have the mirror held up to Hedonism. On the education of the affections
and on the purity of domestic life must depend very largely, not merely
the happiness of individuals, but the well-being of society, and how
wide a space is filled by poems in Tennyson's works bearing
influentially on these subjects is obvious. And they admit us into a
pleasaunce with which it is good to be familiar, so pure and wholesome
is their atmosphere, so tranquilly beautiful the world in which the
characters move and the little dramas unfold themselves. They preach
nothing, but deep into every heart must sink their silent lessons. "Upon
the sacredness of home life," writes his son, "he would maintain that
the stability and greatness of a nation largely depend; and one of the
secrets of his power over mankind was his true joy in the family duties
and affections." What sermons have we in 'The Miller's Daughter', in
'Dora', in 'The Gardener's Daughter' and in 'Love and Duty'. 'The
Princess' was a direct contribution to a social question of momentous
importance to our time. 'Maud' had an immediate political purpose, while
in 'In Memoriam' he became the interpreter and teacher of his generation
in a still higher sense.

Since Shakespeare no English poet has been so essentially patriotic, or
appealed so directly to the political conscience of the nation. In his
noble eulogies of the English constitution and of the virtue and wisdom
of its architects, in his spirit-stirring pictures of the heroic actions
of our forefathers and contemporaries both by land and sea, in his
passionate denunciations of all that he believed would detract from
England's greatness and be prejudicial to her real interests, in his
hearty sympathy with every movement and with every measure which he
believed would contribute to her honour and her power, in all this he
stands alone among modern poets. But if he loved England as Shakespeare
loved her, he had other lessons than Shakespeare's to teach her. The