The regeneration of society, as conceived by Shelley, was to appear suddenly, splendidly shining with the freshness and glory of a dream; as the result of some bright, brief national struggle; as the consequence of the apparition of some pure being, at once a poet and a prophet, before whose voice huge tyrannies and cruel hypocrisies must needs go down, as piled-up clouds go down ruined and rent before a swift, pure wind; in some way or another which involves a catastrophe, rather than according to the constantly operating processes of nature.

Now Mr Tennyson's conception of progress, which he has drawn from his moral and intellectual environment, and which accords with his own moral temper, is widely different. No idea perhaps occupies a place in his poems so central as that of the progress of the race. This it is which lifts out of his idle dejection and selfish dreaming the speaker in "Locksley Hall;"

"Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of

change."/

This it is which suggests an apology for the fantasies of "The Day-Dream." This it is which arms the tempted with a weapon of defence, and the tempter with a deadlier weapon of attack in "The Two Voices." This it is of which Leonard writes, and at which old James girds in "The Golden Year." This it is which gives a broad basis of meditative thought to the Idyll that tells of the passing of Arthur, and renders it something more than a glorious fable. This it is which is the sweetness of "The Poet's Song," making the wild swan pause, and

the lark drop from heaven to earth. This it is which forms the closing prophecy of "The Princess," the full confession of the poet's faith. This it is which is heard

in the final chords of the "In Memoriam," changing the music from a minor to a major key. And the same doctrine is taught from the opposite side in "The Vision of Sin," in which the most grievous disaster which comes upon the base and sensual heart is represented as hopelessness with reference to the purpose and the progress of the life of man :

"Fill the can and fill the cup,

All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up

And is lightly laid again."*

But in all these poems throughout which the idea of progress is so variously expressed, and brought into relation with moods of mind so diverse, the progress of mankind is uniformly represented as the evolution and self-realisation of a law; it is represented as taking place gradually and slowly, and its consummation is placed in a remote future. We "hear the roll of the ages;" the "increasing purpose" runs through centuries; it is "with the process of the suns" that the thoughts of men are widened. It is when our sleep should have been prolonged through many decades and quinquenniads that we might wake to reap the flower and quintessence of change:

"For we are Ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times."

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*So in the "In Memoriam" when the "light is low" and the heart is sick, Time appears not as a wise master-builder, but as a maniac, scattering dust."

It is because millenniums will not bring the advance of knowledge near its term that the tempted soul in "The Two Voices" feels how wretched a thing it must be to watch the increase of intellectual light during the poor thirty or forty years of a life-time. It is "in long

years" that the sexes shall attain to the fulness of their mighty growth, until at last, man and woman

"Upon the skirts of Time

Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,

Then comes the statelier Eden back to man :

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ;
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

May these things be!"

And the highest augury telling of this "crowning race is drawn from those who already having moved upward through the lower phases of being become precursors and pledges of the gracious children of the future:

"For all we thought and loved and did,

And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;

"Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

"That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves."

The great hall which Merlin built for Arthur, is girded by four zones of symbolic sculpture; in the lowest zone, beasts are slaying men; in the second, men are slaying beasts;

"And on the third are warriors, perfect men,

And on the fourth are men with growing wings."

To work out the beast is the effort of long ages; to attain to be "a perfect man" is for those who shall follow us afar off; to soar with wings is for the crowning race of the remotest future.

Apart from the growth of the individual that golden age to which the poet looks forward, the coming of which he sees shine in the distance, is characterized, as he imagines it, chiefly by a great development of knowledge, especially of scientific knowledge; this first; and, secondly, by the universal presence of political order and freedom, national and international, secured by a vast and glorious federation. It is quite of a piece with Mr Tennyson's feeling for law, that his imagination should be much impressed by the successes of science, and that its promises should correspond with his hopes. The crowning race will be a company

"Of those that, eye to eye, shall look

On knowledge; under whose command

Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book."

Were we to sleep the hundred years, our joy would be to wake

"On science grown to more,

On secrets of the brain, the stars."

It is the promises and achievements of science which restore sanity to the distraught lover of "Locksley Hall." In "The Princess" the sport half-science of galvanic batteries, model steam-engines, clock-work steamers and fire-balloons, suggest the thought of a future of adult knowledge :

"This fine old world of ours is but a child

Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time

To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides."

But Mr Tennyson's dream of the future is not more haunted by visionary discoveries and revelations of science than by the phantoms of great political organizations. That will be a time

"When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are furl'd

In the Parliament of men, the Federation of the world."

A time in which

"Phantoms of other forms of rule,

New Majesties of mighty states"

will appear, made real at length; a time in which the years will bring to being

"The vast Republics that may grow,

The Federations and the Powers;

Titanic forces taking birth."

These days and works of the crowning race are, however, far beyond our grasp; and the knowledge of this, with the faith that the progress of mankind is the expression of a slowly, self-revealing law, puts a check upon certain of our hopes and strivings. He who is possessed by this faith will look for no speedy regeneration of men in the social or political sphere, and can but imperfectly sympathise with those enthusiastic hearts whose expectations, nourished by their ardours and desires, are eager and would forestall futurity. Mr Tennyson's justness of mind in a measure forsakes him, when he has to speak of political movements into which passion in its uncalculating form has entered as a main