"From beginning to end, whatever the theme, whatever the mood and key, the poetic impulse of this book is Spring. Mr. Austin tells us, in a 'Prelude which is itself a spring pæan, that his susceptibility to the influence he feels so vividly is due to his having been born in spring. As laureate of the English Spring, he comes forward on her behalf, and elaborates an enticing description of a walk through woods and lanes which must be paradises of spring flowers, on a lovely sunny day improved by a passing shower-the veriest poet's darling of an April day."

Illustrated London News.

"Mr. Alfred Austin's muse, like good wine, has grown rich and mellow with age. It needs no high critical faculty to say that in At the Gate of the Convent, and other Poems, Mr. Austin has attained the high-water mark of his genius. In these days of confused poetical utterance it is delightful to find an author who can say out what is in him in language as clear as the mountain streams to which he loves to listen."

Academy.

"In the poem that gives its name to the volume, the poet, standing face to face with the prior of an Italian convent, listens to the gentle old man's appeal to him to leave the joys and agitations of the world for the cloister's quiet and chastening solitude. It is a beautiful appeal-these verses hang in the memory, like some of Mr. Arnold's on kindred subjects (p. 9)."

Saturday Review.

Fragrant with woodland scents, astir with rural sounds. The veritable voice of poetry."

Morning Post.

"All these poems are excellent in sentiment and expression, and are suggestive of pure and noble thoughts."

Spectator.

"There are charming verses in this volume; loving notes of scenery worthy of a contemporary of Brett and Frederick Walker. The instinct of the spring inspires every line of the opening poem. It is vernal as a primrose coppice painted by one of our best artists."

MACMILLAN & CO., 29, Bedford Street, Covent Garden.

"SKELETONS AT THE FEAST."

OR

THE RADICAL PROGRAMME.

BY

ALFRED AUSTIN.

W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE.

PRINTED BY W. H ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.

66

SKELETONS AT THE FEAST."

THOUGH not one of those who covet Parliamentary honours, because with every day that passes more and more deeply impressed by the deleterious effect upon public interests wrought by our Party system, and because bound, moreover, not to be divorced by politics from that higher vocation of Letters to which, when it is a man's first love, he invariably reverts, and, indeed, from which he never seriously strays; nevertheless, I think a person might justly be reproached with selfishness who manifested no interest in the fierce electoral struggle shortly to be decided. I, therefore, venture to offer this brief contribution to the momentous if distasteful controversy in which so many citizens, capable and incapable, are at present engaged.

Notwithstanding Mr. Gladstone's sportsmanlike Manifesto, that double-barrelled weapon, so admirably adapted for bringing down his birds right and left; notwithstanding Mr. Goschen's painful contortions, reminding one of the writhings of the Trojan priest* in the folds of the fatal serpent; and notwithstanding Lord Hartington's

See note at the end.