And wed her wi' this ring';
And the deid bride's hand it was as cauld
As ony earthly thing.

The priest he touched that lady's hand,
And never a word he said;
The priest he touched that lady's hand,
And his ain was wet and red.

The priest he lifted his ain right hand,
And the red blood dripped and fell.
Says, 'I loved ye, lady, and ye loved me;
Sae I took your life mysel'.'

. . . . .

Oh! red, red was the dawn o' day,
And tall was the gallows-tree:
The Southland lord to his ain has fled
And the mess-priest's hangit hie!

Of the sonnets, this To Herodotus is worth quoting:

Far-travelled coaster of the midland seas,
What marvels did those curious eyes behold!
Winged snakes, and carven labyrinths of old;
The emerald column raised to Heracles;
King Perseus' shrine upon the Chemmian leas;
Four-footed fishes, decked with gems and gold:
But thou didst leave some secrets yet untold,
And veiled the dread Osirian mysteries.

And now the golden asphodels among
Thy footsteps fare, and to the lordly dead
Thou tellest all the stories left unsaid
Of secret rites and runes forgotten long,
Of that dark folk who ate the Lotus-bread
And sang the melancholy Linus-song.

Mrs. Tomson has certainly a very refined sense of form. Her verse,
especially in the series entitled New Words to Old Tunes, has grace and
distinction. Some of the shorter poems are, to use a phrase made
classical by Mr. Pater, 'little carved ivories of speech.' She is one of
our most artistic workers in poetry, and treats language as a fine
material.

(1) An Author's Love: Being the Unpublished Letters of Prosper Merimee's
'Inconnue.' (Macmillan and Co.)

(2) The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets. By Graham R.
Tomson. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

A THOUGHT-READER'S NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 5, 1889.)

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards.
The last page is, as a rule, the most interesting, and when one begins
with the catastrophe or the denoument one feels on pleasant terms of
equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a
theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hairbreadth escapes of the
hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved.
One knows the jealously-guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at
th