steadily on the increase, and he has a band of devoted worshippers. His chief defect is obscurity of expression, with a certain mannerism. The characteristics of his poetry lie rather in its external dress of imagery and language than in any bias toward a particular line of thought or subject. His pieces might be classed, in the manner of Mr. Wordsworth, into Poems of the Affections; Poems of the Fancy; Studies from Classical Statuary and Gothic Romance, etc. Many of them, from the apparent unintelligibility of their external shape, have been supposed to bear an esoteric meaning. The Princess especially, apparently a Gothic romance in a drawing-room dress, has been supposed to figure forth not merely the position which women and their education hold in the scale of modern civilization, but to indicate also the results of modern science on the relations, affections and employments of society. The verse of Mr. Tennyson is a composite melody; it has great power and large compass; original, yet delightfully mingled with the notes of other poets. His mind is richly stored with objects which he invests sometimes with the sunny mists of Coleridge, sometimes with the amiable simplicity of Wordsworth. DANIEL SCRYMGEOUR. [Tennyson was honored by Queen Victoria in A. D. 1883 with the title of Baron JAMES MONTGOMERY. The Princess: A Medley, 1847; In Memo- Tennyson D'Eyncourt. He died 1892.] riam, 1850 (the latter a series of beautiful elegiac poems on the death of his young friend Arthur Hallam, son of the historian); 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," 1852; and Maud, and Other Poems, 1855. JAMES MONTGOMERY was born at Ir vine, Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1771, and died at Sheffield in 1854. He was the son of a Moravian preacher, and was sent to be edu The popularity of Mr. Tennyson has been cated at the settlement of that sect at Ful neck, near Leeds. There he was distinguished reer was comparatively uneventful. In 1806 he produced The Wanderer in Switzerland, which quickly ran through three editions and was subsequently followed by other and better works of the same nature, the chief of which were The West Indies, The World before the Flood and Greenland, a poem descriptive of the establishment of the Moravians in that desolate region, which sect he had again joined. In 1823 he produced Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion. In 1825 he resigned the editorship of the Sheffield Iris, whereupon he was entertained at a public dinner by his fellowtownsmen. townsmen. His interesting History of Missionary Enterprise in the South Seas was produced in 1830. Five years later he was offered the chair of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, which he declined. Sir Robert Peel about the same time bestowed upon him a pension of one hundred and fifty pounds. In 1836 he left the house of his old employer, Gales, where he had lived during forty years, for a more convenient abode. He delivered several courses of lectures upon "The British Poets" at Newcastle-on-Tyne and other places during some years, but in 1841 he visited his native country on a missionary-tour. His last effort was a lecture "On some Passages of English Poetry but little known." for his indolence and melancholy, and, although 66 through life was poetry, and his profession that of stamp-distributor for the government in the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland. He made his first appearance as a poet in 1793 by the publication of a thin quarto volume entitled An Evening Walk: An Epistle in Verse, addressed to a Young Lady. In the same year he published Descriptive Sketches in Verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps, of which Coleridge thus writes in his Biographia Literaria "During the last of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled Descriptive Sketches, and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." Two years after, the two poets, then personally unknown to each other, were brought together at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. Coleridge was then in his twenty-fourth and Wordsworth in his twenty-sixth year. A congeniality of pursuit soon ripened into intimacy, and in September, 1798, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth, they made a tour in Germany. Wordsworth's next publication was the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, published just after he had left for the Continent by Joseph Cottle of Bristol, who purchased the copy right for thirty guineas. But it proved a great failure, and Cottle was a loser by the bargain. The critics were very severe upon it. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, Byron in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," James Smith in his "Rejected Addresses," and others of less note in the literary world, all fired their shafts of reason and ridicule at him. Many years, therefore, elapsed before Mr. Wordsworth again appeared as a poet. But he was not idle, for in the same year that witnessed the failure of his Lyrical Ballads he wrote his "Peter Bell," though he kept it by him many years before he published it. Wordsworth married, in the year 1803. Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled among his beloved lakes-first at Grasmere, and afterward at Rydal Mount. Southey's subsequent retirement to the same beautiful country and Coleridge's visits to his brother-poets originated the name of the "Lake School of Poetry," by which the opponents of their principles and the critics of the Edinburgh Review distinguished the three poets whose names are so intimately connected. In 1807 he put forth two volumes of his poems, and in the autumn of 1814 appeared, in quarto form, the celebrated "Excursion." It consists of sketches of life and manners among the mountains, intermingled with moral and devotional reflections. It is merely a part of a larger poem which was to be entitled "The Recluse," and to be prefaced by a minor one, delineating the growth of the author's mind, published since his death under the name of "The Prelude." The Recluse" was to be divided into three parts. The "Excursion" forms the second of these; the first book of the first part is extant in manuscript, but the rest of the work was never completed. No sooner did the "Excursion appear than the critics were down upon it with a vengeance. "This will never do," was the, memorable opening of the article in the Edinburgh. A few thought it "would do," and praised it; but while it was still dividing the critics "Peter Bell" appeared, to throw among them yet greater differences of opinion. The แ deriders of the poet laughed still louder than | friend and companion, died, and blow fol before, while his admirers believed, or affected to believe, that it added to the author's fame. Another publication the next year-"The White Doe of Rylstone "-was even more severely handled by one party, while with the school" it found still greater favor than anything that he had written. In 1820 he published his noble series of "Sonnets to the River Duddon," which contain some of his finest poetry. Two years after appeared his Ecclesiastical Sonnets," which were composed at the same time that Southey was writing his History of the Church. In 1831 Wordsworth visited Scotland, and on his way to the lakes had an affecting interview—the last he ever had-with Sir Walter Scott, who was rapidly failing and was about to set off for an Italian clime. The evening of the 22d of September was a very sad one in his antique library. Lockhart was there, and Allan, the historical painter. Wordsworth was also feeble in health, and sat, with a green shade over his eyes and bent shoulders, between his daughter and Sir Walter. The conversation was melancholy, and Sir Walter remarked that Smollett and Fielding had both lowed blow in fatal succession. As if to console him for the loss of so many that were dear to his heart, worldly honors began to be heaped upon him. In 1835, Blackwood's Magazine came out strongly in his defence. In 1839, amid the acclamations of the students, he received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University. In 1842 he received a pension of three hundred pounds a year, with permission to resign his office of stamp-distributor in favor of his son. Next year he was appointed to the laureateship, left vacant by the melancholy death of Southey. After this he lived a quiet and dignified life at Rydal, evincing little apparent sympathy with the arduous duties and activities of the every-day world-a world which he left calmly and peacefully, at a good old age, on the 23d of April, 1850. been driven abroad by declining health and H had never returned. Next morning he left Abbotsford, and his guests retired with sorrowful hearts. Wordsworth has preserved a memento of his feelings in a beautiful sonnet. In 1833 he visited Staffa and Iona. The year 1834 was a sort of era in his life, by the publication of his complete works in four volumes. His friends, however, now began to fall around him. That year poor Coleridge bade adieu to his weary life. This must have touched many a chord of association in Wordsworth's heart. In 1836 his wife's sister, and his constant CHARLES D. CLEVELAND. HONOR THY PARENTS. ONOR thy parents-those that gave thee birth, And watched in tenderness thine earliest days, And trained thee up in youth, and loved in all. Honor, obey and love them; it shall fill down God's richest blessing on thee; and, in To come, thy children, if they're given, JONATHAN EDWARDS. THE QUIET MR. SMITH. HAT a quiet man your hus- | think Abel's coats and cravats and canes and cigars come from? Out of my brain! band is, Mrs. Smith!" Quiet! A snail is an "express-train" to him! If the top of this house should blow off, he'd just sit still and spread his umbrella. He's a regular pussy-cat. Comes into the front door as though the entry was paved with eggs, and sits down in his chair as if there was a nest of kittens under the cushion. He'll be the death of me yet. I read him all the horrid accidents, dreadful collisions, murders and explosions, and he takes it just as easy as if I was saying the ten commandments. He is never astonished or startled or delighted. If a cannon-ball should come through that window, he wouldn't move an eyelash. If I should make the voyage of the world and return some fine day, he'd take off his spectacles, put them in the case, fold up the newspaper and settle his dickey before he'd be ready to say, "Good-morning, Mrs. Smith." If he'd been born of a poppy, he couldn't be more soporific. I wonder if all the Smiths are like him? When Adam got tired of naming his numerous descendants, he said, "Let all the rest be called Smith!" Well, I don't care for that; but he ought to have known better than to call my husband Abel Smith. Do you suppose, if I were a man, I would let a woman support me? Where do you "Quiet"! It's perfectly refreshing to me to hear of a comet or see a locomotive or look at a streak of chain-lightning. I tell you he is the expressed essence of chloroform. I FANNY FERN. FEMALE TENDERNESS. WAS one of a party of five in the inside. of a stage-coach, among whom were a jolly butcher and an elderly maiden-lady in green spectacles. At a stopping-place the coachman was regaling himself with some foaming ale, when he was accosted by an official-looking personage, and some whispers passed from which I learned that a convict was about to be forwarded to the next seaport. The coachman, however, to do him justice, softened the matter to the passengers with all possible skill: "If you please, ma'am and gemmen, I wants to make room here for an individual." "Is he a gentleman, coachman? and has he any pipe?" asked the lady in green spectacles. |