impressive personality than any of the other dramatis persona of Shakespeare. We wholly forget that we are reading a play, and shudder like Partridge, however much we ridicule his simplicity. The witches in Macbeth are quite another sort of character. They appear ridiculous to us, and would have appeared just as absurd and ridiculous to an English audience two centuries before the time of Shakespeare. Probably these witches would now be considered very fine by a Syracuse, or New Haven, or Boston audience. Similar superstitions abound in those cities, and are clearly an hereditary monomania derived from their witch-killing ancestors. The writer of fiction should not address himself to rare human idiosyncracies, but to human nature in its normal condition. Mr. Tennyson seems to forget, too generally, that he is writing for the nineteenth not the ninth century. The days of chivalry were days of superstition, not because of the ignorance of the times, but for other reason which we cannot now detect and expose. Ig. norant men are just as incredulous, nay far more so, than the learned, for they judge of probabilities and possibilities from their own extremely limited knowledge and experience, and reject thousands of truths on account of their ignorance, which the learned accept. According to their knowledge and experience witchcraft is impossible, and when their minds are in a sane state, they are less capable of believing in it than the learned, who, knowing more of subtle media of inter-communication, and delicate, invisible, and impalpable physical pow ers and agencies, are not half so thoroughly assured of the non-existence of witchcraft.

We stand up stoutly and sturdily for the ghosts and the gods. They are conceivable, comprehensible; have human passions, motives, and feelings, and take a lively interest in human affairs. They are but human lives transferred to another state of existence. Such were the gods of heathen mythology, and such are the ghosts that now walk at midnight, and frighten burglars and murderers. Ghosts are part of our police guard. They are the realities of fiction, the guardians of life and property, and the salutary promoters of sound morality. Fairies, elves, witches, &c., are quiet another thing. They are always bent on mischief, and full of malignity, without rhyme or reason. Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream is a silly conceit, written probably to please the crazy I uritans, who were just then appearing in England. Milton was a Puritan himself, and being half crazy on many subjects, no wonder he wrote his Comus-nobody reads it now. It is only fit to be read by crazy people.

We shall not indulge the reader's curiosity by letting him know our own private belief as to ghosts. This we will tell him, however we are not at all afraid of them. Familiarity breeds contempt, as well of ghosts as men. Part of our earliest education, was, at the bidding of our father, to go at night and plant sticks in the graveyard. We had, in childhood, a very lively imagination, and the reader may conceive our feelings at first. But we soon got used to it. Afterward we went to school for many years at the Potomac Academy, which had been an old English Church, and was thickly surrounded by graves. After long rains the graves would break in, and we, boys, amused ourselves by fishing out with forked sticks the bones of our ancestors. Still, when we ride by a lonely graveyard in the night, we are apt to whistle, and, possibly, if we saw any strange appearance, might postpone the investigation of its cause until daylight. On the stage no one appreciates and respects a ghost more than we.

The third story, Elaine, "the lily maid of Astolet," is a lovesick affair, as the title denotes. The heroine falls in love with Sir Lancelot at first sight, although he is three times her age, formally addresses him, and being rejected, forthwith dies of a broken heart. It is an extravagant conceit, too romantic and unnatural to be liked or appreciated, except by girls in their teens. It is not, however, without many prettily written passages passages that evince a high order of poetic talent, which, unfortunately, has taken a false and trivial direction.

The first three tales do not entitle our author to be ranked as even a second-rate poet. The fourth and last is very superior in all respects to the first three. Its diction is generally dignified and natural; the passions and feeling which it most eloquently describes, although strong and profound, are suited to the characters and the occasion. The story throughout, though romantic, is not at all improbable; and the characters are well drawn and individualized. High as are its merits, it falls short of the exquisite finish and pathos of Tam O'Shanter. Of humor Mr. Tennyson has none, and writes very awkwardly when he attempts it. He is not entitled to rank with Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, and Byron ; nor do we think with Pope, Goldsmith, or Tom Moore. He is equal to Scott and Dryden, and superior to Southey-we would call him a firstrate third class English poet.

It is easy to show the faults of a writer by extracts, but impossible, by isolated passages, to give a just and full idea of his merits. Such passages, torn from the context, often lose all

their beauty-always great part of it. Yet as we have quoted much of the more indifferent parts of the Idyls, it would seem unfair not to quote from its finer passages.

Guinevere opens in grand and lofty tones, and it is no small praise to the author, that he not only sustams himself, but goes on improving to the conclusion, which is, as it should be, the very ablest portion of the book. It opens thus:

"Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat
There, in the holy house at Almesbury,
Weeping, none with her save a little maid,
A novice: one low light betwixt them burned,
Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad,
Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,
The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,

Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still."

Much as we dislike the preternatural, we cannot but see many beauties in the following lines, which, as the prattle of a child, possess a grace and naturalness that they would not otherwise have:

"To whom the little novice, garrulously:

'Yea, but I know, the land was full of signs
And wonders, ere the coming of the queen.
So said my father, and himself was Knight
Of the Great Table, at the founding of it;
And rode thereto from Lyonnesse, and he said,
That as he rode, an hour, or may be twain,
After the sunset, down the coast, he heard
Strange music, and he paused, and turning-there
All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse,
Each with a beacon star upon his head,
And with a wild sea-light about his feet.
He saw them-headland after headland flame
Far on into the rich heart of the west;
And in the light the white mermaiden swam,
And strong nian-breasted things stood from the sea,
And sent a deep sea-voiee through all the land,
To which the little elves of chasm and cleft
Made answer. sounding like a distant horn.
So said my father-yea, and furthermore,
Next morning while he passed the dimlit woods,
Himself beheld three spirits, mad with joy,
Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower,
That shook beneath them, as the thistle shakes
When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed:
And still at evenings, on before his horse
The flickering fairy circle wheeled and broke
Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke
Flying, for all the land was full of life.
And when, at last, he came to Camelot,
A wreath of airy dancers, hand in hand
Swung roung the lighted lantern of the hall;
And in the hall itself was such a feast

As never man had dreamed; for every knight

Had whatsoever meat he longed for served
By hands unseen; and even as he said
Down in the cellars merry bloated things
Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts
While the wine ran: so glad were spirits and men
Before the coming of the sinful queen.'"

Near the conclusion of the book King Arthur visits the convent to upbraid and take final leave of his guilty, but penitent, queen. She, hearing him coming, throws herself on the floor in an agony of shame, grief, and remorse, and he, after upbraiding her for some time, partly relents, and the poem thus proceeds:

"He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.

Then, waiting by the doors, the war-horse neighed
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again:

'Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes,

I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,

I, whose vast pity almost makes me die,

To see thee, laying there thy golden head,

My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law,
The doom of treason and the flauing death,

(When first I learned thee hidden here) is past.

The pang-which, while I weighed thy heart with one

Too wholly true to deem untruth in thee,

Made my tears burn-is also past, in part.
And all is passed; the sin is sinned, and I,
Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God

Forgives; do thou, for thine own soul, the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing! O imperial moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee-
I cannot touch thy lips. they are not mine,

But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the king's.

I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,

And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh,

Here looking down on thine polluted, cries,

'I loathe thee:' yet not less. O Guinevere,

For I was ever virgin save for thee;

My love, through flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.

Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter, in that world where all are pure,
We too may meet before high Gol, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband-not a smaller soul
Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that,
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence:
Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow:
They summon me, their king, to lead mine hosts

Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against my sister's son,

Leagued with the Lords of the White Horse and Knights,
Once mine, and strike him dead; and meet, myself,

Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.

And thou remaining here wilt learn the event;

But hither shall I never come again,

Never lie by thy side, see thee no more-
Farewell!'

ART. VIII.-THE FLOATING BEACON.

[Much is said in regard to the solidity of the papers that appear in the pages of the REVIEW and often are we delicately reminded that its circulation on that account must be restricted. Now and then, some one very frankly writes us that, as he cannot interest his family in the work, he must needs (we never could understand the argument) discontinue it.

As we are averse to losing subscribers, and would make any reasonable concession to secure a handsome addition to our lists, we determine, in the future, to pay a little attention to popular taste, and without affecting the distinctive character of the REVIEW, to furnish a monthly instalment of twenty or thirty pages of lighter literature, original or selected-essays, criticisms, historical sketches, biographies, romance, etc., after the fashion of Blackwood, which has long retained such wide-world repute. As a type, we give one of the Blackwood artioles from its issue of October, 1821.-ED.]

ONE dark and stormy night we were on a voyage from Bergen to Christiansand in a small sloop. Our captain suspected that he had approached too near the Norwegian coast, though he could not discern any land, and the wind blew with such violence that we were in momentary dread of being driven upon a lee-shore. We had endeavored, for more than an hour, to keep our vessel away; but our efforts proved unavailing, and we soon found that we could scarcely hold our own. A clouded sky, a hazy atmosphere, and irregular showers of sleety rain, combined to deepen the obscurity of night, and nothing whatever was visible, except the sparkling of the distant waves, when their tops happened to break into a wreath of foam. The sea ran very high, and sometimes broke over the decks so furiously that the men were obliged to hold by the rigging, lest they should be carried away. Our captain was a person of timid and irresolute character, and the dangers that environed us made him gradually lose confidence in himself. He often gave orders, and countermanded them in the same moment, all the while taking small quantities of ardent spirits at intervals. Fear and intoxication soon stupified him completely, and the crew ceased to consult him, or to pay any respect to his authority, in so far as regarded the management of the vessel.

About midnight our mainsail was split, and shortly after, we found that the sloop had sprung a leak. We had before shippel a good deal of water through the hatches, and the quantity that now entered from below was so great that we thought she would go down every moment. Our only chance of escape lay in our boat, which was im