dge whether I have succeeded,' (p.
73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most
ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for
reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental
partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by
these means

'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'

The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of
all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses
most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all,
but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a
stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian
painter threw over the head of her father.

----'dimly I could descry
The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,
Watching to see me die.

The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;
The temples, and the people, and the shore;
One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat--
Slowly,--and _nothing more_!'

What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my
throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would
have?

But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this
last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter
strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is
a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his
_Darling Room_.

'O darling room, my heart's delight;
Dear room, the apple of my sight;
With thy two couches, soft and white,
There is no room so exquis_ite_;
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.'

We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the
singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
_little_ room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with
_one_ sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black
mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more
characteristic is white dimity!--'tis as it were a type of the purity of
the poet's mind. He proceeds--

'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen I have been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the _Rhene_
Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

'Yet never did there me