At length the miserable fool, with no rebuke for the heathen thought that God is moved by penances like these instead of active efforts to promote His cause and human happiness, working miracles such as the earliest saints performed, climbs up into his airy home and there “receives the blessed sacrament.” Where is Mr. Tennyson’s “high, spiritual philosophy,” and “transcendental light?” The ideas, imagery and style of expression in this poem are familiar to all readers of monkish stories, and from the beginning of it to the end there are not half a dozen lines to be remembered when the book is closed. We cannot foretell to what degree of popularity these poems will attain in America. The fewness of the copies here, before the appearance of the present edition, enabled some persons to steal the author’s livery and achieve great reputation among a class who will now transfer their admiration to him who “stole at first hand from Keats.” That Tennyson has genius cannot be denied, but his chief characteristics pertaining to style, they will not long attract regard. We have better poets in our own country—Bryant, Longfellow, and others—who put “diamond thoughts in golden caskets;” and all true critics will prefer their simple majesty or beauty to the fantastic though often tasteful and brilliant displays of Tennyson. The difference between them is like that which distinguishes the sparkling frost that vanishes in the sun from ingots of silver that may be raked into heaps and will last forever. Our attention has been directed to resemblances between the poems of Tennyson and those of our own quaint and felicitous humorist, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. We have not space for a parallel. The first is a man of fortune who has given twenty years to the poetic art; the last a young physician who, devoting all his time to a laborious profession, has little leisure for dalliance with the muse, and no ambition to win “a poet’s fame.” Yet even as a versifier Holmes is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient effort and care, he would in every way surpass him as an author. * * * * * _Forest Life: By the author of “A New Home—Who’ll Follow?” Two Vols. 12mo. New York, Charles S. Francis. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart._