and were commonly disabled by the first gale they encountered.* Nor can we admit financial objections. Where such an expensive machine as a ship is employed, the best crew must be the cheapest. A ship, on a rough calculation, costs a thousand pounds a gun. Supposing that ten ships on the plan proposed should be found equal to twelve with ordinary crews, the balance of economy would be more than restored. It cannot be too often repeated that the use of steam, the improvement in guns and gunnery, and the introduction of the rifle, demand an entirely different system of manning our ships. If it should be impossible or inexpedient to introduce at once so great a change in the whole naval system, at all events the experiment should be fairly tested in the gun-boat service. Formed into squadrons under the command of an enterprising officer, and manned by a force especially drilled and trained for the purpose, they would be doubly efficient. Lineof-battle ship officers and sailors have little experience in the tricks and peculiarities of small craft; they look upon them as playthings; but to handle them properly, to take them in safety through the labyrinths of shoal and rock which protect an enemy's position, to navigate them in stormy seas, to know every roadstead and every sand that will afford them shelter in a gale is no cuivis homini task. The spectacle of a squadron of gun-boats unexpectedly cast adrift in the King's Channel a few hours' sail from Sheerness, and then and there utterly bewildered and scattered about among the sands like a flock of sparrows, is surely a disgraceful sight-not disgraceful to the officers concerned, for it was no part of their duty to know the pilotage of the port of London,-but disgraceful to the service in which such elementary knowledge is not required. All such matters would enter into the course of training, both of officers and men, in a regular gun-boat service; they would be practised in landing and embarking through surf, in surveying shoals, harbours, and bays. In the Swedish service gun-boats are provided with field artillery, and the men are practised in the duties of camp life, in the use of the rifle, and in the employments of light infantry they need be inferior to none. They should be the skirmishers, the pioneers, and the foragers of the fleet. * La Graviere, 174. The crew of the old Swedish gun-boat was sixty men, and their navy has 278 such vessels on its list. The boats are now of little value; but the crews, if kept up to the full complement, would constitute (on a small scale) such a force as perhaps no other service could produce. Our seamen, our marines, and our marine artillery and coast-guard, are all excellent in their way; and it would be strange if from such materials we could not hammer out a service suited to the requirements and capabilities of gun-boats; a service analogous to that excellent corps which forms the chief strength and defence of the Swedish coast. It is true, a service of this nature would be arduous, and require attainments on the part of officers and men of no common order; but it would offer means of active employment and opportunities of distinction, such as a regular navy can rarely present. Accustomed to manœuvre together on a definite system, and with officers and men thoroughly up to their work, these dashing little craft would develop powers and resources hitherto unknown, and would ere long find a solution to many a received impossibility. If we once possessed in the gun-boat service the nucleus of such a force, it would not be long before the system would be extended. Our officers would feel such confidence in the steadiness of a trained and disciplined force, instead of the rude goodwill and careless courage of hastily raised and half-drilled sailors, that they would venture ashore, beat up the enemy's positions, and leave nothing safe from their researches. It would require a vastly increased force to protect a coast from the ravages of such a slippery and impracticable foe. A still more important consideration is, the value, the necessity of such a force as this for purposes of national defence. It was with this view that the Swedish gun-boat service was originally constituted by Ehrensvärd, the constructor of the defences at Sveaborg; and the experience of eighty years has so established the excellence of such a force, that many officers, carrying the principle to an extreme, are desirous of abolishing entirely the regular fleet of Sweden, and depending solely upon steam gun-boats, manned by welltrained and well-disciplined gun-boat seamen. It is the genius of Englishmen to allow matters to shake down and adjust themselves as they can; but it may be well sometimes to abandon the time-honoured system of laissez faire, and to try the effect of a little foresight and organization, if it be only for the sake of a change. It will, I fear, be thought presumptuous in a civilian to put forward such decided opinions on subjects entirely professional. In former days, the sentiments of the unpro Future Prospects of the British Navy. 225 fessional world in naval matters were wont to be received as Charles XI. of Sweden received the remonstrances of the good and virtuous Ulrica Eleonore: Votre affaire, Madame, c'est de nous donner des enfans, et non pas des avis.' The pressgang demanded our enfans, and the Admiralty execrated our avis. Now, however, we may venture to hope that our crude notions, such as they may be, will be received with more forbearance. Under all circumstances, it will be a consolation to know that the opinions which have now found so weak an exponent, are shared by others who, not being civilians, are more competent to judge. We are jealous for the service which we have loved and admired-which supplied the day-dreams of our youthwhich has adorned the annals of our country. It is painful to hear it said by foreign lips that our naval glory has culminated, and is already on its decline. It is humiliating to find that, in the judgment of Europe, even our boasted and glorious fleet has failed to advance us beyond the second place in the once equal and ever happy alliance. It is mortifying to believe that officers equal, in all respects, to the pupils of Jervis, the friends and comrades of Nelson and Collingwood, are tied and chained to the dull routine of a timid and inactive policy. It is a disappointment to find that the energy and resource of the service have not kept pace with its improved means and materials. It is intolerable to believe that a remedy can be found, and that timid counsels or financial considerations should deprive us of it. It is mockery to tell us that England is not prepared for such a remedy. England is prepared for anything rather than a timid policy and an inefficient fleet. R. E. H. ૨ ALFRED TENNYSON'S POEMS. A an analysis writings with a view to discover the source of their power over the sympathies of men, or it may treat of the place the poet occupies in the literature of his time and country. The latter plan requires not only more knowledge and greater power of comprehensive survey on the part of the writer, but readers who are thoroughly acquainted both with the poet under review and all those with whom he is brought into comparison. This volume might doubtless find a sufficient number of readers thus qualified, among the class to which it is particularly addressed; and a comparison of Mr. Tennyson's genius and productions with those of Byron, Shelley, Scott, Keats, and Wordsworth, would have abundant interest if it were executed with ability and judgment. The motives which, in spite of these reasons, have induced a preference for the former and easier plan, are twofold. In the first place, the writer has no confidence in his own ability for a philosophical estimate of the essential characteristics of the poetry of the first and second quarters of the present century; he fears running into vague generalities and dogmatical assertions, where there is not space for testing his opinions by quotation and analysis of detail and construction. In the second place, his own experience leads him to think that analytical criticism of Mr. Tennyson's poems is likely to be interesting and serviceable to a large class of readers, though, of course, it can have little charm for persons who by talent and study are better qualified than he is to write such a criticism themselves. It has often happened to him to meet with persons of unquestioned talent and good taste, who profess themselves unable to understand why Mr. Tennyson is placed so high among poets as his admirers are inclined to place him; who say they find him obscure and affected,-the writer for a class rather than for a people. The object of this paper is to show that we, who do admire him, have a reason for our faith; that we are not actuated by blind preference for the man who echoes merely our own class feelings and opinions in forms that suit our particular tastes and modes of thought,—but that Mr. Tennyson is a poet of large compass, of profound insight, of finished skill. We find him possessing the clearest insight into our modern life, one who discerns its rich poetical resources, who tells us what we are and may be; how we can live free, joyous, and harmonious lives; what grand elements of thought, feeling, and action lie round us; what a field there is for the various activities fermenting within us. We do not call him a Shakspeare, or even a Chaucer; but what Shakspeare and Chaucer did for the ages they lived in, Mr. Tennyson is doing for our age, after his measure. He is showing it to us as an age in which an Englishman may live a man's life, and be neither a mere man of business, nor a mere man of pleasure, but may find in his affections, studies, business, and relaxations scope for his spiritual faculties. The main difficulty of the task has lain in the fact that the poems of Mr. Tennyson are never repetitions, in the great variety both of form and matter they exhibit. It has been impossible to do without special mention of a great number of poems, and the result is necessarily somewhat fragmentary and discursive. It turns out rather a commentary than an essay; but its object will be answered, and the expectations of the writer amply satisfied, if it helps only a few persons to enjoy Tennyson more than they have hitherto done, and to understand better the ground of the claim that is made for him of belonging to the great poets. Little more has been attempted with the three longest poems, The Princess, In Memoriam, and Maud, than to place the reader in the true point of view, and examine certain prejudices against them which have obtained currency among us. Indeed, that was all that was absolutely necessary, as the hostile opinions have seldom been expressed unaccompanied by admiration of the beauties of detail in which these poems abound. Mr. Tennyson published his first volume of poems in 1830,* when he was an under-graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. It must always possess considerable interest for those who read and admire his maturer productions; but, with few exceptions, the poems it contains owe their main attraction to the fact that they are the earliest efforts of one who has gained a position of which they afforded no certain promise. Many of *There is, we believe, an earlier volume of poems published by Alfred and Charles Tennyson, but we have never seen a copy; and the volume of 1830 is sufficiently juvenile for a starting-point. |