Book Notices. PURPOSE AND PASSION, by Keningale Robert Cook, B.A. London: Virtue and Co.—This book is of in terest chiefly to those who have a taste for classical Some very prettily-written deseriptions of poetry. flowers, sunlight, and scenery are seattered here and there in the poems, and a few specimens may be quoted. Here, for instance, are a few selections from some verses on "Enthusiasm," whose praises are thus sung by the writer: Come all sweet loves in clusters round my head, Come scarce seen hyacinths of the forest dells, Come singing softly how ye filled and fed From out free skies your wealth of dripping bells. Calm me ye tcachings of the world-old hills, Whose ways lead up to where my maiden stands, Pointing down vistas that great hope fulfils  The brightest stardrop made of God’s fair hands. She is the happiest maiden in the world, Though beaten down a thousand times a day By winds and storm that round her feet are curled, By weight of mist that spheres the rose with grey. The next verse of the same poem shows some of the defeets of the author’s style : As earth-born monster, sorely maimed and spent, Cleaves close unto the nursing-mother’s breast, And, nostril-fed by breaths thus nurture-blent, Gains greater strength the more he is opprest - The following are the opening verses of another poem, entitled “ The World before Man ”: A sky of swollen mists exhaled From seething marsh and boundless green ; A Titan crowd of stems and reeds, Wide lakes and burning plains between. Mad riot and luxuriant growth, Festoonery upon each tree ; Gross life of verdure sweeping down By calm grey rivers to the sea. The panther’s roar is on the air, And full of song the jungle-wood; The blue snake winds his coils along, And seeks the singing bird for food. The heron by the loamy marge Of sheltered shallows, marks the smooth Bright silver fishes flash along, Taught keenness by her hunger’s tooth. The following lines again, from “ The Romance of Rest,” tell in very beautiful language how the poet and his friend were woocd on a summer’s day, to leave the house for the open air: Long converse had we in the window niche, While winds impatient in the ivy leaves, Said “ Come, O come to us,” and whispered low Their tales of couches with the heaven for roof, Tapping the lattice in their ecstacies; Till I, in envy of their joyous hearts, Longed to drink in the air, and be a boy, Taught by the breezes of the hill-side school. We wandered out by sheep-paths toward the moor, Staying our feet, where all things scemed to join With summer to make glad. From the song of “ Fairyland,” and from the lines “ To a Dying King," other quotations possessing beauty and foree might be made, but here are some verses of a different description: The ripple of music flows; Who knows, who knows? The kisses blossom like the rose Only the happy summer knows. Sunlights, rose lights, white lights, In the sweep of their fingers are music to us; Here and there idle thus, Hither and thither across the lattice see floating, how marvellous. Most of the classical poems in the book are elaborately finished works of art. They appeal not to the feelings, but they show considerable—sometimes too much knowledge on the part of the writer of the capabilities of the English language, and are adapted to please the conventional taste of the few, and not the natural taste of the many. Literature whieh meets a demand, caused by temporary and artificial conditions, will soon vanish beneath the effacing fingers of father Time. In our opinion Mr. Cook has been most successful in those poems wherein he has been most simple and most natural, as in some of the verses whieh have here been quoted. These specimens show for themselves that the author has some of the true spirit of poetry in him. The book is neatly bound, and altogether is creditable to the author, printers, and publishers.