No more is heard the mower's ringing blade, No more the blackbird whistles in the sedge; No more the crimson-fingered village maid Seeks the wild fruitage of the berry hedge. But from the hills the smiles of Summer die, And trailing vapors float in dismal shrouds ; And swiftly through the blue fields of the sky The winds, like shepherds, drive the fleecy clouds. Now comes the mellow Indian Summer time, When wold and woodland, stretching far and fair, In panoramic splendor lie sublime, And waver in the illuminated air! November seems with golden June to join, And from the morning windows white-embost As some sad lover, touched with soft regret, And leave unkiss'd the Summer's latest rose! In orchards heaped with fruit the beggared trees The russet fields, resigning to the flail Their golden sheaves, are yet not all bereft, That guards its post through all the storms that blow, By lonely lakes and marshy-bottomed vales Trails to the south its long loquacious flight, No sportsman's tube shall lay their leader low. For now the Pilgrim festival is near, When all the varied crop is safely stored, Honored Thanksgiving! to New England dear! When fowl, or wild or tame, controls the board. Once more around the old familiar hearth The household draws, and tuneful voices ring; And annual games, well-worn and rustic mirth, Swell high the honors of the Harvest King. Yet even while we pledge his jovial reign Our gayest songs are saddened in their tone; For a new ruler, with his boisterous train, Usurps the realm and climbs into the throne. And all too soon the bounty-dropping star Dips toward the darkened verge and sinks below; While o'er the waste white Winter's clattering car Approaches swift, whirled in a cloud of snow! TENNYSON did not act wisely in changing the title of his new volume from "Idyls of the Hearth" to "Enoch Arden;" for Enoch Arden is an idyl of the hearth, and Tennyson has virtually created that kind of simple, domestic poem of which, in his former volumes, "Dora," "Walking to the Mail," The Gardener's Daughter," "Audley Court," "Edwin Morris," and "The Brook" are memorable and exquisite illustrations. It is very pleasant to find this impression recorded in the Quarterly Review in 1842, twenty-two years ago, by that friend of Carlyle's, whom he calls "the noble Sterling, a radiant child of the empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory of all that knew him ;" and again, “the brilliant, beautiful, and cheerful John Sterling." His name can not be mentioned to one at all familiar with his life and his exquisite biography by Carlyle but the passionate pathos of his own lines musically sighs through the mind: "Wail for Dedalus! all that is fairest!" He wrote of Tennyson: "We have now reached that class of poems which stand first on our list, and which we have entitled idyls. We have reserved till now all special mention of them, as holding them the most valuable part of Mr. Tennyson's writings, a real addition to our literature. They have all more or less of the properly idyllic character, though in three or four of them marked with the rapid and suggestive style of the ballad. In all we find some warm feeling, most often love, a clear and faithful eye for visible nature, skillful art and completeness of construction, and a mould of verse which for smoothness and play of melody has seldom been equaled in the language. The heart-felt tenderness, the glow, the gracefulness, the strong sense, the lively painting in many of these compositions, drawn from the heart of our actual English life, set them far above the glittering marvels and musical phantasms of Mr. Tennyson's mythological romances, at first sight the most striking portions of his works. Among the happier specimens of this class two are pre-eminent-"The Gardener's Daughter" and "Dora." These are both of them idyls in the strictest sense of the term, and might rank with the eclogues of Theocritus and Virgil, and with some poems of Goethe, as anecdotes drawn from rustic life and rounded into song. As compared with the antique models we see in them all the gain that Christianity and civilization have brought to the relation of the sexes and to the characters of women." This is just appreciation, and it is simply and truly expressed. Yet had Sterling lived to read the "Idyls of the King" he would have found the same human heart beating in those "mythological romances" as in "The Gardener's Daughter." At the time Sterling wrote he was confused by a theory that a poet of to-day should choose his subjects from the life of to-day. It is certainly well if he does; but it is not essential that he should, any more than it is a cardinal condition of a true American literature that it shall describe Niagara, the Prairies, or the Indians. It is the letter that killeth. The noblest, truest, and most Christian poem of this time is the Queen Guinevere of the "Idyls." But the scene and the persons are all shadowy and fabulous. In the new "Idyls of the Hearth," as we hope the poet will yet call them, he touches a more solemn stop than in his previous domestic idyls. But the scope is still the same; it is to show the master springs of tragedy and romance in the homeliest or most familiar conditions of life. It is not without a start of surprise that the reader finds in these most dainty and elegant of verses the same kind of inspiration as in Wordsworth's "Idiot Boy," and Goody Blake and Harry Gill." Yet in the one 676 66 The Experiments" in various metres are all failures as poems, and as experiments they are impertinent. We ask pictures of a painter, not the emptyings of his port-folio; nor do we go to a concert to hear Liszt or Thalberg practice the scales. Yet this volume, with all the others of Tennyson, are an invaluable study to every literary aspirant and neophyte; for as his poems are the most striking illustrations of the fondness of the literary spirit of the age for the most gorgeous verbiage, so they are the most noble examples of a luxuriant tendency constantly restrained and tempered by He has gained severity and simthe truest taste. plicity without losing richness, and force without Literature is not the record of thought losing fire. only-it is thought and the vehicle of thought. Gold is very precious; but gold carved by Benvenuto is priceless. The minor poems in the new volume are case the homeliness of the condition seems to affect | tion. the sentiment; while in the other the purity of the either poor for Tennyson, or merely curious. feeling refines every form under which it appears. The fascinating fancy which Hawthorne elaborated under the title "Wakefield," of a man quietly withdrawing from his home and severing himself for many years from his family, yet stealing to the windows in the darkness to see wife and children, and the changes time works in his familiar circle, is reproduced in "Enoch Arden," except that the separation is involuntary, and the unbetrayed looking in upon the changes of years is not a mere psychological diversion but an act of the highest moral heroism. Indeed the tale is profoundly tragical, and like the last idyl of the King is a rare tribute to the master passion of the human heart. It is not the most subtle selfishness, whispers the Xavier de poet; it is the perfection of self-denial. Maistre says that the Fornarina loved her love more than her lover. Not so would Raphael's MaNot so loved Enoch Arden. donna have loved. There is no nobler tale of true love than his. It is told with that consummate elegance in The English lanwhich Tennyson has no peer. which guage has a burnished beauty in his use of In his earlier verses it was too is marvelous. "DEAR EASY CHAIR,-Behold me once more at your eldainty, too conspicuously fastidious, and the words were chosen too much for themselves and their bow entreating audience. Many weeks ago I wrote you a But letter or two about the sorrows of unappreciated men of special suggestions and individual melody. his mastery of them now is manly. It is as strik-letters, who go about, not seeking to devour any body, but ing as Milton's, although entirely different. There in a great measure upon their success with editors. I are a Miltonic and a Tennysonian blank verse in say nothing of others dependent upon them. I have no Could pallet to paint, if I had the heart to conceive, the wretchEnglish literature-is there any other? there be, viewed in every aspect, a more perfectedness, the absolute want of little children, and the torpiece of literary art, for instance, than the idyl tures of the mothers, when the father's purse is empty and Hear his heart is sad because he hath been turned away-no, not turned-denied admittance to the pages of some magacalled "The Brook," in the Maud volume? zine or periodical. how the bubbling, hastening melody of the stream melts into the pensive stateliness of the poet's meditation: "I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I move the sweet forget-me-nots "I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Against my sandy shallows. "I murmur under moon and stars "And out again I curve and flow, To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, "Yes, men may come and go, and these are gone, I scraped the lichen from it. Katie walks "A DISAPPOINTED MAN" pleads his case so pathetically that the Easy Chair is sure of gratifying its readers if it listens with them to the argument once more: somebody to devour-men whose souls and bodies depend "In the August number of your Magazine I have seen a letter from "A Hopeful Man," who has a word to say upon the same subject; and I doubt not but that there are many others, who never will say any thing with pen and ink, who feel grateful for these pleadings in their behalf. "Be this as it may, I can not but feel, and I have not come to the conclusion rashly, that there is need of reform in this little matter of deciding upon literary contributions. Let me state one case which often occurs; it may illustrate briefly one phase of this vexatious question. We set out, be it remembered, with the supposition that an editor was, or should be, the judge of what was best for his readers, just as a physician knows what pills to give sick people. Now for my illustration: Bombastes edits a magazine, and it obtains a good circulation. It makes money for its proprietors and fame for its editor, when suddenly Bombastes disappears from the scene (dies, if you will, like the heavy father in the play), and anoth er editor comes to wield the sceptre. The subscriptions increase amazingly; the whole land rings with the sagacity, the tact, the judgment, the discrimination of the new editor. How is this? Did not Bombastes suit the popular taste? Did he not select the first-fruits of genius? Ah no; he did the best he could, honest man, but his best was not the best for the proprietors, as the success of the new editor proves. Has the literary excellence of the age suddenly improved? Not at all. The times are contemporaneous, but what Bombastes threw away as quartz the new editor saw contained gold, and he worked his vein to profit. "Take the list of contributors to any magazine. They are well known to the readers, and the contents of the uals; so that some periodicals might not improperly be magazine are simply a reflection of these several individ All are gone." There is nothing so fine as this in the new volume, and undoubtedly "The Brook" is the perfec-called, Wit, Essays, Flatness, Poems, Turgidity, Rotion of Tennysonian art. But, on the other hand, there is a manly tragic hold of the heart and imagination in Enoch Arden which certainly indicates no decline of power, if also no new force and direc mance, and Stupidity, by Brown, Jones, and Company.' "Sometimes I almost think that rotation in office would be a good plan to put in force with editors. Bear in mind that I am one; but fortunately for my own peace of mind and conscience I am not obliged to sit in judgment upon any tales, poems, or what not, for these are not in the province of my journal. If rotation was proposed, I know very many who would second the motion with the hope of reform in the matter of decisions. "Badinage aside, however, I admit freely that editors are conscientious, well-meaning men, but there are some abuses that need correction; and it is in the hope of exciting reflection that I have written these letters. "I have seen one editor (who should have been more consistent because he rose from nothing himself) take up an article, just glance over it, turn page after page, take a birds-eye view of the contents, and in two minutes' time scratch off a line of rejection to the unlucky author, and then lay the MS. away. "Now if I had not known the contents of the article he was reading I should have thought it was either so horribly written that he couldn't decipher it, or else that it was of the blood-and-thunder style, and plainly unsuitable for his purpose. It was neither. It was a beautiful fairy-tale; and the author feeling hurt at the summary manner in which he was treated took the article to an other editor on the same paper and had it accepted at once. This is a fact. "I might cite many similar instances, which go to prove that carelessness in an editorial room is almost a sin, cer tainly a moral delinquency, which the offender ought to suffer for-not the contributor. "All this discussion about editors and their responsibilities has been confined solely to those who sit in judgment upon fiction, or works of sentiment and feeling. Of course in weightier matters of the law, in business life, finance, the laws of commerce, etc., etc., this extreme sensitiveness does not prevail, and if an article of this kind is declined the man of common sense does not feel grieved. He knows nothing of that other wound which is sharper than a serpent's fang. Suppose your little darling child went tottering forth upon the street, and a ruffian should smite him on the cheek-your grief, agony even, would be too deep for utterance, and that is just the feeling a disappointed contributor has. "I am not so unreasonable or unpractical as to imagine or suppose for an instant that a literary man should never lose his labor. The merchant loses his goods, the mechanic his time. Shall we of the pen eat locusts and wild honey for all time? But a year of losses! an unprofitable season, a bad run of luck, tale after tale sent back, poems rejected, essays declined, when this occurs is a man to blame for being disappointed? I fancy not. "I must not dilate any more upon this theme, although it is as attractive as a field in June. It is endless. I acknowledge that it is hard to draw the line. We can not all be successful, we can not all have crowns, at least not visible ones; but there may be crowns that the eye sees not which shall sit upon the brows of them who bear pain, mental anguish, and bodily suffering, caused by actual want without a murmur. There is no cross without a crown,' and the disappointed contributor has at least the consciousness of having tried to act well his part, and we know that there is where the honor lies. "Fine grapes grow upon the outside of vines, and noble clusters sun themselves in places where the ravisher's hand soon comes and gathers them, bloom, leaf, tendril, and all. But part the snarled stems and look within the grapery, and you shall see great drooping globes that burst with fatness, in whose hearts the red wine glows and scintillates, and whose emerald pulps have more lusciousness than those which woo the passer so imperiously. The indolent or indifferent searcher never finds these "hide-aways;" and they hang their appointed time, then drop to the earth, and Nature takes them to her heart once again. Is there not some analogy between the fruit and the unappreciated? We are out of the way; we are unseen of men; few hands come into our solitary hearts and pluck us out to gladden homes; we linger our appointed time, and are heard of no more. But even as the clusters do not grow and ripen in vain, so it may be that we, too, are tried in this way for a just and wise purpose. To some, riches and honor; to others, thistles and the back of the hand. We are not cumberers of the earth. According to our abilities we perform our parts; and the VOL. XXIX.-No. 173.-YY measure of our success, though it may not be what we desire, is perhaps all we have a right to expect. I know in making this admission I am overthrowing all my previous argument; but I prefer to be just and generous rather than to insist that my views are right, and those of every one else wrong. "Dear Easy Chair, you have always had a tender word for the disappointed contributor. You have doubtless known full well yourself, in your old legs, the pangs of rejection, when some smarter upholstery or more sticky varnish has attracted a passer. Speak us kindly oftener; be genial with us as only you can be; and I am very certain that no matter how many times editors may 'decline us with thanks, and be happy to hear from us again,' we shall feel that in you we have an earnest advocate, a sympathizer, and a friend whose esteem is priceless. "I am yours with respect, "A DISAPPOINTED MAN." Our friend states his case well and strongly; but he complains at bottom that man is fallible, and he urges a plea that is no more admissible in literary labor than in any other. So far as suffering is concerned, the case of the family of a day-laborer who can not get work is as pitiful as that of an author who can not sell his manuscript. It is not a hardship peculiar to authors, but to all men who live by labor. The Easy Chair forgets, and of course its readers have forgotten, whether it has told its correspondent of one of its friends who, having literary ability and aspiration, unfortunately found himself He could not even without a cent in his pocket. buy paper and ink to write, so he walked stoutly about the streets offering himself as a porter, an errand-boy, a Jack-of-all-work, until he happened into a publishing office, where a boy was wanted to write wrappers. "I am the boy," he said, and took hold at a dollar a week, writing wrappers. Character, cheerfulness, cleverness, and the best principle soon made their way, and the writer of wrappers is now in one of the most responsible editorial chairs. Does not "A Disappointed Man" see that he urges a consideration which would be humiliating to manly pride when he speaks of the starvation of an author as an argument for more favorably considering his article? It is a reason for giving him money and food, but not for accepting his manuscript. Last month we were talking of the same general subject as connected with the criticism of pictures. But it does not seem to us a valid plea. If a painter brings a picture to our correspondent and says, "My children are starving," the Easy Chair is sure that its correspondent would instantly buy the picture. But certainly he would as readily give the money without the picture. His purchase of the picture is an act of charity; it is, in fact, alms-giving. Now surely there is no more celestial virtue than feeding the hungry and clothing the naked; but it is, with equal certainty, great folly to confuse this kind of charity with æsthetic criticism, as some of our friends are inclined to do. Essays, tales, poems, and pictures are not necessarily good because the author or artist may be starving or unhappy; and to obtrude personal misfortune is merely to confuse and destroy a just judgment. Yet if the editor succumbs to his private sympathy he very soon spoils the Magazine and involves its publishers. Nothing is more common than for an editor to rehim that the inclosed tale is the work of a young ceive a letter in which his correspondent informs woman who has no resource but her pen, who is in very infirm health, and knows not what to do or where to look if her manuscript is refused. Now what has the editor engaged to do? For the money which the buyers of the paper or magazine pay he has engaged to furnish literature that seems to him the best and most appropriate he can find. Has he any moral right to say to the subscribers-"This month I print, not what seems to me the best I can procure, but article No. 1, because the author has weak eyes; article No. 2, because the author has suddenly lost her father and has no means of livelihood; No. 3, because the author's older brother, who was the sole support of the family, has had a paralysis; No. 4, because the author has broken both legs; No. 5, because the author had no other means of sending his son to school for the winter; No. 6-? But at this point the reasonable subscriber may justly interfere with the declaration that he did not subscribe for a charity but for a magazine; and that, while hoping to be faithful to his humane duties, he prefers to select the objects of his relief for himself, and the magazine, therefore, will please to stop. Does any honest man or woman wish to place a fellow man or woman in such a predicament as this? And yet this is exactly what is done by the extraneous information about personal circumstances. What would such a correspondent as we imagine think if, when she went to buy a loaf of bread, the baker should say, "Please buy this; it is made by a starving man;" and she should find it sour and unwholesome, and utterly unfit for her children? Would she not say, "I will give the starving baker of sour bread a penny, but I can not afford to buy his loaf?" When she returns and writes the letter to the editor, does she forget that her manuscript is merchandise, as the bread is, and that the editor may be willing, or may wish he were able, to send her some money, but can not honorably accept and print her story? The instances and suppositions our friend "A Disappointed Man" mentions are interesting as showing how fallible men are. But did it need proof? There may be a hundred-fold better editor of this identical Magazine than Rhadamanthus Niemand, LL.D. But where is he? Who is to be the judge of his superiority? So, also, the poem which the Dr. declines with thanks, his coadjutor, Mr. Minos, may accept and applaud. Is any thing more proved than a difference of taste, of judgment? And if the opinion of Mr. Minos be found always coincident with the public taste, leading to a larger circulation of the magazine, while that of Dr. Niemand is always opposed to it, is it not pretty clear that the Dr. will be presently gently removed by the publishers who consult their interests.? HERE is a strain of the old, old song, delicately and sweetly breathed. M, who sends it, asks if it be poetry. It is at least poetic. ROSEMARY. Sometime, perchance, when this warm heart is cold, These trembling fingers drop their treasures all, And growing fairest from the crumbling mould, The violets o'er me weave their azure pall; When life has lost for thee its summer glow, You will recall the features, faded then, Of one who loved you with such boundless faith As made the after-dreams of careless men A mockery of truth, its palest wraith. Then, if too late repenting, you shall weave FINIS. That part of life is over, and I write Tis finished" on its sealed up pages fair; Shall bid my pilgrim footsteps rove no more, Has M. ever read the poems of Matthew Arnold? They have the same pensive, meditative strain. There is one of them, very little known, but in itself very beautiful, and a manly reply to the feeling of such verses as the preceding. The poem is called "Excuse," and here is part of it: I, too, have suffered: yet I know Yet, oh! that Fate would let her see And she to him will reach her hand, There is a heroic tone in these verses which is very unusual in modern poetry. The music, too, is subtle and exquisite; and if Matthew Arnold can not stand with the greatest of the subjective English poets, he is certainly among the first of the second class. Editor's Drawer. In one of the northern-tier counties, who considered himself among the great orators of the day, and, when pretty well filled with "Harrisburg water," would get off for the edification of his colleagues some very rich illustrations. Being somewhat interested in a bill before the House, he made what he considered one of his master-speeches, during the delivery of which he used the illustration of "Nero fiddling while Rome was burning." He had scarcely taken his seat when a member tapped him on the shoulder and said, named Charlie Wilson, from the Pennsylvania Legislature, two years ago, "Say, Charlie, it wasn't Nero that 'fiddled;' it was Cæsar. You should correct that before it goes on the record." In an instant he was upon his feet, and exclaimed, "Mr. Speaker-Mr. Speaker-I made a mistake. It wasn't Nero that 'fiddled' while Rome was burn- | or, in the richest brogue, bawl out, "D'ye hear, ing; it was Julius Cæsar!" there, forre an' aft, the meal-bag will lave to-morrow mornin', an' thur'll be an opporthunity to sind away letthers!" Happily for him, the Speaker was so busily engaged that he did not hear him; but some members near heard and enjoyed the joke. Afterward some one told him that he was right in the first place, which resulted in his reading all the ancient history in the State Library during the remainder of the winter, to assure himself as to who it was that "fiddled." Now and then they have a little fun in Boston: We have here a few of the first-class set of braggadocios with which nearly all extensive communities are blessed. At one of the private tableau parties given a short time since, there was present a sea-captain who always has something of more importance to relate than any thing that transpires during these slow times. There was to be a representation of the "Greek Slave," which he was very desirous to see, as he had seen the "original" at the World's Fair in London, and he would not on any account miss seeing the same here. When the curtain was raised, imagine his dismay at seeing a firstrate specimen of the Hibernian tribe, with pick-axe on shoulder, hat without rim, trowsers not reaching brogans, coat with one sleeve, waistcoat of fieriest red, plenty of buttons of the brightest, and all the implements of honest industry, ready for his task. Imagine (as I said before) the effect of the truth vs. fiction brought before the seer of all sights, and the wholesome lesson brought home in so pleasing a manner, and you have a specimen of the style in which we members of the Serious Family enjoy our leisure moments. THE author (?) of the two following says he sends them for us to use when our private "goak" machine is out of order: In an inland town of New Hampshire lived, or rather staid, Amos P, who to general shiftlessness added a strong attachment for hard cider and kindred stimulants and stupefiers. Amos, who was naturally pompous, displayed no little share of it in his cups, and the Academy boys had in consequence nicknamed him the "Superfalia," which title pleased him not a little. On one occasion, when about two-thirds "over the bay," he reeled into the tavern stable, where a few days before a huge goat had been installed, an animal which Amos had never seen. As he staggered into the door-way the goat, taking his lurching movements as an invitation to hostilities, reared on his hind-legs defiant, menacing. At this moment Amos's eyes fell on the irate Capricorn. He stood for an instant with eyes distended; then sinking on his knees, and extending his hands in an attitude of supplication, in a voice hoarse with terror, he cried, "For Heaven's sake, Mr. Demon, give the Superfalia time to say his prayers!" Jerry, however, was good-natured, and generally bore all the fun at his expense without remonstrance; but on one occasion the laugh was so uproarious against him that, if possible, he would never permit any allusion to the cause of it. Some men of his watch were at work down in the fore-hold breaking out provisions, when duty on deck required a few more hands. Jerry went to the fore-hatch and sung out, "Forre-hould, there!" "Hallo!" came up from the depths. "Come up the half o' yez !" DR. His one of those genial souls who can tell a good story, and who loves a good joke, even though it is at his own expense. At one time he had employed an Irishman to cut some wood at his door; and it being a very cold day, he invited him into the house to warm him and to drink a glass of cider with him (the Doctor never takes any thing stronger than cider). After Pat had become sufficiently warmed, the Doctor turned him out a glass, which he drank off with great relish. "Pat," asked the Doctor, still holding the pitcher in his hand, "what is better on a cold day like this than a glass of good cider ?" "Two of them, sure!" was the ready reply. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that Pat got his two glasses. THIS reaches us from Rochester, New York: In the town of W, Oneida County, in this State, resides a wealthy but ignorant and eccentric farmer, named Wilcox. Mr. Billings, from the neighboring city of Utica, called to see him one day on business, and was invited to stay to dinner. The substantial portion of the meal having been discussed, a piece of pie was placed before each person at the table. Taking his fork in hand, Mr. B. essayed to eat according to etiquette, but his proceedings soon attracted the attention of the host, who was industriously shoveling up the contents of his own plate with a knife. "Mary!" shouted the hospitable farmer, "why don't you bring Mr. Billings a knife? Here he is a pokin' away, a tryin' to eat his pie with a fork!" ON another occasion he was invited out to dine at the house of one of the "Upper Ten." When the dessert was served a dish of ice-cream was placed before the Representative from "Duress." It was a new dish to him. He tasted it, then beckoned to the waiter, and said to him, audibly, "That is very good pudding, but did you know it is froze ?" THIS comes from Nova Scotia: There lived in one of the settlements of this Prov THE gun-boat to which I was attached on the Wilmington blockade had for second boatswain'smate a comical little carroty-haired Irishman, call-ince an enterprising individual who kept store and ed Jerry, who would eat more scouse, chew more tobacco, and do more growling than any two men in the ship. Jerry had had no previous experience in his duties, having been rated to the position a day or two after he came aboard; and great was the merriment, fore and aft, at the dismal squeaks he elicited from his boatswain's-whistle, when ordered to call away a boat or pipe "all hands up anchor;" supplied the natives with groceries and very poor rum. It was his standing principle, which he took good care to put into practice, that the more water he put in his rum it was the better for himself and the health of his customers. After acquiring a snug fortune, besides a good farm which came into his possession by the dissipation of its owner, he suddenly became convinced that rum selling was a bad |