Wordsworth's 'points' are but affairs of words. Tennyson has been accused of affectation, but the censure is much more blank to Wordsworth. In the ripe works of the former there is no affectation unfilled by a solid core of substance, while, in the best productions of the latter, affectations abound, consisting of mere form, and all but wholly empty. Wordsworth has been called a metaphysical poet. Of metaphysics proper he knows nothing; and how often do we not find the passages specially so named mere convoluted vapours of laborious breath, involving only a fraudulent sublimity of tumid verbiage? Wordsworth's very position was adverse to the production of the humaner and more valuable results of the art. It is not in the nature of things that a man who sets himself to stare at mountains and at lakes only should, in the end, really enrich himself. In such exclusive companionship humanity will well from him, and he will become rigid as his own rocks, narrow and bald and indurated.

Wordsworth, then, probably inferior to Tennyson in primitive and original, becomes certainly inferior to him in ultimate and acquired manhood. Then again, as regards the products, if there seems a superior density of tone in some of them, this merit is weakened by reflection on its source. Here, then, we found the claim of Tennyson to superiority, on greater native manhood, and on the greater variety, richness, and more human interests of his successful products. It is really a great matter that we hear, in Tennyson, a voice from the whole range of culture.

In regard to Shelley and Keats, it is not the natural Tennyson that is greater than either: it is the ripe maturity of his thought, wrought into the fair products of his imagination, that has bestowed on these a weight and value, rare in any poet, and mostly wanting in the young effusions of Keats and Shelley. Thus, then, Tennyson is distinguished from Wordsworth, on the one hand, by superiority, as well of original richness as of acquired range; and, on the other hand, from Keats and Shelley by the ripe maturity and full humanity of his products.

There is one characteristic in which, though it is common to all great writers, Tennyson is unusually eminent-it is the faculty of conception, or of inner perception, inner vision. He never writes until he has fairly pictured all; and while he writes, his eye never for a moment quits the picture, but passes on from point to point with luminous fidelity and unerring accuracy. The anecdote of Arthur treading on a crowned skeleton, from which the crown rolls into light, and, turning on its rims, flees, &c., will illustrate our meaning. Equally good illustrations may be found in the fall of Geraint, his battles, the scene with Enid in the hall of Doorm, the tournament in Elaine, and the final interview of the king with the queen. In this minute picture-work, Tennyson is always particularly

particularly vivid. It is no speciality of his, however, but belongs to all great writers. To tell the whole truth, it is the secret of literature in general: look at it but deep enough, and even the commonest old tub, red-hooped awry, will suggest words to render it interesting.

The main characteristics of Tennyson are yet to mention: they are ethical conception and classical execution; the latter being but the necessary concomitant and natural shadow of the former. The central sun of all Tennyson's writings is the heart: this is the reflection that lies in his deepest deeps. In Memoriam' alone demonstrates Tennyson to possess the richest, purest, truest, natural heart of any poet on record; and with this natural heart is involved what we name the whole ethical side of him. We know no poet that has ever displayed an equal sense of moral goodness in its two forms of greatness in man and of purity in woman. all forms of these he rises thrilling, dilating, brimming. He is the most Christian of poets. This is his leading attribute; and the classic execution is but its emanation, but its natural garment.

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Milton is moral certainly; but he is fierce, intolerant, Hebraic; while Tennyson is gentle, sweet, and Christian. Wordsworth is also moral; but he is cold and thin, while Tennyson is warm and rich. There is a spirit of gentleness in Keats and Shelley, especially the latter, which is ethic certainly; but, in Keats, it is aimless and lost in mere sensuous beauty, while, in Shelley, it is a too eager longing only that rushes into error.

It is this ethical or human side of Tennyson that involved his necessity for maturity and experience. To Keats, who had no quest but sensuous beauty, boyhood sufficed. To Shelley again,. who, too eager to wait, too impatient even for the laws of time, must, instantly and at once, give voice and shape to all his crude sympathies and torrid anticipations, youth gave verge enough. But Tennyson, who bore the burthen of a purer, richer, larger humanity, required the breadths of Space for his roots and the heights of Time for his branches.

Such are the results of a comparison of Tennyson with several of our greatest Idyllists. We may say that Milton keeps the summit of the hill, and sits amid the thunders; that Wordsworth has chosen for himself a separate crag, where he lives in a somewhat thin complacency, but waited on by simple dignity and solemn carnestness; that Shelley takes the very breast of the mountain, fronting the firmament and the sun; that Keats has found a haunted wood upon the flank, where flash the white feet of the gods and goddesses; and that Tennyson, holding himself free to wander where he will, prefers the fields of labour and the flowers of culture hard by the smoke of roofs.

In conclusion, let us but think again of all those gentlenesses, lovelinesses,

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lovelinesses, and subtle delicacies, and manly greatnesses, that name themselves Godiva,' 'Lady Clare,' 'Enid, 'Ulysses,' Arthur;' let us think of the passionate intensity of Maud,' of the exuberant phantasy of The Princess,' of the ripe culture, deep thought, and long, long wail of In Memoriam; let us think of the true eye for character in the Ode to the great Duke; let us not forget, either, the poet's kindly, genial, manly letter to his friend Maurice; let us recall all these, and the one tendency that directs them all,

To keep down the base in man,

To teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man ;'

and surely we must agree that, unless language be hypocrisy and literature a sham, this is not only the richest, purest, and truest of poets, but also-so far as record speaks-the richest, purest, and truest living man.

ART. IV.-Report of the Ministerial Conference on the Liquor Traffic held in Manchester, June, 1857.

ST. AUGUSTINE relates that when a pagan Roman audience first

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heard the noble sentiment in Terence, Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto,' they filled the theatre with their plaudits. But the Church, in teaching its disciples to say 'Christianus sum (I am a Christian man'), has enabled each to add, with greater truth and a deeper significance, Nothing that concerns mankind is a matter of unconcern to me.' And as a professed body of faithful men,' the Church has not forgotten this principle, however imperfect the practice which should have corresponded. In its less purer form the Church afforded shelter to the weak, befriended the oppressed, curbed military violence, and covered Europe with institutions of mercy. Of later times we need not speak at length; for it would be difficult to name one great reform, from the Reformation downwards, which has not issued from the bosom of the Christian Church. Grievous shortcomings there have been it is too true; and the Church as a whole has often gained credit for the benevolent achievements of a part. An active minority may have done the good, but the minority has been Christian, and on their victorious banners are inscribed deeds of glory-triumphs over oppression, selfishness, and mammon-which might well give to angel-faces a brighter glow. And in all this the Church does not neglect its special duties of religious instruction and spiritual fellowship. To do the one it is not necessary to leave the other undone. Its Holy Founder healed the sick and fed the hungry

Influence of Intoxicating Liquors.

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while He preached the kingdom of God and marched forwards to the Cross.

But, in truth, the removal of human suffering and degradation does not admit of being considered apart from the immediate interests of the Church; and for the sake of those interests the Church is to do all good to all men. The ministries of evil are manifold, and the Church must battle against them in self-defence; in defence of that internal purity which is imperilled, and those agencies of propagandism which are being counteracted and undermined. It cannot, therefore, be affirmed, with any show of plausibility, that we introduce a foreign question-one on which the Church should remain neutral-when we propose to examine the effect of intoxicating drinks, and the traffic in them, upon the prosperity of the Church; the position hitherto assumed by the Church in return; and the course which each section and member of the Church should pursue with conscientious firmness and spontaneous zeal.

I. Intoxicating liquors, by which we mean all fermented and distilled fluids, possess by their alcoholic nature qualities of a peculiar character-so peculiar that they have a reputation and a history all their own. They excite thirst rather than quench it; they are capable, according to their measure and the temperament of the consumer, of deranging the physical, mental, and moral systems; and they tend to produce an appetite demanding ever larger supplies, and leading, by these supplies, to more frequent degradation and to more premature destruction. To suppose such liquors commonly used, often to the exclusion of every other beverage, is to predict the results we behold, and which nothing but miraculous intervention could have averted. For such drinks multitudes of men and women have surrendered their living-all that they have had-even the vigour necessary to daily labour. Hence pauperism, with its privations and burdens; and from such poverty, multitudes have slidden into crime, or crime has more directly followed the stimulating draught, swallowed either with or without an eye to this result. So have abounded lunacy, idiotcy, with every species of social dissipation and domestic misery of which humanity is capable. Traced back to their real source, these horrors have their origin in the intoxicating property of such liquors, a property which they could not fail to exhibit, and by which they have been armed with a power of mischief exceeding that of pestilence or war. It has happened, too, that nations making a Christian profession have been the most fearfully afflicted by this curse; and that among them the traffic in alcoholic beverages has become most widely diffused. A traffic like this is intrinsically dangerous from the dangerous quality of the articles sold; and it has been invariably and inevitably pernicious in a marked degree, because,

1st, It has rendered access to these liquors easy, and their price comparatively cheap; 2ndly, It has offered inducements and temptations to indulgence in them, away from external control; 3rdly, It has associated their use with customs, company, and conversation of a generally demoralizing kind. The social consequences in this kingdom alone are stated by impartial authorities to comprise two-thirds of our crime, and three-fourths of our pauperism, besides a loss of capital and waste of resources (time, money, health, life, industry) sufficient to support an empire. In all these consequences the Church participates through its members: but we desire to glance at some of the direct influences by which it is injuriously affected.

If professing Christians use strong drink, and support the liquor traffic, can they do so with impunity? We answer, No. Alcohol having an invariable physical action, the nervous system of the believer and unbeliever will be similarly affected; and as the rule of use must be what each man thinks good and safe for him, the serpent subtlety of the liquor has too often prevailed against the clearest and cleverest intellect. Pagan rites and pagan revellings were so inseparable that a convert in the primitive Church was protected by his Christian profession from incentives to vinous indulgence; yet exhortations to sobriety bestud the apostolic writings, and in the case of the Corinthian Church, where, at the love-feasts, some were hungry, and others were drunken' (not intoxicated, but filled to repletion with the meal consumed), we perceive the care demanded against a subjection to former habits and lusts. When the profession of Christianity became popular, drinking and its kindred disorders multiplied. Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom, and the other fathers of the Western and Eastern Churches tell a painful tale. They take up the lament of Isaiah over the intemperance of both priests and people. Festivals in honour of the martyrs were perverted into scenes not a whit superior to Bacchanalian orgies. Ecclesiastical canons of the fourth century forbid any ecclesiastic to visit taverns, and by the Justinian code monks found in such places were liable to civil punishment and exclusion from their order. Gibbon notices the regret of the founder of the Benedictines that the intemperance of the age compelled him to allow his disciples half a pint of wine a day-a moderate grant compared with another rule, that clergymen should not exceed five pounds of wine per diem. One monk is said to have deplored that there were sorts of wine of which enough could not be drunk to produce intoxication. The French clergy of the ninth century were forbidden to enter any tavern except as bonâ fide travellers-a prohibition revived in 1282. In the reign of Edgar it was found necessary to enjoin that the priests should guard themselves against drunkenness, and reprehend it in others;

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