that no nomination be made, and that we give him our hearty support. 66 The Republicans met in convention May 4, and nominated George W. Winstead for Gov. ernor. The resolutions commended the policy of the national Republican administration, and in reference to State affairs, denounced the incompetency of the State government, which has been unable to cope with any of the great questions of state policy that have come up from time to time during the long and uninterrupted Democratic rule; which has expended large sums of money and has conferred no benefits on the people of the State; which has tampered with and destroyed the militia system of the State so that its inefficiency is now a by-word; which has, by tampering with the convict lease system, disgraced the State, so that, as a culmination of the outrageous management, to-day the public work of the capital city of the State is performed by penitentiary convicts, and convicts are now employed on the public streets of the capital city, in full view of the State capitol, to the great detriment and injury of honest laborers, who, with their families, are dependent on such work, and are forced to seek employment elsewhere." They demanded the abolition of the convict lease system, the repeal of the poll-tax provision in the election laws, and an amendment of the laws so that illiterate voters may have assistance in casting their votes; denounced all intimida. tion and other frauds for depriving voters of their rights under the Constitution. They declared in favor of measures for the punishment of petty offenses without the intervention of grand juries, condemned the refusal of the legislature to secure to the State representation at the World's Fair, and demanded a just and equitable system of assessment and taxation, to the end that all property of the State may be taxed uniformly, and that neither the industrial interests of the State nor the landed property and homes be required to bear unnecessary and unequal burthens. The State Convention of Prohibitionsts met on June 2, and nominated for Governor Judge Edward H. East. The total vote polled for presidential electors was 267,503-much smaller than in 1888, when it was 303,736. This was in part due to the reduction of the negro vote. There are about 75,000 negro voters in the State, but a large part of them were practically disfranchised by the operation of the poll-tax law, which went into effect in 1890, and the Australian ballot system, which has been adopted in some counties, including those containing the larger cities. The official returns were as follows: For Cleveland, 138,874 for Harrison, 100,331; for Weaver, 23,447; for Bidwell, 4.851; for Turney, 127,247; for Winstead, 100,629; for Buchanan, 31,515; for East, 5,427. For members of Congress, 8 Democrats and 2 Republicans were elected. The State legislature is constituted as follows: SenateDemocrats, 26; Republicans, 6; People's or Independent, 1; House-Democrats, 68; Republicans, 26; People's or Independent, 5. Democratic majority on joint ballot, 56. : Judge Turney did not resign his judgeship till after he became Governor, when he appointed Judge Lorton his successor. TENNYSON, ALFRED, Lord, an English poet, born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, Aug. 6, 1809; died at Aldworth House, near Haslemere, Surrey, Oct. 6, 1892. His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby and Enderby, and vicar of Great Grimsby. He was highly educated, and accomplished in painting, music, and languages, as well as in the art in which his son so far transcended him. He had also a great fondness for nature, and the charms of out-of-door living were early revealed by him to his children, who accompanied him in his rambles and drives. Mr. Tennyson belonged to the family of D'Eyncourt, Norman Plantagenets, which, at the time of Alfred's birth, was represented in Parliament by the eldest member, Rt. Hon. Charles Tennyson D'Eyncourt. The poet's mother was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche. Alfred had three brothers-Frederick, Charles, and Septimus. Frederick Tennyson took the prize at Trinity College, Cambridge, for a Greek poem, and afterward published a volume of poems, entitled "Days and Hours." Charles Tennyson, who also was graduated at Cambridge, took orders, became vicar of Grasby, and assumed the family name of his father's mother-Turner -on inheriting from her an estate in Lincolnshire. Like his brothers, Alfred entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and, like them, wrote poetry while there. He gained the Chancellor's medal, offered for an English poem, the prize being awarded to his Timbuctoo." He left college before graduation. Because of his constant efforts to maintain strict privacy, and his resentment of anything like personal publicity, little more can be said of Alfred Tennyson's life than the bare statement of the facts that he received a pension of $1,000 a year, and lived in and about London till he was forty years of age, when he married Emily Sellwood, and went to live at Twickenham; that on the death of Words worth in 1850 he succeeded him as Poet-Laureate; that soon afterward he removed to the Isle of Wight, where he lived for many years at Faringford, Freshwater; that about 1869 he purchased a place at Petersfield, Hampshire, and years afterward Aldworth House, near Haslemere, where he died; and that in December, 1883, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of D'Eyncourt. Tennyson once wrote to Sir Henry Taylor that he " thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing and that the world knew nothing of Shakespeare but his writings, and that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare or of Jane Austen"; that they, in fact, had not been "ripped open like pigs.' Years before, in his lines After Reading a Life and Letters," he had expressed the same sentiment poetically: You have miss'd the irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet's crown; Hereafter, neither knave nor clown Shall hold their orgies at your tomb. For now the poet cannot die Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry: "Proclaim the faults he would not show; He gave the people of his best: His worst he kept, his best he gave. My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave Who will not let his ashes rest! Who make it seem more sweet to be The little life of bank and brier, The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree, tum of James Russell Lowell, "Style is the man." And to learn what Tennyson was, as well as what he said, we must go to his life-work of poetry. The difference between prying, or even idle curiosity, and a desire for knowledge of the outward ways and looks of those who are gifted above their fellows, is world-wide. Browning, who wrote: Friends, the good man of the house at least Kept house to himself till an earthquake came: 'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you to feast On the inside arrangement you praise or blame. Than he that warbles long and loud And drops at Glory's temple-gates, For whom the carrion vulture waits To tear his heart before the crowd! The English press was flooded, after his death, with anecdotes of the man of whose daily life during eighty-three years most of his country. men had known little more than had the world outside his native land; but these anecdotes. even if they could be repeated as authentic, are nearly all insignificant and unsatisfactory. The famous saying of Novalis, "Every Englishman is an island," is truer of him than of any famous Englishman that ever lived. In judging of him we must recall, not the epitaph of Ben Jonson on Sir Charles Cavendish, "I made my life my monument," but the dic Outside should suffice for evidence: was the most genial of men. He loved them, and trusted to their memories his daily acts and words, without a thought that they looked to criticise or listened to betray; and the Robert Browning of biography is the complement of the Robert Browning of literature. To Tennyson the social instincts of Browning were incomprehensible. To Carlyle's letters to Ralph Waldo Emerson we are indebted for a description of Tennyson's appearance in 1844 : One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair: bright, massive, yet most delicate of sallow-brown comlaughing, hazel eyes massive aquiline face-most plexion, almost Indian-looking: clothes cynically loose, free and easy-smokes infinite tobacco. His TENNYSON, ALFRED. voice is musical-metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between: speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe. Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his life of Lord Hough. MANOR HOUSE, SOMERSBY: 66 66 THE MOATED GRANGE. ton, gives the following story of the granting of While in college, in 1820, Tennyson won the Two years previous to the writing of this poem a little volume had appeared bearing the title "Poems by Two Brothers," the work of Charles and Alfred Tennyson. Coleridge preferred the elder brother's productions, and Wordsworth told Emerson that he had been of that impression. In 1845 Wordsworth wrote to Prof. Henry Reed: "I saw Tennyson in London several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed, in the strongest terms, his gratitude to my writings.' In 1830 appeared Tennyson's next work, "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." In later editions he omitted some of these poems, which he once more included in still later issues, with the comment: The Poems which follow include all those which have been omitted by the author from his latest revised editions, or never acknowledged by him. They are here printed, because, although unsanctioned by Mr. Tennyson, they have recently been collected from various sources, and printed in America." In that little volume may be seen the promise of much that is best in the finished work of the great poet. The most notable instance is the suggestion of the "Lotos-Eaters," to be found in the Sea-Fairies": Slow sail'd the weary mariners and saw, foam, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms To little harps of gold; and while they mused, |