This is Tennyson’s legacy, not Harold’s. It seems strange that it should have fallen into careless hands; not ours, but those of the poet’s coreligionists. The fact is that the world is growing weary of little anti-papal tooters. Great enemies of the papacy it applauds and tries to excuse; but at the mouthings of the little people it yawns. If Tennyson has shown anything in this as in his other anti-Catholic effusions, it is that when moved by rancor he can descend to all the small bitterness of a common and weak order of mind. We cannot go further into an examination of _Harold_, and, indeed, the task is not worth while. He has failed in the one character which, to a true dramatic genius, offered magnificent opportunities—William of Normandy, who was perhaps the greatest and the wisest sovereign that England has as yet known. A gallant soldier; a wary yet bold and successful general; an astute statesman; a lover of learning; a resolute if severe ruler; a man who could bide his opportunity, then move on it with the flash and fatality of the lightning, yet withal a man of almost ungovernable passions, with the old taint running in his blood and through all his successful life—this was a character that it is as great a pity Shakspere did not draw as that Tennyson should have been rash enough to attempt to draw. In what ought to be the chief scene of the play, the battle of Hastings, there is no battle at all. The weak device is resorted to of setting a description of it as it proceeds in the mouth of Stigand, who watches the field from “a tent on a mound.” Norman and Saxon, Harold and William, are not brought together for the final death-grip. Shakspere's battle-scenes are more vivid than those of any painter. They illuminate history and print themselves indelibly on the mind. Cut the battle-scenes out of _King John_, _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _Macbeth_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Henry VI._, and you mutilate the plays. Stigand’s description of the battle of Hastings might be dropped from _Harold_ and not missed. Why should not Harold die as Hotspur dies, or as Macbeth, or Brutus, or any of the others—his face to the victorious foe, the fitting ending of the tragedy? Mr. Tennyson was not equal to the task, either in this scene or at Stamford Bridge. The last clash and conflict of human passion he can only look at from afar off and reflect upon when it is over. He cannot take it in hand and present it. He would do well to retire from the field where empires, and men and events that make or unmake empires, are the subjects of song, and go back to the pretty scenery, the calm truth, and the graceful verse that have made his name dearly loved and justly honored. ANGLICANISM IN 1877, AS AFFECTED BY THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.