lines of suggestion in which the poet intended their ideas to move, then this poem is objectionable. I presume, however, that the main drift of its imagery, which as imagery is glorious, must be, when interpreted into a logical proposition, that, amidst the changes, however extended they may be, of nature, the spirit of man will endure.

The peak is high, and flush'd

At his highest with sunrise fire;
The peak is high, and the stars are high,
And the thought of a man is higher.

The lines entitled the Higher Pantheism are, to me at least, tantalizing. Some of them strike one as explicitly pantheistic.

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains

Are not these, O soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Nature is not a vision, but a fact; fact or vision, we know nothing of it except as it seems; and it is pure, gratuitous, impertinent, and useless fancy to suggest that it is, or can be, anything but what it seems. Nor is nature God. The vision is not Hc. And we do not live in dreams in any sense corresponding to that in which we live in the world revealed to us by our senses. Those of my readers who may have cared to wade through my articles on Hume, in the Literary World, know that these are not, with me, random assertions, but that I have taken pains to ascertain the truth of what I say. I shall not, however, allege that Tennyson intends these lines to be pantheistic, for some which follow are irreconcilable with the pantheistic theory.

Speak to Him thou for IIe hears, and Spirit with spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

These words, ineffable in their beauty, their tenderness, and

their depth, admit of no pantheistic interpretation. If pantheism means anything, it means that speaking to God is scientifically equivalent to speaking to the wind or the sea. If the personality of the Spirit, God, and of the spirit, man, is distinctly posited, as in these lines, then the vague lines previously quoted, and many others that sound pantheistically in the piece, may possibly be capable of an interpretation consistent with spiritual theism.

Entirely in harmony with this conclusion are the two brief but noble poems, Wages and Will. The thesis, or rather tho reverent suggestion, of the first is that God, having revealed Himself to us having taken us into His service in the universal battle of light against darkness-would act with strange and cruel unfairness if He extinguished finally the aspirations and energies He has awakened.

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust,

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

Since Milton penned his sonnets, the grandeur of spiritual manhood, the majesty of moral strength, have not found statelier expression than in Tennyson's lines on Will. By this term he means the sovereign faculty by which man decides for the right; and he describes the inexpugnable fortitude, the Divine peace, of the man who maintains it in its legitimate authority.

O well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong.

He will not suffer long, because, as his pain can be but physical, there is an obvious term to it, either through restoration to health or death. He cannot suffer wrong: for not the smallest particle of suffering can reach him, shielded as he is

by the proudly placid consciousness that injustice, in relation. to him on whom it is inflicted, is, strictly estimated, nothing at all. Brand him, lash him, crucify him; he pities you, not himself.

But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will,
And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,

Or seeming-genial venial fault,

Recurring and suggesting still!

How shrewdly practical, how penetrating and priceless, is moralizing like this! The merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

No reader, I trust, will imagine that, because I have not touched upon many of Tennyson's poems, I overlook or underrate them. The poems descriptive of the Lincolnshire Farmer, old style and new style, attest immense dramatic power, and run over with broad and racy humor. The Princess is admirable as a scrio-comic poem, and contains some of the finest songs ever penned. The poetry connected, directly or indirectly, with his position as Laureate, is unequal, but it is incomparably superior to any poetry of its class. The Gardener's. Daughter, Tithonus, Lucretius, are all, in their widely-varying manners, excellent. The "wicked broth" that killed Lucretius has been thought superbly imaginative; but it has always, I confess, suggested to my mind unprincipled plum-pudding. Take him for all in all, Tennyson must, I think, be pronounced the greatest poet of his time. Victor Hugo is indeed. a colossal genius, wider in his range than Tennyson, who has not succeeded in the acting drama, but his touch is too panoramic for poetic art of the highest order; and Browning, though he has power of intellect and imagination sufficient for ten poets, is far from Tennyson's equal in literary form.

JOHN RUSKIN.