the mythology of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and reconciliation, observes that it was not so much the Tarquins who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman people which set powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture is always assigning to the system-maker and the system a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends like. Culture feels even a pleasure, a sense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, by so doing. I remember when I was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced, -Benjamin Franklin-I remember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agreeable. "I give," he continues, "a few verses, which may serve as a sample of the kind of version I would recommend." We all recollect the famous verse in our translation: "Then Satan answered the Lord and said: Doth Job fear God for nought?'" Franklin makes this: "Does Your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere personal attachment and affection?" I well remember how when first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself: "After all, there is a stretch of humanity behind Franklin's victorious good sense!" So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There I read: "While Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted in words; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every man's experience." From the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham; the fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer, I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas for being the rule of human society, for perfection. Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, with disciples, of a school, with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. It remembers the text: "Be not ye called Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future, and unreached perfection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection that they may with the more authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture-eternally passing onwards and seeking-is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism itself a service. So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with culture, culture with its inexhaustible indulgence, its consideration of circumstances, its severe judgment of actions joined to its merciful judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive." Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains that the man of culture stops him with a “turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except for "a critic of new books or a professor of belles lettres?" Why, it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses, through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because, like religion, that other effort after perfection,-it testifies that, where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. On this the last time that I am to speak from this place, I have permitted myself, in justifying culture and in enforcing the reasons for it, to keep chiefly on ground where I am at one with the central instinct and sympathy of Oxford. The pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of sweetness and light. Oxford has worked with all the bent of her nature for sweetness, for beauty; and I have allowed myself to-day chiefly to insist on sweetness, on beauty, as necessary characters of perfection. Light, too, is a necessary character of perfection; Oxford must not suffer herself to forget that! At other times, during my passage in this chair, I have not failed to remind her, so far as my feeble voice availed, that light is a necessary character of perfection. I never shall cease, so long as anywhere my voice finds any utterance, to insist on the need of light as well as of sweetness. To-day I have spoken most of that which Oxford has loved most. But he who works for sweetness works in the end for light also; he who works for light works in the end for sweetness also. He who works for sweetness and light works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has but one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. Yes, it has one yet greater-the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as possible. I have again and again insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. The religious organizations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I disparage neither; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords; but it seeks to do away with classes, to make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, and use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely, to be nourished and not bound by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of. culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle Ages; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their services to Germany were inestimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany, and yet their names will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed and the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth labourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs ; when thou shalt send forth new labourers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." MATTHEW ARNOLD. Stone Edge. CHAPTER IX. HE boy German was the only one of his family who attended old Bessie's funeral. Ashford at the last moment declared that he was obliged to obey a summons from his landlord, who lived at a distance and only visited his estate in the hills from time to time on business, and was now at the old manorhouse for a few days. "Th' auld squire have a sent for me to see him punctial some time to-day at the 'Knob house,' and I canna go to Youlcliffe ; ye may tell 'um a' down there. And you mind to be home betimes, German, or you'll catch it," he called out as the boy went off. The friends and neighbours collected for the "beryin'" looked upon this message as a mere excuse, and public opinion declared itself strongly against old Ashford. "Sure ill will should ha' died wi' death," said leavin' sich a lot o' money to his daughter, too." one; "and hur a ""Twill hurt nobody but hisself; his room's better nor's company any time is Ashford's," said another. The world was likewise scandalized at Roland's absence. "She were like a mother to un," said society; "he should a strove to come home for to do her respect; he know'd she'd a had a fit, Nathan says." The old woman was buried under the shadow of the spire which she was so proud of. ""Tis a cheerful pleasant place, like hersen," said Nathan to his nephew as they came away together, "and hur will be close to the pathway where her friends can come nigh her, and alongside o' her father for company like, till I come; 'twon't be long first. I've a ordered a headstone," ended the old man, sadly, "and it says,— All you young men as passes by, |