..--Anne Evans : Poems and Music. With Memorial Preface. By
Anne Thackeray Ritchie. (C. Began Paul.)—It will not be surpris- ing if Mrs. Ritchie's preface finds more readers than the poems of her friend. Yet these have much merit, the humorous ones espe- cially, for Miss Evans had humour of no common kind, and had the art of expressing it in very fluent verse. "Maurice Clifton" is excel- lent. Take these verses, for instance :-
" We cannot have everything, and nobody can! And what are the acres, compared with the man P My Helen considers all that such a trifle, If Maurice had nothing on earth but his rifle,
I suppose she would marry him first, and then say, ' Suppose you shoot something for dinner to-day!'
And Maurice, indeed, is so great as a shot, They might have a dinner, where others could not. He rides, too, superbly. And get him indoors, Where other young riders and shots are such bores, You find him quite charming,—so bright, so well-bred,
With very fine brains, in a very fine head."
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