CULTURE AND PROGRESS. 
*35 
that the “ average man ” is well contented with either. 
“ He likes sense and information, if they are not put 
in such a way as to tire or shock him. He is will- 
ing enough to put up with commonplace which imi- 
tates originality, for he finds nothing to object to in 
the commonplaces ; but he has not sufficient confi- 
dence in his own judgment to detect the counterfeit 
originality. But it is a mistake to imagine that there 
is always a popular demand for any foolish fashion 
of writing which happens to exist. That very lack 
of discrimination which marks the uneducated man 
renders him quite as ready to accept sense as non- 
sense. But as nonsense only is given him, he accepts 
nonsense. Who is he that he should set up his 
opinion against persons who express themselves in 
such fine and confident words, whose sentences are 
printed in such elegant type, in papers sold at such 
grand hotels, and scattered by the thousand in such 
great cities ? What is known as a popular demand 
might be more accurately described as a popular 
acquiescence. It seems very formidable when we 
think of the immense number of persons who form 
it; but then it is only skin-deep. Instead of a 
popular state of mind being, as we are apt to think 
it, a recondite and almost inscrutable matter, it is 
oftener the result of an obvious and even contempti- 
ble cause. Instead of there being a deep-seated and 
characteristic taste with which public caterers must 
comply, the fashion is often given the people from 
above. After the fashion is fixed, men write in 
accordance with it, and explain its existence by the 
fiction of a demand.” 
Mr. Nadal has given us a very delightful volume, 
— full of good things that one feels like marking 
with the pencil, or reading aloud, or quoting in a 
“book notice; ” but we confess that these “Impres- 
sions ” most interest us by the promise of their 
qualities. There are phases of American life, — and 
one of them at least he himself points out in the 
paper on “ English Sundays and London Churches,” 
— which are waiting for appropriate treatment at the 
hands of a writer whose tone is so high and reverent 
of truth, who has just such quick and subtile in- 
sight, just such exquisite poetic feeling, free from 
all taint of sentimentality. 
Miss Phelps’s “ Poetic Studies.” * 
Only those whose occupation it is to listen closely 
to all the utterances and echoes of the period, in imag- 
inative literature, can fully know the relief that comes 
with hearing unexpectedly, amid the uproar, a single 
note of genuine, spontaneous song. Such a note we 
seem to distinguish in Miss Phelps’s modest volume, 
though the manner of uttering it is not quite so much 
her own as we could wish it to be, seeing how fine 
and how distinctive is the quality of her feeling. It 
is not that one blames a poet for resemblances which 
may be as natural as that close friends should have 
kindred tastes, and members of one family develop 
like features; and, if Miss Phelps’s poetic accent 
* Poetic Studies. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Author of 
“The Gates Ajar,” etc. Boston: James R. Osgood & Com- 
pany. 
recalls, here and there, the time of Browning or 
Emerson, it is no less a ground for pride that she 
can write in their modern strain two poems like 
“What the Shore says to the Sea” and “ What the 
Sea says to the Shore.” It is, perhaps, not doing 
Miss Phelps justice to call attention first to these 
hints of poetic kinship ; but rather the offering of a 
crumb to very strict literary consciences. The maxim 
of some readers as well as critics seems to be, “ First 
catch your poet: ” we have shown them how to do 
it in this case. But even in “ Petronilla,” a poem, 
the peculiar lace-like texture of which we should be 
tempted most strongly to call Point of Browning, 
we find a strange, visionary effect in the description 
of miracle, which seems quite new and very nota- 
ble. 
The most simply pleasing, and possibly therefore 
the healthiest verses in the book are, we think, 
those called “Did you speak?” They relate a 
childish anecdote of the sort which women poets 
have brought into literature ; and we owe humble 
thanks for the simple, naive, hearty sweetness im- 
parted through them. Of “ The Light that never was 
on Sea or Land,” we must speak in a very different 
tone. This is a poem which brings criticism into 
the attitude of silent awe ; not so much for its art 
(though that is singularly subtle) as for its pure, 
far-reaching feminine holiness. Here again is a 
revelation which only a woman could have made, 
because she alone knows the depths of feeling 
whence it came. 
If we speak solely of literary value, we must think 
Miss Phelps wise in calling her poems “studies.” 
In the main, they are simply this, — not, of course, 
cold, mechanical studies, but efforts in certain direc- 
tions carried only to a given point. Some go farther 
than others, and several deserve a degree higher 
than that assigned by the title. But if these also are 
only “ studies,” we look with great hope for “works ” 
to follow. 
“An. Idyl of Work.”* 
A defense maybe found for the • strict literary 
conscience which we have alluded to in speaking of 
Miss Phelps. It is this. The alien notes in a poet’s 
singing come there in two ways, — either through a 
semi-unconscious demand of a voice strong enough 
to carry them without hurt, or through adoption on 
theory. In the first case, of course, the defect 
excuses itself, in a measure. In the second, though 
the theory may be as unconscious as the distinctive 
demand was in the first case, it proves itself theory by 
the weakness of the voice, and cannot excuse itself — 
can only be excused. 
When a poem in blank verse, something over four 
thousand lines long, is about to be written, it is 
advisable to reflect long and seriously whether the 
subject-matter takes the proposed form voluntarily, 
and whether it has in itself the peculiar elements 
and tendencies which will uphold the ponderous 
shaping, and keep it buoyant and battle-proof to the 
last. It seems to us that this was not safely to be 
* An Idyl of Work. By Lucy Larcom. Boston : James R. 
Osgood & Company. 
