him. One day,' he said to Mr. Rassam, 'you may see me dead; and while you stand by my corpse it may be that you may curse me for my bad conduct towards you. You may say then, "This wicked man ought not to be buried: let his remains rot above ground;" but I trust to your generosity.' Ere long the prophecy was fulfilled. Changeable and inscrutable to the last, after unconditionally sending away his prisoners-the last and only guarantee of peace and personal safety in his hands-he defied the English army, was stormed in his stronghold, and shot himself dead as he saw the British soldiers entering in at the gate. Mr. Rassam stood by his corpse, and identified it as that of the Emperor Theodore. It was conveyed to one of the huts in which his European captives had been confined, and laid upon one of their beds. The following day, under the direction of the Envoy whom he had insulted and chained, and to whose generosity he had appealed for honourable treatment after his death, his remains were prepared for burial, after the fashion of his country, by Aito Samuel, whom he had also injured, and some priests, who approached the lifeless body with their shammas girt; their whole behaviour on the mournful occasion proving that even in death Theodore had not wholly lost the affection of at least some of his subjects.' They were then interred in the church of the Amba. Thus ended the career of this extraordinary man. If 'greatness' consists in a man being 'great' amongst those with whom his lot has been cast, and, like the tallest tree in the forest, towering high above all those that surround him, in leaving behind him a renown which will increase as time rolls on, and which will gradually be invested with an apocryphal splendour, then Theodore, Emperor of Abyssinia, has undoubtedly claims to be called 'a great man.' He had qualities-even geniuswhich would have raised him to the first place had he been born in any land, amongst any people. He had, moreover, that superstitious belief in his destiny which has marked other men of his stamp. To arrive at a just conclusion as to his character we must not measure him by a European standard, but by comparing him with those amongst whom he was placed. Nor must we judge him by the ferocious passions which marked his last struggle of despair, no more than we should judge Peter the Great by his cruelties, Frederick the Great by his meannesses, and the Great Napoleon by his faithlessness. We must take Theodore as he once described himself, as an ignorant Ethiopian,' born and bred in the midst of a barbarous people, far removed from the light of civilisation. With out out education, without examples to direct him, without the advantages of royal birth or hereditary influence, he raised himself to be the first and foremost of his race. His daring, his courage, his untiring mental and bodily energy, his military genius, and his power to command and control wild and barbarous men, and to turn them into faithful and devoted followers, enabled him, as a youth, to overthrow the various petty kings who divided the land amongst them, and finally to become supreme Emperor over Abyssinia, with more absolute power and a greater extent of dominion than had ever before been attained by an Abyssinian ruler. He had, to a remarkable extent, one of the qualities which are necessary to a truly great monarch-the power of appreciating the wants and deficiencies of his people, and an ardent desire to reform and improve their condition. To accomplish this object he turned to Europeans, with the design, however, of using them as mere tools for his purposes, and never for a moment allowing himself to fall under their influence. Those who came into contact with him, and were able to form a just and impartial opinion, testify to the remarkable intelligence with which he profited by the teachings of even those foreign adventurers who had undertaken to instruct the Abyssinians in the arts and sciences of Europe. His questions and inquiries were always apt and to the point, showing equal shrewdness and good sense, except when his pride, ambition, and belief in his destiny led him to discourse upon his own history and future greatness. As Aito Samuel observed to Mr. Rassam, to prepare him, 'He (the King) is a most wonderful man, as you will soon discover for yourself." But Theodore failed in that quality which is wanting in all half-civilised men-he lacked administrative ability. As Mr. Rassam has pointed out, had he been able to administer with as much success as he conquered, he would have consolidated his power, and have raised Abyssinia to the position of a strong and well-governed kingdom. The complete disorganisation and want of system and order which followed his conquests, led to those constant rebellions against his authority which exasperated him, and were the principal cause of those acts of wholesale cruelty and vengeance which alienated his people and led to his fall. He appears to have been at all times of a fickle, suspicious, and excitable temperament, and to have been faithless to those who had served and trusted him. Although in the early part of his career he was liable to ungovernable fits of wrath, yet if Mr. Plowden is to be believed, he was not cruel as in his later days. On the contrary, he then appears to have been just and humane, humane, and to have abolished some of the revolting and barbarous punishments and tortures which had been previously sanctioned by the Abyssinian laws. All the worst features in his character developed themselves as his power increased, until at length his utter disregard of human life, the wanton sacrifice of his most tried and trusted friends and adherents, and his jealousy and suspicion of all those who were about him, were symptoms, according to Mr. Rassam, of absolute madness. The fatal possession of absolute power, and the dread which his very name inspired, rendered him so utterly reckless, that, in his moments of passion, especially when under the further influence of potations of the intoxicating tej, neither friends nor relations, men, women, nor children, the guilty nor the innocent, were safe from his fury. Yet with all his cruelty and insensibility to human suffering, there were strange veins of humour and of tenderness in the man. Mr. Rassam relates some striking instances of them. When in his happier moods, his smile and the mingled grace and dignity of his manner, becoming a king, were quite irresistible, and deceived even those who were best acquainted with his duplicity and latent ferocity. It is a curious illustration of the opposite natures in his character, that Theodore, in order to show his personal attachment and respect for Mr. Rassam, never allowed any punishment to be inflicted, or act of cruelty to be perpetrated, in the Envoy's presence, a mark of consideration which was not shown to any of the other captives. Whilst exposing his vices and his cruelty, Mr. Rassam has done justice to the good side of the King. His description of Theodore is just and impartial; and when we remember all that he had to undergo at the hands of his jailor, and the temptation to exaggerate his own sufferings and the King's misconduct, we cannot but express our admiration at the manner in which he has dealt with the character and career of this extraordinary When time has obliterated the recollection of his many acts of barbarity, and his wonderful rise and tragic fall are only remembered, Theodore will become a hero of romance, and his name will be handed down amongst the Abyssinians in story and song as that of the greatest ruler that ever held sway over the highlands of Ethiopia. ART. ART. II.-1. Poems. The Princess. Maud, and other Poems. 2. Poetical Works. The Ring and the Book. By Robert Browning. London, 1868-1869. 3. Poems. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London, 1866. 4. Poems. By Arthur Hugh Clough. London, 1863. New Poems. By Matthew Arnold. 5. Poems. 1857, 1867. London, I N coming from the poets of the beginning of this century to those of the last thirty or forty years, it cannot but strike every one how much the atmosphere of hope and of enthusiasm has cooled down. The years which were measured by the life of Shelley were years in which Europe was agitated by the most fiery energies; nor was it merely the crash of unexampled wars, the tumult of rising or falling kingdoms, that stirred the minds of men. A new spirit was in the world: the equality of men was, for the first time, not indeed taught or believed, but practically urged by powers that in their first outburst destroyed all, or nearly all, that presumed to bar their way. There could be no indifference to such a spectacle. Some recoiled from it in horror; but those who dared to hope at all, hoped with a vehemence proportionate to the greatness of the events. It might be disputed whether the birth with which the age was in labour would be for good or for evil; it could not be disputed that it was marvellous, beyond precedent; and hence those who had faith, in spite of adverse appearances, that it was good, thought it marvellously and unprecedently good. And in this category were at their first starting (though some afterwards changed) all the great poets of the age. These, then, had no need to seek for a subject on which to write; rather were they likely to fail from the very multitude of their imaginations, from the intensity of their zeal, from inability to exercise that degree of soberness which is requisite, in order to discern truth from falsehood. And this, in fact, is precisely the point in which Shelley, who most of all bore the impress of his age, is the weakest. He could not be unpoetic; he was even too poetic, for in the world there are many things not calculated to rouse enthusiasm, but on the contrary dull and repulsive, which yet it is necessary should be seen, weighed, and remembered. And to these Shelley would never turn his attention. He was for ever like the Pythian prophetess; he stood on his tripod and delivered oracles, which to cool-minded observers seemed madness, but which penetrated deeply deeply into those who had the seed of a like enthusiasm in themselves. The author who connects the age of which we have been speaking, with the age of Tennyson and Browning, is one who is no verse-writer, and who has even poured contempt on poetry, but yet is not the less surely a poet himself—Mr. Carlyle. We may be accused of extravagance in the following opinion, and yet we are not conscious of being mere partisans of Mr. Carlyle; and if need were, we should find many complaints to bring against him. But yet it appears to us that no historic event has ever been embraced so completely in all its amplitude, and in all its circumstances and bearings, by any single writer, as the French Revolution has been by Mr. Carlyle. Not merely, nor even chiefly, in his history of the revolution; but in his miscellaneous essays, where he shows how in Germany and France the new ideas sprang first in the brain of philosophers, and took form, and were disseminated; and how they came into conflict with the effete and languid spirit of those who were nominally rulers, and statesmen, and spiritual teachers; and where he makes every reader feel how natural and human was every part in every scene of that great drama, which began with Voltaire, which culminated in Robespierre, and which ended in Napoleon. In Mr. Carlyle, the fire of the previous generation, which had witnessed these events, has not yet died out; it burns less wildly, but more steadily, and, being mixed with a solid sense of reality, the result is a degree and extent of insight, to which we know scarcely a parallel among historians. Revolutions, indeed, are precisely the kind of subject most suited to Mr. Carlyle's genius: that he would do equal justice to an orderly, peaceable age and country, following precedent, is not so probable. Thus far, then, the ardent and tender spirits who looked out into the world had found, in the course of external events, full and ample material to satisfy their need of ardent hopes and sympathies. But great is the change when we come to the next generation, which had no personal knowledge of the events of the beginning of the century. After the battle of Waterloo, Europe in its weariness ceased from the search after wide abstract principles; causes, which take hold of eager and impulsive minds, became comparatively rare; a prosaic air belonged alike to the Reform Bill of 1832 and to the Revolution of July. Many most memorable political events took place between 1815 and 1848; but, with the exception of the Grecian War of Independence, they all belonged rather to the useful than to the brilliant and picturesque class. The effects of the French Revolution remained, it is true, in the increased action of the peoples, in the more |