All he shows her makes him dearer:
Evermore she seems to gaze
On that cottage growing nearer,

Where they twain will spend their days. O but she will love him truly!

He shall have a cheerful home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath his roof they come.
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
Till a gateway she discerns
With armorial bearings stately,
And beneath the gate she turns;
Sees a mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before:
Many a gallant gay domestic,

Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
"All of this is mine and thine."
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.

All at once the colour flushes

Her sweet face from brow to chin: As it were with shame she blushes, And her spirit changed within. Then her countenance all over

Pale again as death did prove; But he clasped her like a lover,

And he cheered her soul with love. So she strove against her weakness, Though at times her spirits sank: Shaped her heart with woman's meekness To all duties of her rank:

And a gentle consort made he,

And her gentle mind was such

That she grew a noble lady,

And the people loved her much.

But a trouble weighed upon her,

And perplexed her, night and morn, With the burden of an honour

Unto which she was not born.

Faint she grew, and ever fainter,

As she murmured, "Oh, that he

By way of contrast to this true English ballad, and to exemplify Tennyson's extent of range, we will give now a few lines from the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, which make one of the great passages in the poetry of the world :—

-This is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clashed with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun,
Warring on a later day,
Round affrighted Lisbon drew
The treble work, the vast designs
Of his laboured rampart-lines,
Where he greatly stood at bay,
Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines
Back to France her banded swarms,
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
Past the Pyrenean pines,
Followed up in valley and glen
With blare of bugle, clamour of men,
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.
Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheeled on Europe-shadowing wings,
And barking for the thrones of kings;
Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown
On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down;

A day of onsets of despair!

Dashed on every rocky square

Their surging charges foamed themselves away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew ;

Through the long tormented air

Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray,

And down we swept and charged and overthrew.1
So great a soldier taught us there

What long-enduring hearts could do,

In that world's earthquake, Waterloo!

Pope is singular among our modern poets as having written nothing in blank verse; we do not remember that Tennyson has published so much as a sentence of prose. Not even, we believe, the shortest preface, dedication, or foot-note. In this as in other ways he has treated the public with almost ceremonious respect. Being by nature and vocation a poet, he declines to show himself without his singing robes about him. He will not make himself common, as he will do nothing carelessly or in haste. Nor has Browning either ever attempted to palm off careless work upon his readers. His Paracelsus, published when he was only three-and-twenty, marvellous as it was for the depth and completeness of the conception, was perhaps still more remarkable for the delicacy and perfection of the execution, peculiar as the manner was in some respects. And everything that he has produced since, even when departing farthest from established models, has been elaborated and finished with the same masterly skill. But, although he too has now made himself a great name, he has never attained, and is not likely ever to attain, the universal popularity of Tennyson, the general admiration at once of the few and of the many. There is scarcely anything in his poetry that is specially English. What of it is not distinctly of another country is either cosmopolitan or not of the earth at all. He has no special sympathies with the people whose language he writes, or with anything belonging to themeither their literature, their history, their political institutions, or any feeling that makes the national heart beat highest. It is irksome to most people to read English poetry, however fine artistically regarded, with so little in it of an English heart. Yet much of Browning's poetry, considered simply as poetry, is

1 The emphasis on we, as perhaps also on their four lines above.

certainly, both in the soul of passionate vision that animates it and in grace and expressiveness of form, as exquisite as anything that has been produced in our day. He is often complained of as difficult to understand; and no doubt the train of thought is sometimes remote and subtle, and the language wrought to a corresponding degree of compression and fineness of edge, doing its work like the lancet or like the lightning. But this is equally true of much of Tennyson's poetry. Neither is to be read running. Browning, however, is so great a master of words that there is nothing he cannot make them do for him, no manner of using them in which he is not at home. Here is a portion (we must not be so unconscionable as to appropriate the whole) of one poem of his which is as simple and easy in style as it is airy and brilliant, and is in every way fitted to charm both old and young,-"The Pied Piper of Hamelin; A Child's Story," as it is entitled, "(written for, and inscribed to, W. M. the younger.)":Hamelin town's in Brunswick,

By famous Hanover city;

The river Weser, deep and wide,

Washes its walls on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But when begins my ditty,

Almost five hundred years ago,

To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!

They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladies,

Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,

And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body

To the Town Hall came flocking:

«"Tis clear,” cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
"And as for our Corporation-shocking

"To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
"For dolts who can't or won't determine
"What's best to rid us of our vermin!
"You hope, because you're old and obese
"To find in the furry civic robe ease?

"Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
"To find the remedy we're lacking,

"Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sat in council;

At length the Mayor broke silence :
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell;
"I wish I were a mile hence!

"It's easy to bid one rack one's brain-
"I'm sure my poor head aches again,
"I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
"Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?"

(With the Corporation as he sat,

Looking little, though wondrous fat;

Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister

Than a too-long-opened oyster,

Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous

For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)

"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?

Anything like the sound of a rat

"Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger:

And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in-
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:

Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire,

"Starting up at the trump of Doom's tone,

"Had walked this way from his painted tombstone."

He advanced to the council-table:

And, "Please your honours," said he, "I'm able, "By means of a secret charm, to draw

"All creatures living beneath the sun,

That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, "After me so as you never saw ! "And I chiefly use my charm "On creatures that do people harm,