wife and pale children cowering over a few dying embers, to know that Cannon-street, and the lawyers' bills, and lord mayors' feasts, are provided out of the 'income proper' which makes his coals so dear. We will not pursue this branch of the argument any further. Nor will we enter upon the injury done to our whole manufacturing industry by the unnecessary taxation upon a substance which is one of the raw materials of almost all manufactures. It must be very clear, from what we have said, that the system of local taxation adopted by our old chartered cities and towns is tyrannical in principle and vicious in practice; and that, besides many other unjust and unnecessary burdens, of both a public and private nature, by which the staple trade of the north and the fuel of the people of the metropolis, and for forty miles round it, is oppressed, no article suffers so much from the charter taxation as this, one of the prime necessaries of life-coal. To ask the coal trade, thus heavily burdened by local taxation, to contribute the same per centage to the national taxes as the corn trade, or any other trade which is free from such burdens, is not only a wrong to the producer and consumer of the article, but is a sad political blunder. In the race of competition in which we are now engaged with the other nations of the world, how necessary is it that coal-one of the raw materials, we repeat, of almost every manufacture-should be made as cheap as possible for our own people, since we now offer it freely to every other. For ages to come our coal fields will supply the manufactures of the world; and so long as we can deposit on the soil of Belgium and America, British fuel at a cheaper rate than they can raise the same kind of fuel from their own mines, the inhabitants of these countries will continue to resort to our shores for fuel, and our precedence as a manufacturing people will be preserved. Our local taxation on coal is not only a dead weight on our own manufactures, but a premium to the establishment of coal-mining in other countries, and with the establishment of coal-mines in many countries will arise the power of pushing many of our manufactures aside. Whatever, then, tends to make our fuel dear or difficult to export, whether it be careless or unscientific methods in the mine, or heavy wayleaves, or dangerous rivers, or want of docks, or local dues, from which the coal trade derives no benefit, or harbours dangerous and difficult of access; is an injury to the nation at large, for it is injurious to the commercial and manufacturing supremacy in which is bound up the very existence of Great Britain as a first-class power. Finally, as a natural termination to the lengthened chain of monopoly, appears the system of the coal factor and coal mer chant. The coal factor is the agent of the coal owner, who pays him an excessive commission for a very easy and unimportant service. He is one of the fat sinecurists of a monopolist system. Enormous fortunes are made by lucky individuals who happen to be connected, by family or other ties, with the great coal owners of the north. And that, too, for duties compared to which those of a soapboiler are difficult and scientific. From the foregoing detail it is evident that the whole system of the coal trade, from the northern mine to the London grate, calls for reform. Instead of being free as the air or light-as such a necessary of life ought to be-it is burdened by imposts, and hampered with monopolies from beginning to end. The times are propitious for reforming these abuses. If the communities which suffer will combine, the light and warmth of the people will soon be free. ART. III.-Days and Hours. By Frederick Tennyson. London. John W. Parker & Son. 2. Day and Night Songs. By William Allingham. London: George Routledge & Co. 3. Fermilian; or, the Student of Badajos. A Spasmodic Tragedy. By T. Percy Jones. Blackwood & Sons. 4. The Vision of Prophecy and other Poems. By James D. Burns, M.A. Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter. 5. Passion-Flowers. Boston: Ticknor, Read & Fields. 6. Poems. By William Stephen Sandes. London: Longman & Co. 7. Poems. By William Bell Scott. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 8. Robespierre. A Tragedy. By Henry Bliss. London: Kimpton. 9. The Village Bridal, and other Poems. By James Henry Powell. London: Whittaker & Co. 10. Lyric Notes of the Russian War. By Ruther. London: Bell. THE ancients were quite right in proclaiming that a poet must be born, not made. To be sure, fitting culture and art-education, will make the best born poet better, since they supply the finetempered implements of workmanship to the hands of genius. Yet, without a certain given material, all the education in the world will never produce a poet. A due consideration of what is essential to constitute the poet, is suited to deter many versifiers from wasting precious time in an unprofitable pursuit. Let us for a moment glance at some of the requisite qualities. The poet must have large perceptive powers, for they are the windows as it were, through which he looks, and in a great measure determine his range of vision. He must possess the faculty which we call imagination, and which is very compound in its constitution, and a very Proteus in its manifestations. At one time it is a worship of beauty, at another, it is a suffering or rejoicing sympathy. Now it will see a deeper meaning in the heart of common things, and again it will light up the dull face of things with magical beauty. He must possess logical and analytical power, for the poet is the greatest logician, and leaps to his results by no mere guess. He must be the greatest master of common sense, for a poet was never yet an inspired fool. He must possess intense passions, for these, properly reined and guided, draw the car of genius up the immortal mount. His eye must be tremblingly alive to beauty, his ear hungering for melody; indeed, he must have that vehement passion for melody that buoys his speech into song, his footsteps into tune, and makes his life move in a melodious rhythm. But, above all, he must possess a warm, kindling, electrical temperament. This attribute of the poet we should set above all others. Large heart and brain, clear sight, and general breadth of nature, are indispensable. There never has been a poet but in the proportion that he has possessed these characteristics. Such have been the world's great singers. They were all thus gloriously endowed, who have had the magic to unlock the sources of human smiles and tears, and send the thrill of sympathy through the heart of universal humanity. In this sense Homer, Milton, Shakspeare, Dante, and Burns, are poets. They are creators, seers, prophets, and singers. But we must not limit the range of the world of poetry to the empire of these few kings. There are others who possess poetical power in a smaller degree, and the poetical attributes in smaller proportions and varying combinations. As one star differs from another star in glory, and as one flower differs from another in beauty, so may one poet differ from another in the extent of his poetical endowment. Nor do we quarrel with the daisy because it is not dashed with the fiery hues of the tulip, or scorn the linnet because it has not the note of the nightingale. There is space in the universe for all its constellations, there is room on the earth for all its flowers, and there is a place in our sympathies for small poets as well as for great ones. If we were not thus lenient, what should we have to say for our eighteen-hundred-and-fifty-four poets? But we are lenient. Nor are we so much alarmed as some persons at the extent to which 'poetry' is being perpetrated. Versifying is incident to youth as the measles to childhood, and as seldom is it fatal. It generally works its own cure. We ourselves plead guilty to having been metre-mongers in our time, and of rushing into publication before our beard. A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind. If the reader has never rushed into rhyme, and is chuckling over his advantage, we bid him to pause while he recurs to his love-letters, and we warrant that he has little cause to congratulate himself on his particular strength of mind, even though he may have avoided our own peculiar weakness. We imagine that few persons can hold their banquet of ridicule at the expense of poor versifiers in perfect peace of mind. The ghost of some secret delinquency starts up in memory, and comes to trouble their content and spoil their feast. Doubtless, it is melancholy to think how many possessors of average intellect are at this moment engaged in fringing wretched prose with indifferent rhyme. It looks like a mournful waste of precious time and dear paper. Still there's consolation in it, and by virtue of a recent invention, it is probable that paper is not irrecoverable even when printed on. The first book on our list is inscribed with the name of Tennyson, and is therefore sure of a ready reading for the sake of the great Alfred, whom we love so, and who has rendered that name illustrious. Yet it may not be of any great advantage to the poetical aspirant that he should wear such name when we come to consider his poetic claims, for in proportion to the expectation excited may be our disappointment on reading the book; and both feelings may be unjust to the poet. When we first saw poems in 'Fraser's Magazine' signed Frederick Tennyson, we thought that some young branch of the family tree had burst into the poetic flower, and on reading the volume, we felt that the poems might have been the earlier effusions of Alfred now first published, so great is the family likeness. There are the same forms more feebly handled, the same colours more faintly reproduced, and snatches of the old music only badly remembered. We thought Frederick had been gleaning in the rich harvest-field which Alfred had reaped, and that by and by in other years he would garner in the produce of his own. And it was with a feeling of sadness that we learned that this was the elder brother, and that the weakness of the poetic offspring was attributable to age, and not to immaturity. That Frederick Tennyson has a strong sense of beauty no one can doubt after reading his verses, but he lacks the faculty of clear and adequate expression. All is hazy and undefined. There is a delicious dimness sometimes in painting which is pleasing to the eye, but the same soft limning in poetry will often fail; its pictures are dissolving ones. And this is especially the case with Mr. Tennyson's poetry. It fails from want of force. He cannot realize graphically. If not still more impalpable, it should be called poetry in a state of fluidity, and might have been written by a denizen of Jupiter. Or if one was accustomed to write in one's sleep, you might reasonably expect to find something of the same kind on your pillow in the morning as the result of dreaming. Harvest Home' and the 'Bridal' are the two best pieces in the book. We give a specimen of the formerThe harvest days are come again, The vales are surging with the grain; The mighty youth and supple child Old head and sunny forehead peers Draw the clear October out, Then back to labour with a shout. The banded sheaves stand orderly Laughter flies from door to door, Fettered in a golden chain, With a great sheaf for a crown, Onward he reels, a happy clown, Right through the middle of the town.-p. 248. We must make room for four very beautiful stanzas, selected from the 'Song of an Old Man' But take me back where lie inurn'd Discrowned hopes with quenched eyes, Some spirit out of darkness brings, |