a Roman holiday"? Telemachus called upon them to forbear in the name of Christ Jesus.

For one moment afterward

A silence follow'd as of death, and then
A hiss as from a wilderness of snakes,
Then one deep roar as of a breaking sea,

And then a shower of stones that stoned him dead,

And then once more a silence as of death.

But his death was not in vain: "His dream became a deed that woke the world," and Honorius the Emperor decreed

That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust

Of Paganism, and make her festal hour

Dark with the blood of man who murder'd man.

The Bandit's Death is dedicated to Sir Walter Scott in four commonplace lines only removed from triviality by their heartiness. The poem is adapted from a story. narrated in Scott's last Journal, and is gruesome in the extreme. There is power in the poem, but it is only the power which we expect from fifth-rate singers who provide amateur reciters with verses for undiscriminating audiences. The average man who believes in Mr Sims will think Tennyson has done well, and The Bandit's Death would be highly popular at a Penny Reading. One can imagine the sensation that would be caused when, with proper dramatic action, an ambitious amateur rendered the final verse, supposed to be spoken by the bandit's wife

And the band will be scatter'd now their gallant captain is dead, For I with this dagger of his-do you doubt me? Here is his head!

It is a relief and a delight to turn to the next poem, Charity, which is a woman's wail at man's baseness; but the widow of the man who had wronged her-"The tenderest Christ-like creature that ever stept on the ground "-was her salvation. Kapiolani, a short ode on a great chieftain

ess, is another proof of what Tennyson might have done, had he cared, as a writer of classical verse-Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. The Dawn is something of a diatribe and a lament. Its tone reminds us of the opening lines of Maud and the furious outbursts in Locksley Hall against the iniquities of the day.

Dawn not Day,

While scandal is mouthing a bloodless name at her cannibal feast,
And rake-ruin'd bodies and souls go down in a common wreck,
And the press of a thousand cities is prized for it smells of the beast,
Or easily violates virgin Truth for a coin or a cheque.

There are other doubtful or wholly pessimistic poems, like some with which we are already familiar- Vastness, Despair, and De Profundis. But in the end Tennyson has presented us with a sublime incitement to have faith, and these strong words, uttered almost from the grave, will fortify and stimulate many a faltering pilgrim and many a trembling heart.

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!
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart's desire !
Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.
Wait till death has flung them open, when the man will make the
Maker

Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire.

One or two of the final poems in the volume formed the poet's own dirge, and undoubtedly The Silent Voices has taken its place with Crossing the Bar as one of the purest of hymn-like poems. It was fittingly chanted when the poet was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, and it would not be surprising to find that it is in future used on similar occasions, for it has beauty of diction, consolation, and sweetness of sentiment.

When the dumb Hour, clothed in black,
Brings the Dreams about my bed,

Call me not so often back,

Silent Voices of the dead,

Toward the lowland ways behind me,

And the sunlight that is gone!

Call me rather, silent voices,

Forward to the starry track

Glimmering up the heights beyond me,
On, and always on!

The poem entitled God and the Universe is a questioning and an answering. "Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights?" is the characteristic query of the poet. Once he might have confessed a mystery, but the "sunset of life gave him mystical lore," and he could say triumphantly to his spirit "nearing yon dark portal,"

Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great. Tennyson sang in many keys and many moods, but an undercurrent of melancholy was always audible, and served as accompaniment to his lays. If ever his joyousness seemed unrestrained, it was in some of those brief mellow preludes in which he first made his charm and power known. But even his earliest work gave forth sad and weary sounds which prepared the listener for the great threnodies to come. A poet who in his youth could compose Mariana and Enone was already master of the art of transmuting the heart's deepest sorrow into language which itself glistened like tears. But his faith in the future of man and the divine righteousness grew firmer, and his last words are an assurance that life is not vain, and that after death all is not dark.

"He has worthily fulfilled his mission," said a critic. “He has devoted himself to his art, and striven with honest effort to give us the best he could. He has ever sought, by presenting high ideals, and inspiring pure sentiments, to do the noblest work-to raise us above ourselves, above vulgar aims, and selfish narrowness, and low-thoughted cares." Tennyson took his farewell of us with a cry of joy and

Q

triumph, and now that he has passed from among us "to where beyond these voices there is peace," those last jubilant words will ring in our ears and echo down the ages. We hear the poet and we see the hero, and we rejoice that his last words were as good and true, and his teaching as plain and pure, as ever they were. He fitly finished his work: revealing to us his surpassing strength and grandeur to the close, and departing with a cherished message of hope and trust.

CHAPTER XIII.

TENNYSON AS A STUDENT.

"I hear a charm of song thro' all the land,

Across my garden! and the thicket stirs,
The fountain pulses high in summer jets,
The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs,
The starling claps his tiny castanets."

-The Progress of Spring.

"A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence."

-Edwin Morris.

THACKERAY once said to Bayard Taylor, "Tennyson is the wisest man I know." His wisdom was of no common order. It manifested itself in surprising ways, lurking in unexpected expressions, and taking a sudden turn in unlooked for directions. Tennyson was a linguist, naturalist, geologist, astronomer, theologian, and skilled in the sciences. Nor did he neglect the lighter forms of literary study, for he was an assiduous novel-reader, like Macaulay, and could delight in the masterpieces of fiction whether English or French. But, like his great predecessor Wordsworth, he was above and beyond all the lover of nature, knowing by instinct the wonder and beauty of tree and star, and realising the miracle alike of the "flower in the crannied wall," which could be plucked and held "root and all" in the hand, and of the vast evolutionary changes in the world's history. I believe it is a fact that nowhere among his multitude of allusions to nature in all her varying forms and emanations is there a single false statement. His word can always be accepted whether he simply name the colour of a leaf, the plumage of a bird, or the characteristic of a mountain. Apparently he delighted in minutiæ, but this was because