The poems comprising this volume have appeared from time to time in the magazine published in connection with the church—St. Barnabas, Pimlico—of which Mr. Gurney was vicar. They are, therefore, devotional in character. They are also, in some degree, symbolical and mystical. Mr. Gurney has evidently been a good deal under the influence of that earlier phase of Rossetti's art—both in printing and poetry—which dallied with spiritual mysteries, and sought to give them a visible embodiment. The author comes somewhat late as a disciple of the revival of mediaeval feeling, which began in this country forty yoars ago; but ho has the distinction of being more attracted by the spiritual than by the aesthetic side of that revival.
