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sanely and so nobly patient under those which nature has imposed.

PLA. To what is this happy balance of their tendencies to be referred ?

LAN. I know not. I know only that it exists, and that the unbroken tranquillity of our country attests it. The subversive impulses of this people are the superficial ones : their Conservative instincts lie deeper; but we know that they must be there. Westward through the Hellespont, and eastward through the Pillars of Heracles, the surfacecurrents both from the Euxine and from the Atlantic pour perpetually into the Inland Sea; but the waters of its basin keep their bounds, and they must needs, therefore, be depleted, through one channel or the other, by the backset of some deeper-flowing stream. Even so is it with the democracy of England. It is for ever being fed full through the twofold inlet of Teaching and Circumstance; yet the shores of our society remain unwasted, and the rocks of our Constitution still lift their heads above the waves.

PLA. Among such a people there must be some inbred principle of obedience, and it should be easy to educate them to perceive what is beautiful as well as what is just. LAN. The fault is not in the nation but in its circumstances. It is as docile in its tastes as in its politics, but there are none to direct it in either. Wealth and luxury have debauched one set of guides, as faction and ambition have corrupted the other.

PLA. Whom then do you call their guides in matters concerning the Beautiful?

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LAN. The rich, the highly-placed, and the leisured among their fellow-citizens.

PLA. But do not these require teaching themselves in order to know what to study and admire?

LAN. They do, and they are unteachable: there is the whole mischief.

PLA. To the former, the wealthy class, you surely do injustice. Their very willingness to be led in this matter of Hellenic studies is a proof that you do. To show such willingness is to have already gone half-way towards perception of the Beautiful.

LAN. Let us join them, O Plato, in devoting the son of Telamon to the Eumenides. For no man ever destroyed so many potential percipients of the Beautiful in a single day.

PLA. Among the Trojans ?

LAN. No, among the sheep: who surpass all other animals in willingness to be led. If docility to guidance is to serve for an augury of future taste, it must at least be intelligent. A blind and blatant scurrying in one another's footsteps gives no more promise of capacity in the human than in the ovine species; and I deem it no matter of boasting for the silly troop that they have been started by the chatter of some coxcomb, instead of by the jingling of a wether's bell.

PLA. But if then, my friend, you find your countrymen so unteachable in the humane life, would it not be better to abandon the attempt? Other nations will be found to hand on the torch of Hellas, if yours should lose the honour of the office.

LAN. Yet it is this office before all others which I have coveted for her: it is for a service such as this that I would have her remembered by the future world.

PLA. It is not in the power of all nations to preserve their memory among those that come after them. Many great empires have passed away from the earth without leaving any trace behind.

LAN. So will not ours. Most widely, O Plato, have you missed my meaning; except for courtesy I should smile at your mistake. The name and the works of England will endure as long as those of Hellas and of the conqueror of Hellas, whom, with no unwarranted self-praise, we boast ourselves to resemble. England has given laws to a dominion wider even than that of Rome, and has spread her language and her customs among millions over whom the Roman eagles never soared. She has "imposed the wont of peace" upon I know not how many savage or divided races, and its arts and virtues have sprung up in a hundred regions heretofore unfriendly to them, under the shadow of her shield. PLA. Why, then, are you not content with these titles to the remembrance of mankind?

LAN. Because they are too splendid for any nation to remain content with. Achievements as great as ours have never failed to leave behind them aspirations vaster than themselves. Those who have surpassed the work of the Roman may well be fired with the ambition to rival that of the Greek. Moreover you should remember, O Plato, that in proportion to our control over the destinies of mankind, is our debt to the human mind and

soul. At present, however, we are in no way to discharge it. I own, indeed, that when I measure in imagination the span of our conquests, I am unable to rejoice over the wealth of outward prosperity which they have conferred; for I can think only of their tremendous deductions from the aggregate of inward happiness throughout the world. PLA. Deductions! You surely can only mean that they have not increased it.

LAN. Not so, they have diminished it. Wheresoever in the world a people has passed under the sway of England, their lives, in becoming more abundant, have ceased to satisfy their ideals. We have broken in upon the secular calm of ancient and outworn civilisations, and over minds which once reposed in a passive and incurious contentment we have cast the spell of our own unsatisfied longings. The savage whom we tame unlearns his simple delight in Nature, and gains access only to our coarser and viler pleasures in its stead. We have peopled one whole continent with our lank-jawed kinsmen, and fringed another with the careworn faces of our sons. A full half of the globe's surface is given over to the melancholy Englishman-with his sombre attire, his repellent manners, his gioomy worship, his mechanic habitudes of toil. The human instinct of self-preservation will not long tolerate such a dominion as this; the human yearning after gladness will rise up in rebellion against it, and we are bound therefore in common prudence to seek the Hellenic spirit and ensue it, reverently striving, if haply it may admit us to its inspiring visions of the beautiful, and yield up to us the secret of its immortal joy.

LORD BEACONSFIELD AND SIR ROBERT

PEEL,

LORD B. Surely I cannot be mistaken! Sir Robert Peel.

PEEL. Your countenance seems familiar to me, but I cannot at the moment connect it with a name.

LORD B. The name, perhaps—that is, the later name— will be less familiar than the face. Disraeli you knew in the flesh of Lord Beaconsfield you can only have heard.

PEEL. Mr. Disraeli-I beg your pardon, Lord Beaconsfield—you are greatly changed in appearance. . . . . And not in the least improved. As outlandish-looking as

ever.

LORD B. Age, Sir Robert, has doubtless found more points for attack in my exterior than it could discover in yours. . . . Prim respectability is immortal and unchangeable, or the English would not be the race they are.

PEEL. Time has certainly been busy with you, my lord, since we last met on earth.

LORD B. He is indeed the most reckless of Radicals, continually destroying without a thought of replacement. PEEL. Yes, and like the Radical, or those who borrow from the Radical, habitually representing destruction as

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