'Statues growing that noble place in, All heathen goddesses most rare, Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar, All standing naked in the open air!' In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards) which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, _any how_, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, _I should have added_ the following stanzas,' and _then he adds them_, (p. 84;)--or, 'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text, but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) _which they do_;--or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I found it very difficult;'--(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)--'but I have finished the statues of _Elijah_ and _Olympias_--judge whether I have succeeded,' (p. 73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by these means 'We lose no drop of the immortal man.' The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all, but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian painter threw over the head of her father. ----'dimly I could descry The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes, Watching to see me die. The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat; The temples, and the people, and the shore; One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat-- Slowly,--and _nothing more_!' What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would have? But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his _Darling Room_.