movements, as any other of the manifold impulses which make or mar us. And at the same time no poem can take the highest rank of poetic excellence which confines itself to a certain audience, whatever that audience may be. Byron boasts that he will not make "ladies' books al dilettar le femine et la plebe ;" and this is a foolish vaunt, which we have heard repeated in our own day by various new poets, who think it finer to write for a class than for humankind. But it ought to be understood by all capable minds that this is a very poor and false piece of bravado. Humankind, man and woman, small and great, is more worth writing for than any section of it, even were that section the most gifted, the most wise and great minds of their time. The whole is greater than a part; and he who chooses for himself a limited audience, ought at least to have the good sense to perceive that he is not bigger, but less in his aim, than other men an amount of perception, however, with which we are not allowed to credit the poets who profess to produce strong meat for men and not milk for babes. Every such pretension is of its very nature an apology for littleness, little as it is intended so to be.

thoughts of the two human creatures thus be considered the grand spring of human surrounded. Fate hung over them, threatening their youth with the visionary sword already suspended close to their heads. Shame and pain and bitter recompense of folly had already come to both. But a little way further before each lay the path still wreathed in flowers, still full of those possibilities which are never quite shut out from young men, even those who have most wasted their gifts and strength. But soon those flowery ways were to end in darkness. The compassionate human spectator lingers with a painful sympathy by their side in this moment of seeming calm. Both were strong in the sense of wrong, injured men in their own opinion, bearing the weight of England's intolerance, and incapacity to understand the minds of poets. But both were so young, spendthrifts of God's gifts, with no time before them to think better of it, no escape into a purer day possible for either. And howsoever we may blame and judge- -as judge we must-yet the gentle heaven judged not, but sent down its dews and star-rays softly through the enchanted twilight upon the two young beautiful poets' heads, upon the two wasted lives. God help them! Lives more forlorn, amid all their wealth of nature and favouring circumstances, were never thrown away under those peaceful skies.

Byron never returned to England; he lived a disturbed and wayward life in Italy, now moving from one storied city to another, now lingering in unknown corners, doing little but indulge himself and his fancies, and writing much which it might have been as well he had not written. We will not attempt to discuss the productions of his later years, a task which neither space nor inclination encourages; except, indeed, the greatest of all his works, the real and most lasting foundation of his fame. The Manfreds and Cains were but exaggerations doubly exaggerated of his favourite conventionalism; but "Don Juan" is all real. To speak of this poem and of morality in the same breath is simple foolishness, and so must every attempt be to explain or justify its freedom. We believe that, as a mere question of art, the narrowness which limits a man's life to a series of continual indulgences in one favourite sin and varying expressions of one passion, is as narrow as the creed of the poorest precisian who ever was scoffed at by poet. Libertinism is as limited, as cramping and confining, as petty a kind of bondage, as any puritanism; and “passion," so called, has as little claim to

When we say this, we do not pretend to assert or to hope that in any but an ideal state of society it will be possible to maintain that poetry and morality must always go together. But we are confident in saying that few great poems, at least of those which have been written since Christianity began to affect the world (though even this limitation is scarcely necessary), are so interwoven with immoral situations and sentiments as to be inseparable from them, and to keep them continually before the reader. It is this characteristic which must always limit the fame of "Don Juan,” a fault infinitely more serious than any amount of occasional aberrations into forbidden ways. Yet with all its manifold defects there is an easy power and mastery in it, which perhaps, more than any other poem of the time, gives to the reader the conception of strength and capacity almost unbounded. This, setting aside not only its morality, but its moral tone (two quite distinct things), and even setting aside the wonderful beauty of many passages, is the thing which strikes us most. The poet manages a measure by no means facile with the perfect ease of one to whom words are absolutely subject, and who can weave them as he likes, now splendidly, now fantastically, now with the most tragic,

and now with the most trifling meaning, Such a personage is the incarnation of but always with an invincible grace, facili- fine fancy to all commonplace and prosaic ty, and lightness of touch, which fill the minds. Poor poet, who did not write mind of the critic with a purely technical books to delight the people! It is at once and professional admiration, in addition to his glory and his shame that he himself the admiration which he must share with loved no other ideal than that which is the every lover of poetry. The melodiousness god of the plebe; and it is the plebe only of the strain never glides, as it does in -meaning thereby no social class, but Shelley's hands, into mere music, dropping those minds which, irrespective of rank, the thread of articulate thought; every- occupy the lowest imaginative level, and thing is clear every incident and detail, are content with the poorest ideal-to every vicissitude of the much-prolonged whom his revelation was addressed. and lingering narrative. How it must Cynicism is generally supposed to adhave flowed forth, as natural, as easy as dress itself to a more intellectual class; common talk, as spontaneous-boundless but the cynicism of "Don Juan" is exso far as the writer's capacity went, limited only by intention and such poor human details as time and space, which keep the flood within inevitable channels! Even the occasional (and very occasional) jars in the verse give us a sense of careless force, never of poverty. That Byron did not take the trouble to alter here and there a defective line, seems part of the very freedom and ease and careless spontaneity of the strain. Thus it is strength, the sense of gigantic exertion without any strain of power, put forth as lightly as a child's play, yet as effectually as if the earth had been rent by the effort, which is the first great charm of the poem. With that hand so strong, so deft, so easy, so all-capable, what might not the poet do if he would? We are lost in admiration of his vast capacity, his smiling and careless power.

This is the first and greatest quality of "Don Juan." The exquisite passages with which the poem abounds, the absolute lucidity and distinctness of the narrative, and this sense of strength, and ease, and grace, and infinite capability, give to it a claim upon all who love and understand poetry. But when we have said this, we bave stated only its real claims to great

ness.

actly of the kind which delights the vul-
gar, and is their highest conception of
superiority. This beautiful, daring, fortu-
nate young hero goes about the world and
sees the same weaknesses everywhere, and
laughs. He is not ill-natured. On the
contrary, he asks no better; he takes ad-
vantage of the imperfection of nature, and
caresses her, and smiles, and goes on.
They are all the same, high and low, old
and young, he says with perfect com-
placency; he sees through them all, and
does his best to please, and takes what-
ever he can get, and nods aside at the
spectators. He has the ease, the grace,
the strength of a god; and he has the soul
of a costermonger. Heaven forgive us!
there are virtuous costermongers as there
are virtuous peers, and why we should thus
stigmatize a class we know not. But this
hero of poetry, this epic impersonation of
man, is of the commonest and meanest
mental type of humanity. His superiori-
ties are all superficial; he is comprehensi-
ble through and through-there is nei-
ther depth, nor mystery, nor any secret in
him that can confuse the vulgarest reader.
And accordingly, the vulgar, the plebe
whom the poet affected to despise
who in ordinary cases stare and gape at
poetry-rose up and gave their coarse,
unaccustomed hand to that other half of
the world which prepares the thrones and
pedestals of fame; and between them,
while the song was still warm on his lips,
this strange pair placed Byron on his pinna-
cle- an elevation half of real greatness,
half of false fame a place perhaps un-
paralleled in poetry, and entirely unique
in England. Thus it was that, without
pause or interval, Byron won everything,
in point of reputation, which the world
has to give.

those

It has another claim to another kind of greatness which has also been responded to largely, and which perhaps will continue to be responded to as long as men are such as they are. The figure of Don Juan himself carries out all we have said of the popularity of a vulgar and conventional ideal. Once more, we have the very climax and apotheosis of commonplace in this handsome young hero, made of coarse flesh and blood, washed over with just that lacker of outside refinement and sensibility which the vulgar love who roams from love to We need not linger upon the later porlove, and from adventure to adventure, tion of his life. It had a kind of love in always lucky, always safe to get clear of its last chapter which gave him a kind of any scrape in which he finds himself. happiness-perhaps the only kind of love

He left Overton and threw himself into

his work with an energy that never flagged, and a patience that was never exhausted. It was a busy life that he led, and fortunately for him there was much of outdoor occupation and physical exertion to counteract the effect of his late hours and incessant work.

and happiness of which he was capable. j it was part of himself, and could not be His death was like his life a mixture of got rid of. the real and the false, of tragedy and mock tragedy, of some genuine generosity and sentiment and a great deal of counterfeit. Amid the wild, confused, and bewildering melodrama of Greek emancipation amid strangers, with theatrical shouts in his ears, and operatic figures grouped about him, far away from any true affection or friend more trusted than an old servant- he died in the full flower of his days, Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. No more was granted to him, no time of reflection, no afternoon of thought. Never was life less happy, more forlorn and wasted, and never was end more pitiful. And thus all was ended upon earth for a man who had received every gift which Heaven could bestow upon a human creature every gift except the one of know-gaged as a young man of promise, capable ing how to use the glorious faculties which God had put into his hands.

From Macmillan's Magazine.
CHRISTINA NORTH.

BY E. M. ARCHER.

CHAPTER XV.

BERNARD OSWESTRY had left Overton restless and unhappy, and sore at heart. Christina had been his chief object ever since he could remember; all his hopes and projects had centred in her; and now it was not only that they were shattered, but they had been shattered by her in a way which had left him no one point upon which to seize for consolation. It was not only that she had been inconstant with no excuse; it was not, as he thought, that she cared for anyone else; but simply that for the sake of pleasing her relations and escaping from the difficulties of her position, she had been ready to break the promises upon which he had built so much. It was because of all this that he could not forgive her not yet - not although he he had seen her remorseful and unhappy. not although she had pleaded to him as she had never pleaded to him before. And yet he could not thrust her away altogether. It is not so easily that a true and tender heart can shut itself against the love in which it has trusted. And Bernard loved her still, not as he had loved her before, for sorrow and indignation had taken the place of hope and trust; but yet his love had not passed out of him

The architect under whom he was engaged had his office in the midst of a large and thickly populated manufacturing town in the north of England. In the centre of squalor and misery he was raising a church, beautiful in its proportions and rich in its architectural adornments, to stand as a witness for Christianity in the midst of a heathen generation; and it was upon this that Bernard was chiefly en

of superintending the more delicate parts, in which taste was as necessary as mechanical skill. But he had also expeditions to make into the country, long days to spend in hurrying from place to place through the fresh air, which gave him a relief both mental and physical, else the perpetual strain upon his nerves must have broken down even his naturally healthy organization. He was young and inexperienced, and it was thus that he strove to drive away thought.

Even old Mr. Withers, the head of the firm, who rarely condescended to give a thought to the well-being or characters of his clerks, noticed the change in him; for he had before been struck by his lighthearted zeal as much as by his aptitude for his business. Now he went so far as to remark on his pale and altered looks, and to inquire if he had anything on his mind, had he been getting into money difficulties? He did not like to see a young man who didn't care for reasonable relaxations, and came to office in the morning looking as if he had been up ail night.

Bernard thanked him, but laughed at the idea that anything was wrong with him; he would confide nothing; and Mr. Withers, who had made an unusual exertion in broaching the subject, said no more, but was rather confirmed in his suspicions. He said he was sorry for it; he feared young Oswestry was going to the bad: there was a hardness about him he did not like to see; and he was positively alarmed when one day on going into the church he found Bernard walking unconcernedly about on some scaffolding at the top of the nave, where even old hands