Through the water and fire.
Our glory is our freedom,
We lord it o’er the sea;
We are the sons of freedom.
We are free.”
As Mr. Tennyson has been wise enough—for shame’s sake, presumably—to omit these and similar sorry pieces from his later editions, it may seem unfair to quote them against him now. We quote them, however, intentionally, to show that there is a strong streak of English narrowness and Protestant bigotry in his nature which we were happy to think dead, until within the last few years it has cropped out again. In 1852 there were probabilities of war between England and France, then under Louis Napoleon. Tennyson thought to rouse his countrymen, and the strongest appeal he can make is to religious bigotry:
“Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;
The world’s last tempest darkens overhead;
The Pope has bless’d him;
The Church caress’d him;