each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister's bed-side (so fresh made that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth; then came a sound of chanting from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace-might she sleep in peace! and we, too, when our struggles and pains are over! but the earth is the Lord's, as the heaven is; we are alike His creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death! tranquil depth of calin, out of reach of tempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks."

The pathetic circumstances in this passage readily disclose themselves, and illustrate the pervading conditions of the tender interest. The mother is presented to our compassion in the aspect of a great sufferer; her sufferings being given in various forms. Esmond's own feelings receive the fullest expansion, and in terms calculated to awaken the reader's sympathies to an acute pitch. The surroundings are vividly conceived so as to be in full harmony with the mourner. The nun is performing like offices to a sleeping sister. The incident of the bird aids in picturing the scene, as a suggestive circumstance. A mourning chant is heard from the chapel of the sisters. To aid in the picture, to bring life and death together, and to introduce a break in the sad offices, the spires and gables of the city are introduced to view. The usual figure of peaceful sleep is indispensable. Resignation to the will of heaven adds to the general effect. The two last sentences are poetry in prose; the pathos touching on the tragic, without losing character. The whole passage is an accumulation of pathetic circumstances and expression, with a careful avoidance of anything either discordant or irrelevant. The manner admits

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of variation, but scarcely of improvement for the end. More could have been said of the mother's virtues and charms, but these were left to the story.

SORROW FOR FRIENDS.

The Pathos of Friendship's losses corresponds to the strength of the feeling, which, in certain exceptional cases, attains the rank of the love passion between the sexes.

Tennyson's In Memoriam is wholly based on grief for a great loss. The expansion of the treatment allows every circumstance to be adduced that can add to the intensity of the writer's state of feeling, and inspire the reader with a corresponding intensity. The language resembles what is usual under bereavement in the proper love relation.

Following the general requirements in evoking emotion, whether by Strength or by Tenderness, we first ask for an adequate representation of the charms and perfections of the object. This Tennyson supplies, though not at the beginning, in a wonderful panegyric, enumerating the choicest intellectual and moral qualities that a human being could possess. As a noble ideal it is finely drawn, and is strengthened by his own contrasting self-humiliation. To secure not merely admiration, but, what is more difficult, intense personal affection, there are needed such touches as these:

And manhood fused with female grace

In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face.

The difficulty of intellectual portraiture lies in being at once apposite and poetical. Tennyson attempts both in this stanza :

Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassioned logic, which outran

The hearer in its fiery course.

The portraiture by incident, so much more effectual, is exemplified in the previous quotation. It is not pursued further in the present passage, but occurs at random throughout the poem.

We look next for the subjective expression of his own

feelings in such form as to command our concurring emotion. The poem opens with the circumstances of the friend's death, the voyage of his remains to his own country, and all the paraphernalia of grief and mourning. The greatness of the loss is at first assumed. Only after the sadness of the interment does he begin to celebrate the intensity of the friendship (22-27) and all the joys that it brought: a splendid picture of happiness, finishing by the well-quoted stanza-Tis better to have loved and lost. . .' This method of treatment is so far true to the natural course of emotion under bereavement. We do not fully realize our loss-still less analyze and examine it-until the parting has been completed by the burial of the friend.

The harmonious accompaniments created in aid of the author's emotional states would of themselves make a great poem. They are scattered everywhere, and may be valued by the proper tests.

After the preface, the line of thought becomes desultory, and takes the reader through a succession of years after the death of the loved one. A first mournful Christmas is given, and leads to a discussion of the state of departed spirits and the meaningless character of the Universe without immortality. A dawning of comfort arises out of these reflections.

A good many sections are devoted to the weakness and imperfections of the writer, his need of support, and his consequent sense of loss; with more reflections upon immortality and the hope of meeting. Then come fears and questionings (54-56), including the difficulty of reconciling Nature's maleficence with immortality. Many fine stanzas follow. In section 75, we have this expression of the intensity of his feelings:

I leave thy praises unexpress'd

In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess'd.

A second Christmas is reached (78) distinguished by greater calmness of feeling. It introduces a new vein of moral reflections on the influence of death: the real bitterness is the interruption of communion.

In 83, opens a series of recollections and personal incidents, with moralizings as usual; and in 95, there is the reperusal of his letters. After the delineation of character,

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already quoted, occurs an episode on Spring and Spring hopes, as suggesting a renewed intimacy beyond the grave.

Then follow the removal of the family from their old home and its many associations with the dead, and a Christmas kept among strangers. At each new stage, the poet seeks to make us aware of the changing phases of his sorrow; we are to see in the 'merry bells' ringing in the new year that a happier era is now approaching. This tone is continued in connexion with his friend's next birthday, which is now celebrated with gladness:—

We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.

This spirit is maintained through the remaining sections, which supply reflections on the strengthening and mellowing influences of sorrow, backward glances over the course of his own grief, and calm descriptions of what he had received from the friendship.:

The end of the whole is resignation, peace, and the conviction that his friend has become, not less, but more to him. He has grown into a universal presence, mingling with his own life (129, 130), and leading him on to fuller trust (131) in the

Living will that shall endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock.

The difficulties to be overcome in such a poem are unavoidably serious. To raise, in the name of friendship, an emotion of equal intensity with sexual love at its utmost, involves very great straining. The sympathy with a lover for the loss of one of the opposite sex, is easily kindled: no inordinate qualities of mind have to be assumed; and a very limited amount of plot and incident will suffice. To bring the same result out of friendship, the friend has to be constituted a rarity, a paragon, one in ten thousand. Everything has the appearance of over-statement.

A poem thus occupied with personal affliction and intense sorrow, needs redeeming elements. Such are found here in the high-class poetry which is made to envelop all the circumstantials of the bereavement, often without necessary connexion. This is what relieves the monotony of the personal bewailing. Secondly, the poem reveals a conquest over the pains of grief, such that, while the memory

of the departed friend remains, it becomes no longer weakness, but strength and comfort. If this conquest had been more definitely expressed, it would have been still more effectual. Thirdly, there is the celebration of the joys attainable by an intense and elevated friendship. But, having regard to the facts of life, we must feel that it is overdone. Indeed, were an affection of such intensity to occur in actual life, it would interfere with family ties, by taking the place of love without the inspiration and support derived from opposition of sex. It would repeat in an undesirable way, the defective side of the love affection in its intensified forms,-the impossibility of being ever satisfied with any but one person.

The evolution of the poem is open to criticism. Although not demanding the rigorous conditions of an epic, or a drama, it still needs an unfolding purpose; and the only purpose traceable is the writer's gradual approach to serenity of mind. In this, however, there are none of the windings of a plot. The detached passages of highly-wrought verse, constantly occurring, so far sustain the interest, and are, indeed, the glory of the poem.

In his piece entitled 'La Saisiaz,' Browning works up a pathetic subject, the sudden death of a lady friend; the main feature in the handling being an argumentative view of the future life, illustrated by powerful language and comparisons. Touches of tenderness occur, in the midst of energetic argument and declamation. The following is a brief example:-

Gone you were, and I shall never see that earnest face again

Grow transparent, grow transfigured with the sudden light that leapt, At the first word's provocation, from the heart-deeps where it slept. Therefore, paying piteous duty, what seemed you have we consigned Peacefully to what I think were, of all earth-beds, to your mind Most the choice for quiet, yonder.

There is a mixture of business with tenderness in the lines; but the charm of a fine demeanour and a noble character is present to awaken our emotions of love, which the sudden departure intensifies.

The author freely dilates on his own pains, in language severely energetic rather than softly tender, with the view of augmenting our sense of his loss, and the worth of his object :