Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/339

 a cheap play to a concert of Chopin and of Liszt on the ground that his theatre gave a souvenir valued at a quarter at every performance, whereas the concert was only music that went in one ear and out of the other. It is as absurd to say that angel-cake is worthless because it is not beefsteak.

The latter years of our century have been hard on reputations formed in its youth. Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, have lost ground as the years advanced. Shelley alone has gained. Unfavorable conditions have changed; difficulties have disappeared. The second crucial era has come on. His hundredth anniversary falls in an age of money, of practical and inventive genius,—an age lacking spiritualization in its life. To such an age he should be doubly useful.

I have given my reasons for thinking Shelley’s hold upon the world is stronger than before. I should have put “I think” before many of my statements, perhaps. This year will show more conclusively than any other the estimate which is put upon the most spiritual of our poets. Will it show that in our realism we are dead to the breath of the spirit? Will it show that in our century of speed, of invention, of commerce, we have perverted and lost our natural craving for, and love of something higher?

G. W. Alger.

AM going to tell a simple story, as simple as the most common, every-day occurrence of which men hardly take any notice. I am going to tell of one of those sweet little creatures every tenth, eighth, or sixth of whom withers away when scarcely entered upon life; of one of those cobwebby organisms often felled to the grave in a night—nay, in a few hours—by a mere breath of a gentle wind; or again, possessed of such wonderful life-power that for almost a century they are able