tions, and is ready for all occasions. Take the often-quoted passage on the importance of selfknowledge :

To say nothing of its fine felicity of expression, Solomon could add nothing to the wisdom of it. A great pity, I think, if such verses were only calculated to "please "; very sad if, in the didactic sense, they could only be taken as a dead letter. For my part I cannot but think that in so far as they are committed to memory and taken to heart, they can scarcely fail to act, to some extent at least, as a real prophylactic and remedy against vain and conceited thoughts and foolish imaginations. It seems to me that there should be no controversy as to the higher kinds of pleasure and instruction. To feel that you have been instructed is in itself a source of pleasure. To the man of intelligence the pleasure which he receives from a book will be more or less commensurate with the instruction he receives from it. dishonour yourself in so far as you curtail yourself of the privilege of seeking for intellectual and moral ends.

You

11. The grandest service we can render to our kind. The grandest service you can render to your fellow-men must be that of helping them to understand what most concerns them, and best fits them to carry themselves nobly and triumphantly in the Battle of Life. Compared with such service, that of merely amusing them can scarcely be worth mention. He must indeed be a stupid fellow who, with death most certainly

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in front of him and with questions of unspeakable significance demanding his attention, has no aspiration beyond that of amusing others or of getting himself amused. To promote the noble must be the noblest of all activities. Every man should have a noble Ideal-an eternal Life Purpose. Until he is thus moved, he will be but a mediocre and humdrum person.

12. The duty of the literary man.-To set forth large interests, to evoke deep and virtuous sympathies and antipathies, to rouse noble and beautiful emotions, to fill the mind with pure light, to promote all love of the good and all abhorrence of the bad-these should be the chief ends of the man who gives himself to Literature. In any

case, such seems to be the tendency of all great authors without exception. Mention an author universally acknowledged to be great, and you will probably have no difficulty in finding that he has said great things and presented you with great vital pictures, full of instruction, rich in moral purpose, and glowing with moral enthusiasm. This theme is closely allied with that of the Quality of Truth, to which subject we will now devote some attention.

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CHAPTER VIII.

QUALITY OF TRUTH IN LITERATURE.

1. Reason and Nature are the test of truth and sanity.-Reason and Nature are to be followed as closely as possible in every field of human activity. Every law of Reason and Nature should be as soberly regarded as the Law of Gravitation.

2. History, obviously, is not History unless it be essentially true in its statement of facts and in its narrative of events and occurrences.

3. Politicians are mere charlatans when they pretend that they are able by legislative decree to eradicate evils which are born in Human Nature. Great evils will continue to exist even in the best ordered State in proportion to the ignorance and depravity of the population of whom it is constituted. No Legislative or Police System, however perfect, will defeat the Devil and give us a New Jerusalem.

4. Physical Science is unadulterated quackery in so far as it is not a presentment and exposition of the Facts and the Laws of material Nature and their implications.

5. Mental Science is but a madman's craze if it be not impregnably founded upon, or derived, by necessary implication or inference, from the Facts and Truths of Human Consciousness.

6. Theology is disastrous hallucination and mere Devil's Delight when it founds its dogmas and

doctrines on assumptions transcending, or opposed to, Human Experience and Testimony, or at variance with Intellectual and Moral Law: when it dogmatises and doctrinises on the Unknown, the Unknowable, and the Superconscious. If you should be called upon at any time to hold a colloquy with the Keeper of Heaven's Gate, it must be held upon a rational basis; otherwise, stupidity is but " grown vocal," and two fools are but having a senseless palaver. I wish we could bring this great truth home to all clergymenespecially. Fathers and Brethren, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth?

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7. And Literature of any kind is weakened and perhaps rendered worse than worthless in so far as it departs from credibility and essential truth to Nature; whilst, to put it conversely, everything that is essentially credible and true to Nature is, to that extent at least, meritorious.

...

8. The infinite range and diversity of Fact and Truth. We now come to consider the quality or intrinsic value of the Fact or Truth. A taste for the fine arts goes hand in hand with the moral sense to which it is nearly allied. . . . The man who aspires to be a critic must acquire a clear perception of what objects are lofty, what low, what proper or improper, what manly, and what mean and trivial."1 There is fact of chaff and wheat; of cotton and silk; of tin, copper, iron, and gold; of glass and diamond; of sunlight and candle-light; there is truth of Earth and Sky; of Man and Monkey; of God and Devil; of Heaven and Hell. There is unquestionable truth of the Swine-Sty, and unquestionable truth of the Temple of Divinity.

1 Lord Kames, 'Elements of Criticism,' Vol. i. p. 6. As a recent critic in 'The Times Literary Supplement' says, "Every good thing is known and defined by its best."

9. Golden and Copper Coinages.-The ideas of one man, within the circle of truth, may be represented as a coinage of intellectual farthings; those of another, as a coinage of golden pieces. Within the circle of truth one man is an intellectual pedlar a dealer in tapes and trifles; 1 another is an intellectual merchant-prince, offering royal In a word, there is the unit of truth or fact worth, perhaps, a fraction of a farthing; and, on the other hand, there is the unit of truth or fact of such mighty value as cannot be expressed by human figures or by human tongue. This is not a speculation but a calculation-a calculation, let it be admitted, not of mathematical exactness, but of mathematical certainty.

wares.

10. The Great and the Small.-Eschines is said to have conversed in his letters; Demosthenes, in his, to have harangued. In human intercourse some persons converse, whilst others--they do but chatter. The discourse of one man breathes the atmosphere of bad places; that of another is fresh and fragrant, and as full of health and beauty as a flower-garden in June. The conversation of one person is the smallest of small-ale-fit for Goslington tap-room; that of another may be good enough to be uttered across the Table of the Gods. Between two men there may be about as much difference as there is between Thor and a Squib-maker.

11. The great and the small are to be found in every field of inquiry. Within the circle of Fact and Truth in Theology there are questions involving weighty matters of the Law, and others touching mint, cummin, and anise that um

1 Like the sexton who, having accompanied a party of visitors over a fine church, inveigled them into an appended rubbishshoot with the pompous announcement, "And in this 'ere place I keeps my brooms and brushes.”