nected by ponderous, rough-hewn beams or lintels of the same material, while some great slabs in the centre suggested the idea of altars and sacrificial worship. As we sat down to rest and eat our noon-day refreshment in the shadow of one of these monolithic masses, I questioned old Ethelwulf about the origin and object of such a Titanic structure. From an intermarriage with the older British stock, which enabled them and me to trace one branch of our lineage to a collateral kinsman of Caradoc, my friends were somewhat familiar with the Druidical worship, and I could perceive that they yet retained some reverential impressions associated with the spot, as the elder began to relate to me the local legend of the erection of this monument. I should undoubtedly have been able to clear up the obscurity in which this subject is involved, but that while my friend was prefacing his narrative with an introduction which my fatigue rendered tedious, I dropped for a moment into a slumber.

I awoke, as I thought, instantly, at the lowing of cattle. I was still seated on the grass, but instead of one of the posts of Stonehenge, I was leaning against the trunk of a huge cedar. Before me a mountain slope sunk for miles away into a vast plain, which spread like an ocean of forest to the straight horizon-while to the left, at some leagues distance, waved a gigantic range of snowy peaks, piercing into the upper sky. The cow, whose voice had aroused me, stood near a slightly-built cottage of timber and clay, at the door of which sat a scantily-clad old woman, with the universal primæval distaff in her hand.

I suspected at once that my slumber had concealed the instantaneous backward flight of another thousand years, and that I was with an ancestress of a far remoter age than that of the Saxons I had just left, and who must, I thought, have been much surprised at my sudden evanescence. The antique figure addressed me as I approached her, in a tongue unknown, though perfectly comprehended by me; and, for an hour, we kept up an active conversation. I was soon confirmed in my belief that she was an ancestress, but her epoch was indefinitely remote, and I could form no estimate of it within a thousand years. Nor could I learn where I stood, whether on the Libanus, the Caucasus, or the lower Himalaya; nor whether the

language we spoke was Hebrew, Persian, Sanscrit, or any of the tongues which philologists have supposed to be the older languages of mankind. I made some inquiry to learn what her ideas were of the early history of our race; but, though she assured me that she had been well informed by her father, who was a priest, and official custodian of the records of her ancient people, I found her stories utterly vague and unsatisfactory. In them I thought I recognized some features analogous to the Greek and Egyptian mythologies, and a hint or two which might have been developed into some conformity with the traditions of a deluge and a dispersion of mankind. Yet all her historic learning was evidently but a bundle of historic fancies, germs of actual fact sprouted into rich sheaves of mythic fiction; and the only certain thing I could detect, was a general recognition of such existences and causes foreign to humanity as we call supernatural; confirming my belief that ideas of this nature have prevailed in all past human epochs, as they now appear in every corner of earth.

After this rather unsatisfactory interview, my grandmother resumed her spinning, and I bade her adieu. The night drawing on, I made my lodging in a valley not far distant, and closed my eyes, wondering whether I should reopen them in the Garden of Eden.

My slumbers were broken and dreamy; different climates seemed to flit, like the changes of a panorama, across my vision: snows and heated deserts; forests of pine and groves of palm. Day and night seemed to succeed each other more rapidly than the changes of a ma- . gic lantern; but rapid as they were, I thought the atmospheric effects of sunset and sunrise were reversed, and the evident retrograde motion of the Great Bear, as it whirled round the pole through the momentary nights, showed that for me the early ages were retracing their revolutions with almost inconceivable speed. With the alternations of light and gloom, objects the most various appeared and vanished. I saw huge, massive granite structures standing amid the overflow of a swollen river; rude villages of huts crouching under the boughs of deep woods. I witnessed processions of fair-featured men and women, to temples among cultivated fields; I saw hordes of savages in jungly forests and ou open plains,

armed with flint-headed javelins, slings, and stones. I saw combats between scanty tribes-festive entertainments and dances, with music and song of the rudest form-marriage ceremoniesfunerals celebrated with wild outcriesreligious worship, sometimes toward one material object, sometimes toward another, sometimes toward none that was visible, unless it were to sun and sky.

I instinctively recognized in these flitting forms ancestors of my own, and felt still an undefinable sense of kindred and lineage; until, as the last phantom vanished in darkness, I seemed to stand

alone on a sandy shore, from which the calm, mist-covered sea was ebbing, and on which amphibious creatures lay at rest. Suddenly, wild flights of seafowl wheeled and screamed above, and there broke out the yellow light of the sun rising warm and clear from the eastern horizon.

I awoke in my chair, as the reader has, of course, anticipated, and told my vision to my wife, as the reader tells his dreams to his own. She listened to me with unusual attention, and said "there was a good deal in it," and that I had better write it out for the pages of Putnam. So here it is.

TERE is another of Mother Black

HERE

66

wood's naughty boys, who will not put his face in the corner, and suck his thumbs, for having written • Alton Locke," "Yeast," "Hypatia,” “Amyas Leigh," "Phaethon," " Village Sermons," and "Sermons for the Times," in all of which performances that peculiar kind of England which Mrs. Blackwood represents is vigorously delineated. Now he comes graceful in singingrobes, and holding the lyre. His songs are not idle ditties, but grave, sweet measures, full of the humane enthusiasm, masculine vigor, subtle perception, and essential poetry with which the readers of Kingsley are already familiar. That he is a poet no one doubted who has ever read "Alton Locke," or "Yeast," because in those novels are "The Sands of Dee," and "A Rough Rhyme on a Rough Matter.” The first of these poems,

"O Mary, go and call the cattle home,"

is as pure a bit of lyrical melody as can be found in the language; and the other is the finest specimen of the corn-law poetry in literature.

The present volume contains "The Saint's Tragedy," a long dramatic poem; "Miscellaneous Poems," and "Ballads;" and before examining the volume in detail, we shall, perhaps, convey our general opinion of its merits by

saying that it s worthy to make a fourth with Tennyson's "Maud," Browning's "Men and Women," and Longfellow's "Hiawatha"-the three chief works of poetry published during the year. course, it is as entirely unlike all of these as they are unlike each other, and we institute no comparison of the authors as poets. But it is perfectly genuine, like them, and it is poetry full of music and meaning.

The volume is prepared with an introduction by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, a personal friend of Kingsley's, who is himself a clergyman. In this introduction, Mr. Maurice says some admirable things, which we have not room to quote. He thinks the English genius has a special aptitude for the drama, and, consequently, for history. He also defends a clergyman for writing a drama -a defense in which we have little interest, except as a curiously illustrative fact of the state of mind of a Christian people-fellow-citizens of Shakespeare -among whom a man has to be defended for doing what Shakespeare did. It only shows how far gone in formalism England is, in every direction. It sends old women to command in the Crimea, and requires that a poet should be justified for writing poetry. But we speak modestly, for our own withers are not altogether unwrung in this respect. About twelve months since, one of our

own authors, Mr. Calvert, seriously offended the trustees of a church in New England, by reading a grave, dramatic poem, as a lecture. The trustees had laughed merrily, in the same church, at puns, and broad jokes in a lecturepoem; but a serious poem, dramatically divided, was desecration of the edifice. On the whole, the publishers have done wisely to reprint Mr. Maurice's preface. The Reverend Messrs. Chadband and Stiggins might else have denounced the Reverend Charles Kingsley for writing a drama. It is to be hoped that it is no offense in the laity to read the drama, and like it.

The Saint's Tragedy" is the legend of Elizabeth of Hungary. Kingsley has consulted the original authorities for the facts, and has treated them dramatically for certain specific moral ends, as he treats every subject upon which he writes. What his moral design in the drama is, he states in the conclusion of his preface:

"If, however, this book shall cause one Englishman honestly to ask himself, 'I, as a Protestant, have been accustomed to assert the purity and dignity of the offices of husband, wife, and parent. Have I ever examined the grounds of my own assertion? Do I believe them to be, as callings from God, spiritual, sacramental, divine, eternal? Or am I at heart regarding and using them, like the Papist, merely as heaven's indulgences to the infirmities of fallen man ?-Then will my book have done its work.

"If, again, it shall deter one young man from the example of those miserable dilettanti, who in books and sermons are whimpering meagre second-hand praises of celibacy,-deprecating as carnal and degrading those family ties, to which they owe their own existence, in the enjoyment of which they themselves all the while unblushingly indulge-insulting, thus their own wives and mothers,-nibbling ignorantly at the very root of that household purity, which constitutes the distinctive superiority of Protestant over Popish nations;-again my book will have done its work.

"If, lastly, it shall awake one pious Protestant to recognize, in some, at least, of the Saints of the Middle Age, beings not only of the same passions, but of the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, as themselves; Protestants, not the less deep and true, because utterly unconscious and practicalmighty witnesses against the two antichrists of their age-the tyranny of feudal caste, and the phantoms which Popery substitutes for the living Christ-then also will my little book indeed have done its work."

Elizabeth, orphan daughter of the king of Hungary, has been brought to the court of Thuringia, and is betrothed to Lewis, the landgrave. The play opens with a conversation between Elizabeth and her nurse, in which the little prin

cess bewails her utterly forlorn condi-
tion. She has so much Christian de-
mocracy, which leads her to a life of
good works, that she is despised by the
mother of Lewis, and the court. They
freeze her with cold blue eyes, and
scoffing, and she longs, not even to be
loved, but only to be forgotten. Even
her betrothed, Lewis, who treats her like
a young sister, she regards merely as a
brother. But in one of his vassals,
Walter of Varila, she has a friend.
Lewis, a well-meaning youth, dreamy,
and half despondent over his position
and responsibilities, is reminded by
Walter that the welfare of his realm
depends upon himself; and, as they
ride together, Walter shows him the
thrifty domain of some monks. One
of them, Conrad, the pope's legate,
passing at the moment, is summoned by
Lewis, to explain the secret of their
prosperity. Conrad, an enthusiast,
immediately begins to exhort the land-
grave to the heavenly warfare, during
which he is interrupted by the sarcasm
of the count. The adjuration awakens
in Lewis's heart the longing for love—
the desire to serve an earthly mistress.
But the thought of wedding the saintly
Elizabeth seems to him not less than
sin. And yet his heart cries:
"Oh! misery!

Is wedlock treason to that purity,
Which is the jewel and the soul of wedlock?'

Upon this, Walter quietly tells him that Elizabeth loves him:

"Better, her few friends fear, than you love her."

"Lew. Loves me! Henceforth, let no man,

peering down

Through the dim glittering mine of future

years,

Say to himself' Too much! this cannot be!' To-day, and custom, wall up our horizon: Before the hourly miracle of life

Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were not.

I have wandered in the mountains, mistbewildered,

And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted,

And priceless flowers, o'er which I trod unheeding,

Gleam ready for my grasp. She loves me, then!

She, who to me was as a nightingale That sings in magic gardens, rock-beleaguered,

To passing angels melancholy musicWhose dark eyes hung, like far-off evening stars,

Those rosy-cushioned windows coldly shining

Down from the cloud world of her unknown fancy

She, for whom holiest touch of holiest knight Seeined all too gross-who might have been a saint

And companied with angels-thus to pluck The spotless rose of her own maidenhood To give it unto me! "Wal. You love her, then? "Lew. Look! If yon solid mountain were all gold,

And each particular tree a band of jewels,
And from its womb the Niebelungen hoard
With elfin wardens called me, Leave thy
love

And be our Master'-I would turn away
And know no wealth but her."

Walter is the pleased ambassador of this happy speech to Elizabeth, and demands her answer to Lewis's offer of immediate marriage :

"Eliz.

Tell him-tell him-God! Have I grown mad, or a child within the moment?

The earth has lost her gray sad hue, and blazes

With her old life-light; hark! yon wind's a song

Those clouds are angels' robes.-That fiery west

Is paved with smiling faces.-I am a woman,
And all things bid me love! my dignity
Is thus to cast my virgin pride away,
And find my strength in weakness. Busy
brain!

Thou keep'st pace with my heart; old lore, old fancies,

Buried for years, leap from their tombs, and proffer

Their magic service to my new-born spirit.
I'll go I am not mistress of myself-
Send for him-bring him to me he is
mine!"

The bridal feast follows, with a chant of monks and a fool's song, recurring at each pause of the festal chorus.

With the next act begins the struggle of the woman's heart, divided by two loves which it has been taught to believe incompatible-the love of God, and the love of man. Elizabeth is sitting on the floor by her husband's bed.

"Guta. Here comes your husband. "Eliz. He comes! my sun! and every thrilling vein

Proclaims my weakness."

Lewis himself, the messenger of his own doom, comes to tell his wife of the wonderful preaching of the monk, Conrad, whom she instantly summons into the castle, saying to her husband:

"Now hear me, best-beloved: I have marked this man:

And that which hath scared others, draws me towards him:

He has the graces which I want; his stern

calm

Of one who long hath found, and keeps unwavering,

Clear purpose still; he hath the gift which speaks

The deepest things most simply; in his eye
I dare be happy-weak I dare not be.
With such a guide-to save this little heart-
The burden of self-rule-Oh-half my work
Were eased, and I could live for thee and
thine,

And take no thought of self. Oh, be not
jealous,

Mine own, mine idol! For thy sake I ask it-
I would but be a mate and help more meet
For all thy knightly virtues."

Poor Lewis cries amen, feels his inferior force, abdicates his headship as husband, and declares that she must lead him. The shrewd Walter holds another theory of the monk.

"A shallow, stony, steadfast eye; that looks at neither man nor beast in the face, but at something invisible a yard before him, through you and past you, at a fascination, a ghost of fixed purposes that haunts him, from which neither reason nor pity will turn. I have seen such an eye in men possessed-with devils, or with self: sleek, passionless men, who are too refined to be manly, and measure their grace by their effeminacy; crooked vermin, who swarm up in pious times, being drowned out of their earthy haunts by the spring-tide of religion; and so, making a gain of godliness, swim upon the first of the flood, till it cast them ashore on the firm beach of wealth and station. I always mistrust those wall-eyed saints."

Elizabeth surrenders herself to Conrad's absolute spiritual guidance, and

And bind myself to that, which once being right,

Will not be less right, when I shrink from it.
No; if the end be gained--if I be raised
To freer, nobler use, I'll dare, I'll welcome
Him and his means, though they were racks
and flames."

The discipline begins. Not yet seventeen, and a queen, she goes about"Clad in rough serge, and with her bare, soft palms

Wooing the ruthless flint."

She visits the widow and the fatherless, and is an angel of succor wherever there is suffering. She describes to her nurse the scenes with which she becomes familiar; and the reader of "Yeast" and "Alton Locke" recognizes again the human-hearted Christian, Kingsley. But while she thus obeys the impulse of her heart, and seeks, in a thousand engrossing duties, to smother the warm earthly passion for her husband, Conrad sternly rebukes her. The monk believes in the church, not in Christianity :

"What is here?

Think not that alms, or lowly-seeming gar

ments,

Self-willed humilities, pride's decent mum

mers.

Can raise above obedience."

He tries to show her that her sense of humility probably poisons a simple piety:

"The knave whe serves unto another's needs, Knows himself abler than the man who needs him.

And she who stoops will not forget that stooping

Implies a height to stoop from."

A series of lovely pictures of Elizabeth's charities follow. Then we have another aspect of the church of Rome militant in the Abbot, whose sentiments are not so old-fashioned as the date of the play. The Abbot and Count Walter are conversing:

"Abbot. Idleness, Sir, deceit, and immorality, are the three children of this same barbarous self indulgence in alms-giving. Leave

the poor alone. Let want teach them the need of self exertion, and misery prove the foolishness of crime.

"C. Walter. How? Teach them to become men by leaving them brutes?

"Abbot. Oh. sir, there we step in, with the consolations and instructions of the faith."

This discourse is apropos of a famine, in which Elizabeth has so manifestly interfered with the will of divine Providence, which designed that the poor should perish-else why permit a famine?-that the Thuringians are angry and come to complain of her to Lewis. She pleads against them, that it was for her husband's honor as a ruler, that she dared not lose one of the sheep committed to him. The loving Lewis. proud of his spouse, dismisses the complaints.

But it is still a struggle in her heart; there is yet no victory. The loving woman in training for a saint yearns after her natural kind. She sits with Lewis singing:

"Oh! that we two were Maying

Down the stream of the soft spring breeze; Like children with violets playing

In the shade of the whispering trees.

Oh! that we two sat dreaming

On the sward of some sheep-trimmed down, Watching the white mist steaming

Over river and mead and town.

Oh! that we two lay sleeping

In our nest in the church-yard sod. With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast,

And our souls at home with God!"

At the moment in which she finds that she only loves him more than ever, she discovers that he, with holy zeal, has taken the vows of a crusader. This sharp sorrow gives her a vague fear and doubt. Lewis turns her over to Conrad for consolation, and the woman and wife welcomes him in these fiery words:

"Eliz. (Rising.) You know, Sir,. that my husband has taken the cross? "Con. I do; all praise to God! "Eliz. But none to you: Hard-hearted! Am I not enough your slave? Can I obey you more when he is gone Than now I do? Wherein, pray, has he hindered

This holiness of mine, for which you make me Old ere my womanhood? [CONRAD offers to go.

Stay, Sir, and tell me

Is this the out-come of your "father's care?" Was it not enough to poison all my joys With foulest scruples?-show me nameless sins,

Where I, unconscious babe, blessed God for all things,

But you must thus intrigue away my knight And plunge me down this gulf of widow

hood!