efer
equal claims to applause.

"My Beautiful Lady," and "Of my Lady in Death," are two poems
in a quaint metre, full of true poetry, marred by not a few
affectations--the genuine metal, but wanting to be purified from its
dross. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to find the precious ore anywhere
in these unpoetical times.

To our taste the following is replete with poetry. What a _picture_
it is! A poet's tongue has told what an artist's eye has seen. It is
the first of a series to be entitled "Songs of One Household." [Here
comes Dante Rossetti's poem, "My Sister's Sleep," followed by
Patmore's "Seasons," and Christina Rossetti's "Testimony."] We have
not space to take any specimens of the prose, but the essays on art
are conceived with an equal appreciation of its _meaning_ and
requirements. Being such, _The Germ_ has our heartiest wishes for its
success; but we scarcely dare to _hope_ that it may win the
popularity it deserves. The truth is that it is too good for the
time. It is not _material_ enough for the age.

_Art and Poetry: being Thoughts towards Nature._ Conducted
principally by Artists. Nos. 3 and 4. London: Dickinson and Co.

Some time since we had occasion to direct the attention of our
readers to a periodical then just issued under the modest title of
_The Germ_. The surprise and pleasure with which we read it was, as
we are informed, very generally shared by our readers upon perusing
the poems we extracted from it; and it was manifest to every person
of the slightest taste that the contributors were possessed of genius
of a very high order, and that _The Germ_ was not wantonly so
entitled, for it abounded with the promise of a rich harvest to be
anticipated from the maturity of those whose youth could accomplish
so much.

But we expressed also our fear lest the very excellence of this
magazine should be fatal to its success. It was too good--that is to
say, too refined and of too lofty a class, both in its art and in its
poetry--to be sufficiently popular to pay even the printer's bill.
The name, too, was against it, being somewhat unintelligible to the
thoughtless, and conveying to the considerate a notion of something
very juvenile. Those fears were not unfounded, for it was suspended
for a short time; but other journals after a while discovered and
proclaimed the merit that was scattered profusely over the pages of
_The Germ_, and, thus encouraged, the enterprise has been resumed,
with a change o