1809, was welcomed by him as a new ray of light, as a beam from God. But as the new theory of the flowering and growing of life passed through his mind, it was beautified by the rays of his poetic genius: the moral ideas blossomed forth from the germs of development, and the ideals of humanity appeared as perfect fruits on the topmost branch of the world-tree. The poem, "Contemplate all this Work," is a noble hymn, in which the greatest English poet of this century gave the approval and sanction of the world's conscience and faith to the new theory of life, taught by the greatest English scientist of the century. "Arise and fly the reeling faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die." These are the concluding words of the gospel of growing humanity, proclaimed by the poet from the heights of modern knowledge. Lord Tennyson was not only a great poet and a great thinker; he was also a great, good man. He scorned scorn, he hated hate, loved love. The well-spring of his song was love of the best, hatred of sin, love of right, hate of wrong. The charm of his poetry lies mainly in his profound sympathy with man, his woes and sorrows, his rise and fall, his aspirations and struggles. With his ringing song he strove to "ring out the false and ring in the true." While he moved his course, crowned with attributes of woelike glories,' he longed to ring out, by teaching men faith and wisdom, "the grief that saps the mind.” grieved over the feud of the rich and poor, and regarded it as a poet's mission to "ring in redress to all mankind." Whatever laws, institutions, and old forms of political life he saw to be decaying, slowly dying, he wished to be speedily rung out of existence, and be replaced by "nobler modes of life, with sweeter manners and purer laws." He More than all the sermons preached in his lifetime have Tennyson's inspired verses, his flame-winged rhymes, done to ring out old shapes of foul disease; to ring out the want, the care, the sin, to ring out in England and America 'the narrowing lust of gold, the faithless coldness of the times to ring out false pride in place and blood, the civil slander and the civic spite, and to ring in the love of truth and right, the common love of good.' And in coming ages, when the thousand wars of old shall have been rung out by the combined influences of knowledge and faith, by the efforts of the wise statesmen, the heroes, martyrs, and seers of all times, then will Tennyson's name be known and revered among those whose life and work helped to ring in "the thousand years of peace." His heart did not misgive him as to the final triumph of right and truth. Even while 'the red fool-fury of the Seine piled again her barricades with dead,' his soul knew that all was well; even while in the roaring storm, 'faith and form seemed sunder'd in the night of fear,' he heard a deeper voice across the storm proclaiming, "Social truth shall spread, and justice." What a rich life was his, how full of ceaseless effort, how fruitful in accomplishing, how nobly he worked his life-work from early youth to the last days of his high old age! A spiritual Ulysses, he could not rest from traveling onward on wisdom's road. How dull it seemed to him ever to pause, though he had seen much and known much, and become a part of all he met. Though his had become a name known to all the nations of the earth, he would make no end of work, would not let his mind rust unburnished. He shone in use even in the last days of his high old age. He saved every hour of his life from the eternal silence, he was ever a bringer of new things, of immortal works. With an ever hungry heart he roamed the plains of knowledge, his spirit longed in desire to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bounds of human thought. Though his body had been made weak by time and fate, he was to the last strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Alas, the King of Song has passed away; the shining knight of love and faith, of truth and human brotherhood, has been wafted from the shores of mortality! And we, still standing on the banks of time, have seen how a dusky bark hove in sight, all the decks dense with stately forms, the figures of those to whom his genius gave immortality. King Arthur was there, and the three Queens with crowns of gold, and all the famous Knights of the Round Table. Ulysses also was seen and his companions; brave-hearted Enoch Arden was in the funeral barge; and chaste Godiva, Isabel, Mariana, Maud and Lady Clare, Dora and the Gardener's Daughter, Queen Mary, Harold, and the Foresters. But one there rose, the tallest of them all and the fairest, Arthur Hallam, who laid the poet's head on his lap and called him by his name, complaining loud. And from them all and from us all, that loved and revered him as our guide, from millions of souls whose light he had been in darkness, there rose "A cry that shivered to the twinkling stars, All night in a waste land, where no one comes, ALEXANDER III. HE Czar Alexander III. is dead. He passed away THE after a most painful illness before completing his fiftieth year. The autocratic ruler and master of one hundred and fifteen million human beings has yielded to an Autocrat mightier than he. He whose word could make a prince of the veriest beggar and turn princes into vagabonds, is now poorer and weaker than the most wretched exile working in chains in a Siberian mine. He whose single will commanded the bodies and souls of vast multitudes, has not will-power enough left to stir his little finger. The man whose decree drove millions of his subjects from their homes, has been compelled by an omnipotent Will to leave his own palatial home and take up his abode in a subterranean chamber. He whose empire stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and from the Pacific to the Baltic, now is content to lie a still and harmless man within the narrow confines of a coffina beautiful and precious coffin, no doubt-still a coffin. Such is the impotence and vanity of all earthly power and pomp. What a grim satirist Death is! What cruel sport he makes of the mightiest kings! How he puts his grinning mask upon the face of majesty! How, in the twinkling of an eye, he changes their crowns and sceptres into a ghastly mockery and makes the vain shows of royalty a derision! There is something at once tragical and farcical in this sudden collapse into nothingness, which God's alleged vicegerents suffer on being touched by the cold hand of Death. The man to whom for thirteen years the twelfth part of the human race looked up with brutish awe and slavish fear, whom they dreaded more and obeyed more readily than God in heaven, will furnish a banquet to the worms like the corpse of any pauper. Vanity of vanities, all earthly glory and authority are vanity! But no, all is not vanity. Wise kings, righteous rulers, who strove to establish the reign of universal justice and equity in the land and wielded the scepter of mercy and humanity, are more glorious in death than in life. They live transfigured in the grateful memory of their people, and are venerated by the nations of the earth as heroes, guides, and benefactors of the race. No unprejudiced observer of these times, who goes by facts and not by fictions, will assign to Czar Alexander III. a place among the wise and beneficent rulers known to history. Though we put the most charitable construction on his intentions and acts, we are driven to the conclusion that his reign was most calamitous to the Russian people and a great misfortune to the best interests of civilization. The saddest feature of all is that the dead Czar, who caused more human misery and degradation than Caligula, Nero, and Domitian combined, was by no means a bad man at heart. Had it been his good fortune to be a mere private citizen, he would have been an estimable, though commonplace, man. He possessed in a marked degree what are called the domestic virtues. He was a most faithful and loving husband in the midst of a notoriously shameless society, compared with which even French society under the Regency, with all its cynicism and blots and foulness, possessed certain redeeming traits. His love for his wife was almost morbid in its intensity. most devoted father. Grief over the fatal illness of one of his sons hastened his own end. He found his greatest enjoyment in being with his wife and children. He was a very industrious and plodding man. Save for brief periods of holiday-making with his family, he used to work till two or three o'clock in the morning, examining records, reading suggestions, and signing papers. He was a giant He was a |