merous crowd have to impose their still narrower limitations on the half-educated. The coal-heaver will not read any books whatever; the mass of men will not read an intellectual poem: it can hardly ever be otherwise. But timid thinkers must not dread to have a secret and rare faith. Little deep poetry is very popular, and no severe art. Such poetry as Mr. Clough's, especially, can never be so; its subjects would forbid it, even if its treatment were perfect: but it may have a better fate; it may have a tenacious hold on the solitary, the meditative, and the calm. It is this which Mr. Clough would have wished; he did not desire to be liked by "inferior people"-at least he would have much distrusted any poem of his own which they did like.

The artistic skill of these poems, especially of the poem from which we have extracted so much, and of a long-vacation pastoral published in the Highlands, is often excellent, and occasionally fails when you least expect it. There was an odd peculiarity in Mr. Clough's mind; you never could tell whether it was that he would not show himself to the best advantage, or whether he could not; it is certain that he very often did not, whether in life or in books. His intellect moved with a great difficulty, and it had a larger inertia than any other which we have ever known. Probably there was an awkwardness born with him, and his shyness and pride prevented him from curing that awkwardness as most men would have done. He felt he might fail, and he knew that he hated to fail. He neglected, therefore, many of the thousand petty trials which fashion and form the accomplished man of the world. Accordingly, when at last he wanted to do something, or was obliged to attempt something, he had occasionally a singular difficulty. He could not get his matter out of him.

In poetry he had a further difficulty, arising from perhaps an over-cultivated taste. He was so good a disciple of Wordsworth, he hated so thoroughly the common sing-song metres of Moore and Byron, that he was apt to try to write what will seem to many persons to have scarcely a metre at all. It is quite true that the metre of intellectual poetry should not be so pretty as that of songs, or so plain and impressive as that of vigorous passion. The rhythm should pervade it and animate it, but should not protrude itself upon the surface, or intrude itself upon the attention. It should be a latent charm, though a real one. Yet though this doctrine is true, it is nevertheless a dangerous doctrine. Most writers need the strict fetters of familiar metre; as soon as they are emancipated from this, they fancy that any words of theirs are metrical. If a man will read any expressive and favourite words of his own often enough, he will come to believe that they are rhythmical;

probably they have a rhythm as he reads them; but no notation of pauses and accents could tell the reader how to read them in that manner; and when read in any other mode they may be prose itself. Some of Mr. Clough's early poems, which are placed at the beginning of this volume, are perhaps examples of more or less of this natural self-delusion. Their writer could read them as verse, but that was scarcely his business; and the common reader fails.

Of one metre, however, the hexameter, we believe the most accomplished judges, and also common readers, agree that Mr. Clough possessed a very peculiar mastery. Perhaps he first showed in English its flexibility. Whether any consummate poem of great length and sustained dignity can be written in this metre, and in our language, we do not know. Until a great poet has written his poem, there are commonly no lack of plausible arguments that seem to prove he cannot write it; but Mr. Clough has certainly shown that in the hands of a skilful and animated artist it is capable of adapting itself to varied descriptions of life and manners, to noble sentiments, and to changing thoughts. It is perhaps the most flexible of English metres. Better than any others it changes from grave to gay without desecrating what should be solemn, or disenchanting that which should be graceful. And Mr. Clough was the first to prove this, by writing a noble poem, in which it was done.

In one principal respect Mr. Clough's two poems in hexameters, and especially the Roman one, from which we made so many extracts, are very excellent. Somehow or other he makes you understand what the people of whom he is writing precisely were. You may object to the means, but you cannot deny the result. By fate he was thrown into a vortex of theological and metaphysical speculation, but his genius was better suited to be the spectator of a more active and moving scene. The play of mind upon mind; the contrasted view which contrasted minds take of great subjects; the odd irony of life which so often thrusts into conspicuous places exactly what no one would expect to find in those places, these were his subjects. Under happy circumstances he might have produced on such themes something which the mass of readers would have greatly liked; as it is, he has produced a little which meditative readers will much value, and which they will long remember.

Of Mr. Clough's character it would be out of place to say any thing, except in so far as it elucidates his poems. The sort of conversation for which he was most remarkable rises again in the Amours de Voyage, and gives them to those who knew him in life a very peculiar charm. It would not be exact to call its best lines a pleasant cynicism; for cynicism has a bad name, and

the ill-nature and other offensive qualities which have given it that name were utterly out of Mr. Clough's way. Though without much fame, he had no envy. But he had a strong realism. He saw what it is considered cynical to see-the absurdities of many persons, the pomposities of many creeds, the splendid zeal with which missionaries rush on to teach what they do not know, the wonderful earnestness with which most incomplete solutions of the universe are thrust upon us as complete and satisfying. "Le fond de la Providence," says the French novelist, "c'est l'ironie." Mr. Clough would not have said that; but he knew what it meant, and what was the portion of truth contained in it. Undeniably this is an odd world, whether it should have been so or no; and all our speculations upon it should begin with some admission of its strangeness and singularity. The habit of dwelling on such thoughts as these will not of itself make a man happy, and may make unhappy one who is inclined to be so. Mr. Clough in his time felt more than most men the weight of the unintelligible world; but such thoughts make an instructive man. Several survivors may think they owe much to Mr. Clough's quiet question, "Ah, then you think?" Many pretending creeds, and many wonderful demonstrations, passed away before that calm inquiry. He had a habit of putting your own doctrine concisely before you, so that you might see what it came to, and that you did not like it. Even now that he is gone, some may feel the recollection of his society a check on unreal theories and half-mastered thoughts. Let us part from him in his own words:

"Some future day when what is now is not,
When all old faults and follies are forgot,

And thoughts of difference passed like dreams away,
We'll meet again, upon some future day.

When all that hindered, all that vexed our love,
As tall rank weeds will climb the blade above,
When all but it has yielded to decay,
We'll meet again upon some future day.

When we have proved, each on his course alone,
The wider world, and learnt what's now unknown,
Have made life clear, and worked out each a way,
We'll meet again,—we shall have much to say.

With happier mood, and feelings born anew,
Our boyhood's bygone fancies we'll review,
Talk o'er old talks, play as we used to play,
And meet again, on many a future day.

Some day, which oft our hearts shall yearn to see,
In some far year, though distant yet to be,
Shall we indeed,—ye winds and waters, say !——
Meet yet again, upon some future day?"

ART. V.-NAPOLEONISM.

Ten Years of Imperialism in France. Impressions of a Flâneur. Blackwood. 1862.

We have seen two Napoleons, and we have twice had "Ten Years of Imperialism in France." The first Napoleon was probably the most remarkable, and in one sense about the greatest man of modern times. He wrote his name on Europe in lines, all of which were large and deep, and some of which will be indelible. He changed the face of a whole continent, and modified the character, as well as carried captive the imagination and affections of a whole people. Coming forth at the end, and as the result, of the most startling and upsetting convulsion that has been witnessed for many centuries, he "closed" the Revolution by completing and developing it. He educed order out of chaos; he established a government of singular strength and stability, and one which might have been permanent but for his own errors and enormities; and he framed and enacted a code of laws which none of his foes or successors have ever wished to supersede, and which has been voluntarily adopted and retained over a large part of Europe. In military matters he was as great, or even greater. He entirely transformed, by his own genius, the whole system of tactics and the whole art of war; he was incessantly engaged in hostilities on a scale hitherto unparalleled; he moved larger armies than ever before known; he visited as conqueror every capital on the Continent; he overthrew and ejected two dynasties besides that of France; he created a number of new tributary kingdoms; and he never lost a battle till his last. It may be said, too, with a truth rare in such cases, that "alone he did it." He used other men with singular skill, and appropriated their work with singular unscrupulosity; but he was himself the originator and mastermind of all that was effected. Lastly, though he laid upon his countrymen burdens previously unapproached, and lavished their blood and treasure with a heartless prodigality till then unknown, yet his memory is still adored by the great body of the nation; it still acts upon Frenchmen as a sort of resistless and intoxicating spell; and of millions among them it may be said that Napoleon's name is the only one they know their sole conception and embodiment of all that is glorious and mighty. We, his fiercest and most resolute antagonists, are obliged to confess that he tasked our utmost powers, and was the most formidable foe who ever menaced our supremacy: - for fifteen years we made head against him, yet scarcely gained one foot of

solid ground; and we at last only subdued him because his own gigantic blunders synchronised with the appearance of the one great captain England has produced during this century. The most cynical historian is compelled to admit that, in spite of all his vulgarities and crimes, he is about the grandest and most colossal figure that stands out upon the canvas of the World's career- -a "King of Men," as to whose magnificent endowments and achievements there can be no controversy and no doubt.

With his nephew, the present Emperor of the French, the case is very different. The second Napoleon, like the first, succeeded a revolution, and raised himself on the ruins of a republic. He, too, has restored and maintained order; has made France rich and powerful; has won great battles with great slaughter; has materially modified the state of Europe; has crushed and kept down all domestic foes and all rebellious elements. Yet no one calls him great; few have believed in his durability; many close observers despised him to begin with, and despise him still; his very ability is still a matter of discussion both as to its character and its amount; from the outset of his career he has been regarded as a meteor that might any day vanish into smoke-in 1850 the common talk 66 was, Ah, ça ne durera pas six mois;"-in 1862 the common talk is still, “Ah, nous verrons bientôt la fin." No one seems to realise the fact that Napoleon the Second has already lasted as long as Napoleon the First, produced effects almost as great and perhaps more lasting, and displayed in some respects qualities as remarkable and yet more rare. Yet this is the bare truth. The first Napoleon had a fourteen years' lease of power. He became First Consul in December 1799, and Consul for life not long after; and he was elected Emperor in May 1804, and he abdicated in April 1814. The present Napoleon also has held power for fourteen years. He was chosen President in 1848; he made himself President for ten years, and virtually supreme, by the coup d'état in December 1851, and was proclaimed Emperor towards the close of 1852. It is now the end of 1862, and he is on the throne still, and to all appearances more firmly established there than ever. He has already reigned as long as the mightiest autocrat and conqueror whom modern history has seen. Such a position so long maintained assuredly indicates notable qualities of some sort in the man who holds it. If not to be explained by singular intellectual or moral endowments, the explanation must lie in circumstances and combinations yet more singular. Let us endeavour to ascertain, with the help of the book before us, what Louis Napoleon has achieved since he became supreme, and to what personal qualities those achievements indisputably testify.