ions. A recent novel gives us a
picture of "a tall soldier," who, in camp, was very full of brag and
bluster. We are quite sure that when the fight comes on this man with the
lubricated tongue will prove an arrant coward; we assume that he will run
at the first smell of smoke. But we are wrong--he stuck; and when the flag
was carried down in the rush, he rescued it and bore it bravely so far to
the front that when he came back he brought another--the tawdry, red flag
of the enemy!

I slip this in here just to warn hasty folk against the assumption that
talkative people are necessarily vacant-minded. Man has a many-sided
nature, and like the moon reveals only certain phases at certain times.
And as there is one side of the moon that is never revealed at all to
dwellers on the planet Earth, so mortals may unconsciously conceal certain
phases of soul-stuff from each other.

Miss Barrett seems to have written more letters and longer ones to Miss
Mitford than to any of her other correspondents, save one. Yet she was
aware of this rather indiscreet woman's limitations and wrote down to her
understanding.

To Richard H. Horne she wrote freely and at her intellectual best. With
this all-round, gifted man she kept up a correspondence for many years;
and her letters now published in two stout volumes afford a literary
history of the time. At the risk of being accused of lack of taste, I wish
to say that these letters of Miss Barrett's are a deal more interesting to
me than any of her longer poems. They reveal the many-sided qualities of
the writer, and show the workings of her mind in various moods. Poetry is
such an exacting form that it never allows the author to appear in
dressing-gown and slippers; neither can he call over the back fence to his
neighbor without loss of dignity.

Horne was author, editor and publisher. His middle name was Henry, but
following that peculiar penchant of the ink-stained fraternity to play
flimflam with their names, he changed the Henry to Hengist; so we now see
it writ thus: R. Hengist Horne.

He found a market for Miss Barrett's wares. More properly, he insisted
that she should write certain things to fit certain publications in which
he was interested. They collaborated in writing several books. They met
very seldom, and their correspondence has a fine friendly flavor about it,
tempered with a disinterestedness that is unique. They encourage each
other, criticize each other. They rail at e