fine boy for that. Anyhow, it makes _Noema_ at least
twenty-five, supposing she married at sweet seventeen, and, indeed,
she alludes to herself in the poem as no longer in her first youth.

Well, _Aran_, who is very far from being a domestic character, is
struck down by avenging lightning at the destruction of the Tower
of Babel, and _Noema_ is left a widow, with her child, who has been
protected in the _melee_ by the Spirit _Afrael's_ taking him out of
it, and restoring him to his mother's arms. When, after this, the
infatuated spirit-lover _Afrael_ requests _Noema_ to say the word
which shall make a man of him, and a husband of him too at the same
time, she modestly refuses, until she has had a decent time to order
her widow's weeds at her milliner's and wear them for about a month or
so, at the expiration of which interval _Afrael_ may, if he be still
of the same mind, call in again, and pop the question.

_Afrael_ bids good-bye to the Upper House, and, his heart being
ever true to _Poll_--meaning _Noema_--he returns, makes an evening
call upon her, and asks her, in effect, "Is it to be '_Yes-ema_,'
or '_No-ema_'?" The bashful widow chooses the former, and the
Spirit-lover _Afrael_, renouncing his immortality, i.e., giving
up spirits, becomes plain _Mr. Afrael_, and an ordinary, as far as
anybody can judge, a very ordinary mortal, showing what a change a
drop of spirits can effect in a constitution. Now I should like the
poem "continued in our next." I should like to hear _how_ they got
on together: and, as longevity was considerable in those patriarchal
days, I should like to know how they got on together when _Afrael
Esquire_ was 195, and his wife, _Noema_, was 200. Did _Afrael_ never
again take to his spirits? Or, did he become miserable and hipped
having entirely lost his spirits? Did his wife never make sarcastic
reference to the "stars" with whom he had formerly been acquainted?
And how about her boy, his step-son? Did they have any family? Whence
came the money?

Perhaps Mr. ALFRED AUSTIN (whose works are being printed by MACMILLAN
in a collected form, and among them _The Satire_ now historic)
will give us an entirely new volume on the same subject, telling an
expectant public all about _Mr._ and _Mrs. Afrael chez eux_, and, in
fact, something spicy about this strangely assorted couple; for Poet
ALFRED will do well to remember and act upon his own dictum when, in
the preface to _The Satire_, he observed, a