walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." (2 Cor. iv. 1, 2.) The best learning of all for this high calling, and absolutely indispensable, — is that which comes, not of the Schools, but of the teaching of God's Spirit. If we cannot have both, give us, by all means, the latter, fishermen of Galilee, tinkers and cobblers, in preference to the highest culture of Greek and Rabbi, so that what the great John Calvin noted with sorrow as an occasional fact in his day, become not the leading characteristic of our own; "We see even at this day some, even of those who profess the Gospel, who would rather be esteemed subtile than sincere, and sublime rather than solid, while in the mean time all their refinement is mere childishness." ARTICLE II. ONE OF TENNYSON'S POEMS. OUR modesty is not affected. A critique of the Laureate as a composite unity would put us under bonds for a tribute to "Riverside" in a larger amount than we care just now to honor. A cabinet of gems is very beautiful to look upon; far more so than any single flashing jewel of them all but then it is much more difficult to handle, in the way of a description, than that single precious stone. The crown jewels of London Tower are a magnificent ensemble; but it should hardly be charged to a visitor's want of appreciation, if, instead of essaying an account of their combined splendor, he prefers to write a few paragraphs to a friend concerning good Edward the Confessor's staff of beaten gold, or the baptismal salt-cellar of the same generous metal. Very like to this is our mood regarding this elegant little volume in purple covers, to the contents of which "Alfred Tennyson" asserts proprietorship, and from near the middle of which we cull a few pages for a brief review. "Locksley Hall" is the birth, if not of a rarer genius, yet of a riper culture and a more vigorous purpose than the brief "swallow flights of song" which precede it, the delicate wordfinishing of which reminds one of the perfect chiselling, ad unguem, of the smaller statues of the old masters; as if this exquisite verbal beauty were the accomplished author's main ambition. While others of them slumber in the delicious Indian-summer haziness of the shore where the "Lotos-Eaters" moored their bark :— "In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seeméd always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, One begins to feel, in turning these earlier, gilt-edged leaves, that a cataract before long in the mellifluous stream of music would be a pleasant relief; possibly to wonder if the smoothvoiced lute could give a really stirring note. There would indeed be no occasion of such wonder, if the reader should commence at the terminus of the book, and wend his way backward, as we have known some abnormally constituted persons commonly to do in a fragmentary work like this. The "Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward; All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred " - would sufficiently dissipate that doubt: or, what it might fail thus to do would find a full enough completion amidst the actually tremendous battle-dashes of the martial "Maud." No one, too, who has thoroughly sounded the solemn, dirge-like prophesyings of that peerless threnody "In Memoriam," will question whether Tennyson's muse is equal to the grasp of the most subtile and weighty poetic themes. But these, with the strong-minded "Princess" as well, are after-revelations. Nor is it to be supposed that the most of readers pursue any such crab-like course as just now intimated. We, at any rate, do We like to begin at the beginning, title-page, preface, chapter first, and so on. We take a volume like this as indicating the mental growth of its author,-youth, manhood, age; spring, summer, autumn; and peruse its successive accretions as we count the rings on an oak to find how old it is. A lad has been piping on his Tityrean reed, with now and then the interlude of a graver measure; but now a man puts the trumpet to his lips to wind a clear, bold blast. The sound is inspiring, as the first strain sings freely forth "Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn; Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn." A man of autumnal presence and experience-a ward of Locksley Hall - finds himself, after years of absence, at the old, ancestral homestead; and parting awhile from his companions, recalls the memories, and recites the story, of a saddened but not a dispirited or a defeated life. It is a simple and common enough tale; but seldom has it been put into words of more pathetic eloquence, of more burning indignation, while here and there a trenchant irony flashes along the lines, cutting through and through the hollowness of a heartless, fustian civilization. It is not a private quarrel that is rehearsed; but the protest and the complaint of honest souls against a style of existence which is as false as it is pretentious, and which is no more the exclusive growth of an aristocratic soil than is any other sort of fungus-plant. No poet has shown a more admirable skill in adapting the rhythm to the theme, be this what it may; of which this poem is a more than usually fine instance. Following an unerring instinct of modulation, he dashes off upon this outburst of passionate reminiscence and stern resolve, in a wild, galloping trochaic stanza which he manages with the ease of a thorough master. The hero of the story is a native of the East, where his father fell in battle; and the hot blood of that tropic-clime "Deep in yonder shining Orient where my life began to beat ”— courses through the verse which springs from his fevered soul, with a jet-like bound. Familiar objects start up old feelings and scenes. "Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be." The flush of his boy-life softens the tone of his spirit, and the crust around his heart melts again into the tenderer mood of that fresh morning of each new-comer's being. "In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; "In the Spring a lovelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Nothing more natural. Writers set themselves to a very unpromising task who insist on recasting dramatic and imaginative literature generally in the moulds of some other regnant force than that of the universal passion. And simply for this reason, that in one or another form love rules the world; and the creations of genius must conform to the real, to take a permanent hold of the mind. A true love-story is the truest thing in nature. A counterfeit (and the number of these is like the grasshoppers in a newly-mown meadow) is an unmitigated nuisance. There are other great tides in the human heart; but this of the vernal equinox is the greatest. This master-affection will still assert its rights to supreme recognition, in spite of Attic fate and the would-be cynic of Monk barns. Our poet's touch is delicate; he only lifts a corner of the blushing curtain: — "Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young; And her eyes on all my motious with a mute observance hung. "And I said, 'My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me; Trust me, Cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."" The suit is favored, and with seeming sincerity. Warm and glowing words tell the strange joyousness of a virgin manhood in the assurance of this conquest of smiles and tears. "Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. "Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight." If the transfusion of one's-self into that of another which constitutes the inexplicable mystery of love has ever been more gracefully or accurately expressed than in this last line, we are at a loss where.to turn to it. Pity it should not have been lavished upon a worthier object. "Cousin Amy" is not faith ful to her vows. A rich, boorish nobody of a miserly father's friend wins upon her ambitious hopes, and, with the paternal threat to help him, makes a prize of her. Now the verse wakes up to a terrible denunciation of this hollow, bargaining consenting to the conventional demands of place and pride. She has elected her destiny, sacrificing every loftier, dearer interest to position. The penalty is fearful. There is no escaping it. She has linked herself to a lump of coarse, heavy clay: and as it cannot rise to her intellectual and emotional level, she must subside to its. "As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. "He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. "What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine. Go to him it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine. : "It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought; Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. "He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand." No overcolored picture this of the saddest of all sad things. But the poet lays the blame of it not so much at its unhappy victim's feet as upon the perverted opinions of society which sanction and too often command this sacrilege. Many a malediction has fallen on a less deserving offender. "Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth! "Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straightened forehead of the fool!" The painting is of the darkest shading-a Rembrandt; and but for its thorough harmony and truthfulness, a Salvator Rosa, in its stormy wrath. "Like a dog he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall. “Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, To thy widowed marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep. "Thou shalt hear the Never, never,' whispered by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears. "And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain, Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again :' |