weird conceits and high-pacing rhymes are thoughtfully labeled pastels, so as to give us a clue to their otherwise impenetrable obscurity. Sullen seas, and wan twilights, and dim garden paths, relieved with ghostly lilies, and white-armed women of dubious decorum, are the chief ingredients of these poetic novelties; but here is one, picked up by chance, which reads like a genial conundrum:—
"The light of our cigarettes
Went and came in the gloom;
It was dark in the little room.
Dark, and then in the dark,
Sudden, a flash, a glow,
And a hand and a ring I know.
And then, through the dark, a flush,
Ruddy and vague, the grace—
A rose—of her lyric face."
Now, if that be a pastel, and Mr. Gosse's reviews are pastels, and M. Bourget's stories are pastels, and Maurice de Guérin's "Centaur" is a pastel, and Mr. Brander Matthews' realistic sketches are pastels, and Ephraïm Mikhaël's allegories are pastels, I should like to be told, by some one who knows, just where the limits of the term is set.
