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not know the time which was fixed for his execution, yet, with an instinctive feeling that it was near, he sent his daughter Margaret his hair-shirt and whip, as having no more need for them, with a parting blessing of affection. He then lay down and slept quietly. At daybreak he was awoke by the entrance of Sir Thomas Pope, who had come to confirm his anticipations, and to tell him that it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at nine o'clock that morning. He received the news with utter composure. 'I am much bounden to the king,' he said, ' for the benefits and honors he has bestowed upon me; and, so help me God, most of all am I bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid me shortly out of the miseries of this present world.'

"Pope told him the king desired that he would not use many words on the scaffold. Mr. Pope,' he answered, you do well to give me warning; for, otherwise, I had purposed somewhat to have spoken, but no matter wherewith his Grace should have cause to be offended. Howbeit, whatever I intended, I shall obey his Highness' command!'

"He afterwards discussed the arrangements for his funeral, at which he begged that his family might be present; and, when all was settled, Pope rose to leave. He was an old friend. He took More's hand and wrung it, and, quite overcome, burst into tears. Quiet yourself, Mr. Pope, More said, and be not discomfited, for, I trust, we shall once more see each other full merrily, when we shall live and love together in eternal bliss!'

"So about nine of the clock he was brought by the lieutenant out of the Tower, his beard being long-which fashion he had never before used -his face pale and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes often towards heaven. He had been unpopular as a judge, and one or two persons in the crowd were insolent to him; but the distance was short, and soon over, as all else was nearly over now.

"The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot upon the ladder. See me up safe,' he said to Kingston; 'for my coming down, I can shift for myself. He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed; and he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,' he said; pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not awry, for saving of thine honesty.' The executioner offered to tie his eyes. I will cover them myself,' he said; and, binding them in a cloth which he had brought with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay, while he moved aside his beard.

"Pity that should be cut,' he murmured; that has not committed treason.' With which strange words-the strangest, perhaps, ever uttered at such a time-the lips most famous throughout Europe, for eloquence and wisdom, closed forever.

"This was the execution of Sir Thomas More; an act which was sounded out into the farthest corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder, as well for the circumstances under which it was perpetrated, as for the preternatural composure with which it was borne. Something

of this calmness may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected weariness of a world which, in his eyes, was plunging into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their color from the simplicity of his faith, and never was there a Christian's victory over death more grandly evinced than in that last scene."*

The sensation caused by his death throughout Christendom was as great as that created not long before by the outburst of the Reformation. Emperors,† kings, statesmen, poets, Protestants and Catholics, united heartily in testifying their love and admiration for his memory, and execrating the blood-thirstiness of the tyrant who wrought his destruction. Still, to this day, one is almost tempted to rejoice at the cruelty of Henry, for it was the means of proving the capacity of human nature. More, in all the relations of life, had approached, as nearly as any man that ever lived, to relative perfection.

His life, if ever one was, is worthy of imitation. No matter from what stand-point we view him, his conduct is ever marked with nobility and rectitude. In his private relations, as a dutiful son, affectionate husband, loving father, kind master, faithful friend, conscientious man, and true Christian, we contemplate his character with reverence and delight. In his public capacity, literary and official, he wins our admiration. A genuine poet, yet no visionary; a true philosopher, inculcating kindly precepts; an earnest controversialist, with somewhat of the acerbity of the times; a constant author, yet continually busily engaged in public affairs; a successful pleader, yet always on the side of right; an able statesman, without the cunning arts of the diplomat; an honest courtier, never guilty of improper compliance; an assiduous judge, unapproachable in uprightness; he played his varied rôle on the world's stage as simply, honestly, and nobly as ever man that lived. "For learning and probity, for justice, contempt of money, humility, and true generosity of heart, he is one of the glories of the English nation ;" while for integrity of soul, soundness of heart, the consistency between his convictions and his life, and his glorious champion

History of England, vol. ii., 380 et seq.

Charles V. said: "This will we say

If we had been the master of such

a servant, we would rather have lost the best city in our dominions than such a counsellor."-Roper, 95.

Burnet, iii., 356. The Bishop of Salisbury translated Utopia.

ship of the cause of conscience, his image will ever be gratefully cherished in the warm heart of humanity.

"Like Cato firm, like Aristides just,

*

Like rigid Cincinnatus, nobly poor,

A dauntless soul, erect, who smiled on death,"

More passed through life, seeking to be good rather than great or wise, loving, as few ever loved, his country, his king, his fellow-men, and his GOD; and on this account, while there is a spark of love on earth for virtue, greatness and honor, his name will ever be among the brightest on the roll of fame.

ART. IV.-Maud. By ALFRED TENNYSON.

MANY poets have held to our lips cups filled with divine nectar, albeit flecked, sadly we confess it, with stains of earthdust. Brave and fair is that "high companie," but strongest of all, of our time, is Tennyson. Half in the shadow he stands, holding a beaker; to what shall we liken it? Ruby, Bohemian glass veined with white-a sullen white, not lighting the glass by a bright contrast, but, rather, giving it a weird, ghostly hue. These ghostly veins of white are shaped and wreathed into wonderful figures, and on the goblet is engraven "Maud." That cup has been filled at the fountain of passionate human life: yet, watch awhile, see how at intervals the dull white becomes clear, and towards the rim even gleams through the dark red with a hidden luminous

ness.

Let us look for a few moments at this puzzling Maud. Very slight indeed is the outward action of the poem. A man, rendered morbid by circumstances only dimly hinted at, which crushed fresh life out of him when young, lives alone in a little house in the woods, nourishing blindly his bitterness. He sees Maud, whom he knew when both were children; he loves her and she loves him. But she has a brother who wishes to marry her to a lord. Once, after a festal evening, Maud steals out into the garden to meet her “true lover." They are surprised by her brother and the rich suitor; words

"For I had rather pass for a good man than a wise one."-Letter to Peter Giles, prefixed to Utopia.

follow, her lover becomes angry, a duel is fought, her brother falls, and the lover flies to the coast of Brittany. Then follows delirium. Of what becomes of Maud we are not fully informed. Finally the curtain falls on her lover hastening to the war in the Crimea. Not only is the action slight, but the connection is dimly traced: wherefore does Maud take such deep hold on people, and, especially, morbid people?

Humanity! thy heart lies bare to the poet. As thou art, as thou longest to be, yea, more, as thou wert made to be, so speaks he, standing the expresser of what thou thyself only faintly discernest in thyself. Not in one single human being doth the poet appear unto us; for the perfection of an individuality, as of an idea, is found alone in God. But he, in very deed and truth the perfect poet, has not left himself, at any time of the world, without a witness to that part of his character. As the need of any particular era arose, he supplied it. As each succeeding age stood on the battleplain of earth, better panoplied for that warfare-reaching out more eagerly for that ever-recurring warfare of man's mind with spirit and matter-so also was the poet sent, with clearer insight, deeper passions, and stronger cognitions. Afar off, through the troubled murmurs of the past, come clarion rings of poesy swaying the souls of nations—as a wind sways the crested palm-trees, because of their appointed mission. Cymbals and trumpets always mingle with the song of the poet in those far-off regions which stretch in misty crimson magnificence, fascinating and yet oppressing us with an undefined feeling of uncertainty and dissimilarity. But as years roll on, each one pressing its stamp on the pages of earth's history, these surroundings are laid aside, and the unaccompanied voice of the poet reverberates through men's souls, speaking, heart bared to heart, mind bared to mind, by virtue of that grand spiritual consanguinity knitting us together, so that, "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." This mode of unaided expression prevails more than ever in this age, even to an unnatural degree, tending, in fact, to neglect of all musical rhythm in the earnest attempt to decipher the records burned upon our souls. And this tendency (unnatural, for as, in the sunbeam, light is wedded to heat, so, in poetry, rhythm is wedded to truth) is in direct accordance with the spirit of this age.

This marvellous age! Various titles have been given to it. We, too, claim the right of baptism, and call it the morbid age.

In so naming it, we do not blind ourselves to its daring in reachings to the heart of things, its noble action, its ceaseless search for truth: no, for it is in these very things that the justice of the name is found.

In the first, or barbaric age, mankind, like overgrown children, wrangled for slaves and petty crowns; yet amidst their littleness were traces of a strength, uncouth, indeed, but prophetic of future development, while flashes of keen spiritual intuition shone, though rarely, over the barren waste of a civilization which took direct cognizance only of the physical nature of man. Then came the youth age of the world, when people lived freely, frankly; the freshness and impetuosity of young life brightened the earth. This was in the palmy days of Greece. The Greeks chatted of wonders, ran from house to house in search of new wonders, laughed about them when found, and divided them into classes, sometimes startled by a brief vision of the intensity and mystery of these wonders: as in fairy tales boys build palaces in the happy sun-light, and under the luminous stars, only sometimes gazing with a vague awe busy at their hearts, as trails of lustrous purple splendor slowly pass over their skies. Whence do we know this? From their own records of that child-like reverence shown to the "prophetic, the poetic and the love-madnesses," and of the wonder excited by Socrates and Plato-Plato, whose philosophy, unperfected and unsounded even by himself, must have been to their clear, transparent natures very much like the symbol of chaos. For they (as is said in the Phædrus of the rhetoricians who "knew the things before tragedy, but not tragedy itself") knew the things before the soul, but not the soul itself, nor dared to enter in, only passed around it. Plato broke from their quibblings and hair-splittings, and pressed into the holy of holies, seeking to know even the One himself.

That, too, passed away, and the transition age came, when men, fairly awakened to the truth of the awful spiritworld-awful because infinite in its capacities-became blinded to the reality of the matter-world. Demons and genii, imps and angels, Sathanas and Jehovah, surrounded them on every side: still, although awakened, they failed to turn to the only sure clue of knowledge; the mystery of their own being they left unsearched, referring all that baffled them to supernatural influences. But the daring inquiry of ripening humanity suddenly startled this ghostly phantasma

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