much the most active and energetic as to be the only parties apparent; and through defect of sober intrepidity on the part of those who are rational, fool-hardihood is triumphant.

"The Good want power, but to weep barren tears;

The Powerful goodness want, worse need for them;
The Wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill."*

I do not mean of course to imply that it is for want of written poetry that the French nation cannot see its way; nor that it is by virtue of written poetry that our way lies more in the light: but out of that imaginative power in our national mind which is wanting in theirs, have proceeded the twin-births of poetry and political wisdom and as they are born of one stock, so do they dwell together in the land in a faithful and helpful relationship.

:

If the poet who is now one of the foremost members of that body in France which is called its Government, and who is apparently one of the least erring, certainly the most brave and generous of their number,—if that in some respects very admirable person be not politically wise, the inference should be, not that poets make bad politicians, but rather that this politician is but an inPrometheus Unbound.'

*Shelley.

different poet. For true greatness in poetry there is none without wisdom,-without that wisdom at least which errs not widely in the philosophy of politics, whether or not it be competent to the conduct of affairs. The great English Poets, though ardent lovers of freedom, have never, as far as I know, lent their countenance in a single line to the confounding of liberty with equality: nor was it possible that they should do so, so long as the poetic faculty was alive in them: for in what is that faculty most essentially exercised but in the inquisition into Nature, and who can look into Nature and fail to see that the system of God's Providence therein is not a system of equality, but throughout its whole scope and tenour a system of subordination ?

"Not equal all, yet free;

Equally free for orders and degrees

Jar not with liberty, but well consist."*

Such was the judgment of the least conservative of our great Poets as delivered in verse: and the prose development of his opinions may be found in his second book 'Of Reformation in England.'

In Spenser's allegory the champion of equality is represented as a Giant full of violence, pride, and presumption, who proclaimed that all realms and nations.

*Paradise Lost,' bk. v. 791.

were run awry, and undertook to put them right by reducing all things to a level :

"Therefore the Vulgar did about him flock
And cluster thick unto his leesings vain,
Like foolish flies about an honey-crock,

In hope by him great benefit to gain."

He is rebuked by Arthegal as seeking to contravene the order of Nature and Providence, and also for his blindness in aiming at equality through mere physical distribution, having, at the same time, no balance in which he can weigh what is moral, spiritual, or intellectual. But he stubbornly maintains his ground:

"Thou foolish Elf,' said then the Giant wroth,
'Seest not how badly all things present be,
And each Estate quite out of order go'th?
The Sea itself dost thou not plainly see
Encroach upon the Land there under thee;
And th' Earth itself how daily 'tis increased
By all that dying to it turned be?

Were it not good that wrong were then surceased,
And from the most that some were given to the least?

"Therefore I will throw down these mountains high,
And make them level with the lowly plain :
These towering rocks which reach unto the sky
'I will thrust down into the deepest main,
And as they were them equalise again.
Tyrants that make men subject to their law,

I will suppress, that they no more may reign;
And Lordings curb that Commons overawe,

And all the wealth of rich men to the poor will draw.'

"Of things unseen how canst thou deem aright,'
Then answered the righteous Arthegal,

'Sith thou misdeem'st so much of things in sight?
What though the Sea with waves continual
Do eat the Earth, it is no more at all;
Ne is the Earth the less or loseth aught;

For whatsoever from one place doth fall

Is with the tide unto another brought :

For there is nothing lost but may be found if sought.

"For take thy balance (if thou be so wise)

And weigh the wind that under Heaven doth blow;
Or weigh the light that in the East doth rise;

Or weigh the thought that from Man's mind doth flow :
But if the weight of these thou canst not show,
Weigh but one word that from thy lips doth fall.

For how canst thou those greater secrets know

That dost not know the least thing of them all.

Ill can he rule the Great that cannot reach the Small.'"

The argument proceeds, not without the help of Talus, the faithful attendant of Arthegal; but the Giant is obstinate in error :

"Whom when so lewdly-minded Talus found, Approaching nigh unto him, cheek by cheek, He shouldered him from off the higher ground,

And down the rock him throwing, in the sea him drowned." That portion of Spenser's argument which points to the restorative and compensatory character of apparent deprivations in the physical scheme of Nature, in order to be recognised as just in politics, should have been, perhaps, more distinctly connected with that other portion of his argument which insists upon the im

portance, in the lot of Man, of those elements which are not told by number, weight, or measure; showing that equality of wealth does not produce equality of weal, and that Justice is concerned, not in making men equal, but in making them as much as may be, equally the arbiters and agents of their own happiness and fortunes. There is but this step wanting, however, to bring the opponents "cheek by cheek," and the Giant is fairly shouldered from the higher ground.

If Spenser and Milton, each in his way, the one copiously, the other succinctly, propounded the principles by which liberty and justice are distinguished from equality, Shakespeare, whose political philosophy was far-sighted in proportion to the light which his imagination cast upon all he saw, might almost be supposed, from a speech given to Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida,' to have descried in prophetic vision those consequences of the doctrines of equality which at the end of the last century were exemplified in France :

"How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark! what discord follows! Each thing meets