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THE ACCURSED ANNUAL

of Finchley Common" was less conspicuously virtuous. Here in "The Winter's Wreath" is a long poem in blank verse, by a nameless clergyman, on "The Efficacy of Religion." Here in the "Amulet," Mrs. Hemans, "leading the way as she deserves to do" (I quote from the "Monthly Review"), "clothes in her own pure and fascinating language the invitations which angels whisper into mortal ears." And here in the "Forget-Me-Not," Leontine hurls mild defiance at the spirit of doubt:—

Thou sceptic of the hardened brow,
Attend to Nature's cry!
Her sacred essence breathes the glow
O'er that thou wouldst deny;

—an argument which would have carried conviction to Huxley's soul, had he been more than eight years old when it was written. Poor Coleridge, always in need of a guinea or two, was bidden to write some descriptive lines for the "Keepsake," on an engraving by Parris of the Garden of Boccaccio; a delightful picture of nine ladies and three gentlemen picnicking in a park, with arcades as tall as aqueducts, a fountain as vast as Niagara, and