the Red Sea "when Israel went out of Egypt;" but other elements were evidently brought into play on that ever-memorable night, although not (at least clearly) indicated in the Mosaic narrative. There we only read that "the Lord troubled the host of the Egyptians." But the only detail given of this "troubling" is found in the words, "And took off their chariot wheels," &c. But in Psa. lxxvii. 15-20 the deficiency is supplied. We refer our readers to the passage, only noting its most striking portions. "God with His arm redeemed the sons of Jacob. The waters saw Him, and fled (were afraid). The clouds poured out water, and the skies sent out a sound; thunders and lightnings made the earth shake, while His way was in the sea, as He led His people by the hand of Moses and Aaron." The passage of the Red Sea is here beyond question the Psalmist's subject, and his description amply accounts for the terror of the pursuers. The disabled chariots might be referred to accident, but when storm and tempest appear arrayed against them on behalf of the retreating host, they exclaim, "Let us flee from the face of Israel, for Jehovah fighteth for them." In the case of the alliance of five kings against the Gibeonites (themselves allies of Israel), we find hail again employed as an instrument of destruction. And it is noticed as being more fatal than the sword. These hailstones would appear to have been of a very large size, from their being called "great stones" in the former part of the verse, while it is only in the latter that they are spoken of as "hailstones" (Josh. x. 11). In the narrative (Judg. iv.) of the battle between the army of Canaan under Sisera, and that of Israel under Deborah and Barak, there is no mention of any especial divine interposition; but there is an unmistakable allusion to it, and that too of the very kind which we are considering, in the hymn of praise which occupies the entire of the next chapter (chap. v. 20, 21), "They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away." A tempest is described, attributed (perhaps only poetically) to planetary influences; and the river, so swollen by the rains as to be no longer fordable, is represented as sweeping away the flying enemy who attempt to pass it. The withholding of rain and dew for three years and six months in the reign of Ahab supplies one of the most remarkable instances on record, whether we consider the terrible consequences that must have followed such a privation, or the duration of the calamity. There is, besides, a lesson of no slight value taught by the fact that this protracted affliction brought neither sovereign nor people to repentance, or even to reason. We may well believe that the cry, " O Baal, hear us!” arose not for the first time from the priests around the altar on Carmel, and that many an earnest supplication for rain was offered to their sun-god by the besotted Israelites, while "there was no voice, neither any that regarded" their despairing entreaties. Yet the warning threat, "Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron," seems not to have been remembered for an instant, and it needed the visible sign of the fire from heaven, consuming the very stones of the altar, to wring from the assembled people the (it would appear reluctant) confession, "Jehovah, He is the God." The story (1 Kings xviii.) is a masterpiece of simple and powerful narrative. The entire account, from the meeting between the idolatrous king and the prophet of the Lord to the triumph of the latter in the coming of the long-needed and wished-for rain, is unrivalled. The challenge to the priests of Baal, the exquisite irony of Elijah, his prayer, its answer in the appearance of the cloud "like a man's hand,"* the "sound of abundance of rain," and "the heavens black with clouds and wind," altogether furnish a description which for graphic power is perhaps not exceeded by anything even in the inspired Volume itself. Why had Israel never even thought of trying if Jehovah, the God of their fathers, might not prove a better refuge than Baal? Alas! the "hardness and impenitent heart," that "for all this sinned yet more," can alone supply the answer. We shall conclude these notices with a few observations on the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The entirely miraculous character of that event is calculated to exclude from our ideas the possibility of a natural agency having been employed. Yet the whole narrative seems to indicate that electrical action was made use of as an instrument. The "light at mid-day, above the brightness of the sun," Saul struck to the earth, the sound heard by his companions, yet the words undistinguishable to all but himself (comp. Acts ix. 7 with xxii. 9), the blindness which followed, all suggest almost irresistibly the idea of electrical phenomena having been employed as instruments in this case. It is, we know, a favourite theory with many that the infirmity to which the apostle makes such frequent although vague allusion was a defect of vision, the remains of the total blindness inflicted near the gate of Damascus. We must own that this idea has always appeared to us objectionable on many accounts. Sight was restored to Saul by miracle, and if we suppose the cure to have been but partial and imperfect, we must suppose this miracle to have differed in a most essential particular from every other on record. Where conjecture is our only resource we should at least choose the most probable conjecture, and it seems to us that a lasting *At this day a usual precursor of wind and rain in that region. This was evidently that whistling of the wind, which even in this country is considered as an infallible sign of coming rain. nervous derangement, while it would be a natural result of the severe shock undergone (on our supposition) by the apostle, would abundantly account for everything of the kind noticed in his writings. It would furnish a satisfactory reason for his being but an indifferent scribe, and for a "large letter written by his own hand" being a thing quite remarkable; it would account fully for the "weakness, fear, and much trembling"† of which he speaks, and for the fact that not only was his speech derided as contemptible, but that he expresses himself quite grateful for only the negative favour of not being despised on account of his bodily infirmity.§ More than this, we have on this supposition the strange, startling, and otherwise quite unaccountable contrasts between the powers of St. Paul at different times most clearly explained. Was he timid, hesitating, trembling,-nervous, in short, so as to give to his enemies abundant materials for disparaging his person and office? His physical infirmity, which we can (without the least strain put upon the New Testament narrative) refer to the most striking circumstance accompanying his conversion, perfectly accounts for all this. Was he at other times so marvellously eloquent as to be taken on one occasion for the incarnation of the god of oratory, and on another to "almost persuade" Agrippa to be a Christian ?-not to mention the fact that his recorded addresses are to this day admitted to be masterpieces of elocution? We have the explanation of these apparent discrepancies in a very easily understood pledge and promise of our Lord himself (see Mark xiii. 9, 11; Luke xxi. 12, 15). When do we find St. Paul nervous, timid, stammering, unable to give effectual utterance to the feelings with which his heart was full even to overflowing? When he was in circumstances which did not call for any particular exertion of mental power. When the plain statement of the gospel message was all that was required of him. But see him in a different situation, "brought before kings and rulers,” obliged to plead his cause before the Areopagus, the Sanhedrin, Felix, Festus, Agrippa, his powers rise with the occasion, and his judges, accustomed as they must have been to witness similar efforts, are amazed, overwhelmed with astonishment and admiration. We do not know how we can conclude better than by calling attention to the fact that when the Psalmist would set forth the divine attributes of power, he describes God as Lord of the elements, and that he appears to dwell more emphatically upon the irresistible power of frost than that of any other elemental agent: "He giveth snow like wool: He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes. He casteth forth His ice like morsels: WHO CAN STAND BEFORE HIS COLD?" (Psa. cxlvii. 16, 17). * Gal. vi. 11. † 1 Cor. ii. 3. § Gal. iv. 13, 14. ESOTERIC POETRY. A GREATER contrast than that between the Laureate and Mr. Browning it is impossible to imagine. Tennyson in style is lucid; even his mannerism is a trick of over plainness, as if he would fain make himself understood by everybody; and as to power, he is calm and self-sustained, even in his wildest flights letting us feel that he has something in reserve. Hence he is the poet of this our age—an undemonstrative but by no means prosaic age, which gloats over sensation novels but does not talk sensationally, which admires reticence and practices it, which will not, at any rate, have its poetry sensational (the spasmodic school has never had many votaries). And the poetry of any age surely comes more from its heart, tells us more of its real character than its novels. Tennyson, then, is the poet of the present generation, a well-to-do "Realistic" generation, yet not without sympathies and aspirations and forebodings of something better than mere comfort: if we call him a drawing-room poet we do not use the term at all by way of reproach. There is a very great deal of good in the habitués of English drawing-rooms; and very few poets can be, like Burns or Shakspere, poets of all mankind-Milton is hardly so in any degree whatsoever. The drawing-rooms have surely a right to their representative poet. Tennyson is this, though of course he is infinitely more than this; and his being so, the very points which fit him to be the poet of the "jeunesse dorée," must always hinder him from being popular, i.e., the property of the masses, in the same sense in which Burns is in Scotland, or Beranger in France. His office is not so much to act directly on the people, as on those who help to form the people's thoughts. If he is purer, nobler, more truly Christian than Byron, we may be sure the "lower walks of literature" among us will be all the cleaner for his influence. That influence might, however, be brought to act far more directly on the half educated than it has hitherto done. The vast numbers of "Readings in Poetry," "Selections," "Garlands," "Friendship's Offerings," and the like, which the publishers find profitable, bear witness to a strong, unreasoning liking for "verse" among people of all classes. What meagre hide-bound productions most of these are! Several that have come in our way lately are more than half filled with long pieces from third-rate American "poets." From Tenny 66 66 son there is next to nothing in any of them. The same fatal spell seems to rest on the compilers which holds hymn-book makers back from the choice of truly poetical pieces, and forces them to stuff their volumes with the driest of sacred lyrics. A great deal in Tennyson's newest volume might be safely inserted in any popular book of " Extracts." Much of it surely will take its place in that cheaper edition, the first volume of which we so gladly hail as an earnest that our Laureate means henceforth to aim at wider popularity, without forgetting the claims of " that fit audience though few" who have been with him throughout. He has, in the last twenty years, gradually conquered his way, from being the beloved of a small clique to being the foremost poet for all our educated classes, and now he means to win "the many;" and we are sure, too, that he will do it. We should like to see these new volumes, "his own selection," on the shelves of every mechanics' institute, every people's reading-room, through the land. We want to have him read at penny readings. Much more of him is fit for such work than some of us imagine. The very highest poetry commends itself to educated and uneducated alike. Of course, the educated feel it more, and see more in it; but still the others feel it too. Take "Northern Farmer," for instance. He would be sure to be a general favourite at a Reading; and we do not even despair of "Boadicea," the wild Catullian metre is so perfect, and such an echo of the sense, that it would carry safely over the harder lines such as, "Hear Icenian, Catyewchlanian; hear Coritanian Trinobant,"-many who have never even read a word of Cæsar. The "Tropical Island," too, and the lovely tale of Edith's visiting among her cottages (in "Aylmer's Field"),-surely pieces like these, even without their context, would tell on the general reader, just as the Virgin's head in the Sistine Madonna would still entrance us, even if it were cut out and laid here on the library table. But of course much of Tennyson is written for the educated and refined. He is often quite Greek in his suggestiveness; an epithet implies a whole book full. How true this is of "In Memoriam," where we have, as has been said, in a few pregnant lines, "all the latest results of modern philosophy." Every time we read it again we mark some word, perhaps unnoticed before, which betokens a thorough acquaintance with scientific controversies. Naturally, your half-educated reader does not love suggestive poetry, or suggestive anything. He likes to have it all down at full length, penny-a-liner fashion; his powers are exhausted with "business," and he likes to roll easily on from page to page without ruts or jolting. Tennyson, as a whole, will never be very widely read. His greatest works, "Maud," and "In Memoriam," will never be generally appreciated beyond a certain line of culture. Far less will Browning ever be a people's poet. His style is jerky-not so much terse as hopelessly obscure. |