wonderful power of observation.  As reconstructed in these letters, the Inconnue seems to have been not unlike Merimee himself.  She had the same restless, unyielding, independent character.  Each desired to analyse the other.  Each, being a critic, was better fitted for friendship than for love.  ’We are so different,’ said Merimee once to her, ’that we can hardly understand each other.’  But it was because they were so alike that each remained a mystery to the other.  Yet they ultimately attained to a high altitude of loyal and faithful friendship, and from a purely literary point of view these fictitious letters give the finishing touch to the strange romance that so stirred Paris fifteen years ago.  Perhaps the real letters will be published some day.  When they are, how interesting to compare them!

The Bird-Bride, by Graham R. Tomson, is a collection of romantic ballads, delicate sonnets, and metrical studies in foreign fanciful forms.  The poem that gives its title to the book is the lament of an Eskimo hunter over the loss of his wife and children.

   Years agone, on the flat white strand,
      I won my sweet sea-girl: 
   Wrapped in my coat of the snow-white fur,
   I watched the wild birds settle and stir,
      The grey gulls gather and whirl.

   One, the greatest of all the flock,
      Perched on an ice-floe bare,
   Called and cried as her heart were broke,
   And straight they were changed, that fleet bird-folk,
      To women young and fair.

   Swift I sprang from my hiding-place
      And held the fairest fast;
   I held her fast, the sweet, strange thing: 
   Her comrades skirled, but they all took wing,
      And smote me as they passed.

   I bore her safe to my warm snow house;
      Full sweetly there she smiled;
   And yet, whenever the shrill winds blew,
   She would beat her long white arms anew,
      And her eyes glanced quick and wild.

   But I took her to wife, and clothed her warm
      With skins of the gleaming seal;
   Her wandering glances sank to rest
   When she held a babe to her fair, warm breast,
      And she loved me dear and leal.

   Together we tracked the fox and the seal,
      And at her behest I swore
   That bird and beast my bow might slay
   For meat and for raiment, day by day,
      But never a grey gull more.

Famine comes upon the land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slays four sea-gulls for food.  The bird-wife ‘shrilled out in a woful cry,’ and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for her children and for herself, and flies away with them.

   ’Babes of mine, of the wild wind’s kin,
      Feather ye quick, nor stay. 
   Oh, oho! but the wild winds blow! 
   Babes of mine, it is time to go: 
      Up, dear hearts, and away!’