recommence humming. Eloquent artistically expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy, recognisable as pious though strangely coloured, were never wanting long : but in general you could not call this aimless, cloudcapt, cloudbased, lawlessly meandering human discourse of reason by the name of 'excellent talk,' but only of 'surprising ;' and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it: "Excellent talker, very, if you let him start from no premises and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was not without what talkers call wit, and there were touches of prickly sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of the world and its idols and popular dignitaries; he had traits even of poetic humour: but in general he seemed deficient in laughter; or indeed in sympathy for concrete human things either on the sunny or on the stormy side. One right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on this solid Earth, how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim melting ghosts and shadows! None such ever came. His life had been an abstract thinking and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts of defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning singsong of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary feeling.

The Life of John Sterling.

ON STATUES.

IF the world were not properly anarchic, this question 'Who shall have a Statue?' would be one of the greatest and most solemn for it. Who is to have a Statue? means, Whom shall we consecrate and set apart as one of our sacred men? Sacred; that all men may see him, be reminded of him, and by new example added to old perpetual precept, be taught what is real worth in man. Whom do you wish us to resemble? Him you set on a high column, that all men, looking on it, may be con

tinually apprised of the duty you expect from them. What man to set there, and what man to refuse forevermore the leave to be set there: this, if a country were not anarchic as we say,-ruleless, given up to the rule of Chaos, in the primordial fibres of its being, would be a great question for a country!

And to the parties themselves, lightly as they set about it, the question is rather great. Whom shall I honour, whom shall I refuse to honour? If a man have any precious thing in him at all, certainly the most precious of all the gifts he can offer is his approbation, his reverence to another man. This is his very soul, this fealty which he swears to another: his personality itself, with whatever it has of eternal and divine, he bends here in reverence before another. Not lightly will a man give this, -if he is still a man. If he is no longer a man, but a greedy blind two-footed animal, 'without soul, except what saves him the expense of salt and keeps his body with its appetites from putrefying,'-alas, if he is nothing now but a human money-bag and meat trough, it is different! In that case bis 'reverence' is worth so many pounds sterling; and these, like a gentleman, he will give willingly. Hence the British Statues, such a populace of them as we see. British Statues, and some other more important things! Alas, of how many unveracities, of what a world of irreverence, of sordid debasement, and death in 'trespasses and sins,' is this light unveracious bestowal of one's approbation the fatal outcome! Fatal in its origin; in its developments and thousandfold results so fatal. It is the poison of the universal Upas-tree, under which all human interests, in these bad ages, lie writhing as if in the last struggle of death. Street-barricades rise for that reason, and counterfeit kings have to shave off their whiskers, and fly like coiners; and it is a world gone mad in misery, by bestowing its approbation wrong!

Give every man the meed of honour he has merited, you have the ideal world of poets; a hierarchy of beneficences, your noblest man at the summit of affairs, and in every place the due gradation of the fittest for that place: a maximum of wisdom works and administers, followed, as is inevitable, by a maximum of success. It is a world such as the idle poets dream of,—such as the active poets, the heroic and the true of men, are inces

santly toiling to achieve, and more and more realise. Achieved, realised, it never can be; striven after, and approximated to, it must forever be,-woe to us if at any time it be not! Other aim in this Earth we have none. Renounce such aim as vain and hopeless, reject it altogether, what more have you to reject? You have renounced fealty to Nature and its Almighty Maker; you have said practically, "We can flourish very well without minding Nature and her ordinances; perhaps Nature and the Almighty-what are they? A Phantasm of the brain of Priests, and of some chimerical persons that write books?"-"Hold!" shriek others wildly: "You incendiary infidels ;-you should be quiet infidels, and believe! Haven't we a Church? Don't we keep a Church, this long while; best behaved of Churches, which meddles with nobody, assiduously grinding its organs, reading its liturgies, homiletics, and excellent old moral hornbooks, so patiently as Church never did? Can't we doff our hat to it; even look in upon it occasionally, on a wet Sunday; and so, at the trifling charge of a few millions annually, serve both God and the Devil? Fools, you should be quiet infidels, and believe ! "

To give our approval aright,-alas to do every one of us what lies in him, that the honourable man everywhere, and he only have honour, that the able man everywhere be put into the place which is fit for him, which is his by eternal right: is not this the sum of all social morality for every citizen of this world? This one duty perfectly done, what more could the world have done for it? The world in all departments and aspects of it were a perfect world; everywhere administered by the best wisdom discernible in it, everywhere enjoying the exact maximum of success and felicity possible for it. Imperfectly, and not perfectly done, we know this duty must always be. Not done at all; no longer remembered as a thing which God and Nature and the Eternal Voices do require to be done,-alas, we see too well what kind of a world that ultimately makes for us! A world no longer habitable for quiet persons; a world which in these sad days is bursting into street-barricades, and pretty rapidly turning out its 'Honoured Men,' as intrusive dogs are turned out, with a kettle tied to their tail. To Kings, Kaisers,

Spiritual Papas and Holy Fathers, there is universal “ Apage! Depart thou, go thou to the-Father of thee!" in a huge worldvoice of mob-musketry and sooty execration, uglier than any ever heard before.

P. 354, l. 13.

Hudson's Statue. Latter Day Pamphlets.

Swenkt. Carlyle was doubtless thinking of Milton's “swinkt hedger." The word, so more properly spelt, means “hard-worked.” I do not know any authority for the e.

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY.

IT.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple in 1800. His political services to his party secured him an Indian appointment, which ir a few years gave him a competency. He died ir 1859. His Essays and nis History exhibit the most popular style which any English author has ever possessed. Competent critics object to its glaring defects, but have never denied its power.

THE RELIEF OF LONDONDERRY.

T was the twenty-eighth of July. The sun had just set: the evening sermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation had separated; when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three vessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The ships were in extreme peril for the river was low; and the only navigable channel ran very near to the left bank, where the headquarters of the enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numeLeake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used his guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the boom. The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that the Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board; but the Dartmouth poured on them a welldirected broadside, which threw them into disorder. Just then

rous.