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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Should all the churchmen foam in spite 

 At you so careful of the right, 



Yet one lay-heart will give you welcome 

 (Take it and come) to the isle of Wight." 



In the preceding verse he had inti- 

 mated that he would not mind in the 

 least if " eighty thousand college coun- 

 cils" had "thundered anathema" at his 

 friend. His references to the clergy, in- 

 deed, were not in general flattering; 

 and this, considering that his own fa- 

 ther whom he greatly revered was a 

 beneficed clergyman, is a little remark- 

 able. When the old woman in The 

 Goose began to grow rich with her 

 golden eggs, " the parson," we read, 

 "smirked and nodded." In Maud we 

 read of " the snowy-banded, delicate- 

 handed, dilettante priest " ; and in the 

 Northern Farmer we do not get a deep 

 impression of the value of the minis- 

 trations of the parson whom that wor- 

 thy, when he went to church, heard "a 

 bummin' away " over his head. At the 

 same time the tone of Tennyson's mind 

 was essentially reverent. Without 

 cramping his thought he bowed his will 

 to a Power that he recognized as divine. 

 No man ever faced intellectual difficul- 

 ties more fully and fairly than he did. 

 He would sometimes solve his difficul- 

 ties by what Comte has called " the 

 logic of feeling " in a way which is not 

 given to all of us, but he never laid false 

 pretensions to argumentative victory. 

 In his Two Voices he lets the evil spirit 

 have its say to the fullest extent, and 

 then answers: 



" I can not make this matter plain, 

 But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, 

 A random arrow from the brain." 



So in In Memoriam there is ear- 

 nest aspiration and even affirmation, but 

 no dogmatism, no appeal to authority or 

 reliance on authority. 



To the moral law Tennyson through- 

 out his works is unfailingly loyal. If, 

 as he says, he received his laurel "green 

 from the brows of him who uttered noth- 

 ing base," he has bequeathed that laurel 

 as fresh and stainless as he received it. 



We can not think of a better course of 

 moral hygiene than a selection which 

 might be made from the late laureate's 

 poetry. The Palace of Art tells most 

 powerfully of the misery of selfishness ; 

 the Idylls of the King are a noble and 

 impassioned plea for truth and fidelity ; 

 Maud and Locksley Hall strike all the 

 chords of high and generous feeling; 

 and The Princess sets the relations of 

 the sexes in a light which is familiar 

 enough to us to-day, but which forty- 

 five years ago had almost the character 

 of a gospel. It may be said of Tenny- 

 son's Muse that, while the world in 

 which she lives and moves is a noble 

 one, it is not an impossible one : hence 

 the benefit of reading Tennyson ; the vir- 

 tues which he depicts and glorifies are 

 essentially human in their character and 

 make for the perfection of human life. 

 They are within our reach if we will but 

 strenuously grasp at them. If the verse 

 of Tennyson had descended into the 

 grave with him, the world to-day would 

 be a grievous loser ; but while we mourn 

 the poet who gladdened and instructed 

 our age, we rejoice to think how much 

 he has left that our children and our 

 children's children will prize not less 

 highly than we, and that will extend 

 its healthful influence through ages to 

 come. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Man and the Glacial Period. By Prof. G. 

 Frederick Wright, author of The Ice 

 Age in North America. With an Appen- 

 dix on The Tertiary Man, by Prof. 

 Henry W. Haynes. With Three Folded 

 Maps, and 108 Figures, Maps, and Sec- 

 tions in the Text. New York : D. Apple- 

 ton & Co. (No. 69 of the International 

 Scientific Series.) 12mo. Pp. xvi + 385. 

 Price, $1.75. 



The rapid progress of scientific investi- 

 gations during this latter half of the nine- 

 teenth century has been scarcely less surpris- 

 ing than the countless applications of inven- 

 tion in manufactures, in the vast development 

 of railroads, and in the uses of electricity for 

 the telegraph and telephone, and for motive 



