Oh to be clear, clear, clear, of all but Him! Lo, here I strip me of all earthly helps--[Tearing of her clothes. Naked and barefoot through the world to follow

My naked Lord."

Elizabeth retires to a miserable hovel, which is visited by her old friend, Count Walter, who, meeting Conrad, denounces him, with manly indignation.

"C. Wal. Go to-go to. I have watched you and your crew, how you preach up selfish ambition for divine charity, and call prurient longings celestial love, while you blaspheme that very marriage from whose mysteries you borrow all your cant. The day will come when every husband and father will hunt you down like vermin; and may I live to see it!"

The stern monk is stung with rage; but, bent upon his great purpose of making a saint, will not touch the count, unless he stays him in his life-purpose, and will then fell him as God's foe. Elizabeth's father in vain sends to recall her, and implores, by his gray hairs, her return. She will win the quires of heaven to love and honor him. The wife and mother, and now the daughter, submit, and the tragedy of making a woman a Romish saint hurries, through horrors, to the end. Coarse women live with her, to destroy the luxury of sleep, and scourge her, and torment her, în order, probably, that, having tasted hell upon earth, she may be admitted, without purgatory, to heaven.

Elizabeth dies, and Conrad, in long harangues to the people, tells the story of her heavenly and patient life. His work is done. The wife, mother, and daughter is, at last, Diva Elizabeth : "And I have trained one saint before I die! Yet now 'tis done, is't well done? On my lips

Is triumph; but what echo in my heart?
Alas! the inner voice is sad and dull,
Even at the crown and shout of victory.
Oh! I had hugged this purpose to my heart,
Cast by for it all ruth, all pride, all scruples;
Yet now its face, that seemed as pure as
crystal,

Shows fleshly, foul, and stained with tears and gore!

We make, and moil, like children in their gardens,

And spoil, with dabbled hands, our flowers i' the planting. And yet a saint is made! Alas, those children!

Was there no gentler way? I know not any; I plucked the gay moth from the spider's web: What if my hasty hand have smirched its feathers !

Sure, if the whole be good, each several part

May for its private blots forgiveness gain, As in man's tabernacle, vile elements

Conrad, in the moment of victory, shocked at its cost, feels a fearful revulsion of the heart, and the darkest doubts of our mighty mother, Holy Church," and a secret conviction and joy that his own end approaches. He rides forth, and encounters a multitude, among whom is a gentleman, whose wife has been burned, in order to extend the area of Conrad's church. He, with the mob, surround the priest, and with his death the drama ends.

“The Saint's Tragedy" is a poem of very great power and significance. Its grand theme, the conflict of a true human heart between its God-implanted affections and its confused and sophisticated sense of religious duty, is one of the saddest and most frequent spectacles of history; and its grand moral shines like the sun, that such an effort is, when honestly practiced, the most tragical mistake, and when dishonestly or selfishly urged, the basest of crimes; and that, therefore, any institution which organizes that effort as the fundamental law of Christianity, is thoroughly ig norant of the sublime significance of Christianity, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men; and, as a permanent and pernicious blasphemy, should be destroyed at all hazards.

The delineation of Elizabeth's struggle is so delicate that, in the midst of the grossest spiritual error, she never, for a moment, loses our sympathy and compassion. For it is not the yielding of a weak mind to superstition, but the loyalty of a great soul, an imperial but mistaken sense of duty, seeing blindly and vaguely, and resolved to obey conscience to the end. Conrad himself is an inflexible man of spiritual sophistication. He is not a bad man, but almost worse-one of the medieval products, not yet entirely extinct, an ignorant, iron-willed bigot, who serves the devil with the words of God. He rep

resents the spirit which gave the Romish church the mastery of the world in a time of political confusion and religious darkness, and which will always give the principles of that church the power in any barbarous or half-civilized state of society. We do not recall so remarkable a picture of this subversion of the loveliest and holiest human instincts, to the most groveling selfishness, solemnly masking as religious humility and self-renunciation, as in the relation of Conrad to Elizabeth; and the whole drama is a comprehensive statement of the fatal operation of such a false principle. As a plea for religious liberty, the poem is most significant; and, as in Kingsley's novels, beyond all the splendor of description, vivid characterization, and merit of story, there is always the great and direct moral of human brotherhood, whether the scene be laid in Alexandria, in the fourth century, as in "Hypatia," or in England and the West Indies, in the six. teenth century, as in "Amyas Leigh," or in England in the nineteenth century, as in Alton Locke;" so the Saint's Tragedy" has a universal significance, showing us that princesses of Hungary, when there was a Hungary, were women still, and that their story and tragedy are the story and tragedy of many woman and many a man since.

The direct moral purpose is too evident throughout, for the poem to be strictly a drama. And yet every detail of costume and character is rigidly observed, so that the picture of the time is perfect; and this not only externally but internally, for the intellectual state of the age and country is presented with equal fidelity. Kingsley has taken the lovely legend of Saint Elizabeth and treated it not as a Romish priest but a Christian man. He summons the world to see that, while Elizabeth was a noble woman, she was the dupe of a dreadful spiritual deceit, and that her loveliness was in the natural womanliness with which she endured her martyrdom, and not in the mistaken faith which imposed it. It is an improvement of the church tradition which the holy Romish See would hardly approve, but which every noble and thoughtful man, who loves God and his fellow-men must heartily hail.

If we turn to the remaining poems in the volume, we find that they have, through all their lyrical melody and

songful beauty, the same significance as the drama. There are several pure songs among them, like the following, which all our readers have probably read many times, and which they will be glad to read again:

a

'Yon wood does but perish new seedlings to cherish.

And the world is to live yet for thee.'"

11.

"The bells went on ringing, a spirit came singing, And smiled as he crumbled the tree;

The ballads are a series of half-dramatic lyrics, seven in number, having no titles but the date of the time of which they are illustrative. The first is a Saga of the Longbeards, “A. D. 415," and the last is "A. D. 1848," the ballad which was printed in Yeast," and called A Rough Rhyme on a Rough Matter," and which has no superior, in its way, anywhere. We like especially, also, "A. D. 1740," which is the ballad of an old mariner, who had been a buccaneer upon the Spanish main, and has now got back to starve in England. It is a very perfect ballad. The design of this series is admirable. They are social glimpses of the different epochs, and are profoundly suggestive.

The uneasy reader, who fears, in every new poet, an Alexander Smith, and in each new volume only more spasmodic obscurity, may take heart over this book. Every poem in it has the clearness of ripened thought, and the precision of thoughtful art. It is a book full of marrow, and will be sure, not only to win the admiration, but the hearty sympathy, of every intrepid intellect and loving heart.

RUMORS of war with England befall the good people of the United States with about as much regularity as our learned friend, Mr. Meriam, brings on his "heated terms" in summer, and his "cold terms" in winter. They are periodical, and yet not of systematic periodicity; they come and go, like comets, whose orbits have not been precisely ascertained, rather than like planets, whose habitats, at all seasons, are well known. On this account, they always take us with somewhat of surprise. We are aware that once, at least, during every five years, or say during each new administration for precision's sake, everybody will be called upon to draw his sheathed sword, and furbish his rusty musket, preparatory to a defense of the land against a descent of the blood-thirsty Briton; but at what particular day or hour that duty is to be encountered, we are not aware, and so whenever the trumpets of alarm are blown, they are sure to find us quite unprepared. We are all pursuing our usual peaceful way, eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, when suddenly there is a grand flourish of drums, and a startling cry that the foe is coming!

It happened thus only a few months since, when, in the midst of our sweet dreams of increasing trade and cent. per cent., the London Times dropped a bomb-shell on our slumbers. All the world had gone quietly to sleep over night, not a man among them supposing but that he would wake in the morning to pleasant sunshine and an easy breakfast; but what was our astonishment, on taking up the early paper, to find that we were on the verge of a savage and sanguinary war with England. In vain we ran about and asked each other what it could mean; what had England done, or what had the United States done, that could not be reconciled, until they had taken each other by the throat, and strangled the life out of one or the other-never a man could tell: and yet there stood the fact, in the fair round type of the Times, and who dared dispute such an authority? An immediate war was impending-a war, too, provoked by the insolent audacity of the Yankees-and which the adroitness of diplomacy, usually so effective in stav

ing off disagreeable results, was not likely to avert. Straightway, all the vehicles of opinion in both countries were set in motion; the journals of the metropolis groaned and hissed with terrible spite against the marauding republic, which knew no law and no shame; and the orators of Congress repelled the assault with all the blatant and fiery commonplaces for which congressional orators are famous, and which are so potent on such occasions.

War, however, did not come, and the Times was heartily laughed at; but it was laughed at rather prematurely: for, in the course of two or three months, after everything had settled down again into the humdrum status ante bellum, it appeared that there had been considerable excitement in the foreign bureaux; that Mr. Marcy and Mr. Buchanan, Lord Clarendon and Mr. Crampton had been busy writing to each other with ominous diligence, and that the English ambassador was about to be sent home, and our ambassador had asked his papers, while a formidable fleet was going to sail towards-the West Indies.

The publication of the diplomatic correspondence has put us in possession of the whole secret of these threatened hostilities. It seems that the governments disagree upon two simple points: first, as to the interpretation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which relates to certain parts of Central America; and, second, as to the kind and amount of reparation that Great Britain ought to offer for an attempt to infringe our municipal laws and sovereignty. No paramount interests are involved in either question; no strong popular feelings are likely to be aroused by either; and both are matters for diplomatic adjustment rather than national fisticuffs. We shall not discuss them, therefore, but leave them to the settlement of the officials who are appointed to that task. In themselves, they contain no war; and nothing but the most stupid bungling, on the part of the negotiators, or the most determined and malicious desire to go to war, on one side or the other, could extract a war out of such elements.

We have said that it was not our purpose to discuss these questions, and we shall not; but we cannot forbear one

or two passing remarks. With respect to both of them, it seems to us, that the United States is clearly in the right, or, at least, that, as the argument now stands in the correspondence, the force of fact and logic is on our side. It was certainly the distinct and universal understanding, in this country, when the treaty of 1850 was issued, that both nations had stipulated to relinquish forever the exercise of any right of dominion over the designated parts of Central America. The one thing in the treaty which commended it to the warın approval of all humane and peace-loving men was, this supposed removal of every cause of difference between two great civilized nations, in regard to one of the most important highways on the globe. Greater than any conquest, they said to each other, greater than any siege or battle, any Buena Vista, Waterloo, or storming of Sebastopol, is this voluntary and honorable agreement of two powerful governments to surrender ancient topics of dispute, and to unite in a vast and reciprocally beneficial scheme of commercial progress. Here are the words of the treaty:

dom?" Great Britain says that they do not, and the United States claims that they do. What, then, is a protectorate? Does it involve the possession of any real, substantial, important political power-any right of political control or influence, which it would be advantageous for one nation to possess as against others? Or is it a simple formal alliance, in which a strong power guarantees to a weaker one its aid and protection against certain domestic or foreign enemies? If the former, then the exercise of such a protectorate is manifestly opposed to both the language and spirit of the treaty; if the latter, we do not see why Great Britain should be so tenacious of a point which is in itself, as Lord John Russell said in 1853, of no moment; for the Spanish control of Central America, against which this alleged protectorate was assumed, no longer exists. In either meaning, however, it is strange that no reservation of this pretended right was made at the time of the treaty. England was careful, in the addenda to it, presented by Mr. Bulwer, to except British Honduras from the operation of its clauses; but not a word was uttered as to the protectorate, or, as Lord Clarendon describes it, "her great and extensive influence with the Mosquito King.", Mr. Bulwer must have been unusually forgetful of the interests of his country, in omitting every allusion to so "great and extensive" a possession. Or, what is more likely to have been the case, did not Mr. Bulwer know that this entire theory of a Mosquito king and a Mosquito kingdom was a sham, having no foundation in fact, unsustainable by any law, and, therefore, best kept out of the controversy?

All this is frank, open, fair, and mutually honorable. The immediate and obvious meaning of the language is, that neither party will obtain or use, directly or indirectly, any right of occupation or domain over the Mosquito coast. But do such expressions cover the peculiar kind of influence exercised by Great Britain, under the name of a Protectorate of the Mosquito King

66

Be this as it may, there is not a shadow of doubt that in the enlistment controversy, from beginning to end, Great Britain has been in the wrong. Against her own voluntary reminder, that our position in respect to the Allies and Russia was one of the strictest neutrality, she has, directly and indirectly, countenanced the efforts of her officials-those residing in this country, and accredited to this government, as well as her colonial agents-in raising troops for service against a friendly power; her enemy. In doing this she has infringed our municipal laws, invaded our national sovereignty, and contravened the policy which, for the wisest