of the teacher.
Polemically considered, there is nothing very wrong in the discussions
between those metaphysical lovers, and no one need raise the question as
to how far Kathrina's peculiar ideas are applicable to the work of
genius bearing her name.

"The greatest artists speak to fewest souls,
... The bread that comes from heaven
Needs finest breaking. Some there doubtless are,
Some ready souls, that take the morsel pure
Divided to their need; but multitudes
Must have it in admixtures, menstruums,
And forms that human hands or