1849.]

However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was this, that the pictures it presents are the most vivid imaginable; that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where the author falls into reflection and sentiment, he is not equal to himself; that here a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to steal over the page; so that although the poem is not long, there are yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has, at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full justification, wel presume, in that half burlesque character which is impressed upon the whole poem. The subject is a pleasing one-a gentle banter of the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbor, and every heart is solitary.

66

The poem opens oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us-the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down,
A man with knobs, and wires, and vials, fired
A cannon; Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields; and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock

Dislinked with shrieks and laughter; round the

lake

A little clock-work steamer paddling plied,
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,
A dozen angry models jetted steam;
A petty railway ran; a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusty groves,
And dropt a parachute and pass'd;

And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,

They flash'd a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
With science hand in hand went; otherwhere
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamor bowl'd
And stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arrang'd a country-dance, and flew through light
And shadow."

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down; It is but bringing up; no more than that: You men have done it; how I hate you all! Far off from men a college of my own, O were I some great princess, I would build And I would teach them all things; you would

see.

And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
Yet I fear,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.'

death

At this upon the sward She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot; "That's your light way; but I would make it For any male thing but to peep at us.' Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd; A rose-bud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened-who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighboring prince; and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat, With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, All beauty compass'd in a female form,

The princess; liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the sun,
Than our man's earth. She rose her height and
said,

'We give you welcome; not without redound
Of fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,
The first-fruits of the stranger: aftertime
And that full voice which circled round the grave
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.
What! are the ladies of your land so tall?
We of the court,' said Cyril. From the court!'
She answered; then you know the prince?'

And he,

The climax of his age; as tho' there were One rose in all the world-your highness thatHe worships your ideal.' And she replied:

We did not think in our own hall to hear

This barren verbiage, current among men-
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment;
We think not of him. When we set our hand
To this great work, we purposed with ourselves
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling
The tricks which make us toys of men, that so,
Some future time, if so indeed you will,
You may with those self-styled our lords ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'
At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,
Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be the "toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word, Fancy, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two widows (both of whom have children, and one an infant)-Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche-for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognizes her brother.

666

My brother! O,' she said; '

་

Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!
A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!
A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all !"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome; it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out—

"To take The dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stood

Among her maidens higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near!
And from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so
The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."
Went forth in long retinue, following up

nity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to Here the disguised prince has an opportuhis precontract-even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

these?

love,

"You have done well, and like a gentleman, And like a prince; you have our thanks for all; And you look well too in your woman's dress; Well have you done and like a gentleman. You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks;

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood; Then men had said-but now

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd

Our tutors, wrong'd and lied, and thwarted us—
I wed with thee! I bound by precontract,
Your bride, your bond-slave! not tho' all the gold
That veins the world were packed to make your

crown,

And every spoken tongue should lord you.'”

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the melée, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is forever broken up-disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rightsa heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother la ments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child! My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more; For now will cruel Ida keep her back; And either she will die for want of care, Or sicken with ill usage, when they say The child is hers; and they will beat my girl, Remembering her mother. O, my flower! Or they will take her, they will make her hard; And she will pass me by in after life With some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.

But I will go and sit beside the doors,

And make a wild petition night and day,"
Until they hate to hear me, like a wind
Wailing for ever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child;
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass

"Psyche ever stole A little nearer, till the babe that by us, Half lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass, Uncared for, spied its mother, and began A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance Its body, and reach is falling innocent arms, Brook'd not, but clamoring out, 'Mine-mineAnd lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal

not yours;

It is not yours, but mine; give me the child,'
Ceased all in tremble; piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled-gives it, however, to Cyril.

"Take it, sir,' and so Laid the soft babe in his hard mailed hands, Who turned half round to Psyche, as she sprang To embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks, Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough; And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it, And hid her bosom with it; after that Put on more calm.'"

The two kings are well sketched out-the Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty father of Ida, and the father of our prince. old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;

A little, dry old man, without a star,

Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,
And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,
And my betroth'd. You do us, Prince,' he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
All honor. We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth; there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony-
I think the year in which our olives failed.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart;
With my full heart! but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place,
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man,

They harp'd on this; with this our banquets

rang;

Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;
Nothing but this: my very ears were hot
To hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier; I said, No,
Yet, being an easy man, gave it." "

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone-a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too; very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says:

"Tut, you know them not, the girls;

They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do--
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of trumpets round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score,
Flatter'd and fluster'd wins, though dashed with
death,

He reddens what he kisses: thus I won
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand-gentleness
To such as her! If Cyril spake her true,
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
And trip a tigress with a gossamer,
Were wisdom to it." "

With one charming picture we must close

our extracts, or we shall go far to have it
said that, with the exception of scattered
single lines and phrases, we have pillaged
the poem of
every beautiful
it con-
passage
tains. Here is a peep into the garden on the
college-walks of our maiden university :
"There

One walked, reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that.
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadowed from the heat."

It

It may be observed that we have quoted might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way no passages from this poem, such as we transgressing the rules of good taste. does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr. Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favor of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labors, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance, The Princess, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him—not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr. Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performancess-a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

FOR the next century we fear the annalist of pedestrianism will have but few materials to work upon. With benevolent consideration we shall therefore furnish him with a feat we were honored to achieve in the summer of last year. After spending a night on the banks of Windermere, at about eight o'clock in the morning of a beautiful, but somewhat sultry day in June, we set out on foot from Bowness, intending, if possible, to reach Keswick in the twilight. From our starting-place to Ambleside, the road presents a variety of noble prospects, both of the lake and the circumjacent scenery. The unbroken quietude that slept on every object; the aspect of perfect repose that sat upon "the river-lake," and the gigantic heights glassed in its transparency-induced a placid calm upon the spirit, and ameliorated the heart with profitable reflection. Suddenly the neighboring hills rung out their echoes in a deafening, continuous peel-shattering sounds broke unwelcomely over the lake, and drowned the cadences of the waterfalls, that had only served to voice the silence and proclaim its presence. We looked and listened; we could scarcely credit our senses. A grim black monster was seen vomiting forth volumes of dunnest smoke, that darkened the deep blue of the sky, rushing torturingly through the bosom of the lake, breaking into fragments the watery mirror with the remorseless dash of its iron wings, as the sun glared indignantly from his throne upon his broken and distorted image. It was freighted with a cargo of well-dressed people, who, from their unnatural conduct ought to have been behind the counter, at the exchange, or lounging away the morning on their ottomans in town, instead of recklessly marring the natural features, and disturbing the tranquillity of this quiet region. To relieve, as it should seem, the tedium of the excursion, a large band of musicians poured a horse clangor from their brazen

throated instruments, startling echo with unwonted violence from her peaceful retreats, where the wild notes of the cascade, the blended harmony of melodious birds, and the shrill shriek of the mountain spirit, were alone congenial. The romance of a tour among the lakes is sadly interrupted by these painful tokens of a money-loving age, and a matter-of-fact world. The steamboat proprietors, and the prosaic parties that contribute to their support, have unquestionably the impression that Nature has so few charms, that of herself she is insufficient to afford any real recreation and enjoyment. They don't believe the poet when he says—" Thou mad'st all Nature beauty to his eye and music to his ear." Her beauty must be improved and supplemented, to suit the temper and tastes of the age; her pellucid specula must be broken, and shivered and smashed to powdery spray by the tormenting wheels of a thundering steamboat; her clear, cloudless sky and lustrous sun must be agreeably relieved by a smutty tinge of infernal smoke, to remind the manufacturing and commercial tourists of the charming impervious crassitude that oppresses and begrims the caliginous atmosphere of Leeds or Glasgow. Her music, too, must be mended; her melodious birds, her vocal cataracts, her quiet singing brooks, and all the wild and wayward strains of her spiritual harp, must join in concert with the stunning roar of trumpets, fifes and drums, before these worthy and enlightened people can derive any pleasure from her sights and sounds, and force themselves into such tame furiousness as to ejaculate, with a pseudo-poetical obstreperousness, "How pretty!" "Come now, that's well got up!"

It has long struck us, and our visit to these districts greatly strengthened the conviction, that mountain and lake scenery should, if possible, be witnessed alone. like-minded companion may do very well for some time, but even of him you may tire,

A