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and she was at once subjected to an espionage that was tormenting. She was permitted no more to cross the threshold of a Protestant sanctuary; the Bible she had obtained was withdrawn, and intercourse with her young Protestant friend forbidden. There was no harshness, no menace, used at first to frighten back the wanderer. The politic priest understood the delicate mechanism of her nature too well to permit that, until all milder means should prove unavailing. He knew that

"Her sweet emotions could be ever swayed

By gentle words, as reeds by summer wind;"

but he had not yet learned that when what she deemed truth and principle to be at stake, she could be as firm "as beetling rocks upon the ocean's shore." The most winning persuasion and specious argument were therefore in vain. he who had been so directly taught of God himself, could not come back and sit meekly as once, at the feet of a human teacher. Coldness took the place of kindness towards her. Her scrupulous and rigid relatives sighed over her strange obstinacy, and marvelled at the tenacity with which the taint of Protestantism clings, as they remembered her childish account of her dying mother's injunctions and prayer. Compulsatory mortifications and vigils and fasts, while they served to make the lovely face paler, and the fragile figure still slighter, left the spirit calm and unshaken. She could not renounce the only anchor of hope she had ever found to cling to, to be tossed again upon a sea of doubts. It was thought necessary to remove her to some place better fitted for carrying on the important work proposed, and far away from the troublesome inspection and too curious inquiries of interested friends. A journey must be taken for the benefit of her health, she was told; and the unresisting girl allowed herself to be borne away to the convent at E―, where the pure air and the Sabbath quiet of the spot would, they assured her, restore her physical nature to its proper tone, and the heavenly communings, and spotless examples of the holy sisters, aid in bringing her back from her path of error. A series of systematic efforts was commenced immediately upon her arrival; beginning with a tenderness and sympathy that moved the unsuspecting and unfriended orphan to tears, and continuing through all gradations up to the refined mental torture which only Jesuit cunning knows how to inflict upon a victim wholly within its hand. clearer and steadier grew the light within; more resolute became the heart that was being made

But

"perfect through suffering." And though there were times when the dismayed spirit trembled and faltered in its path of loneliness, the feeling was a momentary one. She did not shrink or compromise her faith, and had the eyes of those who were striving to shake her constancy had a spiritualized vision, they might have seen that ever in her extremity there appeared "an angel strengthening" her.

The drama was well nigh ended; its last scene drew to a close. While the strong heart grew stronger, its delicate outward environments began to give way.

-"The weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,"

was soon to be lifted off, and the tumult that had often vexed the enduring soul, to be lost forever in that "appropriate calm" which should know no breaking.

In a small chamber, empty and plain even to homeliness, lay the meek sufferer, with her eyes fixed upon the westering sun, whose latest rays rested like a crown of gold on the top of a distant mountain.

'Near home !" she murmured faintly to herself again and again-"near home!" She lingered upon the last word as if it conveyed to her mind an idea of inexpressible sweetness. The golden gleam faded from the room and the dim twilight crept on, making what was lonely before, seem still lonelier. Long after the darkness of night had reigned through the apartment, the low, weak voice might have been heard try ing to keep the solitary heart company.

"It will be sorrowful," she sighed, "sorrowful to die alone! Ah! their religion is not like that of Jesus; he is so compassionate! He has not left me; no, I am not alone!"

A stealthy step gliding over the floor interrupted the soliloquy, and one of the youngest of the nuns sat down upon the bed and laid her hand on Una's damp brow.

"Oh! you shall not be alone, sister!" said she; "I will watch with you; only believe, only trust in the faith of our holy church. I am in an agony for you; I cannot see you die under an anathema;" and she knelt at the bedside and besought with tears for a renunciation.

Such a manifestation of interest and kindness touched Una deeply; but she did not weep; she was too near heaven for tears. Calmly and connectedly as her failing strength would permit, she reiterated the sources of her trust, and prayed the sympathizing sister to make them her own.

The entrance of a second person terminated the conversation. She bore a taper in her hand, and the deference with which the nun received her, marked her as the superior. She advanced to the bed, and bending over, asked in no very gentle tone, if her determination was unchanged.

"My hope is in my Saviour's sacrifice," was the faint reply. She placed her fingers upon Una's wrist for a moment, then turning, said to the nun in a tone in no degree lowered

"Sister Agnes, you are more experienced in sickness than I am; feel her pulse and tell me if you think she will last till morning!"

The sister cast an appealing glance toward Una; but the question had caused no visible agitation. She took her hand as directed, but it was only to carry it to her lips and bathe it with her tears.

"Ye shall save them pulling them out of the fire,' is the direction of the holy apostle," said the superior. The father is waiting below to administer the last rites; for unworthy as she has shown herself to be by her obstinacy, yet for the sake of her friends, who are true children of the church, and who would be shocked to think she had died without them, we will not withhold them. Tell him I am ready, sister Agnes; you need not return.

Heedless, for a moment, of the superior's presence, the nun folded her arms around Una with a convulsive clasp, and then hurried from the room. In a few moments the priest appeared, bearing in his hands the golden vessel containing the holy chrism. One effort more was

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made to shake the purpose of the dying girl, but the same answer was returned as before. With something like an imprecation, the priest proceeded in a careless manner to apply the extreme unction. Una's lips moved the while in silent prayer, and when, the ceremony being finished, they left her in darkness and alone, her already glorified spirit was only conscious of the presence of hovering angels waiting to convoy her through the "blue realms of ether," to the bosom of her God. When the early bell rung for matins, its sound did not disturb the sleeper; she had wakened in heaven! The mother's prayer was answered, as she knelt before the throne with one child, long a dweller in heaven, and the other a new and wondering angel, and said, "Here am I, with the children whom Thou hast given me !"

Blessed Una! thou wert not the only martyr of whose existence the world has no record; but the repose of heaven was far sweeter to thee after the struggles of thy young heart here, than if thou hadst passed from a bed of roses to the "green pastures" and "still waters" above!

Una's aunt and cousin grieved sincerely for her; but the assurance contained in the letter of the superior, that she had received the last rites, was all the comfort they asked. They caused to be erected over her grave, in the little cemetery at E, a monument bearing only this simple inscription:

UNA G, aged seventeen, Implora pace.

To gambol in the summer sun,

Wondering at all I see;

Or at my father's side to run;

Sit on my mother's knee;

Or with my brother, or a friend,
Fearless, reckless, wild,

Once more to chase the butterfly—
I wish I were a child.

Through all the world, 'mong rich or poor, Wherever we may turn;

Full well we see, 'tis but too true,

That "man was made to mourn."
But when those little ones I see,

Gentle, peaceful, mild,
In sweet simplicity of thought,
I wish I were a child.

"Except you turn like one of these,"

Said He who reigns above, "You cannot to my kingdom come,

Where all is peace and love."

And this I know, although in heaven,
By angels pure and mild,
Eternal praise to him is given,
He loves a little child.

Oh, life, it is a thorny path;

This world, a world of care; How vain, indeed, is all the joy, That we on earth can share! Man's life, a life is full of woes; This, gentle, peaceful, mild;

In truth, in hope, in joy, and love, I wish I were child.

THE name of Alfred Tennyson is pressing slowly, calmly, but surely-with certain recognition, but no loud shouts of greeting-from the lips of the discerning along the lips of the less informed public to its "own place" in the stony house of names. That it is the name of a true poet, begins to be everywhere acknowledged; and he now stands upon the firm ground of an universal recognition of his genius, after no worse persecution than is comprised in the charges of affectation, quaintness, and mannerism. But little is known of his personal history, more than that he is the son of a clergyman of Lincolnshire, England; that he went through the usual routine of a University education at Trinity College, Cambridge; that he is one of a large and gifted circle of brothers and sisters still living; that his chief social characteristic is a strong disposition to avoid general society, preferring to sit up all night talking with a friend, or else to sit and think alone. Beyond a very small circle he is never to be met. There is nothing eventful in his biography, and need not restrain us from the brief view of his qualities and excellences as a poet, which we now propose to give.

Perhaps the first spell cast by Tennyson, the master of so many spells, he casts upon the ear. His power as a lyrical versifier is remarkable. The measures flow softly or roll nobly to his pen; as well one as the other. He can gather up his strength, like a serpent, in the gleaming coil of a line; or dart it out straight and free. Nay, he will write you a poem with nothing in it except music, and as if its music were everything, it shall charm your soul. Be this said, not in reproach, but in honor of him and of the English

language, for the learned sweetness of his numbers. The Italian lyrists may take counsel, or at once enjoy,

"Where Claribel low lieth."

But if sweetness of melody and richness of harmony be the most exquisitely sensuous of Tennyson's characteristics, he is no less able to "pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone," for certainly his works are equally characterized by their thoughtful grace, depth of sentiment, and ideal beauty. And he not only has the most musical words at his command, but he possesses the power of conveying a sense of color, and a precision of outline by means of words, to an extraordinary degree. In music and color he was equalled by Shelley, but in form, clearly defined, with no apparent effort, and no harsh shades or lines, Tennyson stands unrivalled.

Tennyson may be considered generally under four different aspects-developed separately or in collective harmony, according to the nature of his subject that is to say, as a poet of fairy-land and enchantment; as a poet of profound sentiment in the affections, (as Wordsworth is of the intellect and moral feelings;) as a painter of pastoral nature; and as the delineator and representer of tragic emotions, chiefly with reference to one particular passion.

With regard to the first of these aspects of his genius, it may be admitted at the outset that Tennyson is not the portrayer of individual, nor of active practical character. His characters, with few exceptions, are generalizations, or refined abstractions, clearly developing certain thoughts, feelings, and forms, and bringing them home to all competent sympathies. The critics who

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have seized upon the poet's early loves-his Claribels, Lilians, Adelines, Madelines-and comparing them with real women, and the ladyloves of the actual world, have declared that they were not natural beings of flesh and blood, have tried them by a false standard. They do not belong to the flesh-and-blood class. There is no such substance in them. They are creatures of the elements of poetry. And for that reason, they have a sensuous life of their own; as far removed from ordinary bodily condition as from pure spirit. Standing or seated, flying or floating, laughing or weeping, sighing or singing, pouting or kissing, they are lovely underbodies, which no German critic would for a moment hesitate to take to his visionary arms.

In the description of pastoral nature in England, no one has ever surpassed Tennyson. The union of fidelity to nature and extreme beauty is scarcely to be found in an equal degree in any other writer. He is generally as sweet, and fresh, and faithful in his drawing and coloring of a land scape, as the prose pastorals of Miss Mitford, which is saying the utmost we can for a possessor of those qualifications. But besides this, Tennyson idealizes, as a poet should, wherever his subjects needs it—not so much as Shelley and Keats, but as much as the occasion will bear, without undue preponderance, or interfering with the harmony of his general design. His landscapes often have the truthful ideality of Claude, combined with the refined reality of Calcott, or the homely richness of Gainsborough. The landscape painting of Keats was more like the backgrounds of Titian and Annibal Carracci; as that of Shelley often resembled the pictures of Turner. We think the extraordinary power of language in Shelley sometimes even accomplished, not only the wild brilliancy of coloring, but the apparently impossible effect, by words, of the wonderful aerial perspective of Turner-as where he speaks of the loftiest star of heaven "pinnacled dim in the intense inane." But with Tennyson there is no tendency to inventiveness in his descriptions of scenery; he contents himself with the loveliness of the truth seen through the medium of such emotion as belongs to the subject he has in hand. But as these emotions are often of profound pas. sion, sentiment, reflection, or tenderness, it may well be conceived that his painting is of that kind which is least common in art. The opening of "Enone" is a good example, and is a fine prelude to love's delirium, which follows it.

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier

Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.

The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine,

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And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.”

The frequent tendency to the development or illustration of tragic emotion is illustrated in his Dirge;" the "Death of Love," the "Ballad of Oriana;" the "Supposed Confession;" and "Mariana;" all of which are full of the emotions and thoughts which lead directly, if they do not involve, tragic results. The same may be said of the following poems: the "Lady of Shalott;" Eleanore;" "Enone;" the "New Year's Eve;" and the "Sisters."

This "Sisters" is a ballad poem of six stanzas, each of only four lines, with two lines of a chorus sung by the changeful roaring of the wind "in turret and tree"-which is made to appear conscious of the passions that are at work. In this brief space is comprised, fully told, and with many suggestions beyond, a deep tragedy.

The story is briefly this. A youthful earl of great personal attractions seduces a young lady of family, deserts her, and she dies. Her sister, probably an elder sister, and not of equal beauty, had, apparently, also loved the earl. When, therefore, she found that not only had her love been in vain, but her self-sacrifice in favor of her sister had only led to the misery and degradation of the latter, she resolved on the earl's destruc tion. She exerted herself to the utmost to attract his regard; she "hated him with the hate of hell," but, it is added, that she "loved his beauty passing well," for the earl "was fair to see." Abandoning herself in every way to the accomplishment of her purpose, she finally lulled him to sleep, with his head in her lap, and then stabbed him "through and through." She composed and smoothed the curls upon "his comely head," admiring to see that "he looked so grand when he was dead;" and wrapping him in a winding-sheet, she carried him to his proud ancestral hall, and "laid him at his mother's feet."

We have no space to enter into any psycholo gical examination of the peculiar character of this sister; with regard, however, to her actions, the view that seems most feasible, and the most poetical, if not equally tragic, is that she did not actually commit the self-abandonment and murder; but went mad on the death of her sister, and imagined in her delirium all that has been related. But "read the part" how we may, there never was a deeper thing told in briefer words.

The later poems of Tennyson have exemplified more strikingly, that his tendency to, and his power in the treatment of tragic subjects. The