Falls the paint from scripture stories, all blurred with mildew damp, A bunch of flowers and vine leaves, with a satyr's face between. Through chinks the sun is breaking, the rain breaks through the roof; There are sullen pools in the corners, and sullen drops aloof; And him that shelters there a-night from the wild storm or rain, O the haunted house on the moorland, how lone and desolate, The chains clank on the staircase, and the step is coming slow, Better face the storm without, you think? Alas! I cannot tell: Ever listening to its strangeness, to its sorrow and its sin, For is not this our human life even such a wreck of greatness, Where the trace of an ancient grandeur marks an equal desolateness? A thirst for truth and beauty, which, alas! it cannot slake. And the ruin of its greatness casts all round an air of gloom; And fitfully, as through a chink, the higher world of God. And there are pictured tapestries in chambers of the brain, And mingling with the traces of a wondrous beauty still, And if thou watch there thoughtful, in silence of the night, O to rid me of that longing! to stand aloof and free Just to dwell among the little things of life, and be content Still to wade in the clear shallows and the old accustomed fords, To think and feel, and comprehend all I might think and feel, Upon the soul from life and death-the future and the past. So thou'rt crushed beneath a shadow !-Ah! I would that I could smile With your satisfied philosophy; but on my heart the while The shadow of the Infinite is laid oppressively, And though I know that it is light, alas! it darkens me. In the lonesomeness and thoughtfulness of the still midnight hour, How they are twined and parted, yet firmly linked still Hast thou never yearned to see the sun break thro' this gathered haze, Never felt the eager longing in the inner heart of men, For his mighty limbs grow irksome with the lack of room to play, Ah, me to be a botanist or bookworm! just to task A herbal or a history to answer all I'd ask ; And be content to live, and work, and die, and rot-nor ever Why are all things yet a question? What is nature? What is man? O, I've heard that echo often die in mockery away Can I will, and can I be, and do, all I have thought and felt? 'Twixt the willing and the being 'twixt the darkness and the light, Is there no interval for Him to exercise His might? Then perish all my hesitance, and all your power and pelf ; I will be loyal to the truth, and royal to myself. I will call out from the depths a boundless truth-a certain key To unlock the ancient secrets of our hoar perplexity; For the glow of one vast certainty would banish chaos-night, And canopy my soul as with a dome of rainbow light. O the sounding waves should speak to me, and be well understood; And the dew-drops why their tears are formed on the eyelash of the light, For the whole creation groaneth with a sorrow not its own, I would speak with the wild Arab deep-throat guttural truth, and sound I would know all creeds and gospels, and how they played their part, But tossing on the ocean of a changeable belief, To deem there is no certainty and hope for no relief, With no faith in the old causeways and the lamplights, it is dreary Woe's me! but life is rigid-is not plastic to my will; Thoughts they come and go, like spirits with the mist about them still; And the strife is ineffectual towards lighting up the soul, Like the faint and glimmering twilights that creep around the pole. To myself I am all mystery: I fain would act my part; But the problem of existence aches unsolved within my heart. Ah! there the clouds break up; and lo! a clear bright star uprearing, Like the light of a dark lantern is the guiding light for thee, O the haunted house on the moorland, all lone and desolate, The day is short and changeful, the night is drawing on, ORWELL. FROUDE'S HISTORY-VOLS. V. AND VI. BY THE REV. F. D. MAURICE. TEN years ago an eminent German scholar expressed his astonishment at the amount and the value of the contributions which England had recently made to historical literature. That two great histories of Greece should not only have been undertaken, but should have become popular-among us, was a fact which, he said, no experience in his country of books enabled him to account for. He accepted, if he did not suggest, the interpretation, that those who were in the midst of political action must feel an interest in political experiences, from whatever age or nation they are derived, which the most diligent students cannot feel. There was some hope in 1850 that what had been given to one part of the Anglo-Saxon race, would not always be denied to the other. That hope may not be less in 1860. Certainly, the intervening years which have put us in possession of Lord Macaulay's splendid fragment, of several volumes of Mr. Merivale's "Roman Empire," of Dean Milman's "Latin Christianity" (at least in its complete form), of Mr. Car lyle's "Frederick," and of Mr. Froude's "Tudors,"* have not diminished the evidence that the reign of Queen Victoria is likely to be at least as illustrious in the department of history as in that of physical science. That Mr. Froude's first four volumes have established a place for themselves among our English classics, is, it seems to me, a greater witness for the historical tendency of our minds in this day, than even the success of such works as Bishop Thirlwall's, or Mr. Grote's. We know that we have accepted many loose traditions and many false opinions about the classical periods. We can have patience with the scholars who undertake to set us right. We can even feel a sort of gratitude to them. We expect them to adopt a solemn Gibbonic style of writing. But our own history we of course understand; there may be points in it which require to be cleared up; * I have not ventured to include our Transatlantic brethren; otherwise Mr. Prescott and Mr. Mottley would have made splendid additions to my list. In all these particulars Mr. Froude has set at nought our demands. Without relapsing into Gibbonism, he positively refuses to cast his sentences in the "Edinburgh Review" moulds. He is resolved to write simple, quiet English, such as a man writes who thinks seriously of the generations of old, and dares not treat them as we treat the writer of the last new novel. He has not introduced any affectations of his own, while he has eschewed those of his contemporaries. The experiment is a very courageous one. Great intrinsic merits are necessary to make a kind of writing acceptable which is so good that it never forces itself upon our notice, which presents its subject with such clearness, that the medium is almost forgotten. But even if he could be forgiven for being without mannerism, could our English conservative nature tolerate his departure from some of our most approved and fundamental historical maxims? We may be glad if some writer, especially some female writer, will persuade us that we are under no obligation to respect Elizabeth. Those who are Romanists, and those who nibble at Romanism, may be pleased if they are told that Mary has been unjustly disparaged. The opposition to such innovations in some quarters may cause them to be more welcomed in others. But Henry the Eighth is an object of fervent detestation to Romanists and Protestants, Whigs and Tories, English Churchmen and Dissenters. To speak a word in his favour would have been, a few years ago, to incur the denunciation of the most moderate and the most equitable. Sir James Mackintosh, on this topic, is as fierce as Lingard. If a respectable writer like Sharon Turner raised a timid voice in protest, it was drowned in a shout of indignation, mixed, as it would naturally be, with gentle female cries of horror and pity. The love of paradox must be stronger than I believe it ever was in any man, if it led him to resist a clamour so general, and having such obvious justification. The love of truth might be strong enough in one who was undertaking to write a history which must either ratify or disturb the existing opinion, to make him seriously debate with himself a few such questions as these: "This English "Reformation had very much to do "with this King Henry, had it not? "Romanists say, Protestants say-the "plain evidence of history says—that "his image is very deeply stamped "upon it; that whatever most distin"guished it from the Reformations else"where, it owed to the fact that a King was more directly concerned in it than "Divines. Am I prepared to say that "all which was characteristic and pecu"liar in this Reformation was evil? Am "I prepared to say that it ought to have "followed another course; that if I had "had the management of it, it should "have been committed to the divines; "and that the universe would have "been much better off if I had had the "management of that, and of sundry "other matters about which, unfortu"nately, I have not been consulted? "It may be, no doubt, that I have been "mistaken altogether, in thinking the "Reformation to be a good. If so, I "will go to the history; I will study "it fairly; it will no doubt tell me. "And then I shall not be the least sur |