than Crabbe. Even when he made a poem upon that which ■ in the nation,- though was affecting all thoughful men he expressed the national feeling, wrote primarily to express his own. Es pecially is this true of his religious poems, he wrote them to satisfy the questioning of hisown soul. Temyson is so truly a typical Englishman of the upper middle class that through his eyes we may look upon the life of his time and feel that we see his contemporaries, enter into the thoughts and emotions of the ninteenth century and know though his treatment of legend and history its moral and intellectual sympathies. (1) Tennyson's England. Taine describes Tennyson's England in these words: "Here we are at Newhaven or at Dover, and we glide over the rails looking on either side. On both sides fly past country houses; they exist everywhere in England; on the margin of lakes on the edge of the bays, on the summ mit of the hill, in every picturesque point of view,.... (1) Brimley, Essays 30. 2 all round the house rolled every morning. In front great rhododendrons form a bright thicket in which murmer swarms of bees; festoons of exotics creep and curve over the short grass; honeysuckles clamber up the trees; hundreds of roses drooping over the windows, shed their rain of petals on the path. Fine elms, yew-trees, great oaks jealously tended, everywhe re combine their leafage or rear their heads....How delicious is the freshness of thes verdure? How it glister and how it abounds in wild flowers brightened by the sun! Fat oxen lie in the grass, sheep as white as if fresh from the washing, all kinds of happy and model animals, fit to delight the eyes of an amateur and a master. We enter. How nicely everything is got up, and how como dious! The least wants have been foreseen, provided for; There is nothing which is not correct and perfect;...We converse with our host - we very soon find that his mind and soul have always been well balanced. He is married, has tenants, is a magistrate, becomes a politician. He improves and rules his parish, his estate and his family. He founds societies, speaks at meetings, superintends is a lawn fresh and smooth as velvet Schools, disperses justice, introduces improvements... But at the same time he loves and practices all bodily exercises. Such is the elegant and common sense society, refined in comfort, regular in conduct, whose dilettante tastes and moral principles confine it within a sort of flowery border and prevent it from having its attention diverted."(1) Some of the men at Sir Walter Vivian's, climbed, The slope to Vivian place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; in Gray halls alone among the massive groves; Half-lost in belts of hops and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; (2) This vantage ground was much the same as Taine's and they too saw Temy son's England and it was a land of peace. We catch the first glimpse of this England in the lines already quoted describing Tennyson's home? Next (1) Taine II. 535-6. (2) Princess, Conclusion 216. |