achievements of modern research, it has become the fashion among politicians who have any pretence to literary or philosophic training to pose as Admirable Crichtons in the magazines. But we are not aware that the public derives much enlightenment from the many-sided culture of these politicians; nor is the narrow spirit of the politics of former days exorcised from its old haunts. The old battle between the rival patriots is being waged with increased bitterness. If the old shibboleths have disappeared, new ones with the family features have taken their place. And still as of old the sacrifice is made to party of what might have benefited mankind. Amid the crowd of aspirants to honours in the "roaring game" of politics there is no figure that stands in more distinct contrast to Arnold's than that of Mr Morley. Mr Morley has done doughty deeds with his pen. But, alas! he has rushed in where Arnold scorned to tread, and one of the most brilliant literary reputations of our time has sunk in the eclipse of a second or third rate politician. The disinherited knight has turned back from the Holy Land and honest warfare for the right to learn the tricks of the political tournament in the interest of a bad and justly losing cause. It is always a vain thing to speculate on the might have been. But if Mr Morley had shared

the antipathy of Arnold to the devious ways of politics, and had resolved to battle to the last as bravely as his brilliant contemporary against the real foes of progress in the brains and breasts of men, with his moral equilibrium undisturbed by the jostling of Sir William Harcourt on this side and Mr Parnell on that, what better service the country might have got from him than special pleading on behalf of a doomed cause and ill-natured cavilling at a rival's success in grappling with difficulties raised by faction to the administration of the law! Fancy the man of culture in the House of Commons getting up to move a vote of censure on a Government, and piteously complaining that he has no facts to found upon, unless the Government itself will gratuitously supply him with them! If people thought that Matthew Arnold was a "spurious Jeremiah" when he declined to touch the pitch of politics, will they be of the same opinion now when they see how Mr Morley has smirched his hands and face with it!

It would be a serious matter for the country, however, if men of high character and liberal culture were to hold aloof from public life altogether, and leave the business of the country to be tossed from hand to hand by adventurers, as is so much the case

in America. Probably Matthew Arnold and Carlyle too were in their proper sphere outside of or above the strife of parties, on a point of observation from which they could see what was going on below, and sound at need a note of warning or encouragement. But both Carlyle and Arnold would have acknowledged that a nobler career than that of the philosophic observer is the career of the strong, high-principled man, who can steer the vessel of the State through the breakers of popular commotion, with justice for his compass and historic experience for his chart. He who lives the life of the ideal statesman is a greater figure in the world's history than he who sketches it, no matter how beautiful as a work of art the sketch may be. Happily for our country, its public life is not unadorned by such manly figures, who stand forth in bolder relief by contrast with others who have lost some manliness in "finding salvation."

CHAPTER VIII.

COMMON SENSE AND POLITICS.

THE occasion makes the man. It also makes the mannikin; and seldom in the political history of Great Britain has there been such a contrast of men and mannikins as the present crisis in politics has called into view. I speak not as a party man, but as one to whom party shibboleths are nothing compared to the ethical qualities of the men. There are men and mannikins on both sides of the Home Rule controversy; only the relative importance of the two classes is not the same on the two sides. It has been adopted as a principle of politics on the one side that the mannikin shall rule the man; and some, who were long thought to be men in very deed, have dwindled down in the crisis like poor Alice in Wonderland. Political yachting on summer seas is an amusement in which a landsman, with help from his tailor, may look the proper thing. But a stiff nor'-easter on a lee shore makes the dandy skipper look funny.

The prophetic statement which Lord Hartington quoted in his recent Belfast speech, from the speech which he delivered in the same place in 1885, furnishes matter for no self-accusing reflection to the Unionist party. In that quotation Lord Hartington made reference to the comparatively minor grounds of difference between Liberals and Conservatives of that time, which is separated from the present by only a few months of lunar change, but by such a magnetic storm in politics as has ruined the reputation of not a few political compasses. It was not from any contemptuous depreciation of the honest convictions of the two great political parties that Lord Hartington so expressed himself. Probably enough, to a statesman of his strong sense and breadth of view, there were many points in dispute between Liberals and Conservatives in 1885, which he would have been inclined to sweep out of the way. That always has been and always will be the attitude of the strongest and noblest minds. They have a natural shrinking from the extreme views of both the rival parties. Their calm, clear vision is able to note the excesses to which their own cherished principles may lead, if they are allowed as abstractions to get absolute possession of the mind. They are more or less consciously aware