hat the sole aim of art should be to amuse, and had
they been consulted on the subject would have banished Melpomene from
Parnassus. It may be admitted, however, that not a little of our modern
art is somewhat harsh and painful. Our Castaly is very salt with tears,
and we have bound the brows of the Muses with cypress and with yew. We
are often told that we are a shallow age, yet we have certainly the
saddest literature of all the ages, for we have made Truth and not Beauty
the aim of art, and seem to value imitation more than imagination. This
tendency is, of course, more marked in fiction than it is in poetry.
Beauty of form is always in itself a source of joy; the mere _technique_
of verse has an imaginative and spiritual element; and life must, to a
certain degree, be transfigured before it can find its expression in
music. But ordinary fiction, rejecting the beauty of form in order to
realise the facts of life, seems often to lack the vital element of
delight, to miss that pleasure-giving power in virtue of which the arts
exist. It would not, however, be fair to regard Warring Angels simply as
a specimen of literary photography. It has a marked distinction of
style, a definite grace and simplicity of manner. There is nothing crude
in it, though it is to a certain degree inexperienced; nothing violent,
though it is often strong. The story it has to tell has frequently been
told before, but the treatment makes it new; and Lady Flower, for whose
white soul the angels of good and evil are at war, is admirably
conceived, and admirably drawn.

* * * * *

A Song of Jubilee and Other Poems contains some pretty, picturesque
verses. Its author is Mrs. De Courcy Laffan, who, under the name of Mrs.
Leith Adams, is well known as a novelist and story writer. The Jubilee
Ode is quite as good as most of the Jubilee Odes have been, and some of
the short poems are graceful. This from The First Butterfly is pretty:

O little bird without a song! I love
Thy silent presence, floating in the light--
A living, perfect thing, when scarcely yet
The snow-white blossom crawls along the wall,
And not a daisy shows its star-like head
Amid the grass.

Miss Bella Duffy's Life of Madame de Stael forms part of that admirable
'Eminent Women' Series, which is so well edited by Mr. John H. Ingram.
There is nothing absolutely new in Miss Duffy's book, but this was not to
be expected. Unpublished correspondence, tha