quence of prosperity. But one disposition, and that most excel lent, is a concomitant of good fortune, viz., that the fortunate are lovers of the gods, and are disposed toward the Deity with a sort of confidence, in consequence of the goods which have accrued to them from fortune. The subject, then, of the dispositions as they conform to age and to fortune has been discussed; for from the opposites of my remarks the opposite subjects will be evident; the subject, for example, of the disposition of a poor, or unfortunate person, or of one out of power. Chapter XVII of the treatise on "Rhetoric,» MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) s THE exponent of the idea of "Sweetness and Light" as qualities of the cultured intellect, Matthew Arnold occupied a distinctive place in the literature of his generation, and it is probable that much of what he has written will survive even after many such marked changes of taste as have already taken place. He represented the realities of that high intellectual refinement to which some of his imitators had no other title than that given them by their desire to be credited with it. In the generation to which he belonged English aristocratic liberalism showed itself ineffective to deal with the rapidly accumulating problems of civilization. The conservatism which means "holding its own and other people's also" under "The good old rule, the simple plan, That he can take who has the power And he can keep who can," was never unequal to its opportunities. But when for aristocratic liberalism, opportunity meant the sacrifice of its own individual and class privileges, the closing years of the century show nothing but hesitation and vacillation, the longing for progress and the lack of courage to advance, which expresses itself in the sadness of the highest intellect of the English literature of this period. The whole æsthetic movement, with its idea that the world can be saved by the sweetness of those high minds whose culture separates them from the rest, seems to be a reaction from politics, due to the indecision of great political leaders who, when trusted with power, feared to use it to carry out what they had advocated in opposition. Even when he is most the poet and essayist, Matthew Arnold is still the sociologist, the student of the fundamental principles of society. The sadness which underlies his work, prose as well as verse, and develops itself in the sudden antithesis of his exquisite: «Strew on her roses, roses, —this and the protest against "Philistinism" are equally symptoms of discontent, with conditions out of which were soon to be developed the rude and vigorous vulgarity of that middle-class Toryism which thrusts itself forward with its insulting and Philistine question, addressed to the ghosts of Tomlinsonian culture: "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought, God wot, and the tale is yet to run! By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer: What have ye done?» Perhaps the study of Homer, Eschylus, and Dante may yet produce in England a Winkelried in literature who will give a Winkelried's answer to that question, but the Shelleys and Byrons who died expatriated and in disgrace in the first half of the century left no successors in the second half. We had instead the melancholy Tennyson at the Court of Arthur, and the saddened Arnold at Athens in the time of Pericles, - both representatives of the ineffectual protest of poetic souls against an environment they could not control. The son of the celebrated Doctor Arnold of Rugby, Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham, December 24th, 1822. Graduating at Oxford in 1844, he held the professorship of Poetry there from 1857 to 1867, after having served from 1851 to 1867 as Government Inspector of Schools. In 1883-84 he lectured in the United States, and, on his return to England, showed that the intellectual exclusiveness to which he tended did not make him unfriendly to Republican institutions, or hopeless of a government by the masses-who, according to his view, if incapable of saving themselves, were to be saved nevertheless by a "remnant" of men of high intellect. As a poet, Arnold is at his best in his lyrics, some of which are unsurpassed in English. The style of his essays is a model of highly polished smoothness. He died in Liverpool, April 15th, 1888. W. V. B. STR A FINAL WORD ON AMERICA IR HENRY MAINE, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style - Sir Henry Maine in the Quarterly Review adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that "democracy is only a form of government. He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's "History," in which the American democracy is told that its ascent to power "proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the >> laws of being, and was as certain as the degrees of eternity." Let us be willing to give Sir Henry Maine his way, and to allow no magnificent claim of this kind on behalf of the American democracy. Let us treat as not more solid the assertion in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Let us concede that these natural rights are a figment; that chance and circumstance, as much as deliberate foresight and design, have brought the United States into their present condition; that moreover the British rule which they threw off was not the rule of oppressors and tyrants which declaimers suppose; and that the merit of the Americans was not that of oppressed men rising against tyrants, but rather of sensible young people getting rid of stupid and overweening guardians who misunderstood and mismanaged them. All this let us concede, if we will; but in conceding it let us not lose sight of the really important point, which is this: that their institutions do in fact suit the people of the United States so well, and that from this suitableness they do derive so much actual benefit. As one watches the play of their institutions, the image suggests itself to one's mind of a man in a suit of clothes which fits him to perfection, leaving all his movements unimpeded and easy. It is loose where it ought to be loose, and it sits close where its sitting close is an advantage. The central government of the United States keeps in its own hands those functions which, if the nation is to have real unity, ought to be kept there; those functions it takes to itself and no others. The State governments and the municipal governments provide people with the fullest liberty of managing their own affairs, and afford, besides, a constant and invaluable school of practical experience. This wonderful suit of clothes, again (to recur to our image), is found also to adapt itself naturally to the wearer's growth, and to admit of all enlargements as they successively arise. I speak of the state of things since the suppression of slavery, of the state of things which meets a spectator's eye at the present time in America. There are points in which the institutions of the United States may call forth criticism. One observer may think that it would be well if the President's term of office were longer, if his ministers sat in Congress or must possess the confidence of Congress. Another observer may say that the marriage laws for the whole nation ought to be fixed by Congress, and not to vary at the will of the legislatures of the several States. I myself was much struck with the inconvenience of not allowing a man to sit in Congress except for his own district; a man like Wendell Phillips was thus excluded, because Boston would not return him. It is as if Mr. Bright could have no other constituency open to him if Rochdale would not send him to Parliament. But all these are really questions of machinery (to use my own term), and ought not so to engage our attention as to prevent our seeing that the capital fact as to the institutions of the United States is this: their suitableness to the American people and their natural and easy working. If we are not to be allowed to say, with Mr. Beecher, that this people has "a genius for the organization of States," then at all events we must admit that in its own organization it has enjoyed the most signal good fortune. From an essay in the Nineteenth Century. THE REAL BURNS Y HIS English poetry Burns in general belongs to the eighteenth century, and has little importance for us. B* "Mark ruffian Violence, distain'd with crimes, View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue The lifeblood equal sucks of Right and Wrong!" Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame would have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda's love poet, Sylvander, the real Burns either. But he tells us himself: "These English songs gravel me to death. I have not the command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch. I have been at 'Duncan Gray' to dress it in English, but all I can do is desperately stupid." We English turn naturally, in Burns, to the poems in our own language, because we can read them easily; but in those poems we have not the real Burns. The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing perpetu |