Poor Tennyson! Mr. Gladstone has raised him to the peerage. The Poet Laureate of England has consented to change his glorious name into that of Lord Tennyson. For a long while, the news was treated by the republic of letters as a hoax or a poor joke; but, alas! the report was only too true. The graceful Saxon bard, who has so sweetly sung of King Arthur and his knights of the Round-Table, takes his seat in the House of Lords, just like Mr. Guinness, the manufacturer of double stout. _Ah! quel honneur, Monsieur le Sénateur!_ It is a very shabby trick Mr. Gladstone has played him. The word _esquire_ seemed quite ridiculous enough after the two names: Alfred Tennyson; but Lord Tennyson! No, it is almost too much for one's ears. Where is the Frenchman who says _Monsieur_ Victor Hugo in speaking of our immortal poet? And yet imagine, if you can, something still more unseemly, fancy he had to be called _Monsieur le baron_ Victor Hugo, and you will be able to form an idea of the public feeling here, when it was known that Tennyson was going, of his own free will, to stick the title of Lord in front of his name. No one ever thought of reproaching Lord Byron for being titled: it was an accident; he was but eleven years old when he inherited the title and property of his great uncle. It is said that he wept for joy on learning the honour that the accident of birth had conferred upon him. What bitter tears Tennyson must have shed upon seeing himself, at the close of his brilliant career, _the noble lord the Poet Laureate_! It is a perfect suicide. There was, too, in the genealogy of Alfred Tennyson wherewith to satisfy the most ardent craving for distinction: among his ancestors are to be found princes, kings, and even saints. The Laureate's descent from John Savage, Earl Rivers, implies descent from the first three Edwards, Henry III., John, the first two Henrys, William the Conqueror, Edmund Ironsides, Ethelred, Edgar, Edmund I., Edward the Elder, Alfred, Ethelwulf, and Egbert: then Edward III., being the son of Isabelle, daughter of Philip the Fair, one may count Saint Louis, Philip-Augustus, and Hugh Capet, among the Laureate's ancestors. And these are not all. The _St. James's Gazette_, which a short while ago gave the entire genealogy, showed that to the above names might be added those of Ferdinand III., King of Castile and Leon, canonised by Pope Clement X., the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and several Scottish kings. This is a grand array of noble names, or I am no judge. What can have demoralised the descendant of such men? Was it the voyage to Denmark? Could it be a visit to the Court of Copenhagen, at a time when the Czar of all the Russias, the Czarina, and the Princess of Wales were there? Surely, even that was not enough to turn the head of the most illustrious son of Albion.