from the outset, his course was hindered by a sin of such a kind that it had grown into and twined itself round all that was best in his nature; that, indeed, he had taken the vow only in the hope that the sight or touch of the Holy Grail might free him from this fatal sin; but that a most holy saint, whom he consulted, had told him with tears that, if he could not first rid himself of the sin, the Quest was vain. This thought drives him mad; and it is left in doubt whether what he describes was anything more than the dream of a distempered mind. The description itself, however, is one of the best parts of the poem. These lines are in the author's most perfect manner :

Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,

And with me drove the moon and all the stars;
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night

I heard the shingle grinding in the surge,

And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up,

Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek,

A castle like a rock upon a rock,

With chasm-like portals open to the sea,

And steps that met the breaker! There was none
Stood near it but a lion on each side

That kept the entry, and the moon was full.

The rest of the passage is too long to quote, but it is nearly all of the same merit. There is a touch of quiet satire in making the frivolous Gawain come in, after Lancelot's tale, with a compliment to his own good sense in having kept out of such a driftless enterprise, which he ends with a superfluous protest that the ecstasies of holy virgins shall not be permitted to have any influence on his future conduct. Of course he is rebuked by the king, who moralises on the whole event, and closes with a mysterious allusion to his own coming fate.

It will be seen, even from our rapid summary, that the story of the "Holy Grail" is well designed and skilfully constructed. If its poetical excellence were even less, the conception and action of the characters and the method of the narrative would make it be read with interest. We have already intimated our disinclination to deal with the poem of " Pelleas and Ettarre," which immediately follows in this volume. As a piece of composition, it is undeniably beautiful: the narrative is lively and the language exquisite; indelicate things are delicately veiled; but the subject does not please us. We grudge to see that wealth of jewelry scattered on such a worthless scrap of flesh. The "Passing of Arthur" completes the series. It embodies, as we have before remarked, the poet's earlier work, VOL. XIV.—NO. XXVIII. [New Series.]

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entitled the "Morte d'Arthur." We must say that the dovetailing might be more deftly done; but we cannot agree with the opinion expressed by some critics that the new parts of the poem are not worthy of the old. There is more of care and finish, undoubtedly, in the lines with which we have been long familiar, but the description now given us of Arthur's last battle on the sands of Lyonnesse is written with the power of a master, and leaves nothing to desire in method, movement, or colouring. The extract is rather long, but no one will dislike to read it, and we shall make no more :

Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight

Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
A death-white mist slept over sand and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear; and e'en on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought,
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew ;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist

Was many a noble deed, many a base,

And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host

Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the north, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale king glanced across the field
Of battle but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave

Brake in among dead faces, to and fro

Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets, of the fallen,

And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores

The voice of days of old and days to be.

No one better illustrates than Mr. Tennyson the truth of the venerable maxim that "art is long." The early effusions of his muse, which were what enthusiastic young ladies call "sweetly pretty," sometimes bordered on the namby-pamby, and found a fit receptacle and shrine in those "Books of Beauty" which were a feature of the period. His sweetness, indeed, has never failed; but it was then rather cloying-the honey, possibly, of Hymettus or of Hybla, but with a flavour much less of thyme than of lavender. Between "Lilian " and "Maud" there lies an interval of progressive improvement far exceeding any proportion in the interval of time; and the "Lady of Shalott" revivified in "Elaine" is almost as different as a lay figure from a living person. Sweet as his first notes were, they were worthier of the lute that echoes in a lady's bower than of the lyre that stirs into life and action the souls of men. But in his later poems, besides the exquisite diction which is their unfailing charm, there are numberless fine thoughts and striking descriptions; words that electrify and phrases that photograph; a rapid, bounding movement, and a vital and vivid energy; a force of expression which transfers, with the clearness and sharpness and indelibility of a die, the writer's idea to the reader's mind. We do not deny, then, that Mr. Tennyson's popularity is well founded as well as fully established. No doubt, the verses of Tasso were familiar to patrician lips before they found their way to the mouths of the Venetian people. If those classes among ourselves which plume themselves as the higher, had not such a deplorably bad taste for "chickaleary" lyrics and the slang of stables and streets; if they set a good example to those inferiors whose bad example they are now so astonishingly eager to imitate; it is not impossible that the wonderfully perfect English and ever-musical verse of the Poet Laureate would come in time to have that influence over all Englishspeaking men which it has evidently gained among the cultured and well-educated.

ART. VII.-THE MINISTERIAL EDUCATION BILL.

A Bill to Provide for Public Elementary Education in England and Wales. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed.

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HURSDAY, February 17, 1870, will assuredly be an era of immense importance in the history of England. On that day Mr. Forster, as Vice-President of the Council, proposed and explained in the House of Commons a Bill the object of which is to provide that every child in England and Wales shall henceforth receive elementary education; and great as had been up to that very moment the differences of opinion upon the subject, that Bill was received by both the great parties, in a manner which makes it morally certain that before the end of the Session its main provisions at least will become law. That a Bill professing to be a permanent settlement of so vast, so important, and so much disputed a subject, should have been received as it has hitherto been by Parliament and by the country at large, is in itself one of the most extraordinary triumphs which any British Administration ever attained; and no man whose memory extends back for forty years, or even less, can fail to feel it as the strongest possible illustration of the fact, that England, in the life of the present generation, has passed through a most real, although by the blessing of God, a silent and bloodless revolution. To imagine how such a measure would have been received, say before 1830, would be impossible, because no one can really form the idea of any minister proposing it. We need hardly say, that there are many things in the change which we deplore; but we wish our readers to present to their minds, not merely the things which we must regret, but the whole of the revolution of which they are part; because, on the whole, the consideration is calculated to make them thank God and take courage. Much as there is to regret, much to oppose, in 1870, would we on the whole change it for 1820?

Our readers must forgive us if, in shortly stating the more important details of the Government measure, we repeat what is now familiar to them all; for the recollection of such details soon becomes dim and indistinct even in the minds of those who have felt the keenest interest in them; and we suspect that those whose knowledge on the subject is now most accurate will, before very long, be glad to have them in a form on which they can look back.

The Bill proposes, then, to enact, that a "public elementary school" shall henceforth be provided (where it does not already exist) for every poor child in England and Wales. The conditions of such a school are laid down as three. 1. That the secular teaching shall attain the standard required by the Committee of Council on Education. 2. That the school shall be subject to the visits and examination of the Queen's Inspectors; the rule being abandoned which bound particular schools (as, for instance, Catholic schools and those of the Established Church) to receive only inspectors of the same religion with their managers. 3. That "no scholar shall be required, as a condition of being admitted into or enjoying all the benefits of the school, to attend or abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any place of religious worship, or to learn any such catechism or religious formulary, or to be present at any such lesson, or instruction, or observance as may have been objected to on religious grounds by the parent of the child, or by its guardian or other person who is liable to maintain or has the actual custody of it, such objection having been expressed in writing to the manager or principal teacher of the school."

Next, the Bill divides England and Wales into school districts, which, in the country, are to be the same as the parishes relieving their own poor, unless the Educational Department shall unite two or more into one district. In places having municipal corporations the school district will be the same as the borough; in London the districts will be the same as the existing union school districts, where these exist, and in other cases the same as the district administered by a vestry. As soon as the Act is passed, the Educational Department is to take steps (prescribed by the Bill) to obtain a report upon each district, certifying whether the existing means of elementary education are or are not deficient. In calculating this, allowance is to be made for all schools which allow the necessary information to be obtained, whether or not they have hitherto been visited by the Queen's Inspectors and assisted by a Government grant.

With those districts in which the supply of elementary education is reported to be adequate, the new system is not to interfere, except that the three conditions already detailed are to be necessary before any school will be treated as a public school and left in possession. In all others, in which it is announced to be insufficient, a year is to be allowed from the date of such public announcement, in which voluntary exertions may, if they can, supply the deficiency. If at the end of the year it is still unsupplied, the Education Department may order a "school board" to be appointed. This is to consist of either