It would be impossible to give with greater ease as well as delicacy a true picture of these scenes, and with it the subtle flavor of a real rest of spirit in them. The "volleying" rain, the "tossing" breeze, the "vext" garden-trees, and the grass strewn with shed May and chestnut blossoms, call up the very life of a squally spring day in England; as do the "high midsummer pomps," the "roses that down the alleys shine afar," the open, jasmine-muffled lattices," the " groups under the dreaming garden-trees," and the white moon and star, the very life of an English midsummer night. And yet the whole has a tinge of careful tenderness and peace that tells you of the refreshment of these images to the writer. The "vext garden-trees" could have been spoken of as "vext" only by one who had a true delight in their air of tranquillity; just as they could have been described as "dreaming" in the midsummer moonlight only by one who had the deepest feeling for this visionary beauty of contrast between the white light streaming over them and the black shade beneath. Again, 66 roses that down the alleys shine afar," is a line sufficiently betraying how deeply the fair perspective of an English garden is engraved on the poet's imagination; while the reproaches lavished on the "too quick despairer" for the hasty neglect of so rich a feast of beauty, strikes the keynote to the feeling of the whole. Nor is this passage in any sense a peculiar instance of Mr. Arnold's flowing, lucid, and tender mode of painting nature. In all his descriptive passages -and they are many and beautiful-it is the same. He is never buoyant and bright, indeed; but the scene is always drawn with a gentle ease and grace, suggesting that it springs up in the poet's imagination with as rapid and natural a growth as the strokes which delineate it before your eyes, for he makes no heavy draft upon your imaginative power to follow him. You seem to be sharing with him the very vision which he paints. And as to moral effect, the impressions that these pictures make is something between wistful enjoyment, quiet yearning, and regretful peace. It is always one of rest, but always a rest that is not fully satisfying the rest of which the poet himself says, "Calms not life's crown, though calm is well." And it is characteristic of Mr. Arnold, that in closing his larger poems, even when they are poems of narrative, he is very fond of ending with a passage of purely naturalistic description which shadows forth something more than it actually paints, and yet leaves the field of suggestion absolutely to the reader's own fancy. Thus, after painting the fatal conflict between Sohrab and Rustum, in which the famous old warrior Rustum gives the death-wound to his own son, in ignorance that he is his son, Mr. Arnold, after giving us the tender farewell of Sohrab to his father when the discovery is made, concludes with this most beautiful passage, in which the accomplished geographer turns his half-scientific, half-poetical pleasure in tracing the course of a great river to the purpose of providing a sort of poetical anodyne for the pain which the tragic ending has or ought to have given: "But the majestic river floated on, * Out of the mist and hum of that low land, The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Of course the intention may have been to make the flow of the Oxus-"out of the mist and hum of that low land into the frosty starlight," and through the "beds of sand and matted rushy isles," which make him "a foiled, circuitous wanderer," till at last his "luminous home of waters opens, bright and tranquil"—a sort of parable of the unhappy Rustum's great career and the peace of his passing away. But nothing of this is so much as hinted; and we should rather say that, though the course of a great river may be selected rather than any other scene of natural beauty for the vague analogy it presents to the chequered life of a great leader, the intention of the poet * Kharasm (ancient Chorasmia), a country of Turkistan, nearly synonymous with Khiva. Amoor-Darya (ancient Oxus) rises in the lofty Pamere plateau, near the radiating point of the Himalayas, Bolor-Tagh, and Kuen-lun Mountains. is simply to refresh his own mind, after the spectacle of misspent heroism and clouded destiny, with the image of one of Nature's greater works in which there seems to be the same kind of vicissitude, the same loss of pristine force and grandeur, and yet a recovery of all and more than all the majestic volume and triumphant strength of the earlier period at the end. Unable to take the English route, the brave woman had resolved to sail direct for Leith, running all risks, and believing that with the escort of three of her uncles and of D'Amville, the heir of the Montmorencies, Elizabeth would not dare to meddle with her. She was going, cost her what it might, going on an errand which cannot now be separated in remembrance from its tremendous end; and Mary Stuart's name will never be spoken of in history, however opinions may vary on the special details of her life, without sad and profound emotion. She was not yet nineteen years old; but mind and body had matured amidst the scenes in which she had passed her girl hood. Graceful alike in person and in intellect, she possessed that peculiar beauty in which the form is lost in the expression, and which every painter therefore has represented differently. Rarely, perhaps, has any woman combined in herself so many noticeable qualities as Mary Stuart; with a feminine insight into men and things and human life, she had cultivated herself to that high perfection in which accomplishments were no longer adventitious ornaments, but were wrought into her organic constitution. Though luxurious in her ordinary habits, she could share in the hard field-life of the huntsman or the soldier with graceful cheerfulness; she had vigor, energy, tenacity of purpose, with perfect and never-failing self-possession; and as the one indispensable foundation for the effective use of all other qualities, she had indomitable courage. She wanted none either of the faculties necessary to conceive a great purpose, or of the abilities necessary to execute it, except, perhaps, only this, that while she made politics the game of her life, it was a game only, though played for a high stake. the deeper and nobler emotions she had neither share nor sympathy. 66 In Here lay the vital difference of character between the Queen of Scots and her great rival, and here was the secret of the difference of their fortunes. In intellectual gifts Mary Stuart was at least Elizabeth's equal; and Anne Boleyn's daughter, as she said herself, was no angel." But Elizabeth could feel, like a man, an unselfish interest in a great cause; Mary Stuart was ever her own centre of hope, fear, or interest: she thought of nothing, cared for nothing, except as linked with the gratification of some ambition, some desire, some humor of her own; and thus Elizabeth was able to overcome temptations before which Mary fell. Such was Mary Stuart when on the 14th of August she embarked for Scotland. The cardinals of Guise and Lorraine attended her to Calais. Three other uncles, D'Elbœuf, D’Aumale, and the Grand Prior, embarked with her to see her safe to Edinburgh; and with " Adieu, belle France," sentimental verses, and a passionate Châtelar sighing at her feet in melodious music, she sailed away over the summer seas. History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth (1856-1870). BUCHANAN'S IDYLLS OF INVERBURN. (Robert Buchanan, b. 1841). GEORGE BARNETT SMITH. [Mr. Buchanan represents a wholesome reaction against the poetry of extreme and hysteric sensibility. In an article (October 1871), contributed under the name of "Thomas Maitland," to the Contemporary Review, he invented for one class of such poetry the now famous nickname of "The Fleshly School." His own poetry as art-work has been subjected to sharp criticism, the justice of which in some particulars he has practically admitted. As an example of some of his latest and best work, we append to Mr. Barnett Smith's selections the fine sonnet entitled The Motion of the Mists.] Of a higher stamp is the poem Poet Andrew, which depicts the short, sad life of young Gray.* The story is told by the father of Andrew, a simple-hearted weaver, who does not understand the gift wherewith his son is dowered. The character of the father is drawn with great power and individuality, and the whole poem, shining with the tenderness which springs from a loving heart, is full of the deepest human interest. Andrew's parents endeavored to teach him common sense; and when they were reproached for having a poet in the house, exclaimed, "A poet? God forbid!" somewhat dubious as to the full meaning and import of their terrible possession. The youth was grumbled at in vain for his tendencies to ruin; and at length he left his home and went up to the great city, where he was followed by a mother's deep love and a father's solicitude, in spite of his apparent wrongheadedness. But the dark shadow drew near, the trouble that was deeper than all others. The poet came home to die, and the scene is depicted with a pathos which has rarely been excelled for calm and yet strong simplicity. Thus speaks the broken-hearted father: "One Sabbath-day— The last of winter, for the caller + air Was drawing sweetness from the barks of trees- A snowdrop blooming underneath a birk,+ And gladly plucked the flower to carry home * * David Gray, 1838-1861. * * * "Birch." § This may have been suggested to Buchanan's fancy by the concluding line of David Gray's sonnet, Die down, O dismal Day!— |