Geraldines, with their rivals the Butlers, carried on a constant

succes- Tun author of this little poem tells us frankly that he aspires to im- sion of wars, intrigues, and rebellions, with the natives and the home prove on the Book of Job. He limits himself in terms to giving a government, which checked and frustrated every natural tendency to clearer exposition of the Divine purpose of human suffering, which, it self-development. The Tudors first of all applied themselves to the cannot be denied, is obscurely shadowed forth in that marvellous work of conquest and consolidation, and their policy and fierce will poem. This prefatory avowal is as follows :

left Ireland at the close of the reign of Elizabeth in the position of " It did not appear to the author that, in the Book of Job, the answer to the a subjugated country. James I., after playing for a short time, after mourner's powerful inquiries taken up by Elam, and concluded by the Deity his fashion, at royal legislation on the newly-acquired dependency, himself, gave that intelligible and complete explanation and reply which might gave full sway to the host of speculators who, whether in the more have been expected from its importance, or fairly looked for from the God of legal form of colonizers on already confiscated lands, or the more revelation ; and this fact almost suggests a suspicion that some passages essential

to the conclusion of that sublime work must have been omitted or lost. In any immediately profitable capacity of inquisitors of defective title-deeds, case, its answers to the inquiring sufferer do not give that explanatory view of introduced an external but energetic element into the northern por- divine dealing, which places the Deity in the grandest attitude of His own revs. tion of the island. Then came the Stuart misdoings, which culminated lation—not as a Being exercising His supreme Majesty and Omnipotence for the in England in a civil war ; in Ireland, whether with the tacit orof silencing all grievance, and compelling the sorrowing sons of men to avowed knowledge of the king or not it is impossible to say, but cer- Ee down, appalled in slavish fear, at the footstool of an overwhelming Power, but as One desirous to make Himself known, and His whole principles of action tainly not without his complicity in some form,—in rebellion, and, as understood—to interpret Himself mercifully and attractively to mankind."

The author carries out this purpose in the following strange way. Mr. Goldwin Smith does justice, for the first time, to the real posi- "Life" is introduced with " hasty toilet, half awake," standing tion and conduct of Cromwell in Irish affairs. He is quite too clear- beneath "the new-lighted. heaven," and giving his " orison unto the sighted to accept either the malignant calumnies of the enemies of dawn." Life begins this prayer by the statement that there is much the great Protector, or the scarcely less injurious vindication of his suffering in the world : allow it to be ; and Mr. Goldwin Smith speaks with truth of the 'Life,' though so lately up, then falls into a dream, in which he miracles of administrative talent which his short sway exhibits. turns to read the "history of ages," when Time places his withered

"And thou art done, and I have heard thy voice, And call it wisdom—yet within me swells

al

we gain by living ?—This unknown, Is ill at ease, and would be else or elsewhere—

His full heart

aught-

Armed with the truth, if truth indeed be After further insisting on his wish for a revelation, and being re- buked by an intervening " Voice," whom, however, he confutes, this rather striking passage With one more ge we must close our im- lengthy suggestion. He takes Life into Eternity, to see the coloured

stars on the edge of our system, and to look at a comet which de- scribes a very long orbit beyond it. He then requests Life to raise a million to the millionth power in imagination—without even the aid of logarithms—and at an infinitely greater distance than that to "behold the shore of true Eternity." It appears to be a very craggy kind of place :

" And see, remote, and still extending out, Its rising regions, high, and grave, and great, On these stupendous summits that thy stars Would lose themselves in climbing—'mong whose crags The whole material universe might hide, And never more appear. Should but a fragment of those vast crags fall, The petty space thou wiliest time and heaven Were filled, and all thy systems crushed and choked."

There we find a sunlight such as a hundred rifled worlds, the " gor- geous sunlight on ten million hills," could not have revealed, and Life is reproached for grudging " departed loves" to this glorious and very much jewelled region. After a description of hell, and a further draft on the multiplication table, we get an announcement worthy of more serious and simple language, that the shadow of evil and suf- fering is not God's seeking but man's, and is simply the result of sin shutting out as it does the solicitations of an infinite and unceasing love. The last few stanzas seem to have in them a serious purpose, though they are as poor as their predecessors; but no one would wade through such wildernesses of diamonds and multiplied moun- tains to reach it. Why will worthy people do this kind of thing ? If J. A. S. had written out his views in plain English we should have been ready to read them with respect, but this ornamental ex- position of faith is intolerable. Nothing can be more foolish than the verses. Some miscellaneous poems are added, from which we select the following eloquent stanzas on Sympathy in a poem entitled "Wayward (Rather)" :

" 'Tis vain for puritanic frost To check our being's vital action ; Like Nature, with her seasons crossed, As in the dull, wet-day direction.

" The Grecian bed—Dagobert's sword—

Or some such thing to measure feeling, And cut and crop it to the Word, Like housemaids when potatoes peeling.

" Not too particularly nice, Bat, where you find an eye or face deep,

Just level with a good bold slice,

And cure all angles with a base sweep."

Folly like this should not seek competition with the greatest poem in any language.