life of things. Man cannot look long with his eyes, before his heart will be moved. God is not concealed by his works. He that looks upon them, until he sees their beauty and how all together harmonize, cannot but feel the one Spirit working in all. Strike down wherever he will, if he sound but deep enough, he must come to living waters. And then his heart will glow, his knees will bend in reverence, and when he rises, it will be to look and speak prophetic things. We repeat, then, that Tennyson has a poet's nature to answer for.

But we cannot think him true to himself. Taking his poetry together, we must own that it does not often inspire us. He has sought out for us the loveliest; but we fear he has too much of the amateur, and not enough of the lover. He abstracts himself too much from man. He has cultivated the ideal side of his nature to excess, and so almost forfeited his right to human society. Dearly he loves to look at things; he finds a beauty in all; but then all he cares to see is their shadows in the magic mirror that hangs before him. He claps his hands in glad surprise as each still form of life passes over the mirror, but he will not turn round and shake hands with the reality. There is nothing which he so shuns as life. He seeks repose not always the repose of harmonious action, but sometimes of absolute suspension of the vital functions. He converts life into an aesthetic feast; he would fain lull the universe to sleep, that he may look at it, without having to do with it. He will not himself circulate with the current of universal being, but would lift himself out of it and look on. This is effectually shutting himself out from human sympathies. Many of his most finished and beautiful poems, so far as sound and image are concerned, yet make no appeal to any active sentiment within us. They shine for nothing-insulated as in a vacuum. Such are "The Lotos Eaters," "The Hesperides," "The Dream of Fair Women," and others. It may be supposed that he would fail in a patriotic song. Several which he has given us are mere sound without meaning. And an indignant sonnet to Napoleon rebukes him, not in the name of outraged humanity, but of mere vulgar English pride.

He is a dainty, contemplative, curious poet. Active enthusiasm he has almost none. He does not excite, nor get excited. The sphere of active interests, the momentous struggles of great principles, the tragic situations of the human heart he avoids. He seeks to unrealize things and view them

as phantoms. Thus his female creations, we have said, are as lovely as angels, but they scarcely live; they are shadows. His Claribel lives only in the watchful care of the elements, the leaves, the waters, and the stars, about her grave. The most warm and lovely of all these ideal beings, his " Sleeping Beauty," is doomed to eternal slumber.

"Her constant beauty doth inform

Stillness with love and day with light."

The great fault then with Tennyson is that he has sacrificed too much to beauty. The best will always be beautiful; but beauty is not always to be directly sought, any more than pleasure. It does not come at our calling; it surprises us. He finds himself most blessed with it, who, without seeking it, acts according to the noblest impulse. But the exclusive pursuit of beauty becomes idolatry. Tennyson seems to be conscious of this. One of his longest poems, "The Palace of Art," is an allegorical history of a mind entirely, selfishly devoted to beauty. The Poem itself is dull, and overwrought in some passages, till it is reduced to metaphysical abstractions, the very opposite of poetry. But the idea of the piece, as described in some prefatory lines, is worth any one's serious study. He calls his hero

"A glorious devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love beauty only, (beauty seen

In all varieties of mould and mind,)

And knowledge for its beauty; or if good,

Good only for its beauty, seeing not

That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,

Living together under the same roof,

And never can be sundered without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out by Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in utter darkness.".

Such a "glorious devil" it were not worth while to become, even to enjoy as many Elysian trances, and be the same sweet singer, as Alfred Tennyson. But his seems a spirit pure as yet, only given too much to mere æsthetic enjoyment. What he has yet done is not worthy of himself. Let us hope for better things.

J. S. D.

ART. III. The Ends of a Business Life.

THE past summer has been one of great commercial distress. This distress was brought on by many causes, among which speculation stood eminent. It may be well, then, at this time, to look at the moral bearings of speculation and business.

In all business transactions there is more or less of risk, more or less calculation of the probable turn of the market, and, of course, more or less speculation. This makes it impossible to draw a clear line between regular commercial operations, and speculative ones. If we say that these last are gambling in their nature, meaning thereby, that their results depend on chances of which we can know nothing, we exclude most of the transactions called by the world speculative, for it is rarely the case that all in them is as uncertain as the turning of the dice in our favor; and if we do not use terms thus, who shall say what amount of probabilities takes an operation out of the class of speculations, and makes it one of regular business?

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But the sense in which we shall use the term speculation, and to which we wish it were confined, is easily given :mean by it, an operation which produces upon the operator the same effects that gambling produces on the gamester.

The chief evils of gaming are these:

It unsettles the mind; produces an excitement that interferes with regular duties, habits, and labors; and destroys the zest of common and wholesome excitements. It causes an undue love of acquisition as an end, and leads men to drop higher pursuits. It sooner or later tempts men to risk all they

have, and thereby endangers poverty and suffering, whence come anxiety, despair, idleness, and gross crime.

Now any one acquainted with the business world knows, that while some operations cause none of these effects, others produce one or all of them; and, that while this man is affected like the gambler by a particular transaction, his neighbor is nowise harmed. We make the essence of speculation, therefore, to lie not in the nature of the transaction, but in the influence it exerts. "What is one man's food is another's poison." To purchase a section in Illinois neither excites nor otherwise injures the man that dwells by it; but to buy the very next one may be the moral and worldly ruin of the Wall Street small capitalist, who knows nothing of what he is buying, but hopes through it to make his million. To say that speculation, in this sense, is of evil influence, is but repetition; and to say that it must be the duty of all to avoid it, is to start no new dogma in ethics. As to what is speculation each must judge for himself; but whenever he finds effects like those above described following his business, he may rest assured that wisdom bids him turn to other courses. This country, at this time, to go no further, is filled with men engaged in transactions which produce the worst spiritual evils of gaming; and it is to be feared that when the present pressure ceases, thousands more will rush to speculation to regain what they have lost. The present subject, then, is one of deep interest to all that care for the spiritual well-being of their fellows. Our clergy, and lay moralists should wake to a full sense of this evil, which, more subtle and wide-spread than intemperance, is chilling and withering the best affections and energies of millions among us. Let any one that has watched its course, either among the sugar and pork speculators of our wharves, or the Mississippi and Wisconsin land dealers of the West and South-West speak, and he will tell you that even political and literary ambition yield to this more potent spirit, fallen angels as they are, all three. He will tell you that the love of self-improvement and disinterested effort, which lived in the breast of many a man before he stepped within the charmed circle, has been frozen into a love of self-aggrandizement; and that the hope of aiding others, to which, at first, the desire for wealth clung for support, has now, like the oak in the folds of the ivy, lost its beauty and power, and pains the eye with the mockery of life. Let any man

look round upon his friends, and note how many have been injured by their ventures in trade, whether called or not called speculations, and he will see how wide-spread must be the spiritual evil that will threaten, if it do not overwhelm a commercial people.

But all these things are known by every one; and who is not ready to declaim against the evils of speculation? Yet, while thus forward to condemn this monster, few think why it is that he deserves condemnation; and the consequence is that thousands are engaged in transactions which do them all the spiritual harm of speculation, nor yet dream that they are in danger. It is to this that we would call attention; to the false views of business, and to the almost total forgetfulness of the real ends for which men were so placed, as to make a business life the inevitable lot of so large a number.

Such a life, properly used, offers more opportunities for spiritual growth, and the exercise of the best faculties and powers than almost any life that man can lead. But it is not, by most, so regarded; professional and literary men, especially, are apt to underrate business talents, and to regard the merchant or tradesman as a worldly drudge, whose vision is, by his occupation, limited to this little island of time. But however true this may be of most business men, it is, by no means, the necessary result of their position, and it is not, probably, more true of them as a body, than of lawyers, doctors, writers, and idlers.

The complete man should be energetic, efficient, bold, de cided; and where can we become so more readily than in the bustle and rush of commercial life? We are too apt to retire in disgust from the very course which duty would bid us pursue. Our tastes, we say, are averse to law, physic, or business, and so we turn from them; but our tastes are thus averse because we have not the habits, qualities, and energies that these things demand, and this should lead us to seek, not shun them. As well might the mathematical scholar read Shakspeare instead of Euclid because it suits his taste better, as the seeker for perfection turn to that which he likes, rather than that which will develope the powers that yet sleep within him. Few even in theory, very few, in practice, take as their guide that which was the beginning and sum of Christ's teaching, "Be ye perfect even as God is perfect"; a saying which at once teaches the God-tending nature of man, and VOL. XXIII. -3D S. VOL. V. NO. III.

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