1 And we, All his visions, however, are far from resembling this: "When I lay me down at even 'Tis Hades lit with neighbouring Heaven. And darts abroad on frantic wing And, moaning where all round me sleep Nor any wish, before long. Vaughan and his bride visit Graham's ship, and the effect of his observation is to compel the latter to resign "the ultimate hope I rested on:" "The hope that in the heavens high As Hesper in the sunrise." Whence, "Standing beneath the sky's pure cope Unburdened even by a hope," he is able to feel "That I have known her, that she moves Is guerdon up to the degree But offers all, with smiles that say, O si sic omnia! In that case, indeed, "Faithful for Ever" would be no illustration of our doctrine that poetry parts with its essential characteristics in proportion as it undertakes to teach otherwise than indirectly, or concerns itself with the mutable superficies of contemporary life. So far, however, though Frederick Graham is a very substantial personality -a thoroughly imaginable man-his expressions of feeling have been as purely lyrical and subjective as the lamentations of Clymene or Enone. He has, as before remarked, had to learn the same lesson of self-renunciation as the anonymous hero of "Love and Duty," with this very important difference, that the latter has but succumbed to external circumstances as independent of the will of his beloved as of his own; he has yielded nothing to any rival; what he has acquired is after all more precious than what he has been compelled to forgo. Mr. Tennyson, therefore, is not asking too much when he would have us contemplate the "streaming eye" as finally dried, the "broken heart" as eventually bound up; we not merely acquiesce in the propriety, but have faith in the permanence, of the conclusion at which his hero arrives. The infinitely greater severity of Graham's trial perhaps justifies Mr. Patmore in considering that, had the mood of our last extract been represented as permanent, had the curtain fallen then and there upon his hero's folded arms of humility and upward gaze of ineffable aspiration, our torpid imaginations would have seen nothing but a stage-effect, and expected, could we pierce behind the scenes, to find Graham rather prostrate beneath, than “Growing, like Atlas, stronger from his load.” At all events, he has not chosen to task our faith so heavily. In the second section of the next canto we find Honoria's lover-married! Yes, and to a very unattractive personage. Of course, he has a thousand good reasons for maintaining that he has committed no treason against love; that his bride is at worst but as one of Voltaire's oignons, qui n'étaient pas des dieux tout-a-fait, mais qui leur ressemblaient beaucoup: "As to the ether is the air Is her good to Honoria's fair; Mr. Patmore is now fully in his element, with a triple moral problem before him. He has to make his hero's paradox good, to show the effect on Jane (the unattractive wife) of being thus caught up into a sphere so much above her, and to determine the proper relation of Honoria to her married lover. This involves the necessity of a copious and minute delineation of manners and customs, since (to name but one aspect of the problem) it is impossible to depict Frederick and Jane's mutual relation and interaction without entering fully into the details of their domestic life. Behold us, then, alike from the didactic and the descriptive point of view, fairly committed to a course of what, we say, is substantially prose; not that the writing is not, for the most part, very clever, but this is not the question; not that we are not continually encountering passages of the most exquisite poetry, but these are not the rule. We are content to stake the whole theory of this paper on a single issue,-"Is or is not the first book of Faithful for Ever' incomparably the best of the three?" It would be a cheap triumph to produce some of the passages (excellent as these are in their way) in which Mr. Patmore furls the poet's wing on the essayist's perch; but these separate bricks could at best bear witness to the material, not to the style of the building. In conclusion, it will be but just to produce the results at which Mr. Patmore appears to have arrived, embodied in two of the most charming passages of As regards the relation his poem. which Honoria ultimately assumes to No. 14.-VOL. III. Graham,, contemplated from her point of view, we learn nothing; and, indeed, the problem suggests questions of such infinite delicacy that we cannot wonder at Mr. Patmore's reticence. As we are only concerned with her here in so far as she concerns Frederick, we could well have dispensed with numerous trivial details relative to her husband and children, which vexatiously conflict with the unity of impression already disturbed by the change of venue in Book II. In fact, the way in which she is trotted out for the admiration of one personage after another is almost comical. That Frederick himself should never tire of praising her is as natural as that we should never tire of listening to passages like this: "I kiss'd the kind, warm neck that slept, I wandered forth, and took my path We have undertaken to question the propriety of Mr. Patmore's attempting the solution of moral problems in verse at all, not the logic of the solution itself. Yet we cannot refrain from remarking, that the conclusion expressed in the above most exquisite passage appears to us an unfair deduction from the pre K mises. On the other hand, the picture of Jane's development from original immaturity, rather than absolute defect, to perfect sweetness and ripeness of character, is as natural as it is captivating. We are indeed reminded at every stroke how much better it would have become the pages of a work like "The Mill on the Floss," where copiousness and minute precision of detail are rather to be cultivated than avoided. Had the writer attempted to rival Miss Evans's exactness, he might have filled two volumes with this single theme; as it is, he is at once too particular for poetry and too superficial for fiction. Yet, as the stalk is forgotten in the flower, we acknowledge a justification of much prose in the lovely poetry that comes to crown it at last. "Too soon, too soon, comes death to show Were those that foil'd with loftier grace Her humblest good is hence most high When she was hurt. Now, more than all, No magic of her voice or smile Like that which lifts through centuries Till lo the land where was the wave. To deny the character of poetry to tenderness and truth like this, would be to rob the Muses of their fairest province to treat Parnassus as Catherine and her confederates treated Poland. THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS. BY SIR F. H. DOYLE. "Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning, they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown on a dung-hill."-See China Correspondent of the "Times." Last night, among his fellow roughs, To-day, beneath the foeman's frown, He stands in Elgin's place, Ambassador from Britain's crown, And type of all her race. Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered, and alone, A heart, with English instinct fraught, He yet can call his own. Ay, tear his body limb from limb, Bring cord, or axe, or flame: He only knows, that not through him Shall England come to shame. Far Kentish1hop-fields round him seem'd, Yes, honour calls !-with strength like steel He put the vision by. Let dusky Indians whine and kneel; 1 The Buffs, or West Kent Regiment. And thus, with eyes that would not shrink, With knee to man unbent, Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, To his red grave he went. Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron framed ; A man of mean estate, Who died, as firm as Sparta's king, HORSE-BREAKING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. SINCE the day when to man was given dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, there is no record of any new attempts on his part to turn his sovereignty to use. Immemorially our beasts of burden have been of the same races as they are now, and equally unchanged have been our methods of subduing them to our service. In these last days comes to us, from the farthest prairies of the Western world, one who tells us that the error of our methods is the cause of the narrowness of our reign. He shows us that strength must always yield to skill, and that ferocity will always disappear before gentleness. He shows us that violence is but feebleness, and that kindness alone is irresistible. He shows us that intellect can create intelligence; and that animals willingly learn of man whatever man rightly addresses to their understanding. To all this we have listened with no deaf ears. Never has discoverer met with more rapid recognition than this unknown American farmer. His first exhibitions were witnessed and applauded by royalty; the highest in the land eagerly bought, as an expensive secret, the knowledge of his process; when by accident its principles became published, scarce a murmur was heard that more had been given than the exploded secret was worth. Now, amongst all classes, it is expounded with still unabated interest; the competitors whom success called up have dropped out of sight; Government has adopted the system for the Army; and the Humane Society has rewarded its discoverer with a medal. There must be something remarkable in the man that wins such a success; but there must be also something remarkable in the nation that grants it, and perhaps still more in the times that permit it. In no land but ours, indeed, could such a result have followed. Elsewhere Mr. Rarey has amused, and been rewarded by praises, but here alone has he drawn the popular sympathy. We are, in truth, above all nations, a horseloving nation. To us, riding seems nature; with us, men, women, and children are alike infected with the passion. Those who cannot ride delight to watch those who do ride; our chief national amusements are connected with the use of horses; and the most dignified of our Houses of Parliament thinks a discussion of the weights that racehorses should carry no waste of its time. Nor let us in our gravity deem this turn of the national taste a thing wholly insignificant and immaterial. In the world's history it has happened too often to be wholly an accidental coincidence, that national supremacy has fallen to the nation which was distinguished by pre-eminence on horseback. Were those old fables of Centaurs and Amazons not based on a dim perception of this truth, when they taught that the first horsemen were half divine, and the first horsewomen more than a match for men? Shall we recall the first great monarchy of the old world, established and maintained by the innumerable Persian cavalry, till it was broken up by a greater horseman than they, the invincible tamer of Bucephalus? Shall we tell how in the most palmy state of Rome the title "horseman" was one of high honour and esteem, alike in peace and war, and how the uninterrupted spread of Roman power was stemmed at one point only, where it encountered the never-conquered Parthians,-those fatal horsemen, fiery in advance, deadly in flight? Shall we recount the prowess of Arabs and Moors, by whose cavalry alone a new religion was carried to the ends of the earth, till the flower of mounted Christendom at Tours met and broke the overwhelming torrent? Need we speak of the days of chivalry, (the very name expressive of the glories of horsemanship,) when mastery lay ever with him who could bring into the field the greatest number of heavy-armed knights, before whose tremendous onset pikemen and archers went down as grass before the mower? Or passing by all other instances, need we now to be reminded that when, first since the time of Charlemagne, Europe fell under the yoke of a conqueror, it was before a nation of horsemen in the Cossack steppes, and a nation of horsemen in the plains of Spain, that his star first paled? And, when at length Cossack and English themselves met in combat, with whom did the final victory rest but with those whose heavy cavalry at Balaklava rode through the opposing squadrons as if they had been a line of paper, and whose light brigade, on that same day, dashed over the Russian batteries with a sweep as resistless as the surge of the tide-race over an outlying reef? the past; that now we are a nation of be moments when the men must be col- Shall it be objected that all this is of than hitherto. But, if this is the case, |