hear the haunting measures of songs which almost set themselves to music. Of these intercalary lyrics nothing but the highest praise can be said. The magic slumbrous lines, To sleep! to sleep! had seen the light before; and There is no land like England was one of the Laureate's early pieces re-vestured and re-introduced. But the following stanzas were new :—

Love flew in at the window

As Wealth walk'd in at the door.

"You have come for you saw Wealth coming," said I.
But he flutter'd his wings with a sweet little cry,
I'll cleave to you rich or poor.

Wealth dropt out of the window,

Poverty crept thro' the door.

"Well now you would fain follow Wealth," said I.
But he flutter'd his wings as he gave me the lie,
I cling to you all the more.

Considering Lord Tennyson's age, The Foresters was a wonderful performance. In the winter of his life the laurels grew greener on his brow.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LATER BALLADS AND POEMS.

"I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past."

TENNYSON'S literary activity continued to the end. His pen was never idle, and his voice rang out clearly and sweetly in song until the moment that death commanded silence. Sometimes, at the close of a long dull day, the sun as it is about to sink crimsons all the west and makes a glory in the sky so the Poet Laureate, at the end of his long day, and after a sombre interval, flashed out thoughts of beauty and passed from among us while we were contemplating the radiant glory of his work. Some of his last lines will be the best remembered. The world will not willingly let die such poems as Crossing the Bar and The Silent Voices, or forget the assuring message of hope in The Dawn, Faith, and God and the Universe. After a life of doubt, of questioning, the poet heard the answer and received the promise

Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state,
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,
Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate.
Tennyson had already formally recanted of some of the

heresies of his youth. He had learnt that ideals could not be attained, that dreams must fade, that visions must die, and that a divine purpose was manifesting itself even through darkness and the ways of evil. In his youth he had despaired of many things, he had been rebellious, and he had turned pessimist. In his old age he saw that right slowly conquered wrong, that truth gradually overcame error, that the best of all things ultimately survived and grew in strength, and that the red of the dawn is ever turning" a fainter red," and may at last become the whiteness and purity of " a hundred thousand, a million summers away." He who had doubted, mourned, and despaired so much, cried with a last strong breath

Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest.

He who had revolted against destiny, who had questioned, protested, and even denied the wisdom of over-ruling Providence, could at the last pray to "My Father, and my Brother, and my God"

Steel me with patience! soften me with grief!
Let blow the trumpet strongly while I pray,
Till this embattled wall of unbelief

My prison, not my fortress, fall away!

The right note was struck in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, a poem which drew from Walt Whitman one of the finest appreciations of the Tennyson both young and old whom he had known. Said the venerable author of Leaves of Grass :

"Beautiful as the song was, the original Locksley Hall of half-acentury ago was essentially morbid, heart-broken, finding fault with everything, especially the fact of money's being made (as it ever must be, and, perhaps should be) the paramount matter in worldly affairs—

Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

First, a father having fallen in battle, his child (the singer)

Was left a trampled orphan and a selfish uncle's ward.

Of course, love ensues. The woman in the chant or monologue proves a false one; and, as far as appears, the ideal of woman, in the poet's reflections, is a false one-at any rate, for America. Woman is not 'the lesser man.' (The heart is not the brain.) The best of the piece of fifty years since is its concluding line :—

For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward, and I go.

Then for this current 1886-7 a just-out sequel, which, as an apparently authentic summary says, ' reviews the life of mankind during the past sixty years, and comes to the conclusion that its boasted progress is of doubtful credit to the world in general, and to England in particular. A cynical vein of denunciation of democratic opinions and aspirations runs through the poem, in marked contrast with the spirit of the poet's youth.' Among the most striking lines of this sequel, are the following:

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest : 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'
Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,
Till the Cat, thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,-Demos end in working its own doom.

Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,

Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down

the slope.

I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the tone and convictions of the earlier standards and points of view. Then some reflections, down to the hard-pan of this sort of thing.

The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so certain and resistless, not only in America, but in Europe, that we can well afford the warning calls, threats, checks, neutralisings, in imaginative literature, or any department, of such deep-sounding and high-soaring voices as Carlyle's and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses of the prevalent tendency-the dangers of the urgent trend of our times—in my opinion, need such voices almost more than any. I should, too, call

it a signal instance of democratic humanity's luck that it has such enemies to contend with-so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say enemy? Upon the whole, is not Tennyson—and was not Carlyle (like an honest and stern physician)—the true friend of our age? Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary judgment, for the United States on this poet—a removed and distant position giving some advantages over a nigh one.

What is Tennyson's service to his race, times, and especially to America? First, I should say, his personal character. He is not to be mentioned as a rugged, evolutionary, aboriginal force-but (and a great lesson is in it) he has been consistent throughout with the native, personal, healthy, patriotic spinal element and promptings of himself. His moral line is local and conventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the upper crust of his time, its pale cast of thought-even its ennui. Then the simile of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, 'His glove is a glove of silk, but the hand is a hand of iron.' He shows how one can be a royal laureate, quite elegant, and 'aristocratic,' and a little queer and affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better for it. I guess all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who presents those sides of a thought, or possibility, different from our own--different, and yet with a sort of home-likeness—a tartness and contradiction offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed from tastes and proclivities not at all our own. To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been a warning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is such a latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in the voice ringing them, which he has caught and brought out beyond all others-as in the line "And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight," in The Passing of Arthur, and evidenced in The Lady of Shalott, The Deserted House, and many other pieces. Among the best (I often linger over them again and again) are Lucretius, The Lotos-Eaters, and The Northern Farmer. His mannerism is great, but it is a noble and welcome mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contained in the books of The Idylls of the King, all of them, and all that has grown out of them, though, indeed, we could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small or however peculiar-not "Break, Break,” not "Flower in the Crannied Wall," nor the old, eternally-told passion of Edward Gray

Love may come, and love may go,

And fly like a bird from tree to tree;

But I will love no more, no more
Till Ellen Adair come back to me.

Yes, Alfred Tennyson, is a superb character, and will help give