and noble-natured in others; and this, for the first time, without inconsistency, for as yet his sin with Guinevere has not been sinned, and his loyalty to his King has not yet been tarnished by his disloyal love to his Queen.

In the Gareth and Lynette, the poet's two latest creations of character, we have two essentially new types of humanity. Gareth, the boy knight, is a Geraint without the base suspicions of the jealous Geraint, a sinless Arthur without Arthur's cold and passive sinlessness, a Lancelot without the years and skill and fame of Lancelot, and happily without that "faith unfaithful" which "kept him falsely true," but not without the perfection of gentleness that swayed the every mood and manner of that "peerless knight." A lovelier type of young chivalry-of the tenderest grace in the manliest of manhood, strength of hand and heart-the plastic mould of Tennyson's imagination never bodied forth than that of Gareth, all defiance as he is to dangers the most terrible, all fondness and all forbearance as he proves himself ever to the damsel whose battles he fought, whose eyes darted nothing but scorn, whose tongue wagged only to wound him. Wherever we see Gareth we can see him only as a vision of what is lovely and endearing in human character. At home, hovering around his mother's chair, with the sharp spur of fame pricking him to deeds of fame afar, he is still the tender, loving, "best loved" son of his loved and loving mother. Gareth, as "kitchen knave" in the King's kitchen, doing the lowliest of service with an easy grace, pure of speech, bearing the burden of the weak, gentle and kindly to the lowest, wins every heart and draws on him the admiring eyes of Lancelot and the King. Gareth, sent on the quest, scorned and cudgelled by a woman's sharp and bitter tongue, only returns good deeds for evil words, and holds

He scarce is knight, yea, but half man, nor meet

To fight for gentle damsel, he, who lets

His heart be stirred with any girlish heat,
At any gentle damsel's waywardness.

Lynette's pride, petulance, and peevishness stand out in singular contrast to the sweet and tender patience of Elaine and Enid, the ministering angels of Geraint and Lancelot; but much must be said in palliation of a haughty damsel with a well-developed organ of petulance, who comes to Arthur's Court to ask for a Lancelot, and gets, as if in scorn," a kitchen knave," as she deems, for her knight. Her heart is none the less truly a true woman's heart. How tenderly it is touched at last by the unfailing gentleness of the gentle knight, whose

abounding pleasure" it was to fight so hard and suffer so much as her champion! How frankly does she own at last the complete conquest of gallantry and gentleness as she pours out those tender words. of mingled confession and contrition, of simplest but most intense passion:

Sound sleep be thine! sound cause to sleep hast thou!

Wake lusty! Seem I not as tender to him

As any mother? Ay, but such a one

As all day long hath rated at her child

And vext his day, but blesses him asleep.

It is not often that poets spend their music in descriptions of the nasal appendages of their heroes or heroines, as Tennyson has done, not without reason, in the case of Lynette :

And lightly was her slender nose

Tip-tilted, like the petal of a flower.

It is a mistake, however, to assert, as some of the poet's most recent critics have asserted, that our best poets never condescend to such descriptions; for in Chaucer's portraiture of the Prioress we read :

Hire nose streight, hire eyen grey as glass.

Then in Wordsworth we have the mild periphrases

Black hair and vivid eye, and meagre cheek:

His prominent feature like an eagle's beak.

The description of the nose in the portrait of Lynette is, we conceive, an attempt to express, by an outward and visible sign, the inward spirit of petulance and peevishness which plays so large a part in the development of her character. In this assumed harmony between psychology and physiognomy, Tennyson, we believe, is at perfect harmony with himself and with the findings of science and experience. The bard that sees, with the eye of science, in the round face :

and sees a

A cipher face of rounded foolishness,

noble-natured" breed in :

Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and fine,

High nose, a nostril large and fine, and hands
Large, fair, and fine-

so close an observer and painter of nature is not likely to forget so characteristic a symbol of petulance as "le nez retroussé" in a heroine so marked for petulance-who

Nipt her slender nose

With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling "Hence!"

The painters and sculptors of classical antiquity long ago anticipated Tennyson in making the expression of temper and indignation lie chiefly in the conformation of the nose, and the most representative writers of the modern French school of physiognomy have regarded “le nez retroussé" in woman as an index of wit, piquancy, animation, as well as of petulance, though we think Marmontel goes a trifle too far with his celebrated dictum "Un petit nez retroussé renvers les lois d'un empire."

In connection with the ethical treatment of the subject, we may remark that no other Idyll presents so many moral lessons in those short, pithily-condensed lines, so handy for quotation, which remind us of the gnomic verses of Virgil and Sophocles-the purest poets of antiquity. Take, for example, the following gems, which reflect at once the rays of genius at its brightest, and of moral beauty at its best:

Man am I grown, man's work must I do.
The thrall in person may be free in soul.
Accursed who strikes, nor lets his hand be seen.

That Tennyson should naturally endeavour to give an archaic colouring to his work by an archaic phraseology is no matter of surprise, though we cannot but regret that he has carried the endeavour beyond all legitimate bounds by the frequent use of so many obsolete and obscure terms, much to the mystification of his readers, and to the mistiness of his own meaning. This we hold to be the most patent and flagrant fault of a poem which to us is a garden of delight, abounding and superabounding in flowers and fruits, the fairest and the sweetest to the taste of the educated intellect of England.

THE POTTER OF TOURS.

LACE for the man who bears the world!
Not he who rules it from gilded throne,
A puppet made by Fate alone,

Nor he who would float, wide unfurled,

The flag of ruin, dealing death-
But he who, scorning common praise,
Hath shown the world heroic ways,

And trod them first, though with dying breath,
Looking beyond the present pain,

And seeing held in the hands of Time
The crown of genius, won again

By soul undaunted of line sublime.

The potter of Tours was at work one day,
But his eye had lost its lustrous ray—
Despair looked in at the open door,
Casting his shadow athwart the floor,
And the potter's heart was sunk in gloom.
Within the walls of the lowly room
Knowledge had grown that men would prize,
For to the patient spirit came

Art pregnant with immortal fame

Solutions of deep mysteries:

His deeds were wafted forth of men,

And the marvel grew that one so poor
Had e'en the courage to endure

Such scoffs, such jeers, such toil and pain.
Yet though the couriers that wait

To bruit abroad all lofty deeds,.
Had hover'd o'er him in his needs,
And borne away to palace gate
His name, Avisseau; he who claimed
The title kings and savans named
With wonder, pallid by despair,

Sank reeling backward upon his chair.
VOL. X., N.S. 1873.

G

Three hundred years had passed away
Since Palissy, who wrought in clay,
Had died, and carried to the grave
The secret none could read and save.
But he, the ceramist of Tours,

Had sworn the tomb should not immure
Science for ever, and had brought
By his own skill and toilsome thought
The buried treasure back to earth.
Yet his success was little worth,

He said to himself, when still there lay
A greater knowledge far away.
"Ah, could I buy one piece of gold
With a whole cupful of my blood!"
He cried-though all his goods were sold-
And loving eyes with tears bedewed
Looked up in his. One moment sad,
His wife gazed on her wedding ring,
Then drew it off with gesture glad,
And held the little sacred thing
Before her husband-" "Tis our own:
Then take the gold, and melt it down!”
The vision of past happy years,

With joys and sorrows, smiles and tears,
Obscured his purpose, but the best
Of all his knowledge was the love
That such high sacrifice could prove.

He clasped her sobbing to his breast,
And pushed the talisman away:

But she, a woman, had her way.

Over the crucible he stood,

That seemed nigh consecrate with blood, Clammy through fear both brow and palm, As, aspen-like, he strove for calm :

Then like a criminal, at last,

The time of agony being past,

He sought his doom-and with swift glance He knew that he alone did hold

The secret of enamelled gold.

A change came o'er his countenance: "Forgive me, wife," he fainting cried; She, nobly clinging to his side,