Messengers flying at midnight, and lights in the windows; Also the woe of the morning, the calm, restful Sabbath, Bringing no news of the young men, the pride of their households.

Thus as they talked, the lost one came softly upon them, Cast himself down in the midst between comrade and comrade,

Spake not, but lay gazing wearily into the firelight.
Slow sank the blaze into embers, and then into ashes,

Ere they began to talk soberly one to another.

66

Nay, I could scarce steer aright in this all-wrapping darkness,"

Said he who lay in the midst (for the bridged boats were his);

"Besides, I am bitterly tired, and fainting with hunger." Even as he spoke, from the toll-house a glimmer of lamplight

Fell on the shore, and as suddenly vanished in darkness, "Yonder is food!" cried Luke Gleason, the eldest, upstart. ing;

"Why should we famish, with farmer's good larder so near us ?'

Sternly the old man looked on them, nor deigned to make answer;

Grave was he always, and slow of address to a stranger.
But from the brightness behind him, ablush with compassion,
Glided a beautiful girl to the side of her father,

Laid her soft hand on his sleeve with significant pressure. Meanwhile she modestly spake to the young men before her:

"Come in, and sit by the hearth-fire; our father is willing,
For an abundance of food yet remains from the supper."
Then with her hand still caressing the arm of her father
Led she him back to his seat in the cosiest corner;
Afterward seated the strangers beside the warm fireplace,
Blushed at their thanks, and hastened away to the kitchen.
Meanwhile the children drew round, flocking out of the
shadows;

Beautiful children they were, and of lineage taintless.

Dark, princely boys, like young noblemen playing the peasant.

Now the door opens, and Lora, the eldest and fairest,
Enters and stands with the children. How charming her

picture,

In the dim light, half-surrounded by gipsy-brown faces! "Supper is ready," she said, in a voice soft and modest; "Follow me, please." The young men rose up, then, and followed

Her eagerly into the low, dusky space of the kitchen.
There were huge dishes that steamed with a wholesome
provision;

Over the table their cloud and aroma were floating,
Sweeter than spice-laden breezes, or breath of deep gardens,
Unto the sportsmen.
They, when they had taken their
places,

Spake not a word, nor looked up, but ate deeply, in silence, As on a slope fresh and fragrant, and kissed by the morning,

Browses an ox, with his dew-dripping face in the clover!
Lora remained in the room, at a distance, to serve them,
If they should need aught replenished. Her mother, more
timid,

Glided away, and returned to her husband and children.
Still as a star from ten myriad falling, she vanished,
Light as a leaf that steals down through the boughs of an
oak-tree.

Soon as their hunger and thirst were appeased by the good things,

Frequently from the young men to the maid in the shadow Slipped the still arrows, the glances of mute admiration. Especially earnest the gaze of the handsome Luke Gleason, As, leaning his arm on the table, in seeming abstraction, Through his white fingers he peered at the toll-keeper's daughter,

Marveling much at the billowy poise of her shoulders; Her neck, round and ripe, and half-hid in her clustering tresses;

Her face, like an oval drop pressed from the cheek of a peach!

"Face of a fable!" he murmured-"'twill fade with disclosure.

I see it through dusk-light and fancy, and bathe it with glamor."

Then, hastily rising, the maiden stepped out of the shadow. "If you need nothing," she faltered, with down-drooping eyelids,

"I will return to my mother, and unto the children." Slowly she entered the doorway, still waiting before them, If they, perchance, should recall her for some service lacking.

But they spake not, and the maiden went gracefully from them,

Midnight had passed, and the south wind was steadily blowing

Over Colchester Reef, and straight from the light-house.
Nevertheless, in the eye of the glimmering beacon
Bounded the catamaran, from black billow to billow.
Cheerfully chatted the comrades, and, nestling together
Under the sail, they kept watch of the stars of the water,—
Bright beacon-lights on the points and the islands around
them.

"We shall be home ere the dawn breaks!" cried he who was steering.

"Never so staunchly my lady dashed over the billows: See how the lights on Isle Grand kiss the rim of the water!" Thereupon rose on his elbow Luke Gleason, and leeward Gazed with intentness. But now there were stars in the offing, And the window of Lora, perchance, was a window of heaven! (To be continued.)

Of the vast amount written on Mr. Tennyson's poetry, but a small portion has been devoted to serious analytical criticism. Professor Wilson's attack ("Blackwood's Magazine," vol. xxxi.), full of the boisterous spirits of the writer, was too obviously unfair to be taken as a true opinion, though there was in it much of real and discerning literary insight. Lord Houghton's article in the "Westminster Review," vol. xxxviii., able and admirably written, was yet too much in the tone of a discoverer of unknown lands, who thinks all is magnificently fair which strikes upon him with a sense of newness. This, together with Mr. George Brimley's paper, republished in his collected essays, and an article in the "London Review," vol. i., 1835, are perhaps the only sustained attempts to deal with the real intellectual phenomena presented by Mr. Tennyson's works.

But these all date from a period far away from modern readers, and reviewers have for many years gazed on the poems as men gazed on the sun before spectrum analysis. Able and enthusiastic eulogies have been written from time to time in all the leading periodicals as new works have appeared; here and there attempts have been made to discover esoteric meanings in plain and simple narrative of old chivalric tales; but little has been done to understand them as they are, and explain them, to show their relation to literature, to art, to nature, or to life, to estimate the kind and causes of their beauties or defects. Reviews have been for the most part one chorus of indiscriminate praise. There was a period when the Times would at least always essay, if it did not compass literary criticism, but the notices of Mr. Tennyson's recent poems have been almost comic in their abnegation of all a critic's functions. That, for instance, on "The Lover's Tale," simply

quoted as specimens one hundred and thirty-three lines of the poem, together with the larger portion of the little preface, and the remainder of the notice was simply an expansion of the following thoughts, if thoughts they can be called: "Piracy would be popular, if, as was in this instance the case, piracy often enforced publication. This is a remarkable poem for a boy of nineteen, but the essential characteristics of the boy's style are those of the man's." The greater part of other recent reviews have been of the same kind, extracts and platitudes, extracts for the sake of extracting, not as exemplifying a statement or enforcing a posi tion, platitudes in place of thought to save readers the trouble. of thinking, of which, to do them justice, they are rarely desirous. This action of the critics in the case of the later poems has only accentuated a conviction long growing in our mind, that criticism of Tennyson was needed and in some respects almost untried, and in the following pages we shall endeavor to supply the want.

Since the greater portion of this article was written, now more than a year since, two papers have appeared in the "Cornhill" annotating Mr. Tennyson as carefully as critic ever edited Greek play, and working out in detail a good deal of what is here sketched. It has not seemed to us, however, that our own broader examination of principles with but few details is surperseded by those excellent studies, to which we would refer all those who wish to verify our own conclusions more fully than our space will allow us.

We need not pause to prove the popularity of the works in question. Of course, there have been larger sales of single poems. No such rush for copies has ever taken place in Tennyson's case as in that of Byron or Scott, even when by publish

"You and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."

If the same test be applied to the works of almost any other poet, we shall find a very different result. Take Mr. Browning in a passage also chosen by the simple test of opening the volume chosen by the simple test of opening the volume anywhere:

"Fear death ?-to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go;

For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all."

To put this highly elliptical passage into prose would need no mere transposition of words, but a paraphrase; it requires and repays study, but the students are to the readers of poetry, as, perhaps,

one in a hundred.

The only other passage we will here quote shall be Mr. Matthew Arnold's finest sonnet, which

better than any other will exemplify the difference between the poet who writes for scholars only, and him who, indeed, delights scholars, but can be understood at a glance by all:

"So far as I concieve the world's rebuke

To him addressed, who would recast her new,
Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
But from his weakness, who would work her rue.
'Behold!' she cries, so many rages lulled,
So many fiery efforts quite cooled down!
Look, how so many spirits, long undulled,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown!
Thou, too, when thou against my crimes would cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue!'
The world speaks well: yet might her foe reply,
'Are wills so weak? Then let not mine wait long.
Hast thou so rare a poison? Let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me!'"
VOL. XVI.-8.

We have taken modern poets only for purpose of comparison, and but a few instances; but the test is one easily applied, and in most cases will be applied with the same result.

Another great reason of Tennyson's popularity is the homely, we may even say commonplace, character of his subjects, within the comprehension of all. They rarely quicken the pulses or stimulate the brain, and therefore suit the average English mind. De Musset's "On ne badine pas avec l'amour' will always find more readers than Victor Hugo's "Marion Delorme, "Romeo and Juliet" than "King Lear." However pathetic are de Musset's play and the graceful tragedy of Shakspere's youth, they do not stir the deep of human souls, or open the pit of fiery hell which lies deep in the central heart of each great nature, as in the heart of our mother, the earth. Take the whole of Tennyson's poems in the earlier volumes, and save, perhaps, "Fatima," and "The Sisters," there are no poems which deal with any violent or disturbing manifestation of passion. The wail of Enone and the plaint of Iphigenia are as decorous as if sobbed out in a Belgravian drawing-room, while they are studiously draped and surrounded so as to remind us of nothing in common with ourselves. It is quite otherwise with Shakspere's grand anachronisms, in which his men and women are not of any age, but of all time. And in those poems which seem exceptional

Fatima's" sensations have in them no mind; they are wholly physical and animal. The same criticism will apply to "Lucretius;" the physical troubles of lust, not the noble sufferings of love wronged or unrequited, are the subject of the times I stabbed him through and through" is poem. In "The Sisters" the tragedy of "three stilled into peace by the lines:

"I curled and combed his comely head,
He looked so grand when he was dead,"

quite another treatment and in quite another spirit to that in which Keats's "Isabella" dealt with her terrible treasure in the pot of basil.

Nor when Mr. Tennyson would "tell a tale of chivalry" do his notes ring like those of trumpets. to set the blood dancing in the veins. He does not seem to get beyond the plume and the glancing of the spear-heads. He speaks of battle, but "all the war is rolled in smoke," and we see nothing; his combats are as unreal in the "Idylls