"O flourish, hidden deep in fern,
Old oak, I love thee well;

A thousand thanks for what I learn
And what remains to tell.

""Tis little more: the day was warm;
At last, tired out with play,
She sank her head upon her arm,
And at my feet she lay.

"Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves.
I breathed upon her eyes
Through all the summer of my leaves
A welcome mix'd with sighs.

"I took the swarming sound of life—
The music from the town-
The whispers of the drum and fife,
And lull'd them in my own.

"Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip
To light her shaded eye;
A second flutter'd round her lip
Like a golden butterfly.

"A third would glimmer on her neck
To make the necklace shine;

Another slid, a sunny fleck,

From head to ancle fine.

"Then close and dark my arms I spread,
And shadow'd all her rest-

Dropt dews upon her golden head,
An acorn in her breast.'

Of the longer and more serious poems, one of the most beautiful to our minds is "The Gardener's Daughter." Hear her lover's description of the occasion on and way in which he first saw her.

"And sure this orbit of the memory folds
For ever in itself the day we went

To see her. All the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward: but all else of heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel. And now,
As though 'twere yesterday, as though it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound
(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these)
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,
And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood,
Leaning his horns into the neighbour field,
And lowing to his fellows. From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves.

The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,

But shook his song together as he near'd

His happy home, the ground. To left and right,
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;

The redcap whistled, and the nightingale
Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day.
"And Eustace turn'd, and smiling said to me,
'Hear how the bushes echo! by my life,
These birds have joyful thoughts.

Like poet, from the vanity of song?

Think you they sing

Or have they any sense of why they sing?

And would they praise the heavens for what they have?'
And I made answer, 'Were there nothing else
For which to praise the heavens but only love,

That only love were cause enough for praise.'

66

Lightly he laughed, as one that read my thought,
And on we went; but ere an hour had pass'd,
We reach'd a meadow slanting to the north;
Down which a well-worn pathway courted us
To one green wicket in a privet hedge;
This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk
Through crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned;
And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew
Beyond us, as we enter'd in the cool.

The garden stretches southward. In the midst
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.
The garden-glasses shone, and momently
The twinkling laurel scatter'd silver lights.

"Eustace,' I said, 'this wonder keeps the house.'
He nodded, but a moment afterwards

He cried, 'Look! look!' Before he ceased I turn'd,
And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there.

"For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose,
That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught,
And blown across the walk. One arm aloft-
Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the shape-
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.
A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Pour'd on one side: the shadow of the flowers
Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering
Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist-
Ah, happy shade--and still went wavering down,
But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have danced
The greensward into greener circles, dipt,
And mix'd with shadows of the common ground!
But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'd
Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe-bloom,
And doubled his own warmth against her lips,
And on the bounteous wave of such a breast
As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.
"So rapt, we near'd the house; but she, a Rose
In roses, mingled with her fragrant toil,

Nor heard us come, nor from her tendance turn'd
Into the world without."

Our readers must acquaint themselves with the longest and the most powerful, we think, of all Mr. Tennyson's poems, "The Two Voices," -one of which urges a man to commit suicide,-the other, on his gaining the victory over the evil spirit, confirms and harmonizes him.

After confessing such a debt of gratitude as we have done, it seems

ungracious to complain because all is not exactly to our mind. Mr. Tennyson's present two volumes are much freer than his former ones of uncalled for eccentricities, needless provocations to censure, and what, all but his most bigotted admirers must admit to have been violations of good taste. Cheerfully acknowledging this as we do, we must however declare that Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, The Visions of Sin, and St. Simeon Stylites, are in our eyes great disfigurements of the collection. The two former strike us as utter failures. The latter certainly indicates, what we should not otherwise have suspected Mr. Tennyson of possessing, a sort of dramatic power; but the subject and the thoughts are exceedingly painful, such as certainly, if handled at all, should be handled on quite a different occasion, and in quite a different way.

We have dwelt so long on Mr. Tennyson, that we must once again postpone our remaining poets. Nor are we sorry to do so, for many of those on our list deserve much more than the hurried notice they would receive, did we say anything about them now. In truth, a delightful task awaits us, as we hope next month to be able to convince our readers. Meanwhile, we will take leave of Mr. Tennyson by quoting the following lofty strain, not free indeed from inaccuracy in respect of fact, since snow seldom lies on Rome, and convents were unknown in the West at the time of the holy Martyr into whose mouth our poet puts the following words, which may well dismiss such criticism as irrelevant.

ST. AGNES.

"DEEP On the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon :

My breath to heaven like vapour goes:
May my soul follow soon!

The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,

Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.

"As these white robes are soil'd and dark,

To yonder shining ground;

As this pale taper's earthly spark,

To yonder argent round;

So shows my soul before the Lamb,

My spirit before Thee;

So in mine earthly house I am,

To that I hope to be.

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,

Through all yon starlight keen,

Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.

"He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.

The sabbaths of Eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide—

A light upon the shining sea

The Bridegroom with his bride!"

1. Bernard Leslie; or, a Tale of the Last Ten Years. By the Rev. W. Gresley, M. A. Prebendary of Lichfield. London: Burns. 1842. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. viii. 354.

2 A Letter to the Laity of the Church of England, on the subject of recent misrepresentations of Church Principles. By the Rev. Alexander Watson, M. A. of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Assistant Minister of St. John's, Cheltenham. London: Rivington and Burns. 8vo pp. iv. 196.

3. A Collection of Papers connected with the Theological Movement of 1833. By the Hon. and Rev. A. P. Perceval, B. C. L. One of Her Majesty's Chaplains. London: Rivington. 8vo. pp. 107. We have grouped these three very interesting works together, because they seem to have not only a moral but an historical affinity. Mr. Perceval's Collection lets us into the secret of the great theological movement in its organization; Mr. Gresley may pass for the historian of its progress; Mr. Watson bears personal testimony to its results. There is first "the little cloud rising out of the sea, like a man's hand;" then "the heaven black with clouds ;" and last of all, there is the " great rain." The times in which our lot is cast, as they will form a momentous epoch for the future Church historian, so are they rich in materials for ecclesiastical annals. And there is this marked peculiarity about them, that, as "the shaking of the dry bones" arose from within, every step in the progress is of a personal character. The Reformation period had little of this distinctive nature. It was for the most part a movement from without, a rude shock and jostling of general principles; not the combined and systematic advance of individual minds, successively mastering post after post, and occupying a position only after they had sat down before it in form, invested it, and dislodged the enemy. We are far from denying that there is much interest, and deep matter for thinking, in the study of the growth of Luther's character, to take the most obvious example; but all the leading reformers might have written and preached with very different results, had not other elements been at work than the settlement of the doctrine of justification. The reformation was

quite as much a political as a theological strife. The world was shaken to its very centre, not because Luther invented his new theory of salvation, nor because Calvin contrived another, nor because Cranmer believed and disbelieved in transubstantiation or the invocation of saints: all this was beside the great struggle: it was the vast principle of authority on the one hand, and so-called liberty on the other, which, for the first time since Constantine raised the banner of the cross, fairly measured their swords. And although it is most certain that our present divisions are to be ultimately resolved into this everlasting contest, into which every controversy must, if disengaged into its original elements, finally settle, yet the difference between our own times and the sixteenth century seems this -that the first reformation took up religion among other things; the present reformation, in which we are actors, started from religion. Luther (and the same applies to his fellow-labourers) did not begin with a clear feeling of the work which he was stumbling into: he opposed a scandalous abuse, that of indulgences, in the first instance, and he did it manfully; but somehow or other he got into a heady and treacherous current; and he was led at last into statements and denials from which he would have shrunk with horror, not only in his quiet cell, but at any time in his startling course, had he but been permitted sufficient leisure to review his position. Far different is the case with our present reformers, or "ecclesiastical agitators." The papers before us prove most clearly that the original parties in the movement did not leap in the dark. Hence the personal interest of the struggle. They had but to keep their minds fixed on one principle the primitive character, the perpetuity and inviolability, of the Church Catholic in doctrine and discipline, and the "apostolical prerogatives, order, and commission of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons," (Perceval's Collection, p. 18;) they saw clearly where they were going from the very first; they took their ground, and have maintained it. Reform is a good thing, indispensable in certain conditions,—and such, we cheerfully admit, was the state of the Church, previous to the assembling of the Council of Trent; but in the very enunciation of the term we cannot but feel that reform is uncertain and vague at the best, and reform was the characteristic of the movement commenced, unwittingly perhaps of its consequences and extent, by Luther; while restitution was and is the essential symbol and end of the present changes, and this is definite and fixed in character and aim.

Nor will it do to urge, in objection to this view, the extravagancies of the more violent of the disciples of the movement; nor, again, the gradual development of views, or the enforcing of practices, which seem scarcely, if at all, connected with the original principle itself. Because distant consequences are not provided against, it does not follow that they are not foreseen from the first; and it may be yielded that some suggestions (that of prayers for the dead, for example, to take an instance which seems to be among the most startling) might be fairly impugned, without compromising, in