principal business to which he dedicates his whole heart, his most affluent moods, his most sacred feelings-and that he merely edits the "Independent," and merely delivers his one hundred and fifty lectures a year, as an episode and by-play to the main action of his mind. We imagine that Mr. Tilton's real life is in his vocation as a poet; that to this he has given his heart; that the execution of this is, with him, so dear and hallowed a thing that he would offer to it no rash or frivolous thought, nothing irreverent, nothing that is not chaste, serene and beautiful. When he makes a speech or writes an editorial article, he does it at a dash, gayly, with a boyish and rollicking glee, and he flings into the cauldron whatever comes to hand; and though whatever comes to his hand is usually fine, manly, witty, earnest, and imaginative, he does not object much if there comes also that which is coarse, jocular, irrelevant, impious. All goes in; and he stirs it up and he stirs it together, and it is great fun unto him, and he laughs the huge Homeric laugh of the gods and heroes. But when the frolic is over and his love of fun satisfied, and he pulls from his pocket a bit of crumpled paper which bears the first draft of a poem, then he is like a true priest ministering at the altar; he is serious, sad, devout; he exacts of himself the most severe justness of thought, perfect purity of expression, absolute symmetry of form. Now, at last, he feels that he is about the real business of his life. His idealism, his poetic delicacy, his taste, his conscience, his affections, all are aroused, all are engaged; and in thus elaborating, with tender and loving care, a sonnet or a song, he has a mightier joy and a more genuine interest than in all his public and noisy activities put together. Hence it is accountable how he would admit into a speech or an article what he never would into a poem; and hence, also, the rush and storminess, and per

haps the sensationalism, of the former, and the delicate, stealthy, meditative grace and sweetness of the latter.

As we turn over, now for the third or fourth time, the pages of "The Sexton's Tale and Other Poems," and try to analyze and state to ourselves the impression we have of the defects of this collection of Mr. Tilton's verses, perhaps the first thing we say is that the author has not yet done justice to his own endowments; that he has squandered himself upon too great a variety of pursuits; that he has not subjected his nature to the ordeal of long and patient discipline; that he has not rallied all his forces and concentrated them, with full exertion, with unbroken persistence, upon any one protracted, arduous, and worthy poetical task. An air of reserved force is well; but there is such a thing as having too much of one's force reserved. Above all things, the reserve of force is creditable only when a man grapples with great undertakings; it is no compliment to him to say that in small undertakings he has force to spare. The sort of life which Mr. Tilton leads is too dissipating to his powers. In such an existence he will be able to catch the time to do bright little poems; but to achieve a great poem, to spend his faculties upon a work suitable to his faculties, is impossible, without the "antique discipline of retirement and silence." The contents of this volume will be an honor to Mr. Tilton, if he does something greater; if he does not, they will be a reproach.

Moreover, in the longest of these poems, in "The Sexton's Tale," for example, in "The True Church," and in "Maltby Chapel," as well as in the majority of the smaller pieces, there is a want of American flavor; there is even a use of European phraseology and imagery, which impart an exotic, feeble, and imitative quality, to the whole. On general principles we should not expect this in Mr. Tilton's poetry.

He has never been in Europe; and if he had been, he is the last man to ape anything he might find there. He is, besides, an American of the most pronounced type. His manners, his sentiments, his living words, are intensely national. It startles one, therefore, with a suspicion either of weakness or of insincerity, to find that his poetry has depended so little upon native themes for its inspiration, and that its native coloring is so slight and thin. Had he been a lonely poet, dwelling apart from the great currents of American feeling, hearing only the still voices of books, it would be easy to account for a choice of subjects and a treatment of them so remote from the homespun realities of to-day, so slightly tinged likewise with direct and local idealizations. How comes it that a New York editor, touching our continental life at all points, responding with instant and powerful emotion to all the action and the passion of our unique civilization, should, in his most elaborate poetical utterances, have so few ideas or illustrations that belong to us, and so many that relate to knights, dukes, my lady, tournaments, henchmen, castle-halls, abbey-walls, trains of camels, gems from Samarcand, Brahmins, lotus-pods, troubadours of France, and Paduan Minorites? The true poet must not dawdle with these imported goods. These are not the stuff of which our poetry is to be made. Henceforth, let Mr. Tilton get his materials from the soul within him, and from the soil beneath him, and from the air close around him; and leave to more needy poets these pretty European and Asiatic trinkets which have regularly paid duty at the literary custom-house.

While still engaged in finding fault with Mr. Tilton, we will speak of one slight technical blemish in the first and longest poem of his book -a blemish which, so far as we know, has escaped the notice of all his critics. That he

has never yet permitted himself to go to Europe, is doubtless an exertion of self-restraint amounting to a virtue; at any rate, it is one which, in this generation, entitles him to considerable distinction. However, had he happened to visit England before he wrote "The Sexton's Tale," we venture to think that he would not have committed the social solecism of burying his mighty "Duke" and "My Lady" in the open church-yard, where the sexton would be able to complain—

"How thick the leaves are where we tread!"

and to say to his visitors

A very little study of Mr. Tilton's poetry will suffice to detect traces of the great masters of expression who have done most to mold his mind and style. A more curious combination of influences, perhaps, poet never experienced. We think that, in his way of putting thought and sentiment in his verses, Mr. Tilton reveals the impress upon his culture of Henry Ward Beecher, of Wendell Phillips, of Mrs. Browning, and of the Elizabethan poets! The form into which his ideas leap is concrete and picturesque, and their movement is oratorical and dramatic.

It seems to be a favorite habit with Mr. Tilton to express his best things in swift, brief, condensed statements, and to manage the evolution of his verses in such a way as to prepare for these pregnant sentences; thus using in poetry a method which Wendell Phillips makes so effective in speech-making, and putting into admirable practice, also, Herbert Spenser's rhetorical law of economy. In this way, too, a not uncommon thought is made startling by the unexpected angle of view from which it is presented; and this surprise continually reminds one of the sensations he has in reading the literature of the age of Elizabeth, suggesting, not

ease and simplicity of mental work, but mind on the stretch, together with results that are somewhat fanciful and artificial. Thus, in that famous ode entitled "The Great Bell Roland," which gave such delight early in the war, are these two lines, in which we feel the quality which we have just tried to describe:

"What tears can widows weep

Less bitter than when brave men fall?"

Again, in that admirable summary of theology and ethics, "A Layman's Confession of Faith," the same quality reappears:

"I owe no man a debt I can not pay

Except the love that men should always owe."

And just before these lines, also, in this exquisite couplet:

"I stand with wondering awe before my babes, "Till they rebuke me to a nobler life."

We see it, again, in these lines of "A
Woman's Letter":

"A heart can never trust until it knows;
A heart can never know until it trusts."

Perhaps no more certain proof could be given of the spirit of self-discipline in which Mr. Tilton's poetry is written, than the evidence that appears in this book of the firm hand with which he has held in his love of fun. In spite of his best resolutions, however, and to the increased enjoyment of his readers, the vein of delicate and satiric humor is to be occasionally seen cropping out from the midst of serious surroundings. Thus, in "The Preacher of Padua":

"All Padua, when it heard the tale, stood dumb.
No man but vowed to live a whiter life!
O fickle human heart! Thy brittle vows
Are dashed to pieces on thy stony self!
The sinners sinned afresh! The Devil went
Not back to St. Antonio's church! No need!
For St. Antonio's church went back to him!"

Again, in "The True Church":

"We entered at the open door,

And saw men kneeling on the floor;
Faint candles, by the daylight dimmed,
As if by foolish virgins trimmed."

The question, by the way, might be raised over these lines, whether this playful allusion to the defective art of the foolish virgins has not betrayed Mr. Tilton into a false figure. Lamps are trimmed; but are candles? The most that even wise virgins could have done for the foregoing candles would be to have snuffed them; yet that operation, however cheering to the candles, would have had a baleful effect on the rhyme.

In the charming verses, "The Flight from the Convent," is this suggestive passage, where the young fellow says to her:

"Now why thy long delaying?
Alack! thy beads and praying!
If thou, a saint, dost hope
To kneel and kiss the Pope,
Then I, a sinner, know

Where sweeter kisses grow-
Nay, now, just once before we go!"

Dr. Johnson, in his usual sturdy fashion, has declared that poetry and hymns are incompatible terms. Had we in English literature no other evidence to disprove this statement than the single noble hymn of Mr. Tilton's, "The Prayer of the Nations," that alone would be quite sufficient. It is, indeed, a sweet lyric of faith and philanthropy, at once lofty, tender, devout, and imaginative. What beauty, what glowing and unhackneyed imagery, upon an ancient subject, in these opening lines:

"O Thou by whom the lost are found,

Whose cross upon the mountain stands,
Let now its shadow on the ground
Spread east and west through all the lands,
Until it wrap the earth around!"

I have already mentioned that in the process of Mr. Tilton's thought in poetry there is a constant dramatic movement. He shuns what we may call the logical action of ideas, for that which I have described as dramatic. For example, in "The True Church," passing from one form of faith to another, the poet says to the Pilgrim

"Had Augustine a fault?"

Now, the logical answer would be to say simply yes or no, and if yes, to say what it was. The dramatic mode of replying is different:

"The Pilgrim gazed at Heaven's high vault,

"And answered, 'Can a mortal eye Contain the sphere of all the sky?'

"I said, 'The circle is too wide.'

'God's truth is wider,' he replied."

So, likewise, in "The Lotus Planter" and in "The Sailor's Wedding," and indeed in nearly every other poem in the book, the action advances in a similar dramatic mode. In all this we discern the stamp of Beecher, Browning, Phillips, and the Elizabethan dramatists; and we may be sure that if there were in English a living dramatic literature to tempt the ambition of Mr. Tilton, he would find in that department of poetry his true field. It may possibly be worth his while to inquire whether he has not even yet in that direction some work to do.

and in life; vivacity and dramatic movement; yet still we return to ask, is there here that alchemy of a creative imagination which gives life even to what was dead, and fuses all the elements of a scene into unity? "Images," says Coleridge, "however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as they are modified by a predominant passion, or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant; or, lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's own spirit

'Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.'"

Y business having called me to one

River, I became the guest of the widow of my old college classmate and dear friend, who, poor fellow, fell at the head of a rebel regiment on that great day when Hood suddenly shot out from Atlanta, pouncing upon our unprepared "left" between Legget's Bald Knob and Decatur, and whose fiery impetuosity cost the country the noble, generous, and tender-hearted McPherson, and thousands more of brave men. Unlike many that served the Lost Cause, my friend had considerately placed his family in a Border-State city, and in secure and independent circumstances; so, when word came that poor Bob was gone, the once "Little Sue," mother of another little Sue, though now made a widow, was not disposed to wear the weeds longer than a decent respect for the memory of her husband required. And I who had loved her in the creamy college days as truly as had Bob was yet a handsome bachelor, and not absolutely averse to mating. And as a breath blown from the ripe fields will remind you of the summers that were, whispering of the summers yet to be, so widow Sue's kind looks and little Sue's sweet face revived a hundred dreams that had vanished, and suggested possibilities yet to be realized. Every means was used to protract my visit, and I was quite willing to remain, although business demanded my immediate return.

On the eve of my contemplated departure, it suddenly occurred to all that I had not attended the "colored revival" then in full blast-as was pain

fully apparent by a certain looseness in the domestic management, especially the culinary department, of my friend's otherwise well-regulated house. I agreed to remain, claiming the company of the ladies to the scene, which was readily accorded. The next evening being the close of the week, when a large gathering might be anticipated, we repaired to the "color'd chu'ch," under the guidance of "Old Joe," the cook, with a masculine name but of feminine gender, who, like many white people, conscientiously believed in "trowin' away all to foller de Lo'd," at least once a year,—to the great consternation, as I have intimated, of all those dependent on her ministrations.

The church occupied the upper loft of an abandoned tobacco-house, whose several parts apparently were held together by the simple power of adhesion. We ascended by a rickety pair of stairs, and were ushered into the presence of the congregation. The room was lighted by a few candles which burned with a sickly flame, as if in mephetic vapors, and above the pulpit hung a solitary lamp which cast an uncertain light upon the head of the preacher. As "Old Joe" convoyed us to seats, the gaze of the dusky congregation was momentarily withdrawn from the preacher — the congregation doubtless being flattered, and the preacher embarrassed, at the presence of a party of "grand folks." However, the interruption was momentary, when the exercises were resumed.

The preacher was a powerfully-built man, and from his apparent physical strength alone no doubt commanded