Five acts to make a play, And why not fifteen? why not ten? or seven? For all her toothless gums, -as Leigh himself It is plain that Mrs. Browning did not per- And leave the generous flames to shape them-poem. selves.' Yet Aurora Leigh' is a very striking Comparing it, for instance, with the Princess'. a poem that like this, deals largely with the position of woman in the world- no one can fail to see how much fuller it is of thought and matter, though Mrs. Browning nowhere reaches up to the level of the lyrics in Tennyson's poem. And All most true, and only out of place. Mrs. Browning ought hardly even to have thought to herself what she has written in the above passage the method she recommends ought to have been an instinctive habit with her, not a conclusion needing to be ex-given that the efforts of an artist for excelpressed in words; much less ought she to have written it down. Indeed, she need only have followed the advice given by herself. Let me think of form less, and the external,' she says, and then proceeds to condemn the critics and their rules, which surely belong to forms and the external. The result is, that having not accustomed herself to concentrate her attention on action, when she comes to deal with action, she shows a marvellous ignorance. The whole plot of her poem is wild and improbable to the last degree. The hero, Romney Leigh, is most inadequately drawn. No doubt, he might have done any of the actions ascribed to him; he might have proposed to Aurora and been rejected might have engaged himself to Marian Erle, the peasant-girl- have founded his phalanstery lence in his art form a proper subject for a poem, no one can deny that Mrs. Browning has depicted it well. Nor does she ever fail in largeness of sympathy, though perhaps this is not always directed with the clearest discernment. But part, at any rate, of the passage respecting France at the beginning of the sixth book of her poem is not only generous but in a great measure judicious: And so I am strong to love this noble France, For ever, after some ideal good,— Some equal poise of sex, some unvowed love none tired, Some freedom of the many that respects The wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams; Last Poems' excel anyBrowning has elsewhere Forced Recruit,' in Nightingales,' and De Bi have been burnt out of his home, wounded and made blind through those whom he had relieved-and lastly have Sublime, to dream so; natural, to wake. married Aurora after all. All these things But some of the are possible. But they are told in the poem thing that Mrs. as mere isolated facts; there is no consecu-written. In the tion among them no development of char- anca among the acter; we are absolutely without that key Profundis,' the strained effort which elseto the nature of Romney Leigh, which it where mars her poetry is comparatively very was the duty of the poetess to have given little apparent. And of all her works, the us. She means us to admire him; but there gem is that entitled A Musical Instruis an apparent excess of ignorance in his ment.' pursuit of an ideal, to explain which needs much more than is told us in the poem. So, again, Mrs. Browning describes a Roman Catholic and an infidel in controversy and this is how she makes them talk; the Roman Catholic speaks first: 'The church, —and by the church I mean, of course, The catholic, apostolic, mother-church, Inside of which, are Christians, obviously, We thank you. Well I know The poets of whom we have written had their youth, and in some cases their maturer years, cast in times of peace. But since 1848 times of greater restlessness have set in; and within the last ten years changes have been effected in the world which have equalled, not in the violence of their accompaniments, but perhaps in permanent importance, those which took place at the beginning of the century. Will any poet rise great enough to grasp this condition of things, and to render the picture and visible shape of the age eternally present to posterity? We do not know; the advent of such men is not a thing to be calculated upon. There are ages in the world's his- | writer; but the most striking single passatory politically momentous, yet inglorious ⚫ carent quia vate sacro.' But the final culmination of a period is when great actions are crowned by a splendid record. Meanwhile within the last few years a school of poetry altogether novel has been springing up a school which, taking the classical legends as its main theme, only occasionally and in lyrical fashion glances from thence at the thoughts which are most prevalent among the inquirers and workers of the age. Of this school Mr. Morris is the most powerful ges, have, we think, been composed by Mr. Swinburne, in that volume of as yet unfulfilled promise, the Atalanta in Calydon.' To these poets we may recur on some future occasion; but at present we must be silent about them. Nor can we say more concerning such a graceful minor poet as Mr. Barnes, in his Dorsetshire poems; nor of those very notable writers, who, like Dr. Newman and George Eliot,' have expressed in verse the superabundance of feeling and thought that remained to them after the greater fullness of their labours in prose. scratches glass almost as deeply as the diamond; TIN CALCINING FURNACE.-An improved apparatus for calcining tin ores, the invention of Messrs. R. Oxland and J. Hocking, jun., has been successfully treated at Wheal Basset. The new calciner consists, says the Mining Journal, of an iron tube thirty feet long, three feet internal diameter, lined with fire-brick, and supported in a slightly inclined position on friction rollers. By a cogged wheel which surrounds it the tube is kept in a steady, slow revolving motion, imparted by a small water-wheel. The tube is heated in the interior by fire conveyed into it at the lower end from a furnace at the side. The ore, after being dried, is slowly run into the back end, and is gradually moved forward by its own gravitation down the incline by the rotation of the tube, until it is discharged, red-hot, and free from arsenic and sulphur, from the lower end into a close chamber adja cent to the fireplace. The chief object of the invention was to dispense with manual labour for stirring the ore while exposed to heat, and the utilization of the heat evolved in the combustion of the sulphur and arsenic contained in the ore. These objects have not only been fully accomplished, with the consequent attainment of great economy of labour and fuel, but the THE Shakspeare Treasury* is another of the prime cost of erection of the furnace has proved many volumes of extracts from the works of the to be much less than the ordinary calciner great dramatist which it gives enthusiastic auemployed, and the calcined ore passed much thors pleasure to write, and which no one who more rapidly through the furnace has been has the opportunity to read and the capacity to found to be in superior condition for the sub-appreciate an entire drama will ever dream of sequent dressing operations required. Public Opinion. NEW METAL FOR RAILS. An improved metal for the manufacture of rails has been proposed, consisting of iron with an admixture of chrome ore. It has long been known, the Scientific Review states, that an alloy of about 40 per cent. of iron and 60 per cent. of chromium perusing. The extracts are arranged under a edge. By Charles W. Stearns. M. D. New York: LORD STANLEY'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS | the effort merely for the sake of securing this sense of enjoyment while it lasted. Work must have an object apart and dis AT GLASGOW. LORD STANLEY's speech at Glasgow is tinct from itself, and although it may readall which an address to young and eager-ily be granted that it is, or might be, a hearted men in the van of life ought to be, great blessing to a man to have acquired uncompromising in the loftiness of its aim,that healthy and happy instinct which unswerving in the nobleness of its morality. leads him to take delight in his work for Yet with all its sanguine passion the speech his work's sake," it is nevertheless a blessis firmly knit and closely reasoned, diffi- ing which must come to him in some discult, indeed, to answer, if any one wished guise. The law student, reading for an to answer it, by any better argument than a examination, may take delight very often cynical sneer. The doctrine preached is in slowly mastering through many patient elevated enough in its aim, it might be hours the intricacies of real property law. urged, so elevated that it carries the or unfathoming the mysteries connected preacher quite out of sight of land. Uto- with contingent remainders. Later in life, pia would be reached even before the mark while wading through a troublesome case, was hit. We are all to acquire habits of he may be positively happier than if he earnestness and diligence in our youth, and were at leisure; still, in the one case the in our manhood to work, not for the sake hope of receiving the coveted certificate, in of reward in any shape, but for the love of the other of credit or advancement in his our work itself and of mankind, so that we profession, are essential to the enjoyment may not "pass out of the world in the obtained. And it is not necessary to throw world's debt," not "have sat down, as it any discredit upon the pursuit of objects as were, at the feast, and gone away without contradistinguished from those efforts made paying the reckoning." Who that is born from a purely intellectual appreciation of of woman can go through life on principles the fact that exertion is a higher and haplike these? Who that is of flesh and blood pier state of being than indolence. The can have none but spiritual desires? Is it only arrière pensée which checks our admiso easy to keep the Ten Commandments as ration of the ethical theories in the speech they stand that it is worth while to invent a before us, is a doubt whether it is desirable code of morality, which would be to them to cast upon the pursuits of honourable obwhat the differential calculus is to the mul-jects even so much of a slur as is involved tiplication table? Yes, it is even worth in saying that the noblest course of all is to while to invent the very highest code of morality we can conceive, to tell all men what are the motives that ought to guide them, to cheer on each generation as it rises, to attempt a nobler life than any generation has lived before, and even when the efforts which may be made for a moment fail, and those of us who may have made them sink back exhausted, to keep the ideal object still in view, and preserve, even after our faith in ourselves is blighted, our faith in mankind. We do not say that this theory of life which is embodied in Lord Stanley's Glasgow address, is one which any great number of the students who listened to him are likely to carry out in the coming years, or that it is one which is possible for any but a few strong natures. To take delight in your work for the work's sake, to pay that debt to the world which each man owes from a pure sense of duty, is only possible for very few. Indeed, though scarcely any man who has ever worked hard will venture to deny that there is a sense of enjoyment pervading the effort itself, still we are not inclined to believe that any man could make work for the love of work. It must be admitted, however, that no man could uphold this exalted doctrine with better grace, and command for it the reverence of all who heard him with more unconscious authority than the new Lord Rector himself. If any man works for work's sake it is Lord Stanley, and of all the men who take little from the world and give back much, no man more than Lord Stanley repays the debt with interest. [Times, April 3.] "WHATEVER you do, then," says Lord Stanley, do it well;" but some men are fitted for action and some for thought, and he entreats his hearers not to listen to the popular cry that culture is useless, or to doubt that it finds its place and its reward in the work of the world. To put it at the lowest, " every one is bound, not merely to do the thing which seems to him right, but also to do his best that the thing which seems to him right may be that which really is right." For this purpose he must learn, above all things, accuracy of thought and expression. If a man cannot acquire these, 66 let him do his best without them; but let this point Lord Stanley becomes larger him regret his loss. With this object in in thought than his colleague of St. Andrews. view, Lord Stanley is naturally led to do jus- He refuses to depreciate culture and the tice to the traditional studies of English ed- academical idea of education- which culucation the much-reviled classics. What- tured men are doing mainly, as he thinks, ever their other defects, the great writers and as we think also, in a kind of intellectual of antiquity have never been equalled "in despair at the limitations of all study. He precision, in conciseness, in dignity of does not much care upon which road a style, and in verbal felicity." These stud- young man walks so long as he learns to ies teach men more effectually than any walk. And it is very characteristic to find others to think clearly and express them- him defending" culture," not only because selves distinctly. Lord Stanley would not it makes men suspicious of ignorant enthuindeed, have them pursued unless they can siasm, and cautious in action and convicbe carried to some degree of perfection, and tion, but because it begets a "moral earnhe deprecates a mere smattering of Latin, estness" which is necessary to all genand still more of Greek. His argument,uine action. Every one of us is bound, however, may be applied somewhat further. not merely to do the thing which seems to There can be little doubt that the study him right, but to do also what is in his even of dry grammatical rules has, at least, power that the thing which seems to him the effect of teaching boys to know the be- right may be that which really is right. ginning of a sentence from the end of it, . . Action is the end of all thought; but to and accustoms them to grammatical expres- act justly and effectively you must think sion; while it is very questionable whether wisely." "No one," says Lord Stanley, any language is so serviceable for this pur- can pass through his allotted term of years pose as Latin. Moreover, our thoughts least of all can the wealthier classes do and words are so impregnated with Latin so without profiting by the fruits of other that without some smattering of it a man is men's toil. All capital is accumulated laoften a stranger even in his own mother bour." But" a scrupulous and high-minded tongue. But whatever language be se- nan will always feel that to pass out of the lected, it is certain that nothing else but the world in the world's debt to have constudy of language gives, at least for general sumed much and produced nothing" purposes, that accuracy of thought and ex- "to have sat down, as it were, at the pression which Lord Stanley values so world's feast, and not to have paid his reckjustly. A mathematician may be the strict- oning ;" and, hence, even he who lives at est reasoner in his own province: but it is ease will be anxious to replace to the notorious that he is frequently the most public the expenditure of labour that has confused of thinkers in practical matters. been made upon him." There is nothing The phenomenon is sometimes treated as nobler than this in any philosophy; and the surprising; but it is nothing more than the Glasgow youth will not have heard Lord fact, recognized by logicians from the days Stanley in vain if they grave that golden of Aristotle, that demonstrative and prob- rule deep upon their hearts, and take it for able reasoning are distinct. the perpetual motto of their manhood. We rejoice, therefore, that Lord Stanley has contributed his high authority to the support of general education, and has urged the youth of Scotland and England to betake themselves heartily to professional life when they must, but to make an equally hearty use of the opportunities of culture as long as they can. [Daily Telegraph, April 3.] WHAT work, therefore, shall the student choose? This is the main question; and Lord Stanley tells him that life answers it by asking each of us at last not "What do you know?" but "What can you do?" In fact, this duumvirate of Lord Rectors repeat together word for word the Preacher's counsel, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." But at 66 66 66 [Morning Post, April 3.] -is WHY have men low tastes, and why do they indulge in vicious pursuits? asks the Lord Rector; and he answers the question as it has been answered thousands of years ago, by saying that they have no healthful occupation, and that they have nothing else, at least nothing else to which they are habituated, to do with their time. The moral is one, however, which cannot be too frequently pointed out to those who are on the threshold of life, and who are in progress of fashioning those habits which will cling to them in after life. Before all things, cultivate industrious habits; commence early that physical and intellectual training which renders men fit to sustain the burden cast upon them in after life; avoid |