ir brought
more abundant life. What do ideas effect, and how do they affect him
who entertains them is the final question and the final test. Now, our
earth is always trying to grow men. Not harvests nor flowers nor
forests, but man, is what the earth is proudest of. On transparent
June days, standing upon the cliffs of the Isle of Man, I have seen the
golden wheatfields on the hills of Wales; but heaven, looking earth's
way, is oblivious to our tossing plumes of corn or tawny billows of the
fields of wheat. Heaven's concern is in our crop of manhood; and ships
that ply between the shores of earth and shores of heaven are never
laden with gold or silver ingots, as Spanish galleons were, nor with
glancing silks nor burning gems, but are forever freighted with elect
spirits. Men and women are the commodity earth grows that heaven wants.

What helps the growth of man is good; what hurts the growth of man is
bad. When one has become a shadow, lost to human eyes, test him with
this acid. Did he do good? If he did evil, let his name perish; if he
did good, let his name blaze in the galaxy among the inextinguishable
stars. If he has made the growth of manhood easier and its method more
apparent; if he has opened eyes to see the best, and spurred men to
attempt the best they saw; if he has enamored them of virtue as
aforetime they were enamored of vice,--trust me, that man was good. He
will endure, and be passed from age to age, like rare traditions
through centuries, till time shall die. Submit Alfred Tennyson to this
test. Is virtue more apparent, more lovely, and of more luxuriant
growth, like tropic forests, because of him? But one answer is
possible, and that answer is, "King Arthur." To our moral riches,
Victor Hugo added "Jean Valjean;" Dickens, "Sidney Carton;" Thackeray,
"Colonel Newcome;" Browning, "Caponsacchi;" Tennyson, "King Arthur,"
who stands and will stand as Tennyson's vision of manhood at its prime.

The theme of this paper, then, is "King Arthur," being a philosophy of
manhood as outlined by Alfred Tennyson; and the purpose of this essay
is to bring into vital relation to King Arthur the totality of argument
for manhood which Tennyson has constructed in his cycle of poems, thus
taking into our field of vision, not simply "The Idyls of the King,"
adequate as they may be, but, in addition, "Enoch Arden," "Ulysses,"
"The Vision of Sin," "The Palace of Art," "Maud," "Columbus," "Locksley
Hall," "