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fused with it, I should turn to his doctrine of prayer. There are many places in his poems where prayer is not explained, but simply justified, as the highest activity of the human soul and a real bond between God and man. In these very lines on "The Higher Pantheism," from which I have just quoted, there is a verse which can be interpreted only as the description of a personal intercourse between the divine and the human:

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands

and feet.

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Had not his poor heart

Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude.

When he comes back, after the weary years of absence, to find his wife wedded to another and his home no longer his, it is by prayer that he obtains strength to keep his generous resolve to be silent and to bear the burden of his secret to the lonely end.

Edith, in the drama of " Harold," when her last hope breaks and the shadow of gloom begins to darken over her, cries:

No help but prayer,

A breath that fleets beyond this iron world,
And touches Him that made it.

King Arthur, bidding farewell to the last of his faithful knights, says to him:

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But lest any one should say that these passages are merely dramatic, and that they do not express the personal faith of the poet, turn to the solemn invocation in which he has struck the keynote of his greatest and most personal poem:

Strong Son of God, immortal Love.

It is the poet's own prayer. No man could have written it save one who believed that God is Love, and that Love is incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

Next to the question of the reality of God. comes the problem of human life and destiny.

gard to the present world, is man moving upward or downward; is good stronger than evil, or evil stronger than good; is life worth living, or is it a cheat and a failure? Secondly, in regard to the future, is there any hope of personal continuance beyond death? To both of these inquiries Tennyson gives an answer which is in harmony with the teachings of the Bible.

He finds the same difficulties in the continual

conflict between good and evil which are expressed in Job and Ecclesiastes. Indeed, so high an authority as Professor E. H. Plumptre has said that "the most suggestive of all commentaries" on the latter book are Tennyson's Art," and "The Two Voices." In the last of "The Vision of Sin," "The Palace of poems these he draws out in the form of a dialogue the strife between hope and despair in the breast of a man who has grown weary of life and yet is not ready to embrace death. For, after all, the sum of the reasons which the first voice urges in favor of suicide is that nothing is worth very much, no man is of any real value to the world, il n'y a pas d'homme necessaire, no effort produces any lasting result, all things are moving round and round in a tedious circle,

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And then comes another voice whispering

And this has a twofold aspect. First, in re- of a secret hope, and bidding the soul "Re

joice! rejoice!" If we hear in the first part of the poem the echo of the saddest book of the Old Testament, do we not hear also in the last part the tones of Him who said: "Let not your heart be troubled: . . . . in my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you"?

There are many places in the poems of Tennyson where he speaks with bitterness of the falsehood and evil that are in the world, the corruptions of society, the downward tendencies in human nature. He is in no sense a rose-water optimist. But he is in the truest sense a meliorist. He doubts not that

Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

has been made a watch-word by those who
defend the doctrine of a second probation,
and a sign to be spoken against by those who
reject it. Into this controversy I have no de-
sire to enter. Nor is it necessary; for, what-
ever the poet's expectation may be, there is
not a line in all his works that contradicts or
questions the teachings of Christ, nor even a
line that runs beyond the limit of human
thought into the mysteries of the unknown
and the unknowable. The wages of sin is
death; the wages of virtue is to go on and
not to die. This is the truth which he teaches
on higher authority than his own.
"The rest,"
as Hamlet says, "is silence." But what is the
universal end of all these conflicts, these strug-

And the thoughts of men are widened with the pro- gles, these probations? What the final result

cess of the suns.

He believes that good

Will be the final goal of ill.

of this strife between sin and virtue? What the consummation of oppugnancies and interworkings? The poet looks onward through the mists

He rests his faith upon the uplifting power of and sees only God -
Christianity :

But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Chris-
tian child.

He hears the bells at midnight tolling the death of the old year, and he calls them to

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

In regard to the life beyond the grave, he asserts with new force and beauty the old faith in a personal immortality. The dim conception of an unconscious survival through the influence of our thoughts and deeds, which George Eliot has expressed in her poem of "The Choir Invisible," Tennyson finds

Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
And I shall know him when we meet.

The Christian doctrine of a personal recogni-
tion of friends in the other world has never
been more distinctly uttered than in these
words. It is not, indeed, supported by any
metaphysical arguments; nor are we con-
cerned thus to justify it. Our only purpose
now is to show-and after these verses who
can doubt it? —that the poet has kept the faith
which he learned in his father's house and at
his mother's side.

On many other points I fain would touch, but must forbear. There is one more, however, on which the orthodoxy of the poet has been questioned, and by some critics positively denied. It is said that he has accepted the teachings of Universalism. A phrase from "In Memoriam,"

The larger hope,VOL. XXXVIII.-68.

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves.

And if any one shall ask what this far-off divine event will be, we may answer in the words of St. Paul:

"For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. For, He put all things in subjection under his feet. But when evident that he is excepted who did subject all he saith, All things are put in subjection, it is been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also things unto him. And when all things have himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all."

AND now, as we bring to a close this brief study of a subject which I trust has proved larger than it promised at first to those who had never looked into it, what are our conclusions? Or, if this word seem too exact and formal, what are our impressions in regard to the relations between Tennyson and the Bible?

It seems to me that we cannot help seeing that the poet owes a large debt to the Christian Scriptures, not only for their formative influence upon his mind and for the purely literary material in the way of illustrations and allusions which they have given him, but also, and more particularly, for the creation of a moral atmosphere, a medium of thought and feeling, in which he can speak freely and with assurance of sympathy to a very wide circle of readers. He does not need to be always explaining and defining. There is much that is taken for granted, much that goes without saying. What a world of unspoken convictions lies behind such poems

as "Dora," and "Enoch Arden." Their beauty is not in themselves alone, but in the air that breathes around them, in the light that falls upon them from the faith of centuries. Christianity is something more than a system of doctrines; it is a life, a tone, a spirit, a great current of memories, beliefs, and hopes flowing through millions of hearts. And he who launches his words upon this current finds that they are carried with a strength beyond his own, and freighted oftentimes with a meaning which he himself has not fully understood as it flashed through him.

But, on the other hand, we cannot help seeing that the Bible gains a wider influence and a new power over men as it flows through the poet's mind upon the world. Its narratives and its teachings clothe themselves in modern forms of speech and find entrance into many places which otherwise were closed against them. I do not mean by this that poetry is better than the Bible, but only that poetry lends wings to Christian truth. People who would not read a sermon will read a poem. And though its moral and religious teachings may be indirect, though they may proceed by silent assumption rather than by formal assertion, they

exercise an influence which is perhaps the more powerful because it is unconscious. The Bible is in continual danger of being desiccated by an exhaustive—and exhausting-scientific treatment. When it comes to be regarded chiefly as a compendium of exact statements of metaphysical doctrine, the day of its life will be over, and it will be ready for a place in the museum of antiquities. It must be a power in literature if it is to be a force in society. For literature, as a wise critic has defined it, is just "the best that has been thought and said in the world." And if this is true, literature is certain, not only to direct culture, but also to mold conduct.

Is it possible then for wise and earnest men to look with indifference upon the course of what is often called, with a slighting accent, mere belles lettres? We might as well be careless about the air we breathe or the water we drink. Malaria is no less fatal than pestilence. The chief peril which threatens the permanence of Christian faith and morals is none other than the malaria of modern letters — an atmosphere of dull, heavy, faithless materialism. Into this narcotic air the poetry of Tennyson blows like a pure wind from a loftier and serener height. Henry van Dyke.

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STATE

CRIMINALS

AT THE KARA MINES.

N the morning after my first visit to the political convicts of the free command I called again at the little cabin of the Armfeldts, taking Mr. Frost with me. Major Potulof (Po'too-loff) was expected back from Ust Kara (Oost Kah-rah') that night, and I knew his return would put a stop to my operations. It was important, therefore, that I should make the best possible use of the twelve or fourteen hours of freedom that still remained to me. I did not expect to be able to conceal from the authorities, for any great length of time, my intercourse with the political convicts. I was well aware that it must, sooner or later, be discovered, and all that I hoped to do was to get as much information as possible before the inevitable interference should come. There was some risk, of course, in visiting the houses of the free command openly by daylight; but we could not afford to waste any time in inaction, and I had promised Miss Armfeldt that I would return early that forenoon if not prevented by some unforeseen complication or embarrassment.

A brisk walk of fifteen or twenty minutes

brought us to our destination, and we were admitted to the house by Miss Armfeldt herself. In the searching light of a clear, cold, winter morning, the little cabin, with its whitewashed log walls, plank floor, and curtainless windows, looked even more bare and cheerless than it had seemed to me when I first saw it. Its poverty-stricken appearance, moreover, was emphasized, rather than relieved, by the presence, in the middle of the room, of a large, rudely fashioned easel, upon which stood an unframed oil painting. There seemed to me something strangely incongruous in this association of art with penal servitude, this blending of luxury with extreme destitution, and as I returned Miss Armfeldt's greeting I could not help looking inquiringly at the picture and then at her, as if to ask, "How did you ever happen to bring an oil painting to the mines of Kara?" She understood my unspoken query, and, turning the easel half around so that I could see the picture, said: "I have been trying to make a portrait of my mother. She thinks that she must go back to Russia this year on account of her other children. Of course I shall never see her again,- she is too old and feeble to make another journey to

Eastern Siberia,-and I want something to recall her face to me when she has gone out of my life. I know that it is a bad portrait, and I am almost ashamed to show it to you; but I wish to ask your help. I have only a few colors, I cannot get any more, and perhaps Mr. Frost may be able to suggest some way of using my scanty materials to better advantage." I looked at the wretched, almost ghastly, portrait in silence, but with a heart full of the deepest sympathy and pity. It bore a recognizable resemblance to the original, and showed some signs of artistic talent and training; but the canvas was of the coarsest and most unsuitable quality; the colors were raw and crude; and it was apparent, at a glance, that the artist had vainly struggled with insuperable difficulties growing out of a scanty and defective equipment. With the few tubes of raw color at her command she had found it impossible to imitate the delicate tints of living flesh, and the result of her loving labor was a portrait that Mr. Frost evidently regarded with despair, and that seemed to me to be little more than a ghastly caricature. It was pitiful to see how hard the daughter had tried, with wholly inadequate means of execution, to make for herself a likeness of the mother whom she was so soon to lose, and it was even more pitiful to think that before the close of another year the daughter would be left alone at the mines with this coarse, staring, deathlike portrait as her only consolation. I looked at the picture for a moment in silence, unable to think of any comment that would not seem cold or unsympathetic. Its defects were glaring, but I could not bring myself to criticize a work of love executed under such circumstances and in the face of such disheartening difficulties. Leaving Mr. Frost to examine Miss Armfeldt's scanty stock of brushes and colors, I turned to Mrs. Armfeldt and asked her how she had summoned up resolution enough, at her age, to undertake such a tremendous journey as that from St. Petersburg to the mines of Kara.

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1 I kept this promise, and told Count Tolstoi all that he seemed to care to hear with regard to the Armfeldts' situation. He manifested, however, a disinclination to listen to accounts of suffering among the political convicts in Eastern Siberia; would not read manuscripts that I brought expressly to show him; and said distinctly that while he felt sorry for many of the politicals, he could not help them, and was not at all in sympathy with their methods. They had resorted, he said, to violence, and they must expect to

I came here to see for myself. I could not bear to think of Nathalie living alone in the midst of such horrors."

"When did these things happen?" I inquired.

"In 1882 and 1883," she replied. "In May, 1882, eight prisoners made their escape, and after that the life of all the political convicts was made so hard that they finally declared a hunger strike and starved themselves thirteen days."

While Mrs. Armfeldt and I were talking Victor Castiurin (Kass-tyoo'rin), Madame Kolenkina (Ko-len'kin-ah), and two or three other political convicts entered the room, Miss Armfeldt brought out the samovar and gave us all tea, and the conversation became general. I should be glad, if I had the requisite space, to give the readers of THE CENTURY the same vivid and detailed account of life in the Kara prisons that was given me at Miss Armfeldt's house that day; but six or eight hours' conversation cannot be put into a single magazine article, and I must content myself, for the present, with a brief narrative of my personal experience, and a short outline sketch of the life of political convicts at the mines of Kara between the years 1880 and 1885.

I made my last call at the house of the Armfeldts on the afternoon of November 7, just twenty-four hours after I first entered it. I was well aware that the return of Major Potulof that night would put a stop to my visits, and that, in all probability, I should never see these unfortunate people again; while they, knowing that this was their last opportunity to talk with one who was going back to the civilized world and would meet their relatives and friends, clung to me with an eagerness that was almost pathetic. I promised the Armfeldts that I would call upon Count Leo Tolstoi and describe to him their life and circumstances,1 left my address with them so that they might communicate with me should they ever have an opportunity to write, and took letters from them to their relatives in European Russia. It may perhaps seem to the reader that in carrying letters to and from political convicts in Siberia I ran an unnecessary and unjustifiable risk, inasmuch as the act was a penal offense, and if discovered would probably have led to our arrest, to the confiscation of all our papers,

suffer from violence. I was told in Moscow that when Madame Uspenskaya (Oo-spen'ska-ya), wife of one of the political convicts at Kara, went to Count Tolstoi to solicit a contribution of money to be used in ameliorating, as far as possible, the condition of politicals at the mines, she met with a decided refusal. The Count was not willing, apparently, to show even a benevolent and charitable sympathy with men and women whose actions he wholly disapproved.

and, at the very least, to our immediate expulsion from the Empire under guard. I fully appreciated the danger, but, nevertheless, I could not refuse to take such letters. If you were a political convict at the mines, and had a wife or a mother in European Russia to whom you had not been allowed to write for years, and if I, an American traveler, should come to you and ask you to put yourself in my power and run the risk of recommittal to prison and leg-fetters by telling me all that I wanted to know, and if I should then refuse to carry a letter to your mother or your wife, you would think that I must be either very cowardly or very hard-hearted. I could not refuse to do it. If they were willing to run the risk of writing such letters, I was willing to run the risk of carrying them. I always consented, and sometimes volunteered to take them, although I was perfectly well aware that they would cause me many anxious hours.

Just before dark I bade the Armfeldts and the other members of the free command goodbye, telling them that I should try to see them once more, but that I feared it would be impossible. Major Potulof did not return until midnight, and I did not see him until the next morning. We met for the first time at breakfast. He greeted me courteously, but formally, omitting the customary handshake, and I felt at once a change in the social atmosphere. After bidding me good-morning, he sat for ten or fifteen minutes looking moodily into his tea-cup without speaking a word. I had anticipated this situation and had decided upon a course of action. I felt sincere regard for Major Potulof, he had treated us very kindly, I understood perfectly that I had placed him in an awkward and unpleasant position, and I intended to deal with him frankly and honestly. I therefore broke the silence by saying that, during his absence, I had made the acquaintance of the political convicts of the free command.

"Yes," he said, without raising his eyes from his tea-cup, "I heard so; and," he continued, after a moment's pause, "it is my duty to say to you that you have acted very rashly."

"Why?" I inquired.

"Because," he replied, "the Government looks with great suspicion upon foreigners who secretly make the acquaintance of the political convicts. It is not allowed, and you will get yourself into serious trouble."

"But," I said, "no one has ever told me that it was not allowed. I can hardly be supposed, as a foreigner, to know that I have no right to speak to people who are practically at liberty, and whom I am liable to meet any day in the village street. The members of the

free command are not in prison; they are walking about the settlement in freedom. Everybody else can talk to them; why cannot I?"

"I received a telegram," he said gravely, "from Governor Barabásh" (the governor of the territory of the Trans-Baikal in which the mines of Kara are situated), "saying that you were not to be allowed to see the political prison, and, of course, it was the governor's intention that you should not see the political convicts."

"You did not tell me so," I replied. "If you had told me that you had received such a telegram from the governor, it would have had great weight with me. I cannot remember that you ever intimated to me that I could not visit the members of the free command."

"I did not know that you were thinking of such a thing," he rejoined. "You said nothing about it. However," he continued, after a moment's pause, " it is Captain Nikolin's affair ; he has the politicals in charge. All that I have to do is to warn you that you are acting imprudently and running a great risk."

I then explained to Major Potulof frankly why I had said nothing to him about my intentions, and why I had taken advantage of his absence to carry them into effect. If I had said to him beforehand that I wished or intended to see the political convicts, he would have been obliged either to approve or to disapprove. If he had disapproved, I, as his guest, should have been in honor bound to respect his wishes and authority; while, if he had approved, he would have incurred a responsibility for my illegal action that I did not wish to throw upon him. I admitted knowledge of the fact that my intercourse with the politicals would not have been permitted if it had been foreseen, and told him that my only reasons for making their acquaintance secretly in the way I had were first, to avoid interference, and secondly, to relieve him as far as possible from any suspicion of complicity. "Nobody now," I said, "can accuse you of having had anything to do with it. You were not here, and it is perfectly evident that I waited for the opportunity that your absence gave me." My explanation seemed to mollify him a little, and his old cordial manner gradually returned; but he warned me again that secret intercourse with political convicts, if I continued it, would almost certainly get me into trouble.

An hour or two after breakfast I was surprised and a little startled by the sudden reappearance of Captain Nikolin, the gendarme commandant of the political prison. He desired to see Major Potulof on business, and they were closeted together for half or three

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