of us,-as the country squires in the aristocratic class, as the political dissenters in the middle class,—he has no idea of a State, of the nation in its collective and corporate character controlling, as government, the free swing of this or that one of its members in the name of the higher reason of all of them, his own as well as that of others. He sees the rich, the aristocratic class, in occupation of the executive government ; and so, if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear-garden or the streets impassable, he cries out that he is being butchered by the aristocracy.

His apparition is somewhat embarrassing, because too many cooks spoil the broth; because, while the aristocratic and middle classes have long been doing as they like with great vigour, he has been too undeveloped and submissive hitherto to join in the game; and now, when he does come, he comes in immense numbers, and is rather raw and rough. But he does not break many laws, or not many at one time; and, as our laws were made for very different circumstances from our present (but always with an eye to Englishmen doing as they like), and as the clear letter of the law must be against our Englishman who does as he likes, and not only the spirit of the law and public policy, and as Government must neither have any discretionary power nor act resolutely on its own interpretation of the law if any one disputes it, it is evident our laws give our playful giant,

in doing as he likes, considerable advantage.-Culture and Anarchy.

REQUISITES FOR CIVILISATION.

I PUT first among the elements in human civilisation the instinct of expansion, because it is the basis which man's whole effort to civilise himself presupposes. General civilisation presupposes this instinct, which is inseparable from human nature; presupposes its being satisfied, not defeated. The basis being given, we may next enumerate the powers which, upon this basis, contribute to build up human civilisation. They are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of social life and manners. Expansion, conduct, science, beauty, manners,-here are the conditions of civilisation, the claimants which man must satisfy before he can be humanised.-Mixed Essays.

THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

MEN of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality, which it is the glory of the religious organisations to have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has been one of their dangers

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that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance. They have been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakspeare or Virgil,-souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane were eminent,—accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company Shakspeare and Virgil would have found them! In the same way let us judge the religious organisations which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us look at the life of those who

live in it and for it, so I say with regard to the religious organisations. Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the 'Nonconformist,'-a life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection!-Culture and Anarchy.

THE PURITAN TYPE.

MEN make crude types and try to impose them, but to no purpose. L'homme s'agite, Dieu le mène, says Bossuet. 'There are many devices in a man's heart nevertheless, the counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand. Those who offer us the Puritan type of life offer us a religion not true, the claims of intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the claim of manners not satisfied. In its strong sense for conduct that life touches truth; but its other imperfections hinder it from employing even this sense aright. The type mastered our nation for a time.

The nation said: "This type, at

Then came the reaction.

any rate, is amiss; we The type retired into

are not going to be all like that!' our middle class, and fortified itself there. It seeks to endure, to emerge, to deny its own imperfections, to impose itself again ;-impossible! If we continue to live, we must outgrow it. The very class in which it is rooted,

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our middle class, will have to acknowledge the type's inadequacy, will have to acknowledge the hideousness, the immense ennui of the life which this type has created, will have to transform itself thoroughly.-Mixed Essays.

FURITANISM AND LIBERTY.

Is it certain that of the good which we admittedly have in our England of to-day,-the seriousness and the political liberty,-the Puritans and the Puritan triumph are the authors? The assumption that they are so is plausible; it is current ;-it pervades, let me observe in passing, Mr. Green's fascinating History. But is the assumption sound? When one considers the strength, the boldness, the self-assertion, the instincts of resistance and independence in the English nature, it is surely hazardous to affirm that only by the particular means of the Puritan struggle and the Puritan triumph could we have become free in our persons and property. When we consider the character shown, the signal given, in the thinking of Thomas More and Shakspeare, of Bacon and Harvey, how shall we say that only at the price of Puritanism could England have had free thought? When we consider the seriousness of Spenser, that ideal Puritan before the fanatical Puritans and without their faults when we consider Spenser's seriousness and pureness, in their revolt against the moral disorder of the Renascence, and remember the allies which they had in the native

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