Sinning, yet winning
Souls to repenting;
When for her sorrow
Comes a to-morrow,
Shall she be bless’d?’”
“That’s a question I can’t take upon myself to answer,” interrupted Frere. “But if those are in the style you consider suited to the tone of your Magazine, it must be a very wonderful publication.”
“I flatter myself it is, rather,” replied Bracy complacently. “But that’s by no means the only style; here’s a thing that will go down with the million sweetly. Listen to this,” and as he spoke he extracted from a drawer a mighty bundle of papers labelled “Accepted Poetry,” and selecting one or two specimens from the mass, read as follows:—
“THE COUNTESS EMMELINE’S DISDAINMENT.”
“Bitter-black the winter’s whirlwind wail’d around the haunted hall,
Where the sheeted snow that fleeted fester’d on the mouldering wall.