THE GRANDMOTHER. [Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., F.R.S., born at Somerby, Lincolnshire, 1809; poet laureate. He was educated by his father, the late Rev. G. C. Tennyson, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1829 he gained the Chancellor's medal for his English poem entitled Timbuctoo. Two years before that event, he had published, in conjunction with his brother Charles, a small volume under the title of Poems by Two Brothers.1 In 1830 he issued Poems, chiefly Lyrical; another volume, partly reprints, two years later, and a third in 1842. These were followed by The Princess, 1847; In Memoriam, 1850; Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 1852; Maud, and other Poems, 1855; The Idylls of the King, 1859; Enoch Arden, 1864; The Holy Grail, 1869; The Window, or the Songs of the Wrens, 1870; Queen Mary, a drama, 1875; Harold, a drama, 1876; &c. The Idylls of the King was not completed until the publication of Gareth and Lynette in 1873. On the death of Wordsworth, he was appointed poet laureate. The Edinburgh Review says: "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets is precisely that of sustained perfection of style." He has obtained general recognition as the first of modern English poets. He has also published two dramas, Queen Mary and Harold.] And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne? For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save, Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock; "Here's a leg for a babe of a week!" says doctor; and he would be bound, Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue! I ought to have gone before him: I wonder he went so young. I cannot cry for him, Annie: I have not long to stay; Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away. Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold; 1 Wordsworth upon reading this volume at first thought Charles the better poet of the two; but afterwards altered his opinion. 2 The duties and origin of this office are somewhat obscure. The poet laureate was to furnish the state with a measure of praise and verse twice a year. The Delphic laurel consecrated to Apollo in the mythology of the Greeks, or the garland of oak-leaves given to victors in the Roman Capitoline games, probably first suggested the literary distinction of poet laureate, which, with some variations of ceremonies, was maintained until the reign of Theodocius, who abolished it as a remnant of pagan superstition. The title was not used again until it was conferred upon Petrarch, who revived the spirit and studies of the age of Augustus. After Petrarch the title was bestowed on Philelphus, a satirical poet of the fifteenth century; then on Tasso; then on Quezno, the buffoon of Leo X.! and next upon Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. The following anecdote is not without meaning: A poor poet, hoping for some reward, presented a panegyric to Pope Pius III., who sent him an epigram to this effect: "The poet in his own work aye finds his greatest meed." The poet retorted: "If thou wert so rewarded, thou wouldst be poor indeed!" The following is a list of English poets laureate, but the appointment of the first two named is considered doubtful by some authorities: John Skelton, who died 1529; Edmund Spenser, died 1598-9; Samuel Daniel, who was appointed to the laureateship in the year of Spenser's death; Ben Jonson, appointed 1619; Sir William Davenant, 1637; John Dryden, 1668; dismissed the same year on account of being a Papist; Thomas Shadwell, 1688; Nahum Tate, 1692; Nicholas Rowe, 1716; Lawrence Eusden, 1718; Colley Cibber, 1730; W. Whitehead, 1757; Thomas Warton, 1785; Henry James Pye, 1790; Robert Southey, 1813 (the laurel was offered to Scott in this year and he declined it); William Wordsworth, 1843; Alfred Tennyson, 1850. The dates given are those of the appointment, which was generally made immediately after the death of the preceding laureate. For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear, I mean your grandfather, Annie; it cost me a world of woe, For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise, And Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day; And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late I climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate. The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale, And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me chirrupt the nightingale. All of a sudden he stopt: there past by the gate of the farm, Willy stood up like a man, and look'd the thing that he meant; And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine: "Sweetheart, I love you so well that your good name is mine. And what do I care for Jane, let her speak of you well or ill; "Marry you, Willy!" said I, "but I needs must speak my mind, So Willy and I were wedded: I wore a lilac gown; And the ringers rang with a will, and he gave the ringers a crown. But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was born, Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn. That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of death. But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had fought for his life. His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain: I look'd at the still little body-his trouble had all been in vain. For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn: But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born. But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay: And he died, and I could not weep-my own time seem'd so near. But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then could have died: I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side. Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two, And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too-they sing to their team: I am not always certain if they be alive or dead. And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive; For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve; To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad: And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain, So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower; And Willy's wife has written, she never was overwise. A FAMILY IN LOVE. [Mrs.Dinah Maria Mulock Craik was born at Stoke-upon-Trent, 1826. Died 1887. She is distinguished as a writer of the best class of novels, but she is also the author of many tender, truthful, and inspiring poems. Her first novel, The Ogilvies, appeared in 1849, and was followed by Olive: The Head of the Family; Alice Learmont, a fairy tale; Agatha's Husband; John Halifax, Gentleman (this is the most popular of all her works); Nothing New-a collection of eight tales, from which we take the following; A Woman's Thoughts about Women; Studies from Life; A Life for a Life; Mistress and Maid, &c. She has also written many books for children. Her chief works are published by Hurst and Blackett, her poems by Sampson Low, Marston, & Co. "We are always glad to welcome Miss Mulock. She writes from her own convictions, and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but to express it in language effective and vigorous."-Athenæum.] This is the age of complainings. Nobody suffers in silence; nobody breaks his or her heart in secrecy and solitude: they all take "the public" into their confidence—the convenient public, which, like murder, Hath no tongue, but speaks Of course it is neither the confider's fault nor yet the confidant's, if the winds sometimes whisper that king Midas has asses' ears. Mine is no such confession. I have no gossip to retail of my neighbours: I am a very quiet gentleman, who prefer confining my interests and observations to my own household, my own immediate family. Ay, there lies my inevitable grief, there lurks my secret wrong; I am the unhappy elder brother of a family in love. The fact dimly dawned upon me, widening by degrees, ever since I came home from India last year, and took upon myself the charge of my five sisters, aged from about- But Martha might object to my particularizing. Good little Patty! what a merry creature she was when she went nutting and fishing with me. And what ugly caps she has taken to wearing, poor dear! And why can't she speak as gently when scolding the servants as I remember our sweet-voiced pretty mother used always to do? And why, in spite of their mutual position, will she persist in calling Mr. Green with a kind of frigid solemnity, "Mr. Green?" But he does not seem to mind it: probably he never was called anything else. He is a very worthy person, nevertheless, and I have a great respect for him. When my sister Martha-Miss Heathcote, as she has been called from her cradle-by letter announced to me at Madras that she intended to relinquish that title for the far less euphonious one of Mrs. Green, I was, to say the least of it, surprised. I had thought, for various reasons (of no moment now), that my eldest sister was not likely to marry-I rather hoped she would not. We might have been so comfortable, poor Patty and I. However, I had no business to interfere with either her happiness or her destiny; so when, the first Sunday after my arrival at home, a cozy carriage drove up the avenue, and a bald, rather stout little man got out, to be solemnly introduced to me as "Mr. Green," I submitted to the force of circumstances, and to the duties of a brotherin-law. He has dined with us every Sunday since. He and I are capital friends; regularly, when the ladies retire, he informs me what the Funds have been at, day by day during the past week, and which is the safest railway to buy A most shares in for the week following. worthy person, I repeat, will make a kind husband, and I suppose Martha likes him; but However, poor girl, she is old enough to judge for herself, and it is no business of mine. Some time, before long, I shall give her away at the old parish church-quietly, without any show; I shall see her walk down the church-aisle with old Mr. Green-he in his best white waistcoat, and she in her sober gray poplin, which she insists on being married in-not the clear soft muslin and long lace veil I quite well remember seeing Patty working at and blushing over, we won't say how many years ago. Well, women are better married, they say; but I think I would rather have had Martha an old maid. My second sister, Angeline, was fifteen when I left England; and the very loveliest creature I ever beheld. Everybody knew it, everybody acknowledged it. She could not walk down the street without people turning to look after her; she could not enter a room without creating a general whisper: "Who is she?"-The same thing continued as she grew up to womanhood. All the world was at her feet; every one said she would make a splendid marriage become a countess at least; and I do believe Angeline herself had the fullest confidence in that probability. She refused lovers by the dozen; every letter I got told me of some new slaughter of Miss Angeline's. I would have pitied the poor fellows, only she was such a dazzling beauty, and no man falls out of love so safely as a man who falls in love with a beauty. I never heard that anybody died 15 either by consumption, cord, or pistol, through | consent only was required, since he and Charthe cruelty of my sister Angeline. But, like most cruel damsels, she paid the penalty of her hard-heartedness; when I came home I found Angeline Heathcote Angeline Beautiful yet, beautiful exHeathcote still. ceedingly; a walking picture, a visible poem: it was a real pleasure to me to have such a handsome creature about the house. Though people did say with a mysterious shake of the head, that handsome as she was, if I had only seen my sister two or three years ago! And Angeline herself became tenacious on the subject of new gowns, and did not like it to be generally known whether she or Charlotte was the elder. Good, plain, merry Charlotte, who never thought about either her looks or her age. Yet Charlotte was the first that brought me into trouble that trouble which I am now I had not been at called upon to bemoan. home three months, when there came a young gentleman a very lively and pleasant young gentleman too- -who sang duets with the younger girls, and made himself quite at home in my family circle. I myself did not much meddle with him, thought him a good-natured lad, and no more-until one fine morning he astonished me by requesting five minutes' conversation with me in my study. (Alas! such misfortunes come not singly-my study has never been safe from similar applications and conversations since.) I was very kind to the young man; when he blushed I looked another way; when he trembled, I invited him to take a chair. I listened to his stammering explanations with the utmost patience and sympathy; I even tried to help him out with them-till he came to the last clause. Now, I do say that a man who asks you for your purse, your horse, your friendship, after only four weeks' acquaintance, has considerable courage; but a man who, after that brief period since his introduction, comes and asks you for your sister-why, one's first impulse is to kick him down stairs. Happily, I controlled myself. I called to mind that Mr. Cuthbert was a very honest young fellow, and that if he did choose to risk his whole future upon the result of a month's laughing, and singing, and dancing at balls certainly it was his affair, not mine. My business solely related to Charlotte. I was just despatching it in the quickest and friendliest manner, by advising the young fellow to go back to college and not make a fool of himself in vain, when he informed me that my lotte had been a plighted couple for the space I have always held certain crotchets on the So, what could I do?-Nothing but deal with the young simpletons-if such they were according to their folly. If true, their love would have time to prove itself such; if false, they would best find out that fact by its not I kissed away Lotty's tears, being thwarted. silly child! and next Sunday I had the honour of carving for brother-in-law elect No. 2. It never rains but it pours. Whether Angeline was roused at once to indignation and condescension by Charlotte's engagementwhich she was the loudest in inveighing against -or whether, as was afterwards reported to me, she was influenced by a certain statistical newspaper paragraph, maliciously read aloud by Mr. Cuthbert for general edification, that women's chances of matrimony were proved by the late census to diminish greatly between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; but most assuredly Angeline's demeanour changed. She stooped to be agreeable as well as beautiful. To more than one suitor whom she had of old swept haughtily by, did she now graciously incline; and the result was-partly owing to the gaieties of this autumn's election-that Miss Angeline Heathcote, the beauty of the country, held a general election on her own private account. Alas for me! in one week I had no less than four hopeful candidates requesting "the honour of an interview" in my study. Angeline's decision was rather dilatorythey were all such excellent matches; and, poor girl-with her beauty for her chief gift and with all the tinsel adoration it brought her, she had never been used to think of marriage as anything more than a mere worldly arrangement. She was ready to choose a husband as she would a wedding-gown-dispassionately, carefully, as the best out of a large selection of articles, each rich and good in its way, and |