“Must I?” said Margaret playfully; “Well, then, if I must, I must! I have always been a pattern of obedience—have I not, papa?” and Mr. Walton entering, as she spoke, the happy but embarrassed girl escaped from Vivian’s ardent thanks, and flew to her chamber, to recall his every look and tone, and to live over again in fancy the joy of that delightful interview. An hour afterwards, he joined her in her walk, and gave her the whole history of his love, his suspicions and his jealousy. “And so, Mr. Vivian Russell,” said the lady, when he had concluded, “those harmless atoms of paper have been the cause of all this misunderstanding and estrangement. Truly, indeed, said the bard that, “_Trifles light as air_ Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ.” * * * * * SEPTEMBER WALTZ. COMPOSED FOR GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. [Illustration: musical score] * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _The Poems of Alfred Tennyson. Two vols. 12mo. Boston, William D. Ticknor. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart._ Of the works of cotemporary English poets of the second class, perhaps none have been more commented upon or less read in America than those of Alfred Tennyson. The chief reason may be that never until now having been reprinted here, and a very small number only of the first English impression having been imported, they have not been accessible to many whom the praises or the reviewers would have led to examine into their pretensions. The Cardinal de Richelieu, it is said, fancying himself as skilled in poetry as in diplomacy, wrote a tragedy, which having been damned on its anonymous presentation to the critics, he tore into atoms and burned. For like cause Mr. Tennyson, soon after the publication of his “Poems, chiefly Lyrical,” committed all the copies of them he could regain to the fire. But the cardinal and our cotemporary erred. Time, not fire, is the trier of verse. Upon the surface of the stream of ages the good will at some period rise to float forever, the middling for a while live in the under current of the waters, and in the end, with the utterly worthless, sink into the oblivious mire at the bottom. To this conclusion Mr. Tennyson seems now to have been brought, for he has this summer republished his early poems, with many new ones which, though free from some of the more conspicuous faults of his first productions, generally lack their freshness, beauty and originality. We look in vain in the second volume of the edition before us for pieces surpassing his Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, Adeline, Margaret, The Death of the Old Year, or parts of The Dream of Fair Women. He excels most in his female portraitures; but while delicate and graceful they are indefinite; while airy and spiritual, are intangible.