ny voices,
But for Bov Derg were most,

has, of course, an archaeological interest, but has no artistic value at
all. Indeed, from the point of view of art, the few little poems at the
end of the volume are worth all the ambitious pseudo-epics that Mr.
Todhunter has tried to construct out of Celtic lore. A Bacchic Day is
charming, and the sonnet on the open-air performance of The Faithfull
Shepherdesse is most gracefully phrased and most happy in conception.

Mr. Peacock is an American poet, and Professor Thomas Danleigh Supplee,
A.M., Ph.D., F.R.S., who has written a preface to his Poems of the Plains
and Songs of the Solitudes, tells us that he is entitled to be called the
Laureate of the West. Though a staunch Republican, Mr. Peacock,
according to the enthusiastic Professor, is not ashamed of his ancestor
King William of Holland, nor of his relatives Lord and Lady Peacock who,
it seems, are natives of Scotland. He was brought up at Zanesville,
Muskingum Co., Ohio, where his father edited the Zanesville Aurora, and
he had an uncle who was 'a superior man' and edited the Wheeling
Intelligencer. His poems seem to be extremely popular, and have been
highly praised, the Professor informs us, by Victor Hugo, the Saturday
Review and the Commercial Advertiser. The preface is the most amusing
part of the book, but the poems also are worth studying. The Maniac, The
Bandit Chief, and The Outlaw can hardly be called light reading, but we
strongly recommend the poem on Chicago:

Chicago! great city of the West!
All that wealth, all that power invest;
Thou sprang like magic from the sand,
As touched by the magician's wand.

'Thou sprang' is slightly depressing, and the second line is rather
obscure, but we should not measure by too high a standard the untutored
utterances of artless nature. The opening lines of The Vendetta also
deserve mention:

When stars are glowing through day's gloaming glow,
Reflecting from ocean's deep, mighty flow,
At twilight, when no grim shadows of night,
Like ghouls, have stalked in wake of the light.

The first line is certainly a masterpiece, and, indeed, the whole volume
is full of gems of this kind. The Professor remarks in his elaborate
preface that Mr. Peacock 'frequently rises to the sublime,' and the two
passages quoted above show how keenly critical is his taste in these
matters and how well the poet deserves his panegyric.

Mr. Alexander Skene Smi