highest forms now existing), or in the embryonic series (i. e., from the egg to the mature condition of one of the highest animals), we find successively higher systems, or organs, dominating the animal body. First, the highest system dominates, viz., the nervous system; then, in the nervous system the highest organ dominates, viz., the brain; then, as we go still higher, the highest ganglion of the brain dominates, viz., the cerebrum; and lastly, in the cerebrum, the highest part, viz., the exterior gray matter, dominates more and more, as shown by the increasing complexity of the convolutions. The whole process may be called cephalization, or head development. It is a development head-ward, brain-ward, cerebrum-ward, and the dominance of ever higher and higher forms of force. e. Now, what is true of the external material world—the macrocosm-is true also of the inner world—the microcosm; what is true of the body (for the body belongs to the macrocosm), is true also of the spirit. All evolution is cephalization. The evolution of the organic kingdom is a cephalization finding its head in man; the evolution of society is a cephalization finding its head and king in the ideal man the divine man; the evolution of the human body is a cephalization finding its head in the brain. So, also, the evolution of the human spirit is and must be a cephalization, and must find its goal and completion in the dominance of the highest part-must find its head and king in conscience. All the threads of my argument converge here. I must enforce and illustrate this point fully. We have already seen that culture is only voluntary evolution. Evolution is universal, but material evolution is blind and unconscious. Man alone perceives the law, and voluntarily carries forward and accelerates the process by rational methods. This is culture. Normal evolution (and therefore culture) of the mind follows a law precisely similar to that already traced in the lower departments of nature. First in childhood culminate the perceptive faculties and the memory. As these decline, they become subordinated to the higher imaginative and aesthetic faculties, which culminate in youth and dominate this period in life. Then as these decline, they are subordinated to the still higher faculties of productive thought, characteristic of mature manhood. These, also, as they decline, must become subordinated to the still higher moral and religious sentiments, which culminate only in old age, but if duly cultivated never decline until ready to commence evolution on a still higher plane.1 The first group of faculties gathers and stores the materials of knowledge; the second group vitalizes the materials thus gathered, and makes them suitable for the purposes of the third, which uses them in the construction of the temple of science; while the fourth and highest group dedicates the whole to noble purposes, and thus gives all their true significance. Thus the whole man becomes not only higher and higher, but also more and more complexly organized in his spiritual nature. But observe: if there be a law of successive culmination, there is also a law-and if not wisely used, a fearful law-of successive decline; and thereby a necessity is laid upon us of continued evolution by culture to the end. We dare not stop; evolution does not, will not, stand still. If it goes not forward, it inevitably goes backward, and may do so at any stage of its advance. Childhoodbeautiful, joyous childhood-how beautiful, and yet how fleeting! Its characteristic faculties cannot remain in full vigor; they must decline. If evolution does not continue-if the higher faculties characteristic of youth do not arise and subordinate these to higher purposes, the whole nature deteriorates from that time; the glory of life passes away with childhood. Youth-glorious youth-it, too, must quickly pass. If evolution or culture (voluntary or involuntary) does not continue, if the still higher faculty of productive thought does not arise, grow strong, and subordinate all lower faculties to 1 I say never decline. I mean, of course, so far as concerns a law of pure spiritual growth. It declines, if at all, only through breaking down of the instrument (brain tissue) through which it operates. itself, the whole nature deteriorates from that moment, either becoming materialized, vulgarized, brutalized, as we so often see in young men, or else fading away and perishing of inanition, as we so often find in young women. Thus the young buds of a noble humanity either grow into unsightly forms, or else shrivel and die, as under the touch of untimely frost. Finally, manhood-strong manhood, with its pride of intellect and plenitude of will-it, alas, must also decline: the law is inexorable. If the moral nature has not all along been gathering force, and if it do not now rise above all other parts of our complex nature, subordinating all to itself and its higher purposes, then, indeed, must commence the final and saddest deterioration of all; then, indeed, must old age become the pitiable and humiliating spectacle which we so often find it. But if the law of evolution completes itself, if the moral nature rises and continues to rise to the last, until it dominates every faculty of mind and body, then is old age the most beautiful part of human life; then is it a thing not to be pitied, but to be loved and venerated. Then is the course of human life like the course of the sun-if not the brightest, at least the most glorious in its setting. Thus, then, of all the departments of our complex nature, the moral alone increases and brightens to the last. It is the link which connects our present life with the life beyond the veil, and its undiminished brightness to the end a sure pledge of its continuance hereafter. As the glories of the departing sun are a pledge and a surety that he will come again-"trick his beams with new spangled ore and flame in the forehead of the morning sky"—even so the moral splendors of a good life closing are a pledge and a surety that that life will flame again in the morning sky of an eternal day. This, then, is the law of evolution of our spiritual nature, and this the glorious result. But the evolution of man differs from all other evolutions in this: it is not wholly under the dominion of natural forces, but also and pre-eminently under the dominion of rational forces. All nature evolves unconsciously under the play of material forces, which are but different forms of the omnipresent divine energy; and according to material laws-which are the laws of Godman alone, if he would reach this true goal, must be a co-worker with nature. He must understand the law and its goal, and deliberately use the means of reaching it. In a word, his true ideal will not and cannot be realized except by voluntary effort, according to true law. Every culture which does not follow this true law is false in method. Every culture which has not this ideal in view fails-miserably fails-of its true end. A true culture must strive to subordinate the lower to the higher, and all to the highest-the body to the mind, the lower faculties of the intellect to the higher, and all to the moral and religious sentiments. Here, also, as in all evolution, the lower underlies and conditions the higher; but the higher must stand above and subordinate the lower. Thus the process of a true culture and its result may be fitly likened to the building and completion of a splendid temple, with its massive foundation, its stately walls, and its glorious roof and spires. Let us, then, lay well the foundation, deep in the earth of our bodies, in the solid rock of physical culture, in physical health, strength, and activity. Thousands stop the work here; but let us not imitate their folly. Let us next build up the stately walls in intellectual culture, in a mind strong, active, and versatile. Alas, how many stop the work just here, imagining that it is now finished! How many a beautiful edifice is disfigured by a mean and paltry roof! Let us avoid this mistake also. Let us add thereto the crowning glory of all-the sky-lighted dome and the heaven-pointing spires; and then dedicate all only to noblest purpose, as a holy temple to the living God. Joseph LeConte. ALFRED TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE. "Mein Lied ertönt der unbekannten Menge; HAS a Californian, as such, any literary right to discuss belles-lettres in print? And if yea, is a Californian magazine discreet in publishing such discussion? It has been a question with me, now that I have sifted my facts and collated reviews extending over a period of fifty years, whether there has not been too much written by those better advised touching the Poet Laureate to warrant any addition to the mass from this corner of the world. Common honesty demands, at all events, that one should disavow any pretense of originality, and say only that which may be flanked by citation and supported by decisions; and it is therefore with hesitancy that I approach the work, and with a doubt as to its adding to the vigor or impressiveness of our magazine. One feels much as some literary Gascon in the days of the Pleiad might have felt in fumbling over questions of French language or rhythm secluded from Parisian sympathy by his provincial exile. But a poet's reputation is, after all, a sort of meteorological fact, which, as it were, requires reported observations from a large expanse of surface; and in many stations these become the duty of unpretentious subalterns; and the world of literature is no longer Paris or London, but the "Great Globe itself." Tennyson enjoys at least a titular popularity in America. If that needed confirmation, the unremitting piracy of his works would furnish it. In one or more forms, they may be found in all polite households; charming ladies the world over will, if urged, gratify you by singing his lyrics; clever, penniless young bachelors everywhere will, when jilted, mouth stanzas of Locksley Hall; and chaps with ill-balanced hearts, who have become unhappily spooney about their friends' wives, will half imagine themselves Lancelots or Tristrams; while village Guineveres are as VOL. I.-2. Has plentiful as village Cromwells, and not always as guiltless in their particular pose. not the poor, pale corpse of the Lily Maid been bandied about among us of the Pacific coast as recklessly as if it were a mummy in a museum, or a "stiff" on an express train? Who shall say that we do not know our poet intimately? and what is there that a prosy essayist out here can tell us in that behalf? And yet, one feels that there is a certain sediment of méfiance pervading the half-cultured strata of the American reading public, which hinders the Englishman's verse from thorough assimilation with the popular American nature. It is almost as if a taste for Tennyson were an exotic, requiring greenhouse fastidiousness to protect it from rude republican northers. This literary symptom (not, however, exactly confined to Tennyson) has been growing apparent in the last twenty years. Former generations not only courted British culture, but found it a necessity. To-day there is arising an actual aversion to British ideas-at least, in what may be called the superficial literary populace. The fact is, Great Britain is becoming foreign to us. Like the Irish, our literary state is conspiring for Home Rule, and clamors for a parliament of its own. We dislike to be thought to speak the English rather than the American language. Even in our pronunciation and modulation, there is a sibboleth apparent; and we gird at the Britisher who has not our speech, however provincial it be, just as country louts are amused at a stranger's costume or special habits of body. Usages once common to both lands are fast wearing out with us; and a time would seem to be coming when English and American, once identical, will be to each other as Japanese unto Chinese. An evidence of the divergence between the two countries is furnished by the fading literary atmosphere have almost weakened to unintelligibility. I would like to discuss Tennyson in the light in which cultivated people in his own country regard him and his works, as shown by commentators in magazines or published volumes. popularity (regard being had to the increase instruction which distance and a murky of population and relative greater percentage of general readers) of English authors once as eagerly conned in America as in the land of their domicile. This partly arises from the confused ideas of superficially educated Americans as to British customs, usages, and local terms- -a defect which renders the reading of British writers a matter of painful thought, more or less clogged with ignorance and uncertainty as to the allusions. I do not think Scott as popular in America as formerly; Burns is actually archaic; and Hogg requires more than a glossary even to smartish people who are ordinarily swift to catch the slang current in bar-rooms and mining camps, as crystallized in local or humorous journalism. All this is a weakness to be deplored. If our literature had become so broad and deep by reason of its Longfellows, its Hawthornes, its Irvings, its Howellses, and its Holmeses, there might be ground for national pride in our literary progress; but the generation that knows not Joseph also forgets Joseph's brethren and sympathizers on this side the ocean; and is apt to be satisfied with thought, poetry, or humor scenting of no higher taste than might be bred in the cabin of the Arkansas Traveler. The literature chosen to supplant English models must be better, not worse, than what has been cast upon us by British descent. Then, too, it happens that, while we are moving farther from British influence, we are drawing closer to lands which foster the alienation. Our young folks are running the risk of knowing more about Zola than about Thackeray; and our æsthetic ladies are more interested in Mademoiselle de Maupin than in the Vicar of Wakefield's Olivia. And yet they might draw a personal benefit from the good taste and elegance of Goldy, which their quavering knowledge of a foreign tongue must ever be a barrier to their finding or appreciating in Gautier. If, therefore, I sermonize a while about an author whom all ought to appreciate, gentle or simple, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, it is but to repeat an Old-World echo of The life of Alfred Tennyson has not been one of startling events. There are no prominent facts in his career hurtled about as literary gossip which would render his. biography a dramatic poem. Save for the fact that he is a poet and poet laureate, his existence has been passed in the elegant obscurity affected by cultured Englishmen. who keep out of politics. His poetry, in one sense, is not egoistic; and he has shrunk from breaking up the privacy of his life to build the materials into the structure of his poetic reputation. But for all that, everything that we need to know or perhaps ought to wish to know of Tennyson is in his writings, if we will but "read between the lines." For that matter, I would challenge any man with the slightest claim to frankness to write anything at all without confessing some portion of his nature. I remember how a gentleman of old California days came to his death by shipwreck. His general reputation had been of decidedly misanthropic acerbity. None gave him credit for especial warmth of feeling. Yet with death not a quarter of an hour away, he attempted an autographic will, of half a dozen lines, which, by its kindness of tone towards children, strangers to his blood, and towards collaterals, by the preciseness of his chirography and punctuation, by the aptness of terms, and the fact that one of them was Scotch, gave indirectly the materials for a biography of a frosty but kindly nature, bred in the Land o' Cakes, in a lawyer's office, thence transferred to journalist duties on a distant shore, of as heroic a soul as one would expect to dwell in the breast of even the vieux militaire who sank with him. In like manner, one might compose a charming history of Tennyson by stringing together verses from his poems; and one might also branch out and show not only what has been, but what might have been-a feature wanting in most biographies. One might mistake a detail here and there, it is true; but the general truth would be told. ALFRED TENNYSON was born August 5th, 1809, at Somersby, a village in Mid-Lincolnshire. Even Americans have heard of the Lincolnshire Fens; and every poem of Tennyson's youth tells of some feature of the scenery of the land, the verdure and foliage of meadow, marsh, and wood, the brook that flows by Somersby, the mill upon it, "The sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean ridges roaring into cataracts." For here the German ocean has full sweep, and seems to enjoy its revels. It is in Lincolnshire that the poet has laid the scene of his latest drama, "The Promise of May." Tennyson's father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of the parish of Somersby. The poet's mother was the daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche. Tennyson comes of gentle stock. Indeed, some of the collateral branches must have been quite tenacious and precise in the matter of their claims in that regard. There are, I believe, extinct baronies lying around, here and there, in the family history. Those Englishmen are proud of nothing so much as springing from an old county family; and I have no doubt but that Tennyson has a proper weakness that way, befitting a man who need not be his own grandfather, and who is grandfather to others. Of course, he has his quiet thrusts at pride of birth; but behind them remains, evidently, the feeling which, while covered by indifference to the pomps of heraldry, borders on satisfaction that he, also, might, had he willed it so, 66 us. One can readily picture the youth of the poet spent in an English rectory, swarming with sisterly and cousinly maidens; such, doubtless, as Trollope and the artists who have illustrated Trollope have depicted for No ordinary nature could pass through that sort of training without a certain wincing softness that would give tone to his whole after-existence. It may, therefore, be noted that all of Tennyson's heroines, of whatever race, time, or clime, are, morally, just such people as one would likely meet in an English country house on long, summer days, book in hand, or in a parish church at Christmas-tide, helping the curate with the evergreens, or flirting in demure style with the lads home from college or London. Tennyson's father was a man of accomplishments-more, perhaps, than of scholarship or of theological propensities. He was an athlete, a musician, a linguist. It would seem that the poet learned Italian to some extent-possibly induced by his father. In those days, there was a breeze of revival of interest in Italian letters, owing to the fact that England had become a refuge for a number of lettered revolutionists, such as Foscolo, Panizzi, and Rossetti; and Tennyson's short-lived friend Hallam was gliding into the Tuscan groove of culture, with no mean promise of future effectiveness and honor in that direction.4 Tennyson's status in life pointed vaguely to the Anglican church as his possible vocation; but it was fortunate that he escaped being a parson. I fancy that his brother Charles would have lived a more rounded Somewhere beneath his own low range of roofs and complete life had he never taken Have also set his many-shielded tree.' "1 The entire Tennysonian household were poets "a nest of nightingales," as one of 1 Aylmer's Field. orders. Besides, one never sees Reverend before an author's name without expecting 2 S. C. Hall's Book of Gems. 8 Howitt, 1847. 4 Hallam's Remains. |