Cardinal Newman peeping through a window to see men worshipping false though ancient gods. Warren Hastings's high-handed dealings with the temples and time-honoured if scandalous customs of the Hindoos filled Burke with horror. So, too, he respected Quakers, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and all those whom he called Constitutional Dissenters. He has a fine passage somewhere about Rust, for with all his passion for good government he dearly loved a little rust. In this phase of

character he reminds one not a little of another great writer-whose death literature has still reason to deplore-George Eliot; who, in her love for old hedge-rows and barns and crumbling moss-grown walls, was a writer after Burke's own heart, whose novels he would have sat up all night to devour; for did he not deny with warmth Gibbon's statement that he had read all five volumes of Evelina in a day? The thing is impossible,' cried Burke; 'they took me three days doing nothing else.' Now, Evelina is a good novel, but Silas Marner is a better.

Wordsworth has been called the High Priest

of Nature. Burke may be called the High Priest of Order-a lover of settled ways, of justice, peace, and security. His writings are a storehouse of wisdom, not the cheap shrewdness of the mere man of the world, but the noble, animating wisdom of one who has the poet's heart as well as the statesman's brain. Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke, 'Have you read your Burke' is at least as sensible a question to put to a parliamentary candidate, as to ask him whether he is a total abstainer or a desperate drunkard. Something there may be about Burke to regret, and more to dispute; but that he loved justice and hated iniquity is certain, as also it is that for the most part he dwelt in the paths of purity, humanity, and good sense. May we be found adhering to

them!

THE MUSE OF HISTORY.

WO distinguished men of letters, each

TWO

an admirable representative of his University, Mr. John Morley and Professor Seeley-have lately published opinions on the subject of history, which, though very likely to prove right, deserve to be carefully considered before assent is bestowed upon them.

Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland Institute, and speaking in the Town Hall of Birmingham, said: 'I do not in the least 'want to know what happened in the past,

except as it enables me to see my way more 'clearly through what is happening to-day,' and this same indifference is professed, though certainly nowhere displayed, in other parts of Mr. Morley's writings.*

* Critical Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 9.

Professor Seeley never makes his point quite so sharp as this, and probably would hesitate to do so, but in the Expansion of England he expounds a theory of history largely based upon an indifference like that which Mr. Morley professed at Birmingham. His book opens thus :-'It is a favourite 'maxim of mine that history, while it should 'be scientific in its method, should pursue a 'practical object—that is, it should not merely ' gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, 'but modify his view of the present and his 'forecast of the future. Now, if this maxim 'be sound, the history of England ought to 'end with something that might be called a

'moral.'

This, it must be admitted, is a large order. The task of the historian, as here explained, is not merely to tell us the story of the past, and thus gratify our curiosity, but, pursuing a practical object, to seek to modify our views of the present and help us in our forecasts of the future; and this the historian is to do, not unconsciously and incidentally, but deliberately and of set purpose. One can

well understand how history, so written, will usually begin with a maxim, and invariably end with a moral.

What we are afterwards told in the same book follows in logical sequence upon our first quotation-namely, that history fades 'into mere literature, (the italics are ours) 'when it loses sight of its relation to 'practical politics.' In this grim sentence we The poor

read the dethronement of Clio.

thing must forswear her father's house, her tuneful sisters, the invocation of the poet, the worship of the dramatist, and keep her terms at the University, where, if she is really studious. and steady, and avoids literary companions (which ought not to be difficult), she may hope some day to be received into the Royal Society as a second-rate science. The people who do not usually go to the Royal Society will miss their old playmate from her accustomed slopes, but, even were they to succeed in tracing her to her new home, access would be denied them; for Professor Seeley, that stern custodian, has his answer ready for all such seekers.

If you

'want recreation, you must find it in Poetry,