the English soldiers should have ar- nothing, but my throat choked with sorrow. So we sat there till the sun had come up and the gardens were full of light. rived. You must remember, Thakin, that we did not know the English then, that they were merciful, and their soldiers obeyed orders. Perhaps the queen thought that she and the king and all who were in the palace would be dead before the sun set. Once she took up from her side a long, keen dagger with a carved ivory hilt and gold mounting, and looked at it long. I was afraid, and whispered to another maid of honor that the queen would kill herself, but she said, "Do not be afraid. The queen cannot do it." I could not know then why, but now I know. As long as the king her husband lived she could not kill herself; for if she died and he lived, perhaps, hereafter, he might love some one else, and she could not bear to think of that. As long as the king her husband lived she too would live to keep his love to herself alone. Living or dead, she would be the only one the king loved. The queen was very proud, and for her pride she would have died; but her love was greater, and for her love she lived. I There are not many women love like that, the Thakin says. The Thakin does not know. He is not married, so how should he know? I hope he never will know how many there are. Mebya put down the dagger and sighed, and turned for a cigarette. I quickly rolled one up and gave it to her, and when she saw it was I that gave it she said, "So, Ma Thein Me, it is thou? Thou hast not fled, then ? heard my little maid of honor was ill with fever. Is the fever gone?" I said that I was now well, and that I would never leave her if she would allow me to remain; but the queen shook her head and said that I and the other younger maidens had better leave the palace before the foreign troops entered it. "Who can tell what may happen?" she said; "and I should be sorry that any harm should come to any of my maidens; but I, the queen, must stay with the king." When the queen gave an order no one could answer or disobey, so I said At last the queen rose from her seat by the windows and passed through the chambers and the corridors till she came to the courtyard below the round tower, where the lookout is the same tower which my father built. We all followed the queen to the courtyard, and when she came to the foot of the tower she ordered Ma Shwe Hnin to call to the sentry on the tower. Ma Shwe Hnin called, and the sentry looked over and asked what it was. Then the queen told Ma Shwe Hnin to ask the sentry what he could see on the river, and the sentry said he could see many steamers coming up and approaching the landingplace. You know, Thakin, that from the top of that tower you can see all Mandalay city, and over the huge brick walls to the outer town, three miles of houses to the river, and the great Irrawaddy, two miles broad and more, flowing between Mandalay and the grey Sagaing hills. You can see many other things from that tower, the great Shan Mountains, like a wall, and the green plains beneath them, but at this time the sentries only looked to the west. The queen waited, and ordered that the sentry should call down from time to time what he saw. Presently the sentry called that the steamers were making fast to the shore at the steamerlanding, and that crowds of the cityfolk were watching them. The queen asked if there were any firing, and the sentry answered no! Quickly as the news went through the palace, secretaries and others came and stood at the end of the courtyard and listened, and there was a great crowd; but near the queen there was no one except us. I do not know where the king was. I had not seen him that morning. There was a long wait, and the queen asked again if the sentry saw nothing. Then the sentry said he saw troops landing-soldiers with horses and cannon, and still more soldiers, and that they were beginning to march up the long, straight street that leads to | dressed her we could see on her beauti the city gate. When the queen heard this, that the foreigners were at last marching through the streets to the kingly city, she realized that all was lost. Perhaps before this she had some little hope, but now it was all gone. The Golden Kingdom of Ava was destroyed, and the king and queen with it; and who could tell what might not happen before the sun dipped behind the Sagaing hills? Suddenly she threw herself upon her face on the white pavement, and her hair fell down about her face, and she wept. When the people near saw this they all went away, and no one was left in the courtyard except the queen and the maids of honor. The queen raised herself on her knees and beat her breasts with her hands, and cried aloud that she, only she, had brought ruin on the king and the country. "It is I I, the queen that have brought to destruction the king my husband, whom I love! It is I, I alone!" and again she threw herself on the white pavement and beat it with her hands, and her whole body shook with sobs. We did not know what to do, Thakin. We were all heartbroken to see our queen like this, but what could we do? Half as long as it takes a pot of rice to boil, the queen lay thus on the flags of the courtyard in the shadow of the tower, but it seemed like a year. At last the queen rose, and a maid of honor knotted up her hair and arranged her disordered dress, and she went away softly to her own rooms on the west side. There the queen took a bath, and we attended her and dressed her, as she bade us, in a crimson silk skirt, with waves of silver on it like the waves of the sea, and a jacket of fine white cambric like a morning mist; and in her hair were fresh roses, and round her neck was the great diamond necklace. On her arms were bracelets of gold with rubies in them, and her face and throat were powdered with fresh thanaka. Her face had become quite calm and quiet, and no one could see traces of tears, or guess how she had cried in the courtyard; but as we ful fair breasts the red marks where she had beaten them in her despair. When the queen was dressed she ate some food, and when she had finished she said she would go to the king. She ordered several of the younger maids of honor to leave the palace at once, but some of the older ones and the princesses were to stay. When the queen ordered me to go I asked to stay with her; but she would not allow it, and she gave me a gold ring with a ruby, the same I now wear, Thakin, and gave presents to the other maids, and went away to the king. I went back to my own room, and found my mother waiting there, and with her I left the palace and went home. Just as we got outside the city gates we heard a curious sound, like rippled thunder, coming up the street. We went into a house and looked from the verandah, and saw the English troops come marching up. Each soldier put down his foot at the same time as the others, and this was what made the sound. I had never seen soldiers march like that before. The soldiers went on, and there were many of them, and they entered the city gate across the drawbridge over the moat. As you know, Thakin, the king and queen were taken prisoners in the pavilion in the garden, but I was not there. Did I not see the queen again? the Thakin asks. Yes. I saw her once more before she went to that place across the great water where the king and she are prisoners of the English queen. The king and queen were to be taken in one of the steamers and sent to Rangoon, and we heard when they were going, and we went down, I and my mother, to the steamer-landing to see. By this time the people were not afraid of the English troops, for they found they did not hurt any one who did not fight against them, and the streets were crowded with people. The king and queen were in one of those bullock-carriages that were used in Mandalay before the horse-gharries were introduced by the English. The bullock-carriages, as the Thakin knows, Even now, though seven years are past, the people cannot believe the king and queen are gone forever. Only yesterday, I was asked whether they were not in the Shan Mountains, and would again return and restore the kingdom. My queen will never return golden turrets of her palace and the pleasant faces of her people. Only the great strange sea before her, and the memory of what has been to tear at her heart forever. were only four feet high from the floor to the roof, and you sat on mats on the floor, not as in an English carriage. In front of the king's carriage were mounted English soldiers and others, and then came the king's carriage with mounted men at the sides, and other again, never — never see again the carriages with princesses and a few maids of honor; then more soldiers. The procession moved slowly, for the road was bad, and the dust swirled in clouds about the carriages. The people crowded in the streets, looked on in silence, except that now and then a cry rose against the soldiers. Were the people sorry? Yes, Thakin, they were very sorry. Perhaps he was a bad king; but he was our own king, and we understood his ways, while those of the English government are to us as strange as the ways of the gods, for no one can tell what they will do next, or why. When the carriage arrived at the steamer-landing the king and queen got out and stood at the foot of the gangway of planks laid from the bank to the steamer. The officer signed to the king to walk up the gangway, which was covered with matting; but the king held back and looked on the crowds of people round. Perhaps, Thakin, he was hoping for some help at this last moment; perhaps he was loath to take his foot from his kingdom, never to touch it again. Then the officer grew impatient and signed again, and the queen went forward and put her hand in that of the king, and led him up the way to the steamer, as a mother leads her child when he is lost and afraid. So they went on board the steamer, and my queen was gone from me forever. In a few minutes the steamer let go her moorings and stood out in the great river. I watched and watched from the bank till I could not see the steamer any more, for it went fast down-stream, and my eyes were full of tears. Perhaps, Thakin, she was not a good queen. I cannot judge of such things, but she was always kind and gracious to me, and I loved her. From The Nineteenth Century. ASPECTS OF TENNYSON. V. TENNYSON AS A NATURE-POET. as AMONG the many and various “ pects of Tennyson which can occupy the critic's attention, none is more fascinating than that which shows the poet as a delineator of the beauties of nature. And surely this " aspect " of his genius will come upon us with a pathetic power on the day when these words will appear in print, the first May-day that we have known without his presence among us to make sweeter the season's sweetness. His lovely pictures of England in summer, in autumn, and in winter show that, like Chaucer and like Shakespeare, he loved England all the year round; yet he loved her most in this very month, when our English lanes, to use his own words, are "white with may; when the cuckoo, who has already begun to tell his name to all the hills," is in his best and freshest voice; when, far overhead, the skylark 66 can scarce get out his notes for joy,' and when by the time skylark and cuckoo have begun to get tired the nightingale takes up the music, and carries it on; while the mingled breaths of primrose, violet, and celandine rise like a perfumed mist, a visible incense, towards the sunset, and the stars begin to shine through the branches of the dingle. But who shall write adequately of Tennyson as a nature-poet ? In poet ical criticism, to bring any poet under a | Tennyson and Wordsworth's illustrious classification is extremely difficult; in pupil, Matthew Arnold, and another to the case of Tennyson, whose genius is institute a comparison between him and so many-sided, it is almost impossible. the line of living poets from Mr. FredYet, as regards the various methods of erick Tennyson down to the present confronting nature characteristic of the hour. various poets, it may be convenient in the present essay to divide all poets into the three following groups; though we must always bear in mind that, as the members of one group are constantly seeming to pass into another, no invariable line of demarcation can be drawn between them. First, poets who, whether from original impulse or from the influence of the artistic methods of their time, treat nature simply as the background of the human story. Secondly, poets upon whom nature produces a kind of ecstasy that may be called Sufeyistic, an ecstasy resulting in a rapturous hymn to her glory, rather than in a vivid picture of her features. And, thirdly, poets whose impulse is simply to paint the features of nature in every detail of their beauty, using the human story merely as an artistic raison d'être for an objective representation of nature, or at least a representation as objective as the medium at the command of an artist whose material is words will allow. And as to Tennyson's relations to the Greek and Latin poets, even if there were room here to give these relations more than a hurried glance in passing, there would be no need to do so after Mr. Herbert Paul's study of them in his brilliant contribution to this series last March. With regard to the first of the three classes of poets indicated above, those who, always feeling that The proper study of mankind is man, use nature merely as a background for some dramatic picture, Homer, Dante, and Chaucer belong to this class no less clearly than do Eschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. "We call Homer an epic poet," said Mr. Gladstone in Chambers's " Encyclopædia,’ "but he is instinct from beginning to end with the spirit of the drama, while we find in him the seeds and rudiments born of its form." An admirable criticism! While in the art of Eschylus and Sophocles the scenery is of necessity left mainly, In trying to find Tennyson's place if not altogether, to those sister-arts among these groups, it is here proposed which pure drama calls in to aid that to consider him in relation mainly to illusion which is the poet's quest, in those English poets who immediately the art of Homer the descriptive paspreceded him, and whose methods in sages always advance the dramatic acall things were inspired, more or less, tion; or, if they do not actually carry by the neo-romantic temper -the poets it on, Homer always takes care that who form what has been called by they shall seem to be doing this. So Mr. Stedman "The Georgian group,' "dramatic is he almost more dramatic though it will sometimes be necessary than the dramatists themselves - that to glance for a moment at the more there is not in either of the two epics prominent Victorian poets now living, any descriptive passage so apparently such as Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Wil-written for its own sake as that descripliam Morris, by way of illustration. tion by Sophocles of the groves he loved. Restrictions of the space at our command necessitate this restriction of When Homer makes mention of the survey. To institute a proper compar- carth's "soft arms," it is in connection ison between Tennyson and Browning with the human story; it is to call up would alone require a separate article; the pathetic picture of the unconscious another article would be required in Helen's brothers asleep forever in those order to institute a comparison between arms. When he alludes to Lacedæmon, it is to remind us that it is the "father- paint for his own enjoyment and ours a land" of those dead heroes who sleep there : Ως φάτσ· τοὺς δ' ἤδη κάτεχεν φυσίζοος αία ἐν Λακεδαίμονι αὖθι, φίλῃ ἐν πατρίδι γαίῃ. Again, in that famous passage in the eighth Iliad, translated by Tennyson himself in language as divine almost as Homer's own, every word of a passage so picturesque that it might really have been introduced partly to gratify the poet's own love of description seems somehow to add to the reader's expectance of the glorious fighting to come with daylight. Of course it is impossible here to touch upon the descriptive passages in any of Homer's successors in epic and narrative art. Yet, in order to elucidate the classification of the poets above made, a word or two must be said about our own Chaucer. The healthiest poet that has appeared in modern literature, save Walter Scott, Chaucer shows in his poetry nothing but the sweet acceptance and melodious utterance of that same spirit which informs Scott's stories in poetry and prose the spirit that enjoys the beauty of this beautiful world as it is. Of that beauty, however, the part played by nature's loveliness is in no way the first. Ebullient as is his delight in the beauties of nature, when he does dwell upon them for their own sake he always takes as much care as ever Homer did, or the singer of the "Chanson de Roland," or the sagaman of the Völsunga Saga, not to linger so long over them as to create the impression in the reader's mind that the poet's own interest in his men and women has cooled. The riches and the wonderfulness of man's life occupy his imagination as they did Homer's occupy it so entirely that the riches and the wonderfulness of nature, which in poets of the third group take the primary place, are with him quite secondary. Though his delight is to paint pictures - though of all English poets he is the most purely artistic, and cares not from what source he draws his material so that he can beautiful picture of man's life, when he paints nature, it is merely as a background to this human picture. Had the trees and rivers he loved, the daisies that made his heart leap like a child's whenever he looked upon them, or the birds whose carols were so dear to him, lost their association with the human story, they would have lost for him much of their charm. Although Tennyson does not belong specially to this group, although his deep knowledge of nature prevented him from really looking upon her as nothing more than the background of the human story, his artistic instinct was so true and so sure that in his narratives he is as careful as Homer, as careful as Chaucer, never to let the movement of the reader's imagination be arrested by the unnecessary obtrusion of landscape, however beautiful. With regard to the second group of poets, those upon whom the beauty of nature produces a vague rapture, a kind of Sufeyistic ecstasy, it may, perhaps, be safely affirmed that none of these are to be found among the Greeks. The temper, indeed, is mystical, and perhaps it had originally much to do with sun-worship. It is called here Sufeyistic because it reached its acme in the Persian Sufeyistic poets. But of course it is nothing more than the response to that marvellous magnetic power which nature exercises over certain temperaments. In order to show what this temper really is, I cannot do better than quote the following striking verses from "Ferridoddin," as given by Mr. Vaughan : |