Nature is we do not expect it—but they call up a very vivid impression of the scene or the object. Through Scott many who have thought themselves destitute of the poetic sense have made their way into the realm of gold. He was successful in calling the attention of the civilised world to the beauties and the history of his native country. His magic wand called into life its buried heroes and forgotten traditions, and without him the advancing tide of civilisation would have obliterated every ancient landmark, and the heroic age of Scotland would have been as completely sunk and hidden beneath its waves as the round towers of Ireland that lie beneath the waters of its greatest lake.

In width of human sympathy Scott is with Shakespeare. With what better word can we take leave of him? He has created for us, and creation must rank before philosophising or the literary arts of polishing and refining; creation counts for more. Tory as Scott consistently was, he did no wrong to political foes in any of his writings. That large-souled, humorous, joyous man touched life at a vast number of points. He did not touch it at the point we are accustomed, perhaps truly, to regard as the most vital of all, the point at which its circle meets the greater circle whose centre is the source of all being, and whose circumference is not coincident with any physical horizon. This was his limitation, partly conscious and deliberate, but it was not such a limitation as enfeebles though it may restrict art. Nor was it sufficient, in the minds of many as good friends to precision of epithet as Carlyle, to reverse the testimony of his contemporaries to his greatness. Tennyson spoke the sentiment of the English speaking peoples when in his last days he wrote,―

'Oh, great and gallant Scott,
True gentleman, heart, blood and bone;

I would it had been my lot,

To have seen thee, and, heard thee and known.'

Southey and Scott were not the greatest poets of their age, but they were its best as well as its greatest men. The laurel is not only the meed of mighty conquerors and poets sage, it is earned by all signal service in the estates of the universal human realm.

CHAPTER IX

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

* Tennyson-Arnold-Browning

BEFORE the Sturm und Drang of the first quarter of the present century had perceptibly abated, while England was engaged in the momentous struggle for her own liberty and that of Europe, while the new revolutionary and spiritual ideas were still powerfully exciting motors to action and thought, literature responded to the high-beating pulse of the time. It was passion - full, sometimes fevered, at all times in unison with the thrill and stir of a nation's hour of heightened vitality. Poetry was its natural voice; but with the succeeding calm, with the quieter, steadier pulse of the body politic and social, came the era of prose, representative of mental equanimity; of the novel, affording artificial stimulus to compensate for the loss of exciting causes in the real world; of æsthetic and scientific enquiry, only possible to a people who have leisure, who are unoccupied with pressing questions of foreign policy affecting their national existence; of studied art, less spontaneous, less the result of the direct inspiration of an exciting period, but more

* The reader is referred to the chapter entitled 'Neo-Classicism,' and to Professor Dowden's suggestive essay on Tennyson and Browning, in his Studies in Literature.

perfect as regards form; in short, an era dominated by the critical rather than by the productive spirit. Out of the philosophic revival grew the mastering modern principles of scientific investigation; out of the ideas brought into prominence by the Revolution came the mastering modern principles at work, modifying social and political conditions, towards the levelling up and the levelling down aimed at by our Socialist reformers. Without attempting to map out the numerous conflicting influences in our present world of English thought, we may name these as chief. A close observer of the history of the century will note that, while the democratic spirit and the scientific spirit have gathered strength with the years, have justified themselves with time, there has been no corresponding gain to spiritual ideals, to the strengthening and deepening of a faith in the unseen world, or to the idea of its virtual union with this. There has been no corresponding justification of the transcendental philosophy, of the impulse towards the creed that holds by an indwelling spiritual presence, that brought the divine into close communion with the human mind, that read in Nature's beauties and sublimities the signs manual of an everlasting hyper-physical power. The increase of strength to the democratic and scientific principles has worked against spiritualism, against the transcendental movement so potent in the early years of the century; for, as has often been observed, all forms of supernaturalism fare ill in an era of democracy, or during the reign of a scientific spirit. Democracy and science are hostile to things that are not very near, that cannot be taken as it were into the hand, to things that they do not understand. Democracy rarely lifts its eyes above or beyond material ideals, above the gratified or delighted contemplation of bodily comforts, of high wages,

short hours and cheap luxuries. Even in 'Chants for Socialists' it will be vain to look for any conception beyond such a very excellent one as this :

'The little house on the hill,

The streams and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till; And the artist's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle bow, And the banded choirs of music, all those that do and know.'

In a word, a Greek, not a Christian ideal; for there is not a hint of a life other than this, which we had fondly hoped was but a stage on an infinite journey. Scientific investigation, too, is unfriendly to any desire of the soul for other and better worlds. Admirably adapted for attainment of truth, in respect of such things as may be examined under the microscope, or thoroughly probed and laid bare under the scalpel, its very incapacity to go further is the most conclusive of arguments that there is no further to go. The microscope has not yet revealed soul, the dissecting knife has never yet grated against mind, and, for the same reason, God has not, up to the present, been brought into the astronomers' field of vision by the best telescopes. The existence of God and the soul is, therefore, wisely discredited; had they any real objective existence, outside the dreaming imagination of mankind, they could not have escaped the trained eye of the keen physicists. The allegiance of the peoples is transferred to the things that may be seen and handled. Democracy has been justified, scientific methods have been triumphantly justified. Traditional religious belief has at least historical evidence for its support, and can never lose its hold upon a certain type of mind, but the transcendental philosophy has not been justified by experiment. It matters not that its creed is unverifiable by ex