the many creations of his art, -the sweet girls and women like the Gardener's daughter and Dora, humorous shrewd countrymen like the Northern Farmer, or seaside folk like Enoch Arden.

The nobility of his moral tone. Love with Tennyson is not the Byronic passion, but the lovely influence that perfumes the springtime of life, strengthens the soul in all good and unselfish deeds, and crowns human life in inviolable marriage with the greatest of human blessings. This conception of love meets us in its different phases throughout Tennyson's work-in the Idylls of the King, in the English idylls, in Maud, in The Princess. This noble and sane view of love goes hand in hand with other noble emotions. The heroism of the British soldier, the valour of the British sailor, the vital passion for knowledge, for wise freedom, and for human progress, with hatred of greed, of hypocrisy, and of inaction. These are some moral aspects of his work that appeal most strongly to English people, and make the spiritual blessing of his poetry not less than the intellectual blessing.

Artistic excellence. In the matter of form and expression Tennyson's place in literature is unique. No other writer in English approaches him in conscious artistic excellence. The story of his work is one of constant revision, guided by an exquisite sense of perfection in thought and language. Naturally simple and direct in his view of life, and gifted with the finest ear for musical cadence, Tennyson's work, as a lyric poet of the simpler emotions of life, is perfect. This simplicity and directness, it must be said, guided the choice and general treatment of all his subjects. In details, however, whenever the subject admitted it, he was not simple and direct, but elaborate and ornate. Revision after revision brought a polished

perfection that employed all the resources of rhetorical expression and of subtle suggestion; hence those jewels five-words long, and those carefully wrought imitative rhythms.

Tennyson's poetry has held English-speaking people during most of this century with a crescent rather than decrescent power, because he has given the fullest representation of English life during the century. Some of his work must lose its charm as the ideals of life shift shape in future years; but there is so much of his poetry that voices what is permanent in nature and human life that his name is surely inscribed on the eternal bead-roll of fame. We may miss the deepest passion, intuition into life at moments of supreme anguish,--Shakspere's lightning illuminating the wildest storms of the tossing sea of life. Tennyson's genius is a milder radiance, which reveals quiet English lawns crowned with summer sea; where happy lovers wander; where gather groups of wise men delighting to recall the past or speak nobly of the present; where the charm of the purity and beauty of nature is no less pervasive than the tone of sweetness and strength in the human spirit that dominates it.

THE HOLY GRAIL.

FROM noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,

Whom Arthur and his knighthood call'd The Pure,
Had pass'd into the silent life of prayer,

Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl

The helmet in an abbey far away

From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,
And honour'd him, and wrought into his heart
A way by love that waken'd love within,
To answer that which came: and as they sat
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke
Above them, ere the summer when he died,
The monk Ambrosius question'd Percivale :

"O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke,
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years:
For never have I known the world without,
Nor ever stray'd beyond the pale: but thee,
When first thou camest-such a courtesy
Spake thro' the limbs and in the voice-I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamp'd with the image of the King; and now
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost ?'

'Nay,' said the knight; 'for no such passion mine. But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail

Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,

And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offer'd up to Heaven.'

To whom the monk: 'The Holy Grail !—I trust We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much We moulder-as to things without I mean

Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,

But spake with such a sadness and so low

We heard not half of what he said. What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?'

'Nay, monk! what phantom?' answer'd Percivale. 'The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with his own. This, from the blessed land of Aromat— After the day of darkness, when the dead Went wandering o'er Moriah—the good saint Arimathæan Joseph, journeying brought To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. And there awhile it bode; and if a man Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once, By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup

Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd.'

To whom the monk: 'From our old books I know

That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,
And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus,
Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build;
And there he built with wattles from the marsh
A little lonely church in days of yore,

For so they say, these books of ours, but seem
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing to-day?'