Among pieces where the mystical feeling return of the humbled exiles to Florence in is by necessity of subject most simple and the noble poem of "Dante at Verona " — most on the surface, "The Blessed Dam- but more conclusively still in the steady ozel" should be noticed, a poem in which purpose running through all those poems in wild longing, and the shame of life, and which character or action, however lyrical, despair of separation, and the worship of is dealt with; in ripeness of plan, and in the love, are wrought into a palpable dream, in congruity of detail with which they are which the heaven that exists as if for the wrought out; all this, of course, in addition sake of the beloved is as real as the earthly to their imaginative qualities. This is well things about the lover, while these are seen in "Sister Helen," which is, in fact, a scarcely less strange or less pervaded with ballad (the form of poem of all others in a sense of his passion, than the things his which, when it is complete, the lyrical and imagination has made. The poem is as dramatic sides of art are most closely conprofoundly sweet and touching and natural nected), and in which the wild and picturas any in the book, that is to say, as any in esque surroundings, and the growing force the whole range of modern poetry. At first of the tremendous burden, work up surely sight the leap from this poem to the "Jen- and most impressively to the expected but ny" may seem very great, but there is in still startling end, the effect of which, as fact no break in the unity of the mind that almost always in Mr. Rossetti's poems, is imagined these poems; rather one is the not injured by a word too much. As widenecessary complement to the other. The ly different as it may be in character of exsubject is difficult for a modern poet to deal ecution to this, there is the same dramatic with, but necessary for a man to think of; force amidst the magnificent verses of it is thought of here with the utmost depths" Eden Bower," where the strangest and of feeling, pity, and insight, with no mawk-remotest of subjects is wonderfully realized ishness on the one hand, no coarseness on by the strength and truth of its passion, the other: and carried out with perfect though the actors in it add supernatural charsimplicity and beauty. It is so strong, un-acteristics to the human qualities that make forced, and full of nature, that I think it the it a fit subject for poetry. The "Last Conpoem of the whole book that would be most missed if it were away. With all this, its very simplicity and directness make it hard to say much about it: but it may be noticed, as leading to the consideration of one side of Mr. Rossetti's powers, how perfectly the dramatic character of the soliloquiser is kept: his pity, his protest against the hardness of nature and chance never make him didactic, or more or less than a man of the world, any more than his "Shame of his own shame" makes him brutal, though in the inevitable flux and reflux of feeling and habit and pleasure he is always seeming on the verge of touching one or other of these extremes. How admirably, too, the conclusion is managed with that dramatic breakng of day, and the effect that it gives to the chilling of enthusiasm and remorse, which it half produces and is half typical of; coming after the grand passage about lust that brings to a climax the musings over so much beauty and so many good things apparently thrown away causelessly. The dramatic quality of Mr. Rossetti's work has just been mentioned, which brings one to saying that, though it seemed necessary to dwell so strongly on the mystical and intensely lyrical side of his poems, they bear with them signs of the highest dramatic power, whatever its future application may be. This is shewn not merely in the vivid picturing of external scenes as that of the fession," whose subject connects itself somewhat with these two last, is the poem in the book whose form is the least characteristic of Mr. Rossetti's work, the most like what is expected of a poet with strong dramatic tendencies; it is, however, most complete and satisfactory, and the character of the man is admirably imagined and developed, so as both to make the catastrophe likely, and to prevent it from becoming unpoetical, and just merely shocking: a character, elevated and tender and sensitive, but brooding, and made narrow both naturally and by the force of the continual tragedy of oppression surrounding his life; wrought upon by the necessary but unreasonable sense of wrong that his unreturned love brings him, till despair and madness, but never hate, comes from it. Well befitting such a character, but also indicating the inevitable mystical tendency of the author, as small as the indication may be, is the omen of the broken toy of Love that sheds the first blood, and that other typical incident of the altars of the two Madonnas. In speaking of a book where the poems are so singularly equal in merit as this, it has been scarcely possible to do more than name the most important, and several must remain unnamed; but it is something of a satisfaction to finish with mentioning the "Song of the Bower," so full of passion and melody, and more like a song to be sung than any modern piece I know. To conclude, I think | world, whole columns of telegrams by these lyrics, with all their other merits, the cable, letters from all the cities of the most complete of their time; no difficulty is Union-seems wonderful to men who study avoided in them-no subject is treated the London newspapers and note how they vaguely, languidly, or heartlessly: as there is no commonplace or second-hand thought left in them to be atoned for by beauty of execution, so no thought is allowed to overshadow that beauty of art which compels a real poet to speak in verse and not in prose. Nor do I know what lyrics of any time are to be called great if we are to deny that title to these. WILLIAM MORRIS. From The Economist. THE POSITION OF THE LONDON PRESS. are filled. Nothing now is well reported in them except Parliamentary proceedings, which are well reported because it is traditional to report them well, and members complain, we know not with what justice, that even these grow worse and worse. Of municipal news there is next to nothing, of county news nothing at all unconnected with imperial politics. In the whole London Press there is not so much as a letter from Scotland, while Manchester might be almost on the verge of civil war without London knowing that anything had occurred in Manchester. In fact to describe plainly a fact long commented on in society, UNLESS we are greatly mistaken and London newspapers are in most departments we have watched the process for many years badly done, - do not contain the informaand have no interests to blind our judg- tion their readers desire, and would give ment, a great change is pasing over the money to obtain. On the third point there position of the metropolitan press. It is will exist of course much difference of opindecidedly and visibly losing influence, vig-ion, but the truth can, we believe, be deour, and circulation. The number of daily monstrated. The people of the great cities papers published in London declines, their proprietors are less energetic, and the regard of the mass of the people for their opinions daily tends to diminish. Of the first fact any of our readers can judge easily for themselves. Two papers, the Star and the morning Pall Mall Gazette, bave died within the year, and four within the last few years; and no civilized capital has now so few daily journals as this enormous city. There are but six morning papers in all; two of these, the Advertiser and the Post, are supposed to be supported mainly by class connections of a somewhat artificial kind; and of the remainder two are believed, probably without justice, almost to monopolize popular appreciation. The total circulation of them all is certainly not equal to a third of the circulation an ob-gether to endorse. Marked instances of server would predicate for them, and is such failure are the continued career of the probably not equal to half that of the Paris Home Secretary, who has no friend in the or New York press. There is at the same Press, and the apparent breakdown of the time no sign of new enterprises, and, for furious demand for interference in Greece reasons we intend to examine, extremely lit- a demand to which the country press, unintle inclination towards speculation in Lon- fluenced by a personal knowledge of the don newspapers. The second fact-the victims, made a comparatively feeble redecaying energy of proprietors - is scarce-sponse. The change is a very great one, ly less patent. The news department of and will have great political results, and it the journals seems of late to have been may be worth while to examine its more starved. Only two journals have anything probable causes. like a good foreign staff; only one seems to have a provincial staff of any kind; and the telegraph wire is almost unused. The mass of information which a journal like the New York Herald, for example, will publish any morning-fresh news from all parts of the are ceasing to care to take the London papers or to read them, or to feel much interested about them. Time was when the London journals were the only papers which exercised any political power, which formed opinion, or which could be relied on to reflect the views of the majority of electors. Men repeated the Times to you as their opinion, and to quote the ideas of a provincial paper was to commit an absurdity. Now it is doubtful whether provincial papers do not reflect opinion more accurately than London papers, and certain that no journal does more than help to form it. The entire London Press, even when unanimous, is frequently defeated, and often advises action which the House of Commons, pressed by other influences, declines alto We believe that the political importance of London itself has very seriously declined. Twenty years ago, and still more forty years ago, the political importance of London society was very great, indeed so great as to be almost overruling. The opinion of a limited class, living on a rather | This transfer is greatly accelerated by the confined district, alarmed Ministers, affected great difficulties which now impede London the House of Commons, and surely, though journalism considered as a trade. Probaslowly, influenced the whole conntry. bly no trade is under certain circumstances News came first from that class. The pa- so profitable; certainly none pays for short pers which reflected their views gave the periods so great a percentage on the capital tone to all discussion. The clubs, which invested. A successful newspaper is like a were full of their thoughts, were the clubs successful mine, -yields wealth which whose thoughts it was needful for whippers- seems almost unreasonable even to those in and editors to ascertain. This power who receive it. But then success is exhas passed away. If a new Mr. Barnes tremely rare- -the capital required is con sought in all clubs to hear what Englishmen siderable,-a really energetic daily paper thought of a new Queen's trial, he would, could lose 1,000 a-week with the greatest in all human probability, hit upon a view ease, -- and the adventure is one which can his countrymen would immediately reject. hardly be attempted by an association. We The opinion of Belgravia, though still so- question if there is a very successful news cially influential, is politically valueless, paper in England owned by a company, and is not the opinion which will ultimately certainly there is not one in London. Irre guide affairs. That region, for example, sponsible management is a condition of suo was never more unanimous than on the cess, and shareholders in a newspaper have merit of Mr. Forster's Education Bill, yet rarely either the nerve or the temper to it has been found extremely difficult to pass delegate irresponsibility. The consequence that measure. Power has passed to an is that competition becomes excessively difelectorate which does not take its views ficult, that the existing newspapers settle from London society, or even from Lon- into well-worn grooves, and that enterprise don, which prefers its own views, its own in the trade betakes itself mainly to the politics, and, to a growing extent, its own provinces, where journals are compelled by men. There is even a dislocation of ideas the race for existence to try at least to be between London and the provinces so great readable. Nor is there any immediate that an article, reflecting very accurately probability of any change in this condition the ideas of the club world, is criticised in of affairs. The public has fixed on a penny Manchester or Birmingham because it re-as the price it intends to pay for a news flects them, as an expression to be scruti-paper. Sale at a penny can only be profitnised with something of hostility, not ac-able when a large circulation has been obcepted as a guide. At the same time, while tained, and consequently the pecuniary their opinions have thus lost weight, the risk of the speculation must always be conLondon journals have lost their ancient mo- siderable so considerable that none but nopoly of news. The telegraph has equal- very rich men, a class little given to such ized the position of almost all localities. forms of speculation, can encounter it. Birmingham knows everything of import- We are inclined to believe that, apart from tance as soon as Belgravia, and Edinburgh accident, the fall of the London Press and reads the gossip of the lobbies at the mo- the rise of the provincial press will continue ment when it is being read in London. In- until we see something like the state of things deed, Birmingham is apt to hear the news in America, where each journal, however first of the two, for the county dailies, un- good, finds geographical limits to its circu embarrassed by some London expenses, are lation, and the journals of the greatest city liberal in collecting news, are interested have no universal influence, and only a about it, and succeed to a remarkable ex-nominal precedence in the newspaper tent in obtaining it. For the same reason world. In what way that change will affect the local papers pay well, the proprietors the profession we must leave for future find it to their interest to buy good writing, discussion; but one of its main results their employés are less hampered by the in-must, we conceive, be to increase the power visible chains of London "society," and of journalism in the aggregate while dimin their leaders tend to improve-have im- ishing the power of any individual journal, proved, indeed, so rapidly, that there are -a change which in England will be a very now provincial dailies which, as vehicles of great one indeed; and another to make general information, surpass all but the very provincial opinion, the opinion of the best of their London rivals. While there- great trading cities, much more influenfore London declines, the provinces ad- tial than that somewhat over-cautious and vance, until in the North more especially, feeble but acute set of ideas usually de there is a perceptible transfer of journalistic scribed as 'London opinion." There is power. crudity very often in the opinion of the provinces, but it is masculine and broad, | age of the women of that day may either which opinion at present in London cer- serve as the excuse, or explain the cause. tainly is not. From St. Paul's. MADAME LAFAYETTE. At all events, the fact cannot be denied, and we may fairly look to the writings and the lives of women, as trustworthy and eloquent exponents of that most singular period. If the men were heroes, the women were heroines, and seconded them with a zeal and headstrong valour akin to the legends of chivalry. THERE are special phases both in history and in fiction that are invested with an un- Foremost among the young patriots of dying interest, — about the French Revolu- that day was Lafayette, a sincere, though tion especially, we never can read enough. moderate republican, the friend of Mirabeau The spasmodic episodes of political life; and of the people. His career belongs to the dramatic lustre with which events pre- legitimate history, and only concerns us as cipitated themselves; the extraordinary far as it bears upon the fortunes of his wife, power, variety, and spontaneity displayed a domestic saint, living apart, enshrined in by the leaders; the revelations of wickedness and of virtue, of selfish ambition and heroic self-sacrifice, of lofty dreamers and degraded workers, come to us most vividly in memoirs and family records. Through every stage of the Revolution women were extraordinarily predominant. Whether as transcendental republicans, like Madame Roland, or cruel, greedy democrats, like Thervigne de Mericourt; as lovely Aspasias, like Madame Tallien; as murderous Judiths, like Charlotte Corday; as haughty, but high-souled sovereigns, like Marie Antoinette; or sweet, prayerful martyrs, clinging to the falling throne from great love to him who sat upon it, like Madame Elizabeth, typical women of all ages, stations, and capacities stand foremost in the hottest fury of the Revolution. - Women are generally in extremes, and these strange, disjointed times brought out their salient points, both for good and for bad, in undue and inordinate relief. The floating, indeterminate theories on liberty, -as freeing men and women from every law; and on equality, as placing the sexes on a level; entire emancipation from social conventionalities, hitherto so irksome to women; a universal contagion of mock beroism and declamatory vehemence; an incessant excitement and unrest, were all elements recommending themselves, more or less, to the female mind, and affording occasion for supremacy, quite impossible in the ordinary course of events. the sanctuary of her home, and hallowed by her husband's love, until called forth by the course of events into the full glare of historical prominence. While literature has been inundated with notices concerning brilliant women who preferred the notoriety of public career, it has taken more than half a century to unveil the details of this beautiful life, - the domestic side, so to say, of the Revolution, a melancholy episode of what happened within the home, that republican France might triumph. The book in question contains two biographies, the first written by Madame Lafayette herself, when a prisoner at Olmütz, of her mother, the Duchesse d'Ayen; the second by Madame de Lastayrie, daughter of Madame Lafayette, recounting her mother's life. The extraordinary fortitude, self-sacrifice, and resignation, the grace and beauty of these ladies of the Noailles family, in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of the vielle roche, hardly needed their unparalleled misfortunes to give most life-like interest to these pages. We must begin with the Duchesse d'Ayen, the wife of a powerful nobleman, holding high office at the court of Louis XIV., the mother of five daughters, all closely identified with the Revolution. Married early in life, she would appear to have repulsed her husband by a too rigid sense of duty, too uncompromising a piety, qualities little acceptable at any time in married life, but . The men of the Revolution were all young specially so at this dissipated, freethinking and enthusiastic, equally possessed by a period. Neglected by the husband she had sort of fury of novelty, both in government wearied by her mental superiority, she lived and ideas; wildly rejecting the old-world much in solitude, and with her children, rules and restraints, embittered by the tra- who clung to her throughout their lives with ditions of a detested court; eager to in- a love and veneration we may admire, but augurate an entirely new phase of life in certainly little imitate, in these days of which women were assigned an avowed juvenile emancipation, when the young are place beside themselves. The extraordi- so much more considered than the old. nary beauty, fascination, talent, and cour-She was brought into close collision with the agitation of the times, through her two | snares and temptations. She positively re- At first the duchess cordially sympathized with them, but as the political horizon darkened, and organized murder, anarchy, and infidelity, usurped the place of law, justice, and religion, her own principles, as well as anxiety for her husband and relatives, opened her eyes to the approaching crisis. Then came the terrible 10th of August, when every doubt as to the tendency of the Revolution vanished. The duke, who was captain of the king's guard in attendance at the Tuilleries, narrowly escaped death, and was forced to fly from France. The duchess, with her aged mother, the Maréchale de Noailles, and her daughter, In 1777 came the American war of indethe favourite sister of Madame Lafayette,pendence, and Lafayette's resolve to fight all the other members of her family being in in the republican armies, a decision that prison or exile, -lived unmolested until taught her practically what personal sacri after the execution of the king and queen, fices the wives of heroes are called upon to when their high rank and close connection make, and what bitter tears wet the with the court constituted them criminals in laurels of victory. the eyes of the revolutionary tribunals. These unhappy ladies were among the last victims of the Reign of Terror, being guillotined four days previous to the 10th Thermidor, that blessed day of general amnesty, which opened the prisons and saved such crowds of innocent victims. When Lafayette's project was first broached, the Duke d'Ayen, considering his daughter's happiness only, was furious; but the duchess, with a juster mind appreciated the magnanimity of her son-in-law, and for tified her daughter in bearing the separation. Society in those days of unquestioning republicanism applauded Lafayette and blamed the duke. "Indeed," says Lord Stormont, then English Ambassador at Paris, "if the duke had prevented Lafay ette's departure, no one would have been found to marry his other daughters." - Madame Lafayette traces her mother's life with a tender sympathy that reveals to us her passionate nature. Within her heart were depths of love so inexhaustible, that to every call upon her sympathies, whether as daughter, mother, or wife, she responded by an unquestioning devotion and absolute Madame Lafayette, young and enthusias self-abandonment. Educated by such a tic, sympathizing in the cause, and proud mother, it is not surprising that extreme re- of his brilliant achievements, bore this first serve, and an almost exaggerated conscien- parting almost joyfully. His charming les tiousness marked her character. At twelve ters sustained her, - letters so lover-like years old she questioned herself on religion and full of ardour that they bring to us, so constantly that her young mind grew even now, a perfect atmosphere of love. confused, and taught itself to doubt, so that Like Henry VIII. writing to Anne Boleyn, when desired to prepare for her first com- he always addresses her as "Dearest munion she imagined herself an unbeliever, heart." and declined. One year after Lafayette was proposed to her as a husband. His extreme youth, being then only fourteen, his unfinished education, and the vast fortune he possessed, would seem to have been considered especial recommendations. So thought the Duke d'Ayen, a courtier and a man of the world. So did not think his Duchess, who, exaggerated in her ideas of duty and responsibility, viewed these worldly advantages, especially the possession of large fortune, as so many dangerous "What fears," says he, "what sorrow, |