the jargon so feelingly denounced by Colonel Morley about "esthetics,"
and "objective," and "subjective," has gone to its long home, some critic
who can write English will probably bring that poor little volume fairly
before the public; and, with all its manifold faults, it will take a
place in the affections, not of one single generation of the young, but
--everlasting, ever-dreaming, ever-growing youth. But you and I, reader,
have no other interest in these poems, except this--that they were
written by the brother-in-law of that whimsical, miserly Frank Vance, who
perhaps, but for such a brother-in-law, would never have gone through the
labour by which he has cultivated the genius that achieved his fame; and
if he had not cultivated that genius, he might never have known Lionel;
and if he had never known Lionel, Lionel might never perhaps have gone to
the Surrey village, in which he saw the Phenomenon: And, to push farther
still that Voltaireian philosophy of ifs--if either Lionel or Frank Vance
had not been so intimately associated in the minds of Sophy and Lionel
with the golden holiday on the beautiful river, Sophy and Lionel might
not have thought so much of those poems; and if they had not thought so
much of those poems, there might not have been between them that link of
poetry without which the love of two young people is a sentiment, always
very pretty it is true, but much too commonplace to deserve special
commemoration in a work so uncommonly long as this is likely to be. And
thus it is clear that Frank Vance is not a superfluous and episodical
personage amongst the characters of this history, but, however
indirectly, still essentially, one of those beings without whom the
author must have given a very different answer to the question, "What
will he do with it?"

Return we to Lionel and Sophy. The poems have brought their hearts
nearer and nearer together. And when the book fell from Lionel's hand,
Sophy knew that his eyes were on her face, and her own eyes looked away.