agitates every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude guild-brethren; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen: in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungovernable tongues; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: How was it? how went it on? Let us understand it, let us see it, and know it!-In reply, is handed us a really graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over light headed; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder: this, and not the History of Scotland, is what we good naturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something like a horseload of other Books have been written to prove that it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all being so effectually done, concerns us little. To know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable increase of knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and see him with burning candle, from centre to skin,

were no increase of knowledge at all. Thus is History written.

Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should "be the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord! The time is approaching when History will be attempted on quite other principles; when the Court, the Senate, and the Battle-field, receding more and more into the background, the Temple, the Workshop, and Social. Hearth will advance more and more into the foreground; and History will not content itself with shaping some answer to that question: How were men taxed and kept quiet then? but will seek to answer this other infinitely wider and higher question: How and what were men then? Not our Government only, or the "House wherein our life was led," but the Life itself we led there, will be inquired into. Of which latter it may be found that government, in any modern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary condition in the mere sense of Taxation and Keeping quiet, a small, almost a pitiful one.—Meanwhile let us. welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, as bring us any genuine contribution, were it never so inadequate, so inconsiderable.

MORTE D'ARTHUR.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

[The incidents of Tennyson's poem are thus related in La Mort d'Arthure of Sir Thomas Malory, vol. iii., chap. 168, pp. 330, 331, of the edition by Thomas Wright. London, 1858. (La Mort d'Arthure was first issued from Caxton's press in 1485.)

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"But my time hieth fast," said King Arthur unto Sir Bedivere, "therefore take thou Excalibur* my good sword, and go with it unto yonder water side, and, when thou comest there, I charge thee throw my sword into that water, and come again and tell me what thou shalt see there." My Lord," said Sir Bedivere, "your command shall be done, and lightly† bring you word again." And so Sir Bedivere departed; and by the way he beheld that noble sword where the pommel and the haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, "If I throw this rich sword into the water, thereof shall never come good,

*Excalibur: The French romance of Merlin gives the following interpretation of the name:-" Escalibort est un nom Ebrieu, qui vault autant à dire en François comme très cher fer et acier, et aussi disoyent-il vrai." According to the English metrical romance of Merlin, this celebrated sword bore the following inscription :

Ich am y-hote Escalibore;

Unto a King fair tresore.

And it added in explanation,

On Inglis is this writing,

Kene steel and yren and al thing."

"I have forgotten [says Arthur to the Lady of the Lake] the name of the sword which ye gave me." "The name of it," said the lady, "is Excalibur, that is as much to say as "cuttesteele." La Mort d'Arthure, v. i., chap. 28, p. 63.

† Lightly, quickly.

but harm and loss." And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree, and as soon as he might, he came again unto King Arthur, and said he had been at the water, and had thrown the sword into the water. "What sawest thou there?" said the King. "Sir," said he, "I saw nothing but waves and wind.” "That is untruly said of thee," said King Arthur, "therefore go thou lightly* and do my command, as thou art to me lief and dear; spare not, but throw it in." Then Sir Bedivere returned again, and took the sword in his hand; and then him thought† it sin and shame to throw away that noble sword, and so eft‡ he hid the sword, and returned again and told the King that he had been at the water and done his command. "What saw ye there?" said the King. “Sir,” said he, "I saw nothing but the water wap? and the waves waune." "Ah, traitor, untrue!" said King Arthur, "now hast thou betrayed me two times. Who would have weened that thou that hast been unto me so self and dear, and thou art named a noble knight, and wouldst betray me for the rich sword? But now go again lightly,* for thy long tarrying putteth me in great jeopardy of my life, for I have taken cold; and but if¶ thou do as I command thee, and if ever I may see thee, I shall slay thee with my own hands, for thou wouldst for my rich sword see me dead." Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water's side; and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword into the water as far as he might; and there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met it and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished.

And then the hand vanished away with the sword in the water. So Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he had seen. "Alas!" said the King, "help me from hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long." Then Sir Bedivere took King Arthur upon his back, and so went with him to the water's side. And when they were at the water's side, even fast by the bank, hoved a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a Queen, and all they had black hoods, and they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur.

* Lightly, quickly.

Eft, again.

|| Waune, roll.

+ Him thought, it seemed to him. ? Wap, beat.

But if, unless

"Now put me into the barge," said the King; and so he did softly; and there received him three Queens with great mourning, and so these three Queens set them down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head. And then that Queen said, "Ah! dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas! this wound on your head hath taken over much cold." And so then they rowed from the land, and Sir Bedivere beheld all those ladies go from him; then Sir Bedivere cried, “Ah! my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave me here alone among mine enemies?" "Comfort thyself,"

said King Arthur, “and do as well as thou mayst, for in me is no trust for to trust in; for I will into the vale of Avilion for to heal me of my grievous wound; and if thou never hear more of me, pray for my soul." But evermore the Queens and the ladies wept and shrieked that it was pity for to hear them. And as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and wailed, and so took the forest; and so he went all the night, and in the morning he was ware between two hills of a chapel and an hermitage.

George Brimley, in his able essay on Tennyson's Poems, remarks of the Morte d'Arthur: "Since John Dryden died, no English poet has written verse so noble, so sonorous, of such sustained majesty and might; no English poet has brought pictures so clear and splendid before the eye by the power of single epithets and phrases; and Dryden himself never wrote a poem so free from careless lines, unmeaning words, and conventional epithets. The fragment bursts upon us like the blended blasts and wail of the trumpets of pursuing and retreating hosts: a whole day's alternate victory and defeat, a series of single combats, the death of the leaders one by one, the drawing off of the armies at sunset, King Arthur alone and wounded on the field, the coming on of night and the rising of the moon, the approach of King Arthur's last captain to bear him to a place of shelter, are pictured to the imagination in the few vigorous lines that commence the poem.]

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