The Secretary of the International Technical College at Bedford has
issued a most interesting prospectus of the aims and objects of the
Institution. The College seems to be intended chiefly for ladies who
have completed their ordinary course of English studies, and it will be
divided into two departments, Educational and Industrial. In the latter,
classes will be held for various decorative and technical arts, and for
wood-carving, etching, and photography, as well as sick-nursing,
dressmaking, cookery, physiology, poultry-rearing, and the cultivation of
flowers. The curriculum certainly embraces a wonderful amount of
subjects, and I have no doubt that the College will supply a real want.

* * * * *

The Ladies' Employment Society has been so successful that it has moved
to new premises in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, where there are some
very pretty and useful things for sale. The children's smocks are quite
charming, and seem very inexpensive. The subscription to the Society is
one guinea a year, and a commission of five per cent. is charged on each
thing sold.

* * * * *

Miss May Morris, whose exquisite needle-work is well known, has just
completed a pair of curtains for a house in Boston. They are amongst the
most perfect specimens of modern embroidery that I have seen, and are
from Miss Morris's own design. I am glad to hear that Miss Morris has
determined to give lessons in embroidery. She has a thorough knowledge
of the art, her sense of beauty is as rare as it is refined, and her
power of design is quite remarkable.

Mrs. Jopling's life-classes for ladies have been such a success that a
similar class has been started in Chelsea by Mr. Clegg Wilkinson at the
Carlyle Studios, King's Road. Mr. Wilkinson (who is a very brilliant
young painter) is strongly of opinion that life should be studied from
life itself, and not from that abstract presentation of life which we
find in Greek marbles--a position which I have always held very strongly
myself.

(1) Memoirs of an Arabian Princess. By the Princess Emily Ruete of Oman
and Zanzibar. (Ward and Downey.)

(2) Makers of Venice. By Mrs. Oliphant. (Macmillan and Co.)

(3) The Plan of Campaign. By Mabel Robinson. (Vizetelly and Co.)

(4) A Year in Eden. By Harriet Waters Preston. (Fisher Unwin.)

(5) The Englishwoman's Year-Book, 1888. (Hatchards.)

(6) Rachel and Other Poems. (Cornish Brothers.)

THE POETS' CORNER--VI

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 6, 1888.)

David Westren, by Mr. Alfred Hayes, is a long narrative poem in
Tennysonian blank verse, a sort of serious novel set to music. It is
somewhat lacking in actuality, and the picturesque style in which it is
written rather contributes to this effect, lending the story beauty but
robbing it of truth. Still, it is not without power, and cultured verse
is certainly a pleasanter medium for story-telling than coarse and common
prose.