Not here, O Apollo !

Are haunts meet for thee,

But where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea.

Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O, speed, and rejoice!

On the sward, at the cliff-top,
Lie strewn the white flocks;
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.

In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull'd by the rills,
Lie wrapt in their blankets,
Asleep on the hills.

-What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower'd broom?

What sweet-breathing Presence
Out-perfumes the thyme ?
What voices enrapture
The night's balmy prime ?-

"Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, The Nine.
-The Leader is fairest,
But all are divine.

They are lost in the hollows.

They stream up again.

What seeks on this mountain

The glorified train ?

They bathe on this mountain,

In the spring by their road.

Then on to Olympus,

Their endless abode.

-Whose praise do they mention?

Of what is it told?—

What will be for ever,

What was from of old.

First hymn they the Father

Of all things; and then
The rest of Immortals,
The action of men.

The Day in its hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The Night in its silence,

The Stars in their calm."

But though in his art Mr. Arnold is Greek, the thought and general feeling of his pieces are tinged with a more modern heathenism.

The greatest intellect of modern times cannot but have had an influence on modern thought, even in the English Universities. There is nothing about Goethe in the Articles of the Church of England, and undergraduates at Oxford may read him with impunity. His philosophy and his practice have found echoes-confused and uncertain enough-but still easily recognisable in many English, even many Oxford, minds. We don't allude to his pantheistic tenets; for no sworn member of our English Church can be infected with these; but to his Philosophy of Life-the philosophy which says life is the art of self-development, and claims that we should devote ourselves to conscious self-formation without ulterior object, which would have the nature of a man revolve on its own axis, and treats religion as a step in education, and not the highest step. This is the philosophy which lies hidden in the centre of many an English mind; and it has received an impulse from a very different and less generally suspected quarter. Where Goethe stepped with conscious searching eyes, the mild egotism of Wordsworth led him without thought or clear perception of his whereabouts. His self-occupation was too simple and complete for him to be conscious of it. It was quiet, inoffensive, and unlimited. The most important thing in the world was the cultivation of William Wordsworth for himself, the next important thing his cultivation for the sake of

mankind. Goethe puts quietly on one side that central spirit of the Christian revelation which makes the dependent affections the highest element in our nature, and which places our noblest attainable life in that service which is perfect freedom. He would have us all patentdigesters, or rather assimilators, of knowledge and experience; and, indeed, his vast ranging genius and cold temperament made him, if any man, capable of the independent position he assumes. But feebler minds that strive to hold this place are constantly and painfully reminded of their own insufficiency. They "stretch weak hands," not "of faith and prayer," but of the self-distrust begotten by frequent failure, and of the dismay and heartsinking that arise from finding that their steps are not right onward to the proposed goal, but wavering, sliding, too often retrogressive. Their affections, whether strong or weak, outbalance their will: they suffer from all the shortcomings of their philosophy, and have not the heart to avail themselves of its consolations, such as they are. Goethe, as Mr. Arnold himself says in one of his finest poems,

"Was happy, if to know

Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror and insane distress,

And headlong fate, be happiness."

But to few is it given to taste such happiness. Few have the will and fewer yet the power to sever those threads which knit them up in the common bond of humanity. Some cold tempers there are which can stand aloof and quietly survey the field of circumstance. They quarrel neither with their own shortcomings nor with those of others; all that is, is if not well, at least not to be helped ; they are indifferentists, calm and apathetic ruminators. They lie down in life and chew the cud of destiny. They have opinions; but whether they are true, they don't know; nor does it much signify; things must take their course.

and

They are phenomena, and content to be phenomena;
they rarely harass themselves with any stronger feeling
than that of a gentle contempt for others. Mr. Arnold
is far from being of this class; his nature is too genial to
permit it; but he is touched with the barren doctrine that
it is a man's business to be investigating and following
the "Law of his being," and that therein lies his road
to rest and happiness; he yearns to walk by sight, and
kneels idolatrously to wisdom, and sings of Fate and
"Unknown Powers" that control the destiny of man;
but in such wavering strains, and mixed sometimes with
thoughts so much higher, that it is not easy to estimate
what real hold the Oxford sublimate of Goethe has upon
his mind. Like others of his school, weary of the inter-
necine war of self, his troubled eyes turn to Nature, and
he sees in the calm routine of physical Nature something
that contrasts so peacefully with the jar of his own en-
deavours, that he not only seeks the soothing balm of
loveliness and freshness that she pours into our wounds,
but he gives a moral significance to her invariable round
of operations, and personifies her as the ideal of voluntary
obedience to the law. So vivid is his personification, and
so warm his reverence, that it far outpasses the limits of
our sympathy and admiration.

"Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,

At the vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

And a look of passionate desire

O'er the sea and to the stars I send :

'Ye who from my feeble childhood up have calm'd me,

Calm me, ah, compose me to the end.

Ah, once more,' I cried, 'ye Stars, ye Waters,,

On my heart your mighty charm renew:

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you.'

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night-air came the answer-
'Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.

Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll.
For alone they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

Bounded by themselves, and unobservant
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.'

O air-born Voice! long since, severely clear
A cry like thine in my own heart I hear.
'Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.'

Perhaps it is hardly fair to quarrel so much with Mr. Arnold's personal philosophy, when his poetry is so much better. He brings this sort of observation on himself, however, by inflicting so much of the subject-matter of it upon his readers. His pages are crowded with this sort of poem, when he has it in his power to write others infinitely superior to them. He must pardon us for saying that his philosophy and meditations on life are scarcely valuable enough, to make a poetry employed in developing them capable of deeply moving and widely profiting the public mind. Again, the intricacies of his intercourse with Marguerite are certainly not good love-poems, and rarely any thing better; and his mourning notes over the perplexities and distracting influences thrust upon the heart and mind in this

"Strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its head o'er-tasked, its palsied heart—”