never mingled. He had not yet traduced his friends, nor flattered his enemies, nor disparaged what he admired, nor praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction that, literary arts would never be his.

even with time, these His poem, "The Bothie

of Toper-na-Fuosich,' has some admirable Homeric qualities;-out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity. Some of the expressions in that poem,- Dangerous Corrievreckan. . . Where roads are unknown to

Loch Nevish,'-come back now to my ear with the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which I think oftenest, is the Homeric simplicity of his literary life.—Last Words on Translating Homer.

II.

POLITICS AND SOCIETY.

81

THE YOUNG LIONS.

MR. WRIGHT would perhaps be more indulgent to my vivacity, if he considered that we are none of us likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, the last glimpse of colour before we all go into drab,—the drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, austerely literal future. Yes, the world will soon be the Philistines'! and then, with every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and the whole earth filled and ennobled every morning by the magnificent roaring of the young lions of the 'Daily Telegraph,' we shall all yawn in one another's faces with the dismallest, the most unimpeachable gravity.—Essays in Criticism.

BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

WHERE shall we find language innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to the political Englishman, that the British Constitution itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the speculative side,—with its

G

compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of clear thoughts,-that, seen from this side, our august Constitution sometimes looks,-forgive me, shade of Lord Somers !-a colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines?—-Essays in Criticism.

THE LICENSED VICTUALLERS.

EVERY thing in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a paramount right reason. Royalty itself, in its idea the expression of the collective nation, and a sort of constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn into a kind of grand advertising van, meant to give publicity and credit to the inventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals.

I remember, when I was in North Germany, having this very strongly brought to my mind in the matter of schools and their institution. In Prussia, the best schools are Crown patronage schools, as they are called; schools which have been established and endowed (and new ones are to this day being established and endowed) by the Sovereign himself out of his own revenues, to be under the direct control and management of him or of those representing him, and to serve as types of what schools should be. The Sovereign, as his position raises him above many prejudices and littlenesses, and as he can always have at his disposal the best advice, has evident