ment at least was due to a long peace, | to be prophetical, but covers a meaning to a progress so continuous that it sug-not to be apprehended. This rider gested a law, to a condition all around never loses hold of the bridle of Peghim which was nowhere unendurable. asus, never falls in his eagerness into a His verse suggests heroism very often, chasm, never breaks utterly away from but never despairing resistance, and any known course. It is not that his even when he is saddest there is always steed is tame. The speed and rush of something in his strains which tells of Tennyson's poetry, as in such common an inner feeling that the world and the examples as the "Death of the Duke of God who made it are both good. There Wellington," or "Locksley Hall," or is no tornado coming in the atmosphere the "Charge of the Light Brigade," is which surrounded Tennyson's thought. something matchless, but it is the rush It is conceivable, of course, that such and speed of the trained charger, not of a poet should exist at any time, for the the wild horse of the Steppes. Tennypoet's impulse is from within, but that son had thought out all he meant to say, his poetry should receive enthusiastic and said precisely that and no more, admiration, should awaken a kind of and if "all the charm of all the Muses national affection for the man who often flowered in a lonely word," that poured it forth, is conceivable only word had been selected as carefully as when, as regarded external storms, the if the poet had been a diplomatist conworld was very still. One could hardly ducting a serious quarrel for his State. It is Mendelssohn's music, not Wagner's, that he offers, and he is in his most wilful moods incapable of breaking into discord. Even when his inspiration is at its highest there is sense in his verse always, and clear thought, as of a man whose mind, however stirred, never grew turbid or overburdened. This high self-restraint in a man of such powers is exceedingly rare in literature, and springs doubtless from that quality of wisdom which his friends say was always in Lord Tennyson's talk, which appeared in the sustained dignity of his long life, and which detractors and pub

imagine "" In Memoriam " or the

"Idylls of the King" being so much as written, far less greeted with shouts of congratulation, except at a time when readers, fairly contented with circumstances around, could pause to think and dream. Tennyson could sing of nature as few men ever sang, but it is of nature as those see it who dwell in scenes where disturbance except from one's own thoughts hardly even rises in the imagination. It is in such times as produced him that nations grow rich in culture, in the arts, and in the practice of material accumulation. There is another quality in Lord Ten-lishers say was never wanting in his nyson's work which should have, and we doubt not has, a charm for the kind of audience to which the Economist usually addresses itself. He is one of the sanest poets who ever lived, was, indeed, hardly rivalled in this attribute by any great verse-maker except Virgil and Shakespeare. Perversity is not in him, or extravagance, or that exaggeration which suggests that the mind in its movement had attained a pace beyond its owner's control. Full of fire as it is, there is not a poem in all his mass of work in which there is a trace of delirium or a verse which its author could not explain or justify, or a line which the reader has to accept like some sentence of a prophet which must be taken

management of pecuniary affairs. Like Shakespeare, he saw no reason why, because he was poet, he should be a fool in the ordinary affairs of life, and like him he made a fortune. He never in fact pleaded his genius to excuse an aberration, but lived always as a good member of the community, whose duty to those around him was not confined to the exercise of his splendid gift. Southey did the same thing, but Southey had no more Tennyson's dignity than his powers. The latter was as independent, sometimes almost as savage as Byron, but unlike Byron, he regarded his powers not as properties but as trusts, and never misused them even when most conscious and he was not an

unconscious man at all— that they sep- | drawings ere it is reduced to the size arated him from the majority of his desired. Much friction is generated in kind. Much of his work will perish the process, notwithstanding the use with the national mood which it em- of lubricants; and "annealing" is bodied, but we do not doubt that much necessary to counteract the brittleness will live, and that he will be regarded, produced in the wire. Where great aceven centuries hence, as a figure whose curacy is requisite, the wire is drawn rare powers and strong sense and lofty through rubies or other hard stones in dignity of character fully became that the draw-plate. The speed of the drawgreat Victorian era throughout which, ing cylinder is increased as the diameter until its close approached, he had been of the wire diminishes. the recognized great poet of his time.

The manufacture of wire as now carried out may be briefly and concisely stated, and consists in attenuating or reducing in section thin rods of the metal under manipulation by drawing them cold through holes in a draw-plate, usually made of hard steel. The wiredrawer's bench is furnished with a horizontal cylinder, driven by steam or other power, on which the wire is wound after leaving the draw-plate. The holes in the draw-plate are arranged in decreasing diameters; and a fine wire may require some twenty or thirty rarily employed.

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From Blackwood's Magazine. LOWLAND SCOTLAND IN THE LAST CENTURY.

treelessness, without his rather heavy fun, and almost every page of the “Sta- · tistical Account" supplies corroborative THE career of Burns — 1759-96 - is evidence. Even Burns, who cannot be almost coextensive with the latter half accused of lack of patriotism, finds a of the eighteenth century, a period in similar state of matters, and this even our history of momentous importance. where it was least to be expected, as is It significantly opens with the abolition shown by his lines on Bruar Water. of the heritable jurisdiction of the The intelligent travellers from the barons in 1748, and closes with the south who did the Scottish tour last quiet disappearance of the last relic of century describe with considerable defeudal serfdom in 1799, when the col- tail the appearance of the country. liers and salters were relieved of the Pennant found some hedges and traces sole remaining link in the chain that of plantation around Edinburgh. The had for centuries bound them to the city itself must have had clumps of soil. This period witnessed the rise of trees, for Cockburn deplores the vanall our modern industries, and the com- dalism that was cutting them down in plete transformation of the only hitherto his day to make way for the New Town. existing one agriculture. It wit- Pennant saw, in going to Perth by Kinnessed also both an enormous expan-ross, few trees, except about Blair and sion of the population - twice has it Perth itself. Farther north, over the doubled itself since the youth of Burns Grampians, all the way to Inverness, as well as a surprising redistribution matters were still worse. Moray and of it. At the end of the century fifty- Aberdeen were little better; but the five per cent. of the population were Mearns and the Carse of Gowrie on living in hamlets and homesteads of the east side, and the lower reaches of under three hundred inhabitants. Fur- the Clyde above Dumbarton, afforded ther, it was the period which evolved charming prospects of wood, water, and such questions as the rise of Dissent, rich corn-fields. Topham saw many a road reform, poor laws, burgh reform, wide view without the appearance of elementary education,—all which have vegetation higher above its surface than so profoundly affected our own well- a blade of grass. There was but one being. But, above all, it gave us the orchard in Edinburgh, and hardly angreatest and most typical of modern other in the country. Good apples Scotsmen Burns, Scott, Carlyle. Yet were not to be seen, and turnips formed our historians, great and small, have the only dessert. "The country seats nothing special to say of it. Burton near Edinburgh," " he adds, 66 are well and Chambers both stop at 1748, a state planted, but, save in the parks of parof matters that is to be regretted from ticular nobles, there are few oaks that a literary as well as a political point of have seen half a century." Lettice view. For while Scott and Carlyle are says nothing could exceed the drearilargely their own interpreters, the lights ness of the upper ward of Lanark. and shadows of Burns's life and work Heron thinks Nithsdale would be beaucannot be properly understood and sym-tiful with clumps and belts of wood. It pathized with without some such study is not quite bare, but there are few of the social conditions of the time. trees. Drumlanrig Castle has an air of It is possible to form a very complete decay and desolation (thanks to the idea of the general appearance of the sordid avarice of the then Marquis of country during this period. Down al-Queensberry, so vigorously denounced most to the close of the century, except by Burns). The banks of the Stinchar in a few sheltered river valleys, a Scottish landscape presented few pleasing features. All the travellers from the more favored south bear out Dr. Johnson's famous observation on the general

are unadorned by trees or underwood; Magus Muir remains wild, unenclosed, and untilled, probably as at the time when Sharp was murdered. Both districts are now richly clothed in foliage.