"Flower in the crannied wall," of which Professor John Fiske says, "No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet."

It is quite clear that Tennyson, through much of his life at least, was in the fog rather than in the sunlight as to many important truths. And it must have been this familiar acquaintance of his own with doubt that caused him to esteem it so highly, putting it, when "honest," above "half the creeds." This is too high a place. We may cheerfully admit that skepticism is not always criminal, and that patience with it is often a duty, but the fact of its being a weakness and a misfortune should not for a moment be forgotten. It is never something to be gloried in and praised, but at the best, to be pitied and outlived. Truth-seeking is good, but truth-having is certainly better.

Tennyson's creed appears to have been very vague up to the end. His friend James Knowles tells us that the poet "formulated once quite deliberately his own religious creed in these words, which were said with such a calm emphasis that I wrote it down exactly and at once. It was this: "There is a Something that watches over us, and our individuality endures; that is my faith, and that is all my faith."" If that was indeed the whole extent of his mature belief we can well understand why he was so ambiguous and dubious in his poems, on many fundamental religious matters-inferior in this respect both to Wordsworth and Browning-and why his opinions were expressed so obscurely that they are cited with approval by men of very different ideas.

It has even been questioned by some whether he fully accepted the doctrine of the Trinity and the Deity of Jesus Christ. We know from the testimony of Miss Weld, and from other sources, that he certainly did. But we wish that he had spoken out more explicitly upon the matter in his published writings. However, a thoughtful examination of the introductory stanzas to "In Memoriam " will hardly leave the careful inquirer in suspense on this point. To him who is hailed "Strong Son of God, immortal Love," is ascribed the creation, from him forgiveness is supplicated, he is called Lord in contrast with man, and divine as well as human. Such a one can scarcely be other than very God. This is made still

plainer by the other passage, further on in the same poem, where, almost in the language of St. John, the Word is said to have "had breath, and wrought with human hands."

Tennyson, then, was not an atheist, a pantheist, a materialist, an agnostic, or a mere theist. But it cannot be denied that he

was a restorationist. Dean Farrar, who knew him well, explicitly declares it. "He considered," avers the dean, "that if a single soul were to be left in what are called endless torments it would be a blot upon the universe of God, and that belief in it would be an impugning of his infinite mercy." His son and biographer also says that he meant by the "larger hope" "that the whole human race would, through perhaps ages of suffering, be at length purified and saved, even those who now 'better not with time;' that love must conquer at the last." His views in this matter are, to our mind, very superficial, a triumph of weak sentiment over right reason and sound exegesis, and his influence on the world with regard to this doctrine seems to us to have been very unwholesome.

To claim for Tennyson, as is sometimes done, that he was a strong champion of orthodox Christianity is going rather beyond the facts. So far as the poems bear testimony neither his theology nor his religion ever worked itself wholly free from doubt. Even that beautiful fragment entitled "Crossing the Bar," written in his eighty-first year, and, by the author's own direction, put now at the close of all editions of his works, the poem which Stopford Brooke says "is the first clear cry of hope and faith, of doubt and trouble past," cannot rightly be called very clear when looked at critically. What does it say? Simply this:

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

He got no farther, we observe, than a hope, at the best. There was no ring of triumph in his voice. His faith did not soar with untroubled flight into the serene heavens, even at the last. Indeed, he grew more despondent as he grew older, carried a less cheerful tone than in his vigorous manhood, and confessed to those about him that the paths leading into the

future, so far as earthly affairs were concerned, seemed somewhat gloomy. It was the ancestral temperament asserting itself-a temperament against which he fought with much success, but could not wholly overcome. It was this which made him so miserably sensitive to slights and in great bondage to what was said about him. He never could forget an unfriendly word, even from the most obscure and insignificant writer. It hurt him keenly to be censured, while praises affected him but little. These dark views increased upon him toward the end. Mr. Knowles writes: "The last time I went with him to the oculist he was most heartily reassured as to his eyes by the great expert after a careful and detailed examination, but as he left the door he turned to me and said with utter gloom, 'No man shall persuade me that I am not going blind.'" Nevertheless he did not go blind.

And while his life at certain periods was not free from keen sorrows it was on the whole an exceptionally favored one. He very early knew what he had to do, and he was never turned aside from the doing of it. He devoted himself to poetry with singleness of eye from his youngest years, until, having fulfilled his calling without interruption or digression, at the ripe age of eighty-three, full of all honors and comforts, he passed on to that other world whose existence he had never ceased most vigorously to maintain. He was popular almost from the start. At the issuing of his second volume in 1832, when he was only twenty-three years old, he was recognized as the coming poet of the age, and every publication after that steadily added to his fame. By 1850, when he was forty-one, he had acquired a large income, had been appointed Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth, had issued "In Memoriam," one of the greatest poems of the century, and had married a marvelously good wife. As years went on and hundreds of thousands of his volumes were sold, his riches greatly increased, till he was estimated to be worth a million dollars; he had two fine estates, he was a peer of the realm, intimate with the royal family, most happy in his domestic life, with a devoted and noble son to inherit his wealth and his barony, enjoying good health to the last, and possessed of every honor that an adoring public could bestow. Probably no one in the

whole range of poetic literature had a lot more to be enviedone with which the mere world interfered so little, and which had so many elements of splendor and supreme success, personal, domestic, social, national.

We rejoice that it was so. For his prosperity did not spoil him. And though he would probably have had a closer sympathy with the toiling masses had he been less exempt from burdens, yet, considering the comfortable conditions by which he was surrounded, and without which he could hardly have done his work, it must be said that he carried himself most creditably. We are exceeding glad of the right noble words he has left behind him and the spotless record of good deeds with which he has blessed humanity.

He was ever keenly alive to the great responsibilities entailed by his rare gifts. He was faithful to duty. He followed the gleam. And we, if we are wise, will visit early and late and often that splendid country of the imagination which by his sixty years of toil he has created for our enjoyment; we will walk and talk there with the beautiful characters to be found along its paths; we will converse with its kings and heroes, its fair women and brave knights-yes, and with the kind hearts which are more than coronets, the souls that by their simple faith and living truth, their love of country, their trust in God, give forth effulgence and radiate strength. The time devoted to such intercourse will be well spent. We shall return to the daily round of labor much invigorated and consoled, better acquainted with our fellow-men, nearer to God and to righteousness, with loftier ideas and fresh power to realize them. For, truly, he who drinks at this fountain of bright waters will taste a pure enjoyment, and rise refreshed to speed upon his journey, more fully fitted in every way to make good progress toward the celestial city.

James Mudge

ART. IV.-A DRAMA OF WAR.

An actual chapter of human behavior becomes, to those remote from it in time or space, dramatic. The Crimean War was to us who saw it at five thousand miles a drama. At now fifty years and more, it takes on more definitely the unities of time, place, and action, and becomes even more vividly dramatic. In trivial origin, wasteful, woeful progress, brilliant heroisms, tender humanity, fruitless issue, and quickly healing scars it went into the world's history—a perfect specimen of our human nature as it was developed in the middle of our century.

The World's Fair of London, in 1852, the first of its kind, due largely to the generous and hopeful energy of Prince Albert, marked an era in human progress. Its display of inventions, as of the electric telegraph-a Hercules in his cradle-may now seem crude and remote, yet it was beautiful in its time. The kings of the earth brought into it the honor of their contributions and the majesty of their presence. Nicholas, the mighty czar, and Napoleon III, just made by an almost unanimous suffrage emperor of the French with fixed dynasty, came to greet the queen and shake hands in her palace. The vision of Micah was coming true. The nations were to learn war no more, and Tennyson rose up to sing how, at length, The battle-flags were furl'd

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.

The sun looked down on encouraging material progress, but All those trophied arts

And triumphs that beneath it sprang

Healed not a passion or a pang

Entailed on human hearts.

The sunshine that gilded the hour was thin and precarious. Horace Greeley, returning home, told of gathering clouds and prophesied a storm. England was flush and lusty. Forty years with no war save police skirmishes on a frontier had been counted-the longest warless period since England replaced Britain, since Horsa and Cerdic of old; and the veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns were tingling young ears with