It might be thought from what is said, that this section of the community, which has done everything else so well, which has astonished the world by its energy, enterprise, and self-reliance, which is continually striking out new paths of industry and subduing the forces of nature, cannot, from some mysterious reason, get their children properly edu

zio's explanation, the features of the case lost their | hour, and we must confess to a feeling of shame at phantasmagoric halo, and resumed their natural the nonsense which is being uttered on the subject. appearance. The shrouded head was but the roots of the saplings tied together with a cloth to preserve the native earth adhering to them; the body (il morto) was but a commonly used Italian figure of speech to denote anything the object of some mystery (the saplings in our case), the same as saying a "dead secret"; Bastian's fiendish sneer was only an innocent joke far from inappropriate to the circum-cated." Still more strong were the words of the stance; his patibulary countenance a freak of my heated fancy, etc., etc. And so nothing remained, save a little laugh at its discoverer, of the Deed of Darkness.

MY COUNTRYMEN.

ABOUT a year ago the Saturday Review published an article which gave me, as its articles often do give me, much food for reflection. The article was about the unjust estimate which, says the Saturday Review, I form of my countrymen, and about the indecency of talking of "British Philistines." It appears that I assume the truth of the transcendental system of philosophy, and then lecture my wiser countrymen because they will not join me in recognizing as eternal truths a set of platitudes which may be proved to be false. "Now there is in England a school of philosophy which thoroughly understands, and, on theoretical grounds, deliberately rejects, the philosophical theory which Mr. Arnold accuses the English nation of neglecting; and the practical efforts of the English people, especially their practical efforts in the way of criticism, are for the most part strictly in accordance with the principles of that philosophy."

Daily News (I love to range all the evidence in black and white before me, though it tends to my own discomfiture) about the blunder some of us were making: "All the world knows that the great middle class of this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power for all the great and good things that have to be done, and it is not likely that that class should surrender its powers and privileges in the one case of the training of its own children. How the idea of such a scheme can have occurred to anybody, how it can have been imagined that parents and schoolmasters in the most independent and active and enlightened class of English society, how it can have been supposed that the class which has done all the great things that have been done in all departments, will beg the government to send inspectors through its schools, when it can itself command whatever advantages exist, might seem unintelligible but for two or three considerations." These considerations do not much matter just now; but it is clear how perfectly Mr. Bazley's stand was a stand such as it becomes a representative man like Mr. Bazley to make, and how well the Daily Telegraph might say of the speech, "It was at once grand, genial, national, and distinct"; and the Morning Star of the speaker: "He talked to his constituents as Manchester people like to be talked to,-in the language of clear, manly I do not quite know what to say about the tran- intelligence, which penetrates through sophisms, igscendental system of philosophy, for I am a mere dab-nores commonplaces, and gives to conventional illubler in these great matters, and to grasp and hold a system of philosophy is a feat much beyond my strength; but I certainly did talk about British Philistines, and to call people Philistines when they are doing just what the wisest men in the country have settled to be quite right, does seem unreasonable, not to say indecent. Being really the most teachable man alive, I could not help making, after I had read the article in the Saturday Review, a serious return, as the French say, upon myself; and I resolved never to call my countrymen Philistines again till I had thought more about it, and could be quite sure I was not committing an indecency.

sions their true value. His speech was thoroughly instinct with that earnest good sense which charac terizes Manchester, and which, indeed, may be fairly set down as the general characteristic of England and Englishmen everywhere."

Of course if Philistinism is characteristic of the British nation just now, it must in a special way be characteristic of the representative part of the British nation, the part by which the British nation is what it is, and does all its best things, — the middle class. And the newspapers, who have so many more means than I of knowing the truth, and who have that trenchant, authoritative style for communicatI was very much fortified in this good resolutioning it which makes so great an impression, say that by something else which happened about the same the British middle class is characterized, not by time. Every one knows that the heart of the Eng- Philistinism, but by enlightenment; by a passion lish nation is its middle class; there had been a good for penetrating through sophisms, ignoring commondeal of talk, a year ago, about the education of this places, and giving to conventional illusions their true class, and I among others had imagined it was not value. Evidently it is nonsense, as the Daily News good, and that the middle class suffered by its not be- says, to think that this great middle class which suping better. But Mr. Bazley, the member for Man-plies the mind, the will, and the power for all the great chester, who is a kind of representative of this class, and good things that have to be done, should want made a speech last year at Manchester, the mid- its schools, the nurseries of its admirable intellidle-class metropolis, which shook me a good deal. gence, meddled with. It may easily be imagined "During the last few months," said Mr. Bazley, that all this, coming on the top of the Saturday Re"there had been a cry that middle-class education view's rebuke of me for indecency, was enough to ought to receive more attention. He confessed him- set me meditating; and after a long and painful self very much surprised by the clamor that was self-examination, I saw that I had been making a raised. He did not think that class need excite the great mistake. sympathy either of the legislature or the public.” Much to the same effect spoke Mr. Miall, another middle-class leader, in the Nonconformist: "Middleclass education seems to be the favorite topic of the

I had been breaking one of my own cardinal rules: the rule to keep aloof from practice, and to confine myself to the slow and obscure work of trying to understand things, to see them as they

are. So I was suffering deservedly in being taunted with hawking about my nostrums of state schools for a class much too wise to want them, and of an Academy for people who have an inimitable style already. To be sure I had said that schools ought to be things of local, not state, institution and management, and that we ought not to have an Academy; but that makes no difference. I had been meddling with practice, proposing this and that, saying how it might be if we had established this or that. I saw what danger I had been running in thus intruding into a sphere where I have no business, and I resolved to offend in this way no more. Henceforward let Mr. Kinglake belabor the French as he will, let him describe as many tight, merciless lips as he likes; henceforward let Educational Homes stretch themselves out in The Times to the crack of doom, let Lord Fortescue bewitch the middle class with ever new blandishments, let any number of Mansion House meetings propound any number of patchwork schemes to avoid facing the real difficulty; I am dumb. I let reforming and instituting alone; I meddle with my neighbor's practice no more. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

they could hear how cavalierly a foreigner treats this country of their making and managing. It is not so much that we dislike England," a Prussian official, with the graceful tact of his nation, said to me the other day, "as that we think little of her." The Cologne Gazette, perhaps the chief newspaper of Germany, published in the summer a series of letters, much esteemed, I believe, by military men, on the armies of the leading Continental powers. The writer was a German officer, but not a Prussian. Speaking of the false military system followed by the Emperor Nicholas, whose great aim was to turn his soldiers into perfectly drilled machines, and contrasting this with the free play left to the individual soldier in the French system: "In consequence of their purely mechanical training," says this writer, "the Russians, in spite of their splendid courage, were in the Crimean war constantly beaten by the French, nay, decidedly beaten even by the English and the Turks."

"Let us

Hardly a German newspaper can discuss territorial changes in Europe, but it will add, after its remarks on the probable policy of France in this or that event: "England will probably make a fuss, but what England thinks is of no importance." I believe the German newspapers must keep a phrase of that kind stereotyped, they use it so often. France This I say as a sincere penitent; but I do not see is our very good friend just now, but at bottom our that there is any harm in my still trying to know" clear intelligence penetrating through sophisms,” and understand things, if I keep humbly to that, and and so on, is not held in much more esteem there do not meddle with greater matters, which are out than in Germany. One of the gravest and most of my reach. So having once got into my head this moderate of French newspapers - a newspaper, too, notion of British Philistinism and of the want of our very good friend, like France herself, into the clear and large intelligence in our middle class, I do bargain-broke out lately, when some jealousy of not consider myself bound at once to put away and the proposed Cholera Commission in the East was crush such a notion, as people are told to do with shown on this side the water, in terms which, though their religious doubts; nor, when the Saturday Re- less rough than the "great fool" of the Saturday view tells me that no nation in the world is so logical Review, were still far from flattering. as the English nation, and the Morning Star, that speak to these English the only language they can our grand national characteristic is a clear intelli- comprehend. England lives for her trade; cholera gence which penetrates through sophisms, ignores interrupts trade; therefore it is for England's intercommonplaces, and gives to conventional illusions est to join in precautions against cholera." their true value, do I feel myself compelled to re- Compliments of this sort are displeasing to rememceive these propositions with absolute submission as ber, displeasing to repeat; but their abundance articles of faith, transcending reason; indeed, this strikes the attention; and then the happy unconwould be transcendentalism, which the Saturday Re-sciousness of those at whom they are aimed, their view condemns. Canvass them, then, as mere matters of speculation, I may; and having lately had occasion to travel on the Continent for many months, during which I was thrown in company with a great variety of people, I remembered what Burns says of the profitableness of trying to see ourselves as others see us, and I kept on the watch for anything to confirm or contradict my old notion, in which, without absolutely giving it up, I had begun certainly to be much shaken and staggered.

I must say that the foreign opinion about us is not at all like that of the Saturday Review and the Morning Star. I know how madly the foreigners envy us, and that this must warp their judgment; I know, too, that this test of foreign opinion can never be decisive; I only take it for what it is worth, and as a contribution to our study of the matter in ques

tion.

state of imperturbable self-satisfaction, strikes the attention too, and makes an inquisitive mind quite eager to see its way clearly in this apparent game of cross purposes. For never, surely, was there such a game of cross purposes played. It came to its height when Lord Palmerston died the other day. Lord Palmerston was England; "the best type of our age and country," The Times well called him; he was "a great representative man, emphatically the English Minister"; the interpreter of the wishes of that great middle class of this country which supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, and therefore "acknowledged by a whole people as their best impersonation."

Monsieur Thiers says of Pitt, that though he used and abused the strength of England, she was the second country in the world at the time of his death, and the first eight years afterwards. That was after Waterloo and the triumphs of Wellington. And that era of primacy and triumphs Lord Palmerston, say the English newspapers, has carried on to this hour. "What Wellington was as a soldier, that was Palmerston as a statesman." When I read these Ja, selbst von den Engländern und Türkern entschieden ge

schlagen.

rash

words in some foreign city or other, I could not help in numberless ways, the Americans expected symrubbing my eyes and asking myself if I was dream-pathy, while from the aristocracy they expected ing. Why, taking Lord Palmerston's career from none. And, in general, the faults with which for1830 (when he first became Foreign Secretary) to eigners reproach us in the matters named, his death, there cannot be a shadow of doubt, for engagement, intemperate threatening, undignified any one with eyes and ears in his head, that he found retreat, ill-timed cordiality, are not the faults of England the first power in the world's estimation, an aristocracy, by nature in such concerns prudent, and that he leaves her the third, after France and reticent, dignified, sensitive on the point of honor; the United States. I am no politician; I mean no they are rather the faults of a rich middle class, disparagement at all to Lord Palmerston, to whose testy, absolute, ill-acquainted with foreign matters, talents and qualities I hope I can do justice; and a little ignoble, very dull to perceive when it is makindeed it is not Lord Palmerston's policy, or any ing itself ridiculous. Minister's policy, that is in question here: it is the policy of all of us, it is the policy of England; for in a government such as ours is at present, it is only, as we are so often reminded, by interpreting public opinion, by being "the best type of his age and country," that a Minister governs; and Lord Palmer ston's greatness lay precisely in our all "acknowledging him as our best impersonation."

Well, then, to this our logic, our practical efforts in the way of criticism, our clear, manly intelligence penetrating through sophisms and ignoring commonplaces, and above all, our redoubtable phalanx possessing these advantages in the highest degree, our great middle class, which makes Parliament, and which supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, have brought us to the third place in the world's estimation, instead of the first. He who disbelieves it, let him go round to every embassy in Europe and ask if it is not true.

I know the answer one gets at home when one says that England is not very highly considered just now on the Continent. There is first of all the envy to account for it, that of course; and then our clear intelligence is making a radical change in our way of dealing with the Continent; the old, bad, aristocratical policy of incessantly intermeddling with the affairs of the Continent, this it is getting rid of; it is leaving the miserable foreigners to themselves, to their wars, despotisms, bureaucracy, and hatred of free, prosperous England. A few inconveniences may arise before the transition from our old policy to our new is fairly accomplished, and we quite leave off the habit of meddling where our own interests are not at stake. We may be exposed to a little mortification in the passage, but our clear intelligence will discern any occasion where our interests are really at stake. Then we shall come forward and prove ourselves as strong as ever; and the foreigners, in spite of their envy, know it. But The foreigners, indeed, are in no doubt as to the what strikes me so much in all which these foreignreal authors of the policy of modern England; they ers say is, that it is just this clear intelligence of know that ours is no longer a policy of Pitts and ours that they appear at the present moment to aristocracies, disposing of every movement of the hold cheap. Englishmen are often heard complainhoodwinked nation to whom they dictate it; they ing of the little gratitude foreign nations show them know that our policy is now dictated by the strong for their sympathy, their good-will. The reason is, middle part of England, England happy, as Mr. that the foreigners think that an Englishman's goodLowe, quoting Aristotle, says, in having her middle will to a foreign cause, or dislike to it, is never part strong and her extremes weak; and that, grounded in a perception of its real merits and bearthough we are administered by one of our weak ex-ings, but in some chance circumstance. They say tremes, the aristocracy, these managers administer us, as a weak extreme naturally must, with a nervous attention to the wishes of the strong middle part, whose agents they are.

the Englishman never, in these cases, really comprehends the situation, and so they can never feel him to be in living sympathy with them.

hope not; and if not, I should say, for the benefit of those who have seen Mr. John Parry's amusing entertainment, that England and Englishmen, holding forth on some great crisis in a foreign country,Poland, say, or Italy, - are apt to have on foreigners very much the effect of the young man from the country who talks to the nursemaid after she has upset the perambulator. There is a terrible crisis, and the discourse of the young man from the country, excellent in itself, is felt not to touch the crisis vitally. Nevertheless, on he goes; the perambulator lies a wreck, the child screams, the nursemaid wrings her hands, the old gentleman storms, the policeman gesticulates, the crowd thickens; still, that astonishing young man talks on, serenely unconscious that he is not at the centre of the situation.

I have got into much trouble for calling my counIt was not the aristocracy which made the Cri- trymen Philistines, and all through these remarks I mean war; it was the strong middle part, the conam determined never to use that word; but I wonstituencies. It was the strong middle part which der if there can be anything offensive in calling showered abuse and threats on Germany for mis-one's countryman a young man from the country. handling Denmark; and when Germany gruffly answered, Come and stop us, slapped its pockets, and vowed that it had never had the slightest notion of pushing matters so far as this. It was the strong middle part which, by the voice of its favorite newspapers, kept threatening Germany, after she had snapped her fingers at us, with a future chastisement from France, just as a smarting school-boy threatens his bully with a drubbing to come from some big boy in the background. It was the strong middle part, speaking through the same newspapers, which was full of coldness, slights, and sermons for the American Federals during their late struggle; and as soon as they had succeeded, discovered that it had always wished them well, and that nothing was so much to be desired as that the United States, and we, should be the fastest friends possible. Some Happening to be much thrown with certain forpeople will say that the aristocracy was an equal eigners, who criticised England in this sort of way, offender in this respect: very likely; but the be- I used often to think what a short and ready way havior of the strong middle part makes more impres- one of our hard-hitting English newspapers would sion than the behavior of a weak extreme: and the take with these scorners, if they fell into its hands. more so, because from the middle class, their fellows | But being myself a mere seeker for truth, with noth

ing trenchant or authoritative about me, I could do | rope'; these few words, with their lofty strength, no more than look shocked and begin to ask ques- contain, as one may say, the prophecy of future suctions. "What!" I said, "you hold the England of cess; you hear the very voice of an aristocracy to-day cheap, and declare that we do not compre-standing on sure ground, and with the stars in its hend the situation; yet you rate the England of favor. Well, you succeeded, and in 1815, after 1815 so high, and call our fathers and grandfathers Waterloo, you were the first power in Europe. the foremost people in Europe. Did they compre-These people have a secret,' we all said; 'they hend the situation better than we?" 66 Yes," re- have discerned the way the world was going, and plied my foreign friends, "the situation as they had therefore they have prevailed; while on the other it, a great deal better. Their time was a time for hand, the "stars in their courses fought against Sisenergy, and they succeeded in it perfectly. Our era.' We held you in the greatest respect; we time is a time for intelligence, and you are not suc- tried to copy your constitutional government; we ceeding in it at all." read your writers. After the peace,' says George Though I could not hear without a shudder this Sand, the literature of Great Britain crossed the insult to the earnest good sense which, as the Morn-straits, and came to reign amongst us.' It reigned ing Star says, may be fairly set down as the general in Byron and Scott, voices of the great aristocraticharacteristic of England and Englishmen every-cal spirit which had just won the victory; Scott exwhere, yet I pricked up my ears when my compan- pressing its robust, genial conservatism, holding by ions talked of energy, and England's success in a a thousand roots to the past; Byron, its defiant force time for energy, because I have always had a notion and indomitable pride. myself that energy - energy with honesty England's great force; a greater force to her, even, than her talent for penetrating through sophisms and ignoring commonplaces; so I begged my acquaintances to explain a little more fully to me what they meant. “Nothing can be clearer," they answered. "Your Times was telling you the other day, with the enlightenment it so often shows at present, that instead of being proud of Waterloo and the great war which was closed by it, it really seemed as if you ought rather to feel embarrassed at the recollection of them, since the policy for which they were fought is grown obsolete; the world has taken a turn which was not Lord Castlereagh's, and to look back on the great Tory war is to look back upon an endless account of blood and treasure wasted.

is

"Now, that is not so at all. What France had in her head, from the Convention, faithful to the principles of the sovereignty of the people, which will not permit them to acknowledge anywhere the institutions militating against it," to Napoleon, with his immense projects for assuring to France the empire of the world,' what she had in her head, along with many better and sounder notions destined to happier fortune, was supremacy. She had always a vision of a sort of federation of the states of Europe under the primacy of France. Now to this the world, whose progress no doubt lies in the direction of more concert and common purpose among nations, but these nations free, self-impelled, and living each its own life, was not moving. Whoever knocks to pieces a scheme of this sort does the world a service. In antiquity, Roman empire had a scheme of this sort, and much more. The barbarians knocked it to pieces,-honor to the barbarians. In the middle ages Frederick the Second had a scheme of this sort. The Papacy knocked it to pieces, honor to the Papacy. In our own century, France had a scheme of this sort. Your fathers knocked it to pieces, honor to your fathers. They were just the people to do it. They had a vigorous lower class, a vigorous middle class, and a vigorous aristocracy. The lower class worked and fought, the middle class found the money, and the aristocracy wielded the whole.

"We believed in you for a good while; but gradually it began to dawn upon us that the era for which you had had the secret was over, and that a new era, for which you had not the secret, was beginning. The work of the old era was to prevent the formation of a second Roman empire, and to maintain a store of free, rich, various national lives for the future to work with and bring to harmony. This was a work of force, of energy; it was a work for an aristocratical power, since, as you yourself are always saying, aristocracies, poor in ideas, are rich in energy. You were a great aristocratical power, and did it.

a

"But then came an era with another work, work of which it is the great glory of the French Revolution (pardon us for saying so; we know it makes some of your countrymen angry to hear it) passionately to have embraced the idea,—the work of making human life, hampered by a past which it has outgrown, natural and rational. This is a work of intelligence, and in intelligence an aristocratic power, as you know, does not so much shine. Accordingly, since the world has been steadily moving this way, you seem to have lost your secret, and we are gradually ceasing to believe in you. You will say, perhaps, that England is no longer an aristocratical power, but a middle-class power, wielded by an industrial middle class, as the England of your fathers was wielded by a territorial aristocracy. This may be so; and indeed, as the style, carriage, and policy of England have of late years been by no means those of an aristocratical power, it probably is so. But whatever class dictates it, your course, allow us to say, has not of late years been intelligent, has not, at any rate, been successful. And, depend upon it, a nation who has the secret of her era, who discerns which way the world is going, is successful, keeps rising. Can you yourselves, with all your powers of self-satisfaction, suppose that the Crimean war raised you, or that your Indian mutiny raised you, or that your attitude in the Italian war raised you, as your performances at the beginning of the century raised you? Surely you cannot. You held your own, if you will; you showed tenacity; you saved yourselves from disaster; but you did not raise yourselves, did not advance one jot.

This aristocracy was high-spirited, reticent, firm, despising frothy declamation. It had all the quali- "Can you, on the other hand, suppose that your ties useful for its task and time; Lord Grenville's attitude in the Danish business, in the American words, as early as 1793: England will never con- business, has not lowered you? You are losing the sent that France shall arrogate the power of annul- instinct which tells people how the world is going; ling at her pleasure, and under the pretence of a you are beginning to make mistakes; you are fallpretended natural right, the political system of Eu-ing out of the front rank. The era of aristocracies

is over; nations must now stand or fall by the intel- | by these unrivalled exploits of theirs, had not only ligence of their middle class and their people. The raised their country to an unprecedented height of people with you is still an embryo; no one can yet greatness, but had also saved our foolish and obquite say what it will come to. You lean, therefore, structive aristocracy from being emptied into the with your whole weight upon the intelligence of Thames. your middle class. And intelligence, in the true sense of the word, your middle class has absolutely

none."

66

As it was, however, what I had urged, or rather what I had borrowed from Mr. Lowe, seemed to me exceedingly forcible, and I looked anxiously for its effect on my hearers. They did not appear so much disconcerted as I had hoped. Undoubtedly," they said, "the coming of your middle class to power was a natural, salutary event, to be blessed, not anathematized. Aristocracies cannot deal with a time for intelligence; their sense is for facts, not ideas.

"The world of ideas is the possible, the future; the world of aristocracies is the established, the past, which has made their fortune, and which they hope to prolong. No doubt your middle class found a great deal of commercial and social business waiting to be done, which your aristocratic governments had left undone, and had no talents for doing. Their talents were for other times and tasks; for curbing the power of the crown when other classes were too inconsiderable to do it; for managing (if one compares them with other aristocracies) their affairs and their dependants with vigor, prudence, and moderation, during the feudal and patriarchal stage of society; for wielding the force of their country against foreign powers with energy, firmness, and dignity. But then came the modern spirit, the modern time; the notion, as we say, of making human life more natural and rational; or, as your philosophers say, of getting the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Have you succeeded, are you succeeding, in this hour of the many, as your aristocracy succeeded in the hour of the few? You say you are; you point to the noble work, the heroic work which the House of Commons has performed within these last thirty-five years; everything that was complained of, everything that had grown distasteful, has been touched with success and moderation by the amending hand.' Allow us to set claptrap on one side; we are not at one of your public meetings. What is the modern problem? to make human life, the life of society, all through, more natural and rational; to have the greatest possible number of one's nation happy. Here is the standard by which we are to try ourselves and one another now, as national grandeur, in the old regal and aristocratical conception of it, was the standard formerly.

I was aghast. I thought of this great class, every morning and evening extolled for its clear, manly intelligence by a hundred vigorous and influential writers; and though the fine enthusiasm of these writers had always seemed to me to be carrying them a little too far, and I had even been guilty of the indecency of now and then calling my country*men Philistines, these foreign critics struck me as passing all bounds, and quite out-Heroding Herod. Fortunately I had just received from England a copy of Mr. Lowe's powerful and much-admired speech against Reform. I took it out of my pocket. Now," said I to my envious, carping foreigners, "just listen to me. You say that the early years of this century were a time for energy, and we did well in them; you say that the last thirty or forty years have been a time for intelligence, and we have done ill in them. Mr. Lowe shall answer you. Here is his reading of our last thirty or forty years' history, as made by our middle-class Parliament, as he calls it, by a Parliament, therefore, filled by the mind and will of this great class whose rule you disparage. Mr. Lowe says: The seven Houses of Commons that have sat since the Reform Bill have performed exploits unrivalled, not merely in the six centuries during which Parliament has existed, but in the whole history of representative assemblies.' "He says: "Look at the noble work, the heroic work which the House of Commons has performed within these thirty-five years. It has gone through and revised every institution of the country; it has scanned our trade, our colonies, our laws, and our municipal institutions; everything that was complained of, everything that had grown distasteful, has been touched with success and moderation by the amending hand. And to such a point have these amendments been carried, that when gentlemen come to argue this question, and do all in their power to get up a practical grievance, they fail in suggesting even one.' There is what Mr. Lowe You see we have nothing left to desire, absolutely nothing. As Mr. Lowe himself says: With all this continued peace, contentment, happiness, and prosperity, England in its present state of Every nation must have wished to be England development and civilization, the mighty fabric in 1815, tried by the old standard: must we all wish of English prosperity, - what can we want more?' to be England in 1865, tried by the new standard? Evidently nothing; therefore, to propose for Eng-Your aristocracy, you say, is as splendid, as fortuland to make a step in the direction of democracy nate, as enviable as ever: very likely; but all the is the strangest and wildest proposition ever broached world cannot be aristocracy. What do you make by man.' People talk of America. In America of the mass of your society, of its vast middle and the working classes are the masters; does anybody lower portion? Are we to envy you your common doubt that?' And compare, Mr. Lowe means, people; is our common people to wish to change England, as the middle class is making her, with places with yours; are we to say that you, more than America, as the working classes are making her. we, have the modern secret here? Without insistHow entirely must the comparison turn to the ad-ing too much on the stories of misery and degradavantage of the English middle class! Then, finally, as to the figure we cut in the eyes of the world, our grandeur and our future, here is a crowning sentence, worthy of Lord Macaulay himself, whose style Mr. Lowe enthusiastically admires: The destiny of England is in the great heart of England!'"

says.

Mr. Bright had not then made his famous speech about the misdeeds of the Tories, but, if he had, I should certainly have added that our middle class,

66

tion which are perpetually reaching us, we will say that no one can mix with a great crowd in your country, no one can walk with his eyes and ears open through the poor quarters of your large towns, and not feel that your common people, as it meets one's eyes, is at present more raw, to say the very least, less enviable-looking, further removed from civilized and humane life, than the common people almost anywhere. Well, then, you are not a suc