Cloud-battled high Pangaeus hoar With earthquake voice and ocean roar Swells against Heaven!-Up, up! the stars To vault beyond the sphere of Time When this fierce joy I feel shall aye subside, Like a swoln bubble on the ocean tide And all annoy Lie drowned with it for ever there, And never-ebbing Life's soft stream with confluent wave Among those calm Beatitudes and fair That lave Their angel forms, with pure luxuriance free, In thy rich ooze and amber-molten sea, All-blessing, blest, eterne Tranquillity!' There is noble music in this passage; and, when all is said that can be said against 'Nepenthe,' the poem remains an astonishing performance. Had Darley published it, it could scarcely have failed to make its mark, even though the time was unpropitious for a poem of this kind. Darley was inured to disappointment, and the small amount of interest which 'Nepenthe' excited among his friends probably surprised him but little. Miss Mitford, though she afterwards confessed that she never got to the end, wrote kindly to him about it. In return she received one of those long and formal letters, which she subsequently described as 'startling to receive and terrible to answer.' There is a touch of pathos in the fact that a few polite words should have had the power to raise such a tempest of gratitude. The letter-one of the few of Vol. 196.-No. 391. Darley's still in existence-is far too long to quote in its entirely. This is a characteristic passage: 'This brings me to your advice about undertaking a subject of both natures, the imaginative and the real. Such indeed always is, always should be the scope of a truly catholic poet. But alas! I fear myself but a poor sectarian. The double mind seems wanting in me; certainly the double experience, for I have none of mankind. My whole life has been an abstraction; such must be my works. I am, perhaps you know, labouring under a visitation much less poetic than that of Milton and Maeonides, but quite as effective, which has made me for life a separatist from society. But, were my knowledge of humanity less confused than it is, I apprehend myself to be still too much one-minded for the making a proper use of it. Do you not expect so from "Nepenthe"? Does it not speak a heat of brain mentally Bacchic? I feel a necessity for intoxication (don't be shocked, I am a mere tea-drinker), to write with any enthusiasm and spirit. I must think intensely or not at all. Now, if this be the case, if my mind be only occasional, intermittent, collapsive, which (unaffectedly impartial) I think it is, how should I conduct the detail of a story where poetic furore were altogether out of place? It is a great defect, I own, but my genius (as you call it) never enables me to sustain a subject, the subject must sustain it.' * And so on, for some two thousand words! No wonder that Miss Mitford was somewhat appalled by this portentous epistle, and by the thought of having to send one of her own delightfully slipshod and garrulous effusions in reply. However, her answer seems to have been favourably received, as it elicited a further offering of some of Darley's earlier works, and hearty good wishes for the success of one of her tragedies which was shortly to be produced. With 'Nepenthe' the chief interest in Darley's career ceases. Thenceforward, except for an occasional lyric in a magazine, he confined his energies entirely to the drama. For 'Thomas à Becket' and 'Ethelstan,' two plays which he produced in 1840 and 1841 respectively, we cannot profess much enthusiasm. Darley himself, with a strange blindness to the real bent of his genius, * The Friendships of M. R. Mitford'; edited by A. G. L'Estrange; vol. ii. (London, 1882). persisted in regarding them as his best work, and resented very strongly his friends' inability to perceive their value. Undoubtedly there are beautiful passages in both plays; in fact Darley could hardly write a line without revealing the touch of a true poet; but he had very little dramatic power, and not much idea of characterisation. In both dramas he shows, it is true, a fuller mastery of blankverse than in 'Sylvia'; but even here, in spite of bursts of magnificent eloquence, the long speeches, of which there are many, are apt to become monotonous. Of the two plays, 'Thomas à Becket' is the more vigorous, and perhaps, if subjected to the same process of curtailment and arrangement that turned Tennyson's Becket' into a passable stage-play, it might face the footlights not without success. 'Ethelstan' is impossible as a drama, but poetically it counts for more than Thomas à Becket,' chiefly on account of the spirited songs of Runilda, the glee-maiden. Darley wrote a third play, 'Plighted Troth,' which was produced by Macready at Drury Lane in 1842, but was never published. It failed completely, only surviving one performance. Its failure seems to be attributable chiefly to Darley's ignorance of stage technique, for as a poem it evidently had fine qualities. Macready expected great things of it, and the critic of the Daily Chronicle' went so far as to call it a work of genius. It might even have won some success, had it not been for a ludicrous incident which discomposed the gravity of the audience at a critical point in the drama. The hero, played by Macready, had been murdered by his steward, and his body had been hastily thrust under a table. The actor who played the part of the steward in the course of the next scene happened to tread upon Macready's outstretched hand. This was too much for the patience of the choleric manager. Forgetting his part, he sat up on the stage and addressed the delinquent in his most vigorous vernacular. The audience burst into uncontrollable laughter, and the play was doomed. Mr William Archer, in his sketch of Macready's career, suggests that the author of 'Plighted Troth' was not George Darley the poet, but another man of the same name; yet we know of no other Darley living at that time who is likely to have been the author even of an unsuccessful play. It is significant, too, that the sale-catalogue of Macready's 6 library contains presentation copies of Darley's 'Thomas à Becket' and Ethelstan,' a sufficient proof that the poet and the actor were on friendly terms. In any case the matter is not very important, as 'Plighted Troth' seems to have disappeared altogether. Darley's closing years were embittered by the failure of his dramas. In vain he challenged the opinion of his few friends. Even the gentle Barry Cornwall could find little to praise in them, and Darley drew back more and more into his misanthropical seclusion. In his last illness he was carefully tended by devoted friends, but his death in 1846, save for an appreciative tribute in the Athenæum,' was unnoticed by the world at large. After his death he was soon forgotten. The rising sun of Tennyson extinguished the light of lesser stars. Since those days public taste in poetry has undergone many and strange changes. We have found that the idols of our fathers have feet of clay. It may be that the poetical history of the seventeenth century will be repeated in that of the nineteenth, and that the Herricks and the Vaughans of a later age will come into their kingdom when the Cowleys and the Wallers have, in Mr Swinburne's pregnant phrase, gone the way of all waxwork. Art. X.-THE CHANGING EAST. 1. Things Japanese. By Basil Hall Chamberlain. Fourth edition. London: John Murray, 1902. 2. Der Eintritt Japans in das Europäische Völkerrecht. By Freiherr von Siebold. Berlin: Kisak Tamai, 1900. 3. The Constitutional Development of Japan, 1853-1881. By Toyokichi Iyenaga, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Ninth Series. No. IX). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1891. 4. Japan in Transition. By Stafford Ransome. London: Harper, 1902. 5. Report on the Post-bellum Financial Administration in Japan, 1896-1900. By Count Matsukata Masayoshi. Tokio: Government Press, 1901. 6. Financial Annual of Japan. Issued by the Department of Finance. Tokio. 7. Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japar And other works. Tokio, 1901. LESS than fifty years ago Japan was in all respects a hermit nation, closed to all the world, unknown and unknowing, satisfied to maintain a haughty exclusiveness which had continued unbroken for two hundred and fifty years, finding in herself all the materials necessary for her own well-being and happiness, and possessing neither foreign trade nor shipping. Till scarcely more than thirty years ago she was in the bonds of a feudalism as strict as that of the days of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, governed by great territorial nobles, who, while owing a well recognised allegiance to a legitimate sovereign, were, for every purpose of administration, and even for foreign or domestic war, practically in a condition of absolute independence within the limits of their own estates. By a series of reforms, equally swift, picturesque, and farreaching, for a precedent to which the history of the whole world may be searched in vain, Japan has advanced to-day to the position of a powerful and consolidated empire, able and ready to make her voice heard in the councils of the great Powers of the world, with a reputation for military valour and efficiency of which any nation might be proud, a foreign trade of an annual value of over fifty millions sterling, and, what is perhaps the |