poets. The music and the just and pure modulation of his verse carry us back not only to the fine ear of Shelley, but to Milton and to Shakespeare: and his powers of fancy and of expression have produced passages which, if they are excelled by that one transcendent and ethereal poet of our nation whom we have last named, yet could have been produced by no other English minstrel. Our author has a right to regard his own blank verse as highly characteristic and original: but yet Milton has contributed to its formation, and occasionally there is a striking resemblance in turn and diction, while Mr. Tennyson is the more idiomatic of the two. The chastity and moral elevation of this volume, its essential and profound though not didactic Christianity, are such as perhaps cannot be matched throughout the circle of English literature in conjunction with an equal power and such as to recall a pattern which we know not whether Mr. Tennyson has studied, the celestial strain of Dante.* This is the more remarkable, because he has had to tread upon ground which must have been slippery for any foot but his. We are far from knowing that either Lancelot or Guinevere would have been safe even for mature readers, were it not for the instinctive purity of his mind and the high skill of his management. We do know that in other times they have had their noble victims, whose names have become immortal as their own.

Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.'t How difficult it is to sustain the elevation of such a subject, may be seen in the well-meant and long popular 'Jane Shore' of Rowe. How easily this very theme may be vulgarised, is shown in the Chevaliers de la Table Ronde' of M. Creuzé de Lesser, who nevertheless has aimed at a peculiar delicacy of treatment.

But the grand poetical quality in which this volume gives to its author a new rank and standing is the dramatic power: the power of drawing character and of representing action. These faculties have not been precocious in Mr. Tennyson: but what is more material, they have come out in great force. He has always

*It is no reproach to say that neither Dante nor Homer could have been studied by Mr. Tennyson at the time-a very early period of his life-when he wrote the lines which are allotted to them respectively in 'The Palace of Art.'

f Inferno, c. V., v. 127.

been fond of personal delineations, from Claribel and Lilian down to his Ida, his Psyche, and his Maude; but they have been of shadowy quality, doubtful as to flesh and blood, and with eyes having little or no speculation in them. But he is far greater and far better when he has, as he now has, a good raw material ready to his hand, than when he draws only on the airy or chaotic regions of what Carlyle calls unconditioned possibility. He is made not so much to convert the moor into the field, as the field into the rich and gorgeous garden. The imperfect nisus which might be remarked in some former works has at length reached the fulness of dramatic energy in the Idylls we have nothing vague or dreamy to complain of: everything lives and moves, in the royal strength of nature: the fire of Prometheus has fairly caught the clay : each figure stands clear, broad and sharp before us, as if it had sky for its background: and this of small as well as great, for even the little 'novice' is projected on the canvas with the utmost truth and vigour, and with that admirable effect in heightening the great figure of Guinevere, which Patroclus produces for the character of Achilles, and (as some will have it) the modest structure of St. Margaret's for the giant proportions of Westminster Abbey. And this, we repeat, is the crown-. ing gift of the poet: the power of conceiving and representing man.

We do not believe that a Milton-or, in other words, the writer of a 'Paradise Lost,'-could ever be so great as a Shakespeare or a Homer, because (setting aside all other questions) his chief characters are neither human, nor can they be legitimately founded upon humanity; and, moreover, what he has to represent of man is, by the very law of its being, limited in scale and development. Here at least the saying is a true one: Antiquitas sæculi, juventus mundi; rendered by our poet in 'The Day-dream,'

'For we are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.'

The Adam and Eve of Paradise exhibit to us the first inception of our race; and neither then nor after their first sad lesson, could they furnish those materials for representation, which their descendants have accumulated in the school of their incessant and many-coloured, but on the whole too gloomy experience. To the long chapters of that experience every genera tion of man makes its own addition. Again

The substitution of law for force has indeed altered the relations of the strong and the weak; the hardening or cooling down of political institutions and social traditions, the fixed and legal track instead of the open pathless field, have removed or neutralised many of those occasions and passages of life, which were formerly the schools of individual character. The genius of mechanism has vied, in the arts both of peace and war, with the strong hand, and has well-nigh robbed it of its place. But let us not be deceived by that smoothness of superficies, which the social prospect offers to the distant eye. Nearness dispels the illusion; life is still as full of deep, of ecstatic, of harrowing interests as it ever was. The heart of man still beats and bounds, exults and suffers, from causes which are only less salient and conspicuous because they are more mixed and diversified. It still undergoes every phase of emotion, and even, as seems probable, with a susceptibility which has increased and is increasing, and which has its index and outer form in the growing delicacy and complexities of the nervous system. Does any one believe that ever at any time there was a greater number of deaths referable to that comprehensive cause, a broken heart? Let none fear that this age, or any coming one, will extinguish the material of poetry. The more reasonable apprehension might be lest it should sap the vital force necessary to handle that material, and mould it into appropriate forms. To those especially, who cherish any such apprehension, we recommend the perusal of this volume. Of it we will say without fear, what we would not dare to say of any other recent work; that of itself it raises the character and the hopes of the age and the country which have produced it, and that its author, by his own single strength, has made a sensible addition to the permanent wealth of mankind.

ART. VI.-1. An Inquiry into the Origin, Progress, and Results of the Strike of the Operative Cotton-Spinners of Preston, from October, 1836, to February, 1837.

2.

3.

Read before the Statistical Section of the British Association at Liverpool in September, 1837. By Henry Ashworth. Manchester, 1838.

The Preston Strike; an Inquiry into its Causes and Consequences. Read before the Statistical Section of the British Association at Liverpool, September, 1854. By Henry Ashworth, Esq., F.S.S. Manchester, 1854.

Combinations and Strikes, their Cost and Results; comprising a Sketch of the History and Present State of the Law respecting them; with a few Suggestions for remedying the Evils arising therefrom. By George Price. London,

1854.

No labourer is better worthy of his hire than the English one. It is not merely that he works harder than the labourer of any other country, but he generally produces a better quality of workmanship. He possesses a power of throwing himself bodily into his occupation, which has always been a marvel to foreigners. When the first gangs of English navvies went over to France to construct the works of the Rouen Railway, the peasantry used to assemble round them, and gaze with wonder at their energy and dexterity in handling the spade and mattock, and at the immense barrow loads of earth which they wheeled out. "Voilà! voilà! ces Anglais! comme ils travaillent!' was the common exclamation.

But it is not merely where muscular strength, bone, and sinew are needed, that the continuous power of the English labourer displays itself. Even in cotton manufacturing, where little exertion is required, the English workman by his patient application contrives to do as much in six hours as the Frenchman does in ten. A witness before a Parliamentary Committee, who had been employed in superintending eight men in one of the best manufactories in Alsace, was asked, 'Supposing you had eight English corders under you, how much more work could you have done?"

His answer was, 'With one Englishman, I could have done more work than I did with those eight Frenchmen. It cannot be called work they do, it is only looking at it, and wishing it done.'*

* Evidence of Adam Young before the Committee on the Employment of Artisans and Machinery, tice to the artisans of Alsace, that they have made in 1824. It ought, however, to be added, in jusconsiderable progress as skilled workmen during the last thirty years.

Sometimes the English artisans appealed to legislation to help them in combating imaginary evils, as in the case of the Shrewsbury cloth-frizers, in the reign of Elizabeth, who complained that persons neither belonging to their company, nor brought up to their trade, 'have of late with great disorder, upon a mere covetous desire and mind, intromitted with and occupied the same trade, having no knowledge, skill, or experience of the same, to the impeachment and hindrance of six hundred people of the art or science of sheermen, or frizers, within the said town.' The Legislature listened to the appeal made to them to protect the united sheermen, and the consequence was that the non-union artisans were expelled the town. Not more than six years later, however, we find the same town of Shrewsbury again before Parliament, imploring the repeal of the Act passed for the benefit of the sheermen, on the ground that it threatened to prove the ruin of the industry of the place. The Act was repealed accordingly, with the following significant avowal: And where sithence the making of the said Act experience hath plainly taught in the said town that the said Act hath not only not brought the good effect that was hoped and surmised, but also hath been, and is now likely to be, the very greatest cause of the impoverishing and undoing of the poor artificers and others, at whose suit the said Act was procured, for that there be now, sithence the passing of the said Act, much fewer persons to set them to work than before,' &c.

The Legislature nevertheless long continued to regulate the operations of commerce, the prices of commodities, and the wages of labourers. It was for this last purpose that the Statute of Apprentices' Act was devised in the reign of Elizabeth, and continued in force for two centuries and a half. By this law all men, except gentlemen born, were compelled to work either at trade or husbandry; their wages were to be assessed by the justices; and it was declared unlawful for any person to exercise any art, mystery, or manual occupation now used in England and Wales, unless he shall have been seven years apprenticed to the same.' This Act, however arbitrary its provisions may now appear, unquestionably exercised an important influence on English industry. It stigmatised and punished the idle and the vagabond, directed the mass of the people

means of independent subsistence, and being acted on steadily from generation to generation, it gradually educated a nation of skilled artisans. The chartered guilds and corporations were in some degree placed beyond the reach of this law; and it is a remarkable circumstance that in almost every case their privileges proved their ruin. Industry fled from the protection of the united trades and guilds of the corporate towns, and took refuge in the unprivileged and then obscure hamlets of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and numerous other towns, which soon left the ancient cities and boroughs far behind.

As manufactures extended, and especially when machinery began to interfere, not only with the power, but also with the dexterity, which, more than any statute, protected the highly-paid artisan, the upper class of operatives, besides redoubling their exertions, were led to seek protection in combinations for the purpose of maintaining the rate of wages. These combinations had long been customary; the men had been taught them by the guilds and corporations, and as early as Edward VI.'s reign, when ye workemen dyd rebbelle ther worke and refuse their places,' we find an Act passed (2 and 3 Edw. VI. c. 15) forbidding confederacies to enhance wages, under severe penalties. The combinations of those early days, as appears from one of the sections of this Act, seem principally to have occurred among those employed in building, such as free-masons, rough masons, carpenters, and bricklayers. The same subject occupied the attention of successive English parliaments, and as many as thirty separate statutes were enacted, directed against trades' combinations. These Acts continued in existence as late as the year 1824, when they were all repealed. Legislation was abandoned, because its total failure had been conclusively proved. It was found that combinations were not prevented by repression, but, on the contrary, they multiplied in all directions, though in secrecy, and were an increasing source of crime and outrage of the most detestable character. Vitriolthrowing, arson, and assassination were practised upon such masters and workmen as made themselves obnoxious to the trades' unions; the operations of trade and capital were seriously interfered with; and it was felt that, not only was it impossible to stop combinations, but, by confounding right and wrong, and treating unionists as felons, men were led to regard things