the town and the country, and from whom I received much more satisfaction than common, upon which I was going to declare him the smartest Englishman I had seen, when, unfortunately for England, he turned out to be a Frenchman transplanted young.'-p. 124.

We had no intention to trespass on Mrs. Calderwood's continental chapters. Here, however, is one sentence from her description of Rotterdam :

'The Dutch maid-servants do nothing on earth but wash the house and the streets, and the veshells of the house and kitchen; none of them wash their linnen at home, they are all washed in publick fields and brought in wet, so that, when the maids have not them to dry and dress, they have nothing to do but slester and wash. They have plenty of water, and every house has a pump, and they will have a pump of water in every story. This is one inducement to wash, but the originall of it is the necessity, as the streets would in a few days gather a fog betwixt the bricks, and that in a short time would certainly breed a vermine.'-p. 135.

Her description of a Dutch house brings out some curious revelations concerning the interior finishing, &c., of the time in Scotland. It would appear, for instance, that Mrs. Calderwood viewed a door-bell as quite a novelty; but indeed, according to Chambers, it was not much before 1756 that the knocker supplanted the aboriginal rasp and pin in Auld Reekie.

The bricks of which the houses are built are vastly hard: Mr. Crawfurd had forgot to bore a hole for a bell (which, in every house, is put so as the handle is at the side of the outer door, that, instead of knocking, you ring), and in peircing that hole through the brick, it was as hard to do as if it had been marble.'-p. 140.

We conclude with a paragraph which, more than any other in this book, must have delighted the members of the Maitland Club of Glasgow :'-

Most of the reproaches our country meets with can only be the effects of want of enquiry or reflection. I once thought that Scotland might carry on a greater trade than it does, from its advantageous situation for the sea; but if they should import, who is to take it off their hands? there is no country behind them to supply, who has not the advantage of the sea ports, which is the case of Holland, who has all Germany to supply; neither have they a great demand at home, like England, which is a great country, and most part of it inland, that must be supplied from the trading towns on the coast. Or, to what country can they transport their merchandise, which they have imported more than serves themselves, that cannot be as cheap served by nearer neighbours? They have no East India goods, which are almost the only goods that are demanded by all the world, so that no country, which has not one or more of these advantages, can ever become a country of great trade.'-p. 144.

Could

Could this good lady of 1756 have had second-sight enough to catch a glimpse of her native Clyde as it is in 1842, what could have persuaded her that she had her own dearly-beloved and judiciously-admonished Scotland before her vision!

We are tempted to conclude our review of a book which perhaps few will ever handle, with an extract from one which is, or ought to be, as well thumbed as any production of the present year The Mirza' of the wise humourist, and gentle satirist, who more lightly and happily than any other writer conveys lessons to his own countrymen, in the shape of mirthful delineations of the absurdities of outlandish faith and practice. Mr. Morier represents himself as listening to one of the brilliant tales of wonder with which his friend-and indeed hero-the professional storyteller in chief was accustomed to cheer the evening hours of the late Shah of Persia. On its conclusion he joined the royal circle in extolling the merit of the narrative, but incautiously signified his suspicion of its marvellous incidents. There was a burst of indignation at such Pyrrhonism; but the Frank rejoins:

6 66

Perhaps, I too, may assert some facts relating to my own country, to which you may not be willing to give credence, but to the truth of which I in my turn am ready to take my oath."

"Ohi-oh, well said and well done," said the prince, his words. echoed by the poet, and repeated by the rest of the company. "Speak on-let us hear-our ears are open. We have given up our souls to you."

"I then said:" Perhaps every one present has seen a ship, and though they may not have sailed in one, have remarked how it is impelled by wind; perhaps, too, some may have been caught in a tempest, or observed its effects on the sea. Now, we have ships in my country, which, in defiance of storms and tempests, will make their way in the teeth of the wind, and thus perform voyages from one end of the world to the other."

I paused awhile, after having made this assertion, to hear the remarks of the company. I could perceive incredulity in every face: a little scorn and contempt, perhaps, was associated with that feeling, but it was plain no one believed my words.

""Sahib ekhtiar. You are at liberty, of course, to affirm what you please," said the prince, "but to me it appears that what you have advanced is wholly impossible."

"What words are these?" said another. "You might as well say that I can thrust a spear through my enemy's body, and he not bleed, as to say a ship will go ahead against wind."

'I heard the word derough, derough-lie! lie! whispered about from mouth to mouth throughout the assembly, and I became convinced that I was totally disbelieved.

"I then tried them upon another subject.

"There is another thing," said I, "to the truth of which I am ready

to

to take my oath. In my country our cities are lighted at night by the means of lanterns suspended on iron pillars. A subterranean vapour is made to circulate through our streets, which is led to the summit of the said pillars, and at a given hour men run about the city carrying a lighted taper in their hands, which they merely present to a small spiral tube, whence a flame is seen to issue, which, keeping alive the night through, illuminates the city like day, the inhabitants meanwhile sleeping soundly, unapprehensive of evil consequences."

"Where in the name of Allah," said the prince, "have you found words to affirm such things? A subterranean fire running underground all through your streets, and nobody afraid! Yours must be a world different from ours, inhabited by men of a different formation to Persians. I cannot believe what you say.'

"People may talk of Persians being liars," said one of the company, "but as there is but one Allah, and Mahommed is his prophet and Ali his lieutenant, let them go to the Franks for the future. Wonderful assertions have we heard to-day."

"Now I begin to understand," said a man of the law who was present, "why Franks are unbelievers of our faith, the ever-blessed and only true faith of Islam-why they reject our prophet and despise his sayings, while they adhere with so much pertinacity to their own. See this Sahib-he tells us of things which cannot be true, and believes in them, whilst events which may occur every day, which so many people here present, men of respectability and worthy of confidence, have seen and heard of, he rejects. Is it not plain that the reputation which Persia has acquired for the sagacity and acuteness of her sons has been well acquired, whilst all the rest of mankind are kept in a state of total blindness? Let the Sahib forgive my words," said the speaker, turning himself to me, "but in truth our holy prophet legislated with all wisdom, when he said, " As for the unbeliever, all that is left for him is katl, katl, slay, slay."

6.66

May your shadow never be less," said I, addressing the man of the law; may your house flourish-we are grateful-we kiss the dust

of your slippers!"'—The Mirza, vol. ii. pp. 23-27.

ART. IV. - Poems by Alfred Tennyson.

London. 1842.

2 vols. 12mo.

WHAT poetry might be in our time and land, if a man of

the highest powers and most complete cultivation exercised the art among us, will be hard to say until after the fact of such a man's existence. Waiting for this desirable event, we may at least see that poetry, to be for us what it has sometimes been among mankind, must wear a new form, and probably comprise elements

VOL. LXX. NO. CXL.

2 c

elements hardly found in our recent writings, and impossible in former ones.

Of verses, indeed, of every sort but the excellent there is no want: almost all, however, so helpless in skill, so faint in meaning, that one might almost fancy the authors wrote metre from mere incapacity of expressing themselves at all in prose-as boys at school sometimes make nonsense-verses before they can construct a rational sentence. Yet it is plain that even our magazine stanzas, album sonnets, and rhymes in corners of newspapers aim at the forms of emotion, and use some of the words in which men of genius have symbolized profound thoughts. The whole, indeed, is generally a lump of blunder and imbecility, but in the midst there is often some turn of cadence, some attempt at an epithet of more significance and beauty than perhaps a much finer mind would have hit on a hundred years ago. The crowds of stammering children are yet the offspring of an age that would fain teach them-if it knew how-a richer, clearer language than they can learn to speak.

It is hard in this state of things not to conceive that the time, among us at least, is an essentially unpoetic one-one which, whatever may be the worth of its feelings, finds no utterance for them in melodious words.

Yet our age is not asleep. Great movements, various activities, are heard and seen on all sides. In the lowest department, that of mere mechanics, consider what fifteen years have done. It was only in the autumn of 1830, following close on the French three memorable days of July, that the Duke of Wellington opened the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad. The population of the busiest region on this earth were assembled round him, whom all acknowledged as the greatest man in England, at the inauguration of a new physical power, then felt to double the strength and swiftness of human beings. While, among myriads of gravely joyous faces, the new machines travelled at a speed matching that of eagles, the life of a great statesman shot off on a darker and more distant journey, and the thrill of fear and pain at his destruction gave the last human tragic touch to an event which would at any rate have retained for ever an historic importance. The death of Mr. Huskisson startled the fixed bosom of the veteran soldier, and those who were near perceived a quiver of the lip, a movement of the eye, such as had hardly been caused by the most unlooked-for and dreadful chances of his mighty wars. To a calm observer, the emotion of the whole multitude, great and small, might strangely have recalled far-distant ages and the feelings with which ancient peoples held every great event as incomplete, wanting the blood of a victim-too often human

solemnly

solemnly shed. In the most prosperous and peaceful of national triumphs the dark powers again claimed a share, and would not be forgotten.

Since then, about twelve years have passed, and behold what they have brought forth. Some seventy millions of money have been expended-more, at the lowest estimate, than four times as much as the Papacy was able to raise in a century and a half for the construction of its greatest monument, the costliest the world has ever seen. These seventy millions of pounds have been subscribed by private persons at their own choice in one small country, and have created nearly fifteen hundred miles of railroads -structures that surpass all pyramids and Cyclopean walls, and machines that would puzzle Archimedes, by which myriads of men are perpetually travelling like the heroes of fairy tales. It is probable that the roads of the Roman empire, the work of many centuries, did not cost so much of human labour, and they certainly did not exhibit so much greatness of thought, as those that we have built in less than twenty years.-In the state of society that has produced such results there may be, we know there is, enough torpor, even rottenness. But it cannot be, on the whole, an insignificant stage of human existence, one barren for imaginative eyes.

Or look at one of our general elections. The absurdities are plain, no doubt-has not the ocean froth and bubbles? But take the thing altogether, and observe the mixture and spread of interests and faculties brought into action-above all, the open boldness with which a nation throws itself into the streets and markets, casting off, in the faith that it can reproduce, its company of rulers, and letting the fools clamour, the poor groan, the rich humble themselves, and all men bring all to judgment, without a moment's fear but that quiet will spring out of the tumult, and a government be born from a mob. From the castle of the highest peer to the clay-stained tipplers in the alehouse, from the bench of bishops to the ranters in the moor-side smithy, all are stirred and fluttered, feverish with the same anxieties, debating in their different dialects the same questions, and all alike dependent on the omnipotence of an event which no man can absolutely control. Most of what they say is folly-most of their objects of hope and fear chimeras: but how full of throbbing business is the whole land, how braced are all the wishes and devices of all! Among so much of make-believe and sound, it is a great thing that the whole country must at least be willingly deceived if it is to be gained over-must seem to itself rationally persuaded; and that the most futile pretender can only cheat by aping, and so strengthening in others, the qualities in which he is