hero of "Maud" to let us know whether war is more likely to reduce or to multiply the horrors which he denounces? Will more babies be poisoned amidst comparative ease and plenty, or when, as before the fall of Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as they now are, and wages not much more than half as high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much given to war: but no nations were more sedulous in the cult of Mammon. Again, the Scriptures are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they do not recommend this original and peculiar cure. Nay, once more: what sad errors must have crept into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he is made to desire that our swords shall be converted into ploughshares, and our spears into pruning-hooks! But we have this solid consolation after all, that Mr. Tennyson's war poetry is not comparable to his poetry of peace. Indeed he is not here successful at all: the work, of a lower order than his, demands the abrupt force and the lyric fire which do not seem to be among his varied and brilliant gifts. We say more. Mr. Tennyson is too intimately and essentially the poet of the nineteenth century to separate himself from its leading characteristics, the progress of physical science and a vast commercial, mechanical, and industrial development. Whatever he may say or do in an occasional fit, he cannot long either cross or lose its sympathies; for while he elevates as well as adorns it, he is flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone. We fondly believe it is his business to do much towards the solution of that problem, so fearful from its magnitude, how to harmonise this new draught of external power and activity with the old and more mellow wine of faith, self devotion, loyalty, reverence, and discipline. And all that we have said is aimed, not at Mr. Tennyson, but at a lay-figure which he has set up, and into the mouth of which he has put words that cannot be his words. We return to our proper task, "Maud," if an unintelligible or even, for Mr. Tennyson, an inferior work, is still a work which no inferior man could have produced; nor would it be difficult to extract abundance of lines, and even passages, obviously worthy of their author. And if this poem would have made while alone a volume too light for his fame, the defect is supplied by the minor pieces, some of which are admirable. "The Brook," with its charming interstitial soliloquy, and the "Letters" will, we are persuaded, always rank among Mr. Tennyson's happy efforts; while the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," written from the heart and sealed by the conscience of the poet, is worthy of that great and genuine piece of manhood, its immortal subject.