He reposed the most perfect confidence in the all-meritorious atonement of the Redeemer. He felt the most cheerful resignation to the Divine

noble volumes of which we are about reluctantly to take leave?

daughter, now Lady Havelock, barely esA frightful danger from which his caped with life, shook the old man. rapidly failed:

He

will, and looked at his own dissolution without any feeling of anxiety. Respecting the great change before him,' writes Mr. Mack, 'a single shade of anxiety has not crossed his mind since the beginning of his decay, as far as I am aware. His Christian experience partakes of that guile-"but he was supported by the blessed hope of less integrity which has been the grand charac- immortality, and the richest consolations of the teristic of his whole life . . . We wonder that Divine presence were vouchsafed to him. The he still lives, and should not be surprised if he resignation of his mind and the serenity of his were taken off in an hour; nor is such an oc- feelings afforded the clearest evidence of the currence to be regretted. It would only be value of Christian truth at the hour of approachweakness in us to wish to detain him. He is ing dissolution. When apparently unconscious, ripe for glory, and already dead to all that be- he repeatedly exclaimed: The precious Saviour! longs to life." His decease thus came softly on He never leaves nor forsakes.' Frequently after his relatives and associates. On Sunday, the a night of broken rest and bodily suffering, the 8th of June, Dr. Marshman engaged in prayer triumph of joy beamed in his eye in the mornat the side of his bed, but was apprehensive that ing, as he informed his friends that he had exhe was not recognized: Mrs. Carey put the perienced the greatest delight in communion question to him, and he feebly replied, 'Yes;' with God. A week before his death, the swelland for the last time pressed the hand of his ing began to subside, and he felt a degree of colleague. The next morning, the 9th of June, lightness of head, but his mind was still fixed his spirit passed to the mansions of the blest. on the work in which he had been engaged; he He was followed to the grave by all the native prayed in Bengalee, and conversed in that lanChristians, and by many of his Christian breth-guage on spiritual subjects. Soon after, he apren of various denominations, anxious to pay the last token of reverence to the father of modern missions. Lord William Bentinck was

at the time at the Neelgirry hills, but Lady William sent over a letter of condolence, and desired her chaplain to attend the funeral."-Vol. ii. pp. 476, 477.

Three lonely years the last of the giants traveled cheerfully on, expecting to overtake his happy comrades. He reached close on his seventieth year; bowing to his honored grave "in graceful poverty," says his son, "after having devoted a sum little short of forty thousand pounds to the mission-and that, not in one ostentatious sum, but through a life of privations." On this point the words of the old man were: "I have never had a misgiving thought for having done it, though I have two sons unprovided for." Ah! how many have, and ought to have, misgivings for not devoting thousands to such works, on the plea of providing for children-meaning, thereby, leaving them very rich! And of the sons so left, how many rear to the father who enriches and, perhaps, ruins them, such a monument as the two

peared to regain his strength, both of body aud mind, and at his own request was carried about in his 'tonjohn,' or sedan chair, to take his last look at the various objects on the premises. On Thursday morning he caused the bearers to convey him to the chapel where the weekly prayer-meeting was held, and to place him in the midst of the congregation; and, while seated in his 'tonjohn,' he gave out in a firm voice the missionary hymn, which he and his colleagues had been accustomed to use in every season of difficulty, till it came to be identified with their names, and to be designated the chant of the Serampore missionaries.'"-Vol. ii. p. 516.

His last act was to inquire "if there was any thing more he could do for the cause." So slept the last of the Serampore fathers, three wonderful instruments of Providence, the contemplation of whose course makes us feel that He who draws such men from the cottages of shoemakers and weavers, holds indeed in His hand the power to raise up laborers for the widest harvest. Already the lives of the three are a wonder; in a few centuries the tale told in this book will be considered a part of the history, not of the Baptist denomination, or of Bengal, but of the human race.

IDYLLS

From the London Review.

0 F

THE

KING.*

WITHOUT dispute, the first place among | conduct warranted and imposed by the living poets is universally accorded to fitness of things. If the position and Alfred Tennyson; and perhaps he stands powers of some great genius are once atmore decidedly in advance of his contem-tained and recognized, beyond reasonable poraries than did ever English poet of a former generation. Of course there are many sciolists who affect to depreciate his style and genius, and some intelligent persons who from slight knowledge or imperfect sympathy incline to hesitate, or demur; but he has the suffrages of all who rightly and scrupulously exercise the poetic franchise. He is Laureate by national as well as royal favor: raised by deliberate choice of Majesty, his position is almost equally confirmed by critical award and popular assent. Indeed, there was and is no second candidate. No name rising to the lips makes the hand hesitate in placing the honorary wreath upon his forehead. It is only by an effort of recollection that we can call to mind the names of any possible pretenders to his crown; and the best (as well as the worst) among them exhibit marks of his authority and influence.

doubt, it is clear that the ordinary rules of criticism, always to a great extent mechanical and formal, are of no further use. The leading-strings of a child are more helpful to a man, the primer and spellingbook of more service to the hoary and illustrious scholar, than the critic's teaching to a truly great poet. He has left all his schoolmasters far behind-and they never, first or last, taught him any of the true inestimable lore with which he is enriching all mankind. He has gathered for himself all that is essentia., and rare, and beyond price. If he comes back to us, let us sit at his feet and listen. He will enlarge for us the sphere of truth as well as the theory of art, and show us in a thousand ways how the one may rise in endless accommodation and growth towards the illimitable reaches of the other. Thus nobly taught, and richly entertained, we shall learn to repair frequently to the We might now distinguish ourselves by poet's muse, as Numa to the presence of finding a thousand faults in the Laureate's Egeria, that we may see the features of new production. After so full an admis-truth in the face of beauty, have our sion of Mr. Tennyson's poetic supremacy kingly reason molded by diviner tender—not for the first time made to our read-ness, and, ever listening with reverence ers-it would be quite in keeping with the pretensions of modern criticism to put in a handsome qualification of his merits; for how easily may the critic thus magnify his office, or suggest the inference of his own unrivaled penetration! Unfortunately-or fortunately, as the case may be -it is too late for us to avail ourselves of this admirable trick. We have already intimated in a former paper, and we repeat it now with emphasis, that the critic's office practically ceases in the case of poets of the highest order; in such presence all is admitted privilege and prerogative. This is neither blinded homage nor unmeet subservience: it is a conclusion and

Idylls of the King. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. E. Moxon and Co. 1859.

and serious pleasure, find that the genius of nature is charged with lessons of justice, providence, and social virtue.

We come then to Mr. Tennyson's volume, not to criticise, but to learn, and to share its lessons with our readers. Much expectation had been raised by its announcement, and an excitement almost popular has attended its immediate issue. When the subject of the new poem became known, the public curiosity was still more busy and alert. It was then remembered that the poet had long brooded on the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; and that a fine fragment on the mythic hero was conspicuous among his earliest pieces. Some ground for speculation as well as for hope existed. The poem was nearly certain to be a wel

come largess of poetic thought; but was it not also in the nature of a grand experiment? The famous legend of King Arthur was a species of poetic crux. Confessedly beautiful in itself, and dimly associated with the historic muse of England, there remained considerable doubt of its poetic capabilities. It was true that Milton had long cherished the intention of making it the subject of that last effort for which he was "mewing his mighty strength;" but then Milton had himself abandoned the design, and all the critics congratulated him on his prudent resolution.

seen for a moment in its noblest attitude, and thenceforward transfigured by imagination into all that virtue or ambition would set before itself.

Now all these conditions, and many others hardly less essential, are fulfilled by the Arthurian legends in a very marvelous way. The incidents themselves are various and beautiful, as well as most abundant; while the theory of the whole is wonderfully elastic for the poet's special purpose. The features of British scenery, in its most primitive state, afford some appropriate hints of local color. The ele ment of the supernatural is furnished by the stories of Morgane the faery and of Merlin the enchanter. But most available of all are the moral traits which distinguish the prime age of Christian chivalry. In spite of occasional lapse and fault-or even more strikingly because of these-King Arthur and his knights are found knit together by sentiments of loyalty and friendship, and banded in the cause of honor and religion. They severally illustrate all the social types of Christian virtue. The lowest in their

in the code of pagan honor. We have then, in beautiful gradation, Truth, Temperance, Chastity, and Magnanimity which last may be taken as the type of Christian Charity in a rude and violent and haughty age; and as the outward link, if not rather as the crowning grace, of these high qualities, we have the most eminent and knightly gift of Courtesy, summing up all the virtues of Christian gentlehood in a well-nigh perfect manner. Arthur himself was the pink of courtesy; but the peers of his court were only less distinguished than their "blameless king."

In truth, the difficulties to be surmounted in the treatment of this theme were not exaggerated. Nothing could seem less likely, on a first view, to enlist the sympathies of modern Englishmen than a revival, in elaborate poetic frame, of Arthur's shadowy and mysterious court. We must not be tempted into a dissertation on the origin of these fine legends-certainly the finest which the age of chivalry has bequeathed to us--but we may assume that they are beyond the region of authentic history. At the pre-scale is that Courage which ranked highest sent time they have no hold upon the national mind, even as historical tradition. They have not even a local habitat. They are not associated with our laws, like the reign of Alfred, nor with a crisis in our history, like the death of Harold. They may furnish pretty fables and moralities for brief song or ballad measure; but of epic pretensions they have absolutely none. On the other hand, the story of Pendragon asserts itself as the perfection of mythic history; and mythic history is the purest region of poetical romance. No great poet is original in the sense of inventing his own plots; but neither is he content to take his story ready molded and hardened into a fact of history. He borrows material that is yet in a plastic condition. However great a realist he may be, both characters and events are for him mainly typical, or representative; where else would be his power over the sympathies and passions of mankind, and where the value of the lessons which he distills into our hearts? It is evident that the floating legends of a superstitious but heroic age are just the sort of material he requires; something between history and allegory; some incident which fiction has early seized upon, and shaped and improved to its own needs; some character,

"For in those days

No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn;
By those whom God had made full-limbed and
But if a man were halt or hunched, in him

tall,

Scorn was allowed as part of his defect,
And he was answered softly by the King
And all his Table.”—Idylls, p. 227.

We say that these are the ethical fea tures of the great romaunt of chivalry. But they are to be traced only by a pure mind and patient study. The crude mass of fiction in which they are embedded contains abundance of exceptionable matter. There is much of gross and more of frivolous kind. Many stories occur in