It will always be a question, we think, whether Mr. Rossetti had not better have painted his poems and written his pictures; there is so much that is purely sensuous in the former, and so much that is intellectual in the latter. But we do not suppose that those who like his work will let the question mar their enjoyment of either, though they will probably enjoy both in the same kind and degree. It seems a pity, however, for the sake of readers who do not know any of his pictures, that these poems should not have been illustrated by the author's hand. We should then have had in his volume a proof of the curious fusion of the literary and artistic nature in him. But as it is, though one cannot here see the poetry in the painting, the painting in the poetry is plain enough.

On the whole, except the sonnets, the best poem is "The Blessed Damozel," and in this the author's characteristics are very marked. The picture with which it opens is exactly in the spirit of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with its broad and effective contrasts of color, - yellow, blue, and white.

"The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven

"Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem

No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn."

This is the new Pre-Raphaelite, and here, following, in the lines we have italicized, is the old, as one sees it very often in the fading frescos of medieval churches. Of course it is very beautifully and very vividly expressed; and the whole picture is a lovely

one.

"She ceased.

The light thrilled towards her, filled With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

"(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres :

And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. (I heard her tears.)"

In this poem Mr. Rossetti strives for that heart of pure and tender rapture which, it seems to mediæval-minded poets, must have beat in the centre of the Romish mystery, and he is more successful in his effort than Mr. Tennyson in his later yearnings, but not so much so as the latter was when he wrote of attributing too explicit a feeling to Mr. Sir Galahad. We are conscious, however, Rossetti's poem, which is really a series of mystic and devotional pictures, and scarcely more exegetic than if they had actually been painted. Here are three of the pictures, which are very charming, and take you again and again with ravishing suggestions of the old religious art, but which have no great intellectual merit, and scarcely any independent merit at all, except a luxury of words, that most well-read people can nowadays command:

:

"Water, for anguish of the solstice: - nay,

But dip the vessel slowly, nay, but lean And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away The heat lies silent at the brink of day:

Now the hand trails upon the viol-string That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing, Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep

And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass Is cool against her naked side? Let it be ;Say nothing now unto her lest she weep, Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,

Life touching lips with Immortality." It is easy to choose an exquisite picture from these poems at random, like this from the "Dante at Verona":

"Through leaves and trellis-work the sun

Left the wine cool within the glass,
They feasting where no sun could pass :
And when the women, all as one,

Rose up with brightened cheeks to go, It was a comely thing, we know." Or this, from "A Last Confession," more perfect, more delicate even, and liker an old painting :

"I know last night I dreamed I saw into the garden of God, Where women walked whose painted images I have seen with candles round them in the church. They bent this way and that, one to another, Playing and over the long golden hair Of each there floated like a ring of fire Which when she stooped stooped with her, and

when she rose

Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
As if a window had been opened in heaven
For God to give his blessing from, before
This world of ours should set: (for in dream
my
I thought our world was setting, and the sun
Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
Then all the blessed maidens who were there"
Stood up together, as it were a voice

That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
To hear God bless the world."

Or this, from the sonnets:

"BEAUTY AND THE BIRD. "She fluted with her mouth as when one sips, And gently waved her golden head, inclined Outside his cage close to the window-blind;

Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
And when he made an end, some seed took she
And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.

"And like the child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
A grain, who straightway praised her name in
song:

Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
Now turned on me and laughed, I heard the throng
Of inner voices praise her golden head."

Dramatic power is so closely allied to that of the painter, that one naturally expects it in this charming colorist, — though as to color, the reader will notice that he gets his delight only from the positive richness and splendor of each hue, not at all from the subjection of one color to another, or their harmony.

In the poems where the color does not predominate, we see Mr. Rossetti's weaknesses more plainly. He has numbers of affectations, and they are not all his own. Some of Mr. Browning's, for example, are pretty clear in "A Last Confession," and those of the imitation-old-ballads are the property of the trade. Of course these ballads are the poorest of Mr. Rossetti's poems, and they are not fairly characteristic of him. Some of them are very poor indeed, and others are quite idle.

It is a curious thing in a poet whose purity of mind and heart makes such a very strong impression, that his imagination should be so often dominated by character and fact which are quite other than pure. We think there has been more than enough of the Fallen Woman in literature; we wish that if she cannot be reformed, she might be at least policed out of sight; and we have a fancy (perhaps an erroneous, perhaps a guilty fancy) that some things, even in "The House of Life," however right they are, had best be kept out of speech. Otherwise, unless on account of the climate, it appears that clothes and houses are a waste of substance. We do not intend to give an unjustly broad impression of what is only a trait of Mr. Rossetti's poetry, after all, and we note it quite as much because it is phenomenal and not quite accountable as because it is objectionable. He has a painter's joy in beauty, and an indifference to what beauty, or whose, it is; and his celebration of love is chiefly sensuous, but beauty and love are both most highly honored at their highest by him. Yet here and there, as in the sonnet "Nuptial Sleep," we feel that

we are too few removes from Mr. Whitman's alarming frankness, and that it is but a step or two from “turning aside and living with the cattle."

In most of Mr. Rossetti's sonnets one is reminded of the best Italian sonneteers, and of our English poets when the Italians were their masters. They are more mystical, however, and more abundant in conceits, than almost any other English sonnets, and recall, most vividly of all, the sonnets of Dante's Vita Nuova. The fact is particularly felt in such a one as this.

"LOVE'S BAWBLES.

"I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit: And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit, Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store: And from one hand the petal and the core

Savored of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

"At last Love bade my Lady give the same:

And as I looked, the dew was light thereon; And as I took them, at her touch they shone With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame. And then Love said: Lo! when the hand is hers,

Follies of love are love's true ministers.""

But the meaning is not often so plain as it is here, and there is a vexing obscurity in the greater part of Mr. Rossetti's poems, which some other peculiarities of his make us doubt whether it is quite worth while to explore. We find in him a love for rank, lush, palpitating, bleeding, and dripping words, which we think does not mark the finest sense of expression; and yet, when he has himself well under control, no one can say a thing more subtly, as this little poem may witness.

"THE WOODSPURGE.

"The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill :
I had walked on at the wind's will,

I sat now, for the wind was still.

'Between my knees my forehead was, --
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
"My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
"From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me, —
The woodspurge has a cup of three."

Here, also, is an idea, now rather common in literature, finely suggested:

"Watch we his steps. He comes upon

The women at their palm-playing.
The conduits round the gardens sing
And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
Where wearied damsels rest and hold

Their hands in the wet spurt of gold."

Of the longer poems in the volume, after "The Blessed Damozel," comes, we suppose in point of merit, the by-no-meansblessed damozel "Jenny," though we praise it reluctantly. "Dante at Verona" makes no very impressive figure, and "The Burden of Nineveh" rests heavily upon the reader.

Have we been saying, on the whole, that we think Mr. Rossetti no great poet? Let us say, then, that we think him, on the whole, a very pleasing one to read once at least : whether twice, or thrice, or indefinitely, we do not know, for we write from the first impression, and not without our modest misgivings both of the praise and blame we have bestowed. The book is a very characteristic one, is very genuine. Yet it has many charms, and at eighteen, if you are of one sex, or at twenty-two if of the other, you might wish to be parted from it only in death. The trouble is, you cannot always be eighteen or twenty-two.

- we are not sure that it

In some respects, the comparison is a strained and unfair one, but we feel that

is an ardent, unaffected believer in the credentials of all the distinctively Protestant churches, while he maintains a tolerant and friendly attitude towards the Romish communion as well. His devotional animus is perfectly reverential, although a highly emotional nature may now and then slightly demoralize its utterances. He is never scornful towards unbelief, but patient, gentle, and persuasive in expostulation and argument. He betrays no Pharisaic symptoms, and evidently takes much more pleasure in the things that make for peace among men than in those that make for division. In short, Mr. Beecher is an altogether favorable exponent of our modern religious life. And yet, being what he is, we are persuaded that his fine qualities are mainly due to his exceptional temperament, and imply nothing whatever of that subterranean or supernatural leaven which the earlier faith of Christendom used to call regeneration. Rather let us say that the regeneration which Mr. Beecher's religious character and activity attest is a regeneration of human nature itself, and not of any special subject of the nature.

This fact makes it difficult to do exact and ample justice to Mr. Beecher as a representative of the actual religious movement of the time. For men feel an instinctive distrust of any religion which claims merely natural sanctions. The reverence of the Divine name is so deep-seated in the heart of mankind, that men will believe anything sooner, in the long run, than that we can love God naturally, or as we love ourselves.

The best culture of the world, from the days of Paul down to those of Goethe, affirms an infinite distance between the Divine and human natures; and if the distance be in reality infinite, it of course excludes the pretension of any moral or personal relations between Creator and creature. If the difference between God and man be one of kind altogether, and not at all one of degree, a difference of quality and not of quantity, then manifestly my natural love and appreciation of myself will, in proportion to its strength, only disqualify me to appreciate and love God, and I shall require, consequently, to be gifted with some supernatural force in order to overcome this limitation. This explains the distrust which Mr. Beecher's corpulent, not to say carnal, religiosity provokes in the mind of the ultra-devout. Nothing can be more unaffected or helpless than the disgust which his performances excite in the rival school of ecclesiastical thought, which sinks religion into a mere ritual parade, or makes it consist in propitiating the Divine obduracy by all those appliances of dramatic or ostentatious humility which men use to placate earthly sovereigns. The pallid traditional observances of this school contrast with his robust unscrupulous piety, much as last year's withered leaves contrast with the fresh green of the spring; and there is no end, accordingly, to the misunderstanding between them, until the gorgeous spring itself, with all its vivid garniture of green, descends into the sere and crisp October, or consents in its turn to be a thing no longer of life but of memory. Such is the fate that overtakes all bright things, to bud and blossom for a while with a promise of immortal fruit, and then expire in wintry nakedness. Such has been the history of ritualism, such will be the history of our modern evangelicism, out of hay to become stubble, out of living wood to become dead bark; and to fancy itself still ministering to the heaven of men's faith, when in fact it is only coloring and enriching the earth of their imagination.

And yet Mr. Beecher is, in his way, both perfectly explicable and legitimately admirable, inasmuch as he representatively constitutes a veritable link between the old faith and the new life of Christendom. He is neither the base grub of men's servile ritual devotion, nor yet the soaring butterfly of their emancipated scientific hopes; he is simply the golden chrysalis under whose frail transparent envelope you see the actual

struggle going on, by which the moral conscience of mankind is becoming converted into æsthetic science, or living perception. He is thus and at once the grave of prophecy and the cradle of realization. He is, indeed, a real changeling, now inviting, now repelling, sympathy; here simulating a pious humility, there a truculent conceit or self-confidence, just as the alternate needs of his representative character compel him to do. The very great public worth of Mr. Beecher, as it seems to us, lies in this representative office of his, consists in his so faithfully combining these divergent tendencies as to make him a true symbol for the time, or real providential man, full of instruction and encouragement to those who, like the men of old time, still look for "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." If he were a more satisfactory or less contradictory person than he is alleged to be, that is, if he were capable of taking sides with either the death or the resurrection that is going on in his own unconscious entrails, his providential significance would at once vanish or subside into the measure of his intelligence, which is by no means a large measure.

-

But our space is limited. We can assure our readers, then, that it will be difficult to find a juicier repast in the way of religious reading than is here furnished them by Mr. Beecher. Mr. Beecher talks religion down to the level of the most carnal capacity; and why, forsooth, should he not, if the carnal mind demands a religious consecration? That it does so, that it feels the need, even in a vehement manner, of reconciliation with God, has long been evident to thoughtful observers, and Mr. Beecher is the inspired apostle exactly fitted to its exigency. He exacts nothing from his hearer but a good digestion and a clean skin, with a sane average morality, in order to educate him upon a strict common-sense regimen into full communion with the skies. His disciple need intermit no business avocation, nor take to his bed for an hour, nor waste any time in puerile ascetic practices; but, on the contrary, keep every sail bent that now carries him onward to fortune or to fame, and yet find himself in the end just as complete as needs be in all the armor of righteousness, and infinitely more jolly than any of our toilsome and tiresome ritualist nurslings has ever pretended to be. Mr. Beecher shuns all the heights and depths of religion, as religion is regarded

by those who make it the insatiable thirst of the soul after true divine knowledge, and treats it as a strictly private or personal interest of man, anxious to make the best possible bargain for this present world and the world to come, with One who is every way his superior, and who yet has somehow a controlling voice in his destiny. His formulas of the Divine being and character are, to be sure, very much shorn of their original orthodox lustre and force, from the necessity of his representative position, and present accordingly a very odd mixture of reason and superstition, or scepticism and dogmatism. But, on the whole, Mr. Beecher theoretically holds that the world has already got all the knowledge of God that it needs, so that no actual revelation of his name to sense will ever come to fulfil — and by fulfilling supplant- the one previously made to faith. And this he holds even while he is himself all the while practically doing nothing else than interpreting faith by sense, or bringing spirit down to flesh. all of our readers, then, go without misgiving to Mr. Beecher's book. It will amply atone for all the intellectual shortcomings of its author. Its sense, its wit, its pathos, its human friendliness, its frank abounding @gotism, its boisterous animal spirits, or sensuous pride of existence, - all these things belong to the author himself, and will endear him to multitudes. But the book reveals something much beyond the author himself, in clearly foreshadowing that scientific consciousness of the race whose rising tides will soon submerge the highest landmarks of men's ancient faith, and turn the whole earth into a broad highway of the Lord. Mr. Beecher is at most the friendly duck that incubates the egg of destiny; he is not for a moment to be mistaken for the royal bird that lays it.

Let

Society and Solitude. Twelve Chapters. By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co.

LORD CLARENDON said of Lord Falkland, Secretary of State to Charles I., that as his house was within ten miles of Oxford, "the most polite and accurate men of that university frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in purer air; so that his house was a university in less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study."