1

And we,
sublimed to song and fire,
Take order in the wheeling quire,
Till from the throbbing sphere I start,
Waked by the beating of my heart."

All his visions, however, are far from resembling this:

"When I lay me down at even

'Tis Hades lit with neighbouring Heaven.
There comes a smile acutely sweet
Out of the picturing dark; I meet
The ancient frankness of her gaze,
That simple, bold, and living blaze
Of great goodwill and innocence
And perfect joy proceeding thence,
Ah! made for Earth's delight, yet such
The mid-sea air's too gross to touch.
At thought of which, the soul in me
Is as the bird that bites a bee,

And darts abroad on frantic wing
Tasting the honey and the sting;

And, moaning where all round me sleep
Amidst the moaning of the deep,
I start at midnight from my bed,
And have no right to strike him dead."

Nor any wish, before long. Vaughan and his bride visit Graham's ship, and the effect of his observation is to compel the latter to resign "the ultimate hope I rested on:"

"The hope that in the heavens high
At last it should appear that I
Loved most, and so, by claim divine,
Should have her, in the heavens, for mine,
According to such nuptial sort
As may subsist in the holy court,
Where, if there are all kinds of joys
To exhaust the multitude of choice
In many mansions, then there are
Loves personal and particular,
Conspicuous in the glorious sky
Of universal charity

As Hesper in the sunrise."

Whence,

"Standing beneath the sky's pure cope Unburdened even by a hope,"

he is able to feel

"That I have known her, that she moves
Somewhere all-graceful; that she loves,
And is beloved, and that she's so
Most happy; and to heaven will go,
Where I may meet with her (yet this
I count but adventitious bliss),
And that the full, celestial weal
Of all shall sensitively feel
The partnership and work of each,
And thus my love and labour reach
Her region, there the more to bless
Her last, consummate happiness,

Is guerdon up to the degree
Of that alone true loyalty
Which, sacrificing, is not nice
About the terms of sacrifice,

But offers all, with smiles that say,
"Twere nothing if 'twere not for aye !"

O si sic omnia! In that case, indeed, "Faithful for Ever" would be no illustration of our doctrine that poetry parts with its essential characteristics in proportion as it undertakes to teach otherwise than indirectly, or concerns itself with the mutable superficies of contemporary life. So far, however, though Frederick Graham is a very substantial personality -a thoroughly imaginable man-his expressions of feeling have been as purely lyrical and subjective as the lamentations of Clymene or Enone. He has, as before remarked, had to learn the same lesson of self-renunciation as the anonymous hero of "Love and Duty," with this very important difference, that the latter has but succumbed to external circumstances as independent of the will of his beloved as of his own; he has yielded nothing to any rival; what he has acquired is after all more precious than what he has been compelled to forgo. Mr. Tennyson, therefore, is not asking too much when he would have us contemplate the "streaming eye" as finally dried, the "broken heart" as eventually bound up; we not merely acquiesce in the propriety, but have faith in the permanence, of the conclusion at which his hero arrives. The infinitely greater severity of Graham's trial perhaps justifies Mr. Patmore in considering that, had the mood of our last extract been represented as permanent, had the curtain fallen then and there upon his hero's folded arms of humility and upward gaze of ineffable aspiration, our torpid imaginations would have seen nothing but a stage-effect, and expected, could we pierce behind the scenes, to find Graham rather prostrate beneath, than “Growing, like Atlas, stronger from his load.” At all events, he has not chosen to task our faith so heavily. In the second section of the next canto we find Honoria's lover-married! Yes, and to a

very unattractive personage. Of course, he has a thousand good reasons for maintaining that he has committed no treason against love; that his bride is at worst but as one of Voltaire's oignons, qui n'étaient pas des dieux tout-a-fait, mais qui leur ressemblaient beaucoup:

"As to the ether is the air

Is her good to Honoria's fair;
One place is full of both, yet each
Lies quite beyond the other's reach
And recognition. Star and star,
Rays crossing, closer rivals are."

Mr. Patmore is now fully in his element, with a triple moral problem before him. He has to make his hero's paradox good, to show the effect on Jane (the unattractive wife) of being thus caught up into a sphere so much above her, and to determine the proper relation of Honoria to her married lover. This involves the necessity of a copious and minute delineation of manners and customs, since (to name but one aspect of the problem) it is impossible to depict Frederick and Jane's mutual relation and interaction without entering fully into the details of their domestic life. Behold us, then, alike from the didactic and the descriptive point of view, fairly committed to a course of what, we say, is substantially prose; not that the writing is not, for the most part, very clever, but this is not the question; not that we are not continually encountering passages of the most exquisite poetry, but these are not the rule. We

are content to stake the whole theory of this paper on a single issue,-"Is or is not the first book of Faithful for Ever' incomparably the best of the three?" It would be a cheap triumph to produce some of the passages (excellent as these are in their way) in which Mr. Patmore furls the poet's wing on the essayist's perch; but these separate bricks could at best bear witness to the material, not to the style of the building.

In conclusion, it will be but just to produce the results at which Mr. Patmore appears to have arrived, embodied in two of the most charming passages of As regards the relation

his poem.

which Honoria ultimately assumes to No. 14.-VOL. III.

Graham,, contemplated from her point of view, we learn nothing; and, indeed, the problem suggests questions of such infinite delicacy that we cannot wonder at Mr. Patmore's reticence. As we are only concerned with her here in so far as she concerns Frederick, we could well have dispensed with numerous trivial details relative to her husband and children, which vexatiously conflict with the unity of impression already disturbed by the change of venue in Book II. In fact, the way in which she is trotted out for the admiration of one personage after another is almost comical. That Frederick himself should never tire of praising her is as natural as that we should never tire of listening to passages like this:

"I kiss'd the kind, warm neck that slept,
And from her side, this morning, stepp'd
To bathe my brain from drowsy night
In the sharp air and golden light.
The dew, like frost, was on the pane.
The year begins, though fair, to wane.
There is a fragrance in its breath
Which is not of the flowers, but death,
And green above the ground appear
The lilies of another year.

I wandered forth, and took my path
Among the bloomless aftermath;
And heard the steadfast robin sing,
As if his own warm heart were spring,
And watch'd him feed where, on the yew,
Hung sugar'd drops of crimson dew;
And then return'd by walls of peach
And pear-trees bending to my reach,
And rose-beds with the roses gone,
To bright-laid breakfast. Mrs. Vaughan
Was there, none with her. I confess
I love her rather more than less!
But she alone was loved of old;
Now love is twain, nay, manifold;
For, somehow, he whose daily life
Adjusts itself to one true wife
Grows to a nuptial, near degree
With all that's fair and womanly.
Therefore, as more than friends, we meet
Without constraint, without regret;
The wedded yoke that each had donn'd
Seeming a sanction, not a bond."

We have undertaken to question the propriety of Mr. Patmore's attempting the solution of moral problems in verse at all, not the logic of the solution itself. Yet we cannot refrain from remarking, that the conclusion expressed in the above most exquisite passage appears to us an unfair deduction from the pre

K

mises. On the other hand, the picture of Jane's development from original immaturity, rather than absolute defect, to perfect sweetness and ripeness of character, is as natural as it is captivating. We are indeed reminded at every stroke how much better it would have become the pages of a work like "The Mill on the Floss," where copiousness and minute precision of detail are rather to be cultivated than avoided. Had the writer attempted to rival Miss Evans's exactness, he might have filled two volumes with this single theme; as it is, he is at once too particular for poetry and too superficial for fiction. Yet, as the stalk is forgotten in the flower, we acknowledge a justification of much prose in the lovely poetry that comes to crown it at last.

"Too soon, too soon, comes death to show
We love more deeply than we know !
The rain, that fell upon the height
Too gently to be called delight,
Within the dark vale reappears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be.
She's cold. Put to the coffin-lid.
What distance for another did,
That death has done for her!

Were those that foil'd with loftier grace
The homely kindness of her face.
'Twas here she sat and work'd, and there
She comb'd and kiss'd the children's hair;
Or, with one baby at her breast,
Another taught, or hush'd to rest.
Praise does the heart no more refuse
To the divinity of use.

Her humblest good is hence most high
In the heavens of fond memory;
And love says Amen to the word,
A prudent wife is from the Lord.
Her worst gown's kept ('tis now the best,
As that in which she oftenest dress'd),
For memory's sake more precious grown
Than she herself was for her own.
Poor wife! foolish it seemed to fly
To sobs instead of dignity,

When she was hurt. Now, more than all,
Heart-rending and angelical
That ignorance of what to do,
Bewilder'd still by wrong from you.
(For what man ever yet had grace
Not to abuse his power and place?)

No magic of her voice or smile
Rais'd in a trice a fairy isle;
But fondness for her underwent
An unregarded increment,

Like that which lifts through centuries
The coral reef within the seas,

Till lo the land where was the wave.
Alas! 'tis everywhere her grave."

To deny the character of poetry to tenderness and truth like this, would be to rob the Muses of their fairest province to treat Parnassus as Catherine and her confederates treated Poland.

"Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning, they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown on a dung-hill."-See China Correspondent of the "Times."

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.

To-day, beneath the foeman's frown, He stands in Elgin's place, Ambassador from Britain's crown, And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered, and alone,

A heart, with English instinct fraught, He yet can call his own.

Ay, tear his body limb from limb,

Bring cord, or axe, or flame: He only knows, that not through him Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish1hop-fields round him seem'd,
Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam'd,
One sheet of living snow;
The smoke, above his father's door,
In grey soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doom'd by himself, so young?

Yes, honour calls !-with strength like steel

He put the vision by.

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die.

1 The Buffs, or West Kent Regiment.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,

With knee to man unbent, Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron framed ;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,
The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe
ring-

A man of mean estate,

Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,
Because his soul was great.

SINCE the day when to man was given dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, there is no record of any new attempts on his part to turn his sovereignty to use. Immemorially our beasts of burden have been of the same races as they are now, and equally unchanged have been our methods of subduing them to our service. In these last days comes to us, from the farthest prairies of the Western world, one who tells us that the error of our methods is the cause of the narrowness of our reign. He shows us that strength must always yield to skill, and that ferocity will always disappear before gentleness. He shows us that violence is but feebleness, and that kindness alone is irresistible. He shows us that intellect can create intelligence; and that animals willingly learn of man whatever man rightly addresses to their understanding. To all this we have listened with no deaf ears. Never has discoverer met with more rapid recognition than this unknown American farmer. His first exhibitions were witnessed and applauded by royalty; the highest in the land eagerly bought, as an expensive secret, the knowledge of his process; when by accident its principles became published, scarce a murmur was heard that more had been given

than the exploded secret was worth. Now, amongst all classes, it is expounded with still unabated interest; the competitors whom success called up have dropped out of sight; Government has adopted the system for the Army; and the Humane Society has rewarded its discoverer with a medal. There must be something remarkable in the man that wins such a success; but there must be also something remarkable in the nation that grants it, and perhaps still more in the times that permit it.

In no land but ours, indeed, could such a result have followed. Elsewhere Mr. Rarey has amused, and been rewarded by praises, but here alone has he drawn the popular sympathy. We are, in truth, above all nations, a horseloving nation. To us, riding seems nature; with us, men, women, and children are alike infected with the passion. Those who cannot ride delight to watch those who do ride; our chief national amusements are connected with the use of horses; and the most dignified of our Houses of Parliament thinks a discussion of the weights that racehorses should carry no waste of its time. Nor let us in our gravity deem this turn of the national taste a thing wholly insignificant and immaterial. In the world's history it has happened too often to be wholly an accidental coincidence,