but justice to say, that, if written with three times less ability, lawn-sleeves would not have given them buoyancy, but, on the contrary, they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably; whilst the curate, favoured by obscurity, would have survived for another chance. So again, and indeed more than so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle (not of this generation, but the earl of fifty years back) wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, the judicious public has allowed the booksellers to incorporate, along with other rubbish of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of the "British Poets." And really, if you will insist on odious comparisons, they were not much below the verses of an amiable prime minister (John Woburn) known to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina, not only they fell, but in falling they caused the earl to reel much more than any commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle -viz., Lord Byron-because he brought dazzling genius and power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage in his peerage and his very ancient descent. On these double wings, he soared into a region of public interest far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic power alone. Not only all his rubbish-which in quantity is great-passed for jewels, but also what are incontestably jewels more gorgeous than the Koh-i-noor, have been, and will be, valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less aristocratie mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction from birth, from station, or from accidents of brilliant notoriety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to-be-respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon.

She is always ready for Jacobinical scoffs at a man for being a lord, if he happens to fail; she is always ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. Ah, dear sycophantic old lady! I kiss your sycophantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke for your sake!

It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to confound real merit and its accidents of position is at all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr Sacheverell, by embarking his small capital of talent on the spring-tide of a furious political collision between the Whigs and Tories, brought back an ampler return for his little investment than ever did Wickliffe or Luther. Such was his popularity, in the heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal progresses through England, had he not been canonised by the Tories. He was a dead man, if he had not been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither is the case peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the ci-devant Romish priest (whose name pronounce as you would the English word wrong, supposing that it had for a second syllable the final a of "sopha"-i. e., Wronguh), has been found a wrongheaded man by all parties—and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid man; but he moves * about with more eclat by far than the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the man that burned down a miracle of beauty-viz., the Temple of Ephesus-protesting, with tears in his eyes, that he had no other way of getting himself a name, has got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride down through all history, whether you and I like it or not. Every pocket-dictionary knows that Erostratus was that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or par

*Not at all. He did move when this was written; but that was in 1847. He is now as sedentary, or as stationary, as a milestone.

roasted, York Minster some twenty years back; that fellow will float down to posterity with the annals of the glorious cathedral: he will

"Pursue the triumph and partake the gale;”

whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are practically forgotten.

These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as Ephesus or York; but not one of us can tell, without humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the timehonoured Minster. Equally in literature; not the weight of service done, or the power exerted, is sometimes considered chiefly -either of these must be very conspicuous before it will be considered at all-but the splendour, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or even the scandalousness, of the circumstances surrounding the author.

Schlosser must have benefited in some such adventitious way before he ever could have risen to his German celebrity. What was it that raised him to his momentary distinction? Was it something very wicked that he did, or something too clever that he said? I should rather conjecture that it must have been something inconceivably absurd which he suggested. Any one of the three achievements stands good in Germany for a reputation. But, however it were that Mr Schlosser first gained his reputation, mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivocal reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London.

* Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the commoner. There is, you see, a blind sort of compensation.

There he thrives, not by any approving experience or knowledge of his works, but through blind faith in his original German public. And back he flies afterwards to Germany, as if carrying with him new and independent testimonies to his merit, and from two nations that are directly concerned in his violent judgments; whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a careless reverberation of his first German character, from those who have far too much to read for declining aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare that effort to themselves. Schlosser has simply had his old passport vise'd up and down Europe; fresh passports he has none to show. Thus it is that German critics become audacious and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, Dr Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, by means of introductory letters floating them into circles far above any they had seen in homely Germany, are qualified by our own negligence and indulgence for mounting a European tribunal, from which they pronounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels presented arms to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he rode in a carriage of Queen Adelaide's; and Von Raumer immediately conceived himself the Chancellor of all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to universal Europe, upon all questions of art, manners, politics, or any conceivable intellectual relations of England. Schlosser meditates the same career.

But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words from an English translation? I do so only because this happens to be at hand, and the German not. German books are still rare in this country, though more numerous (by one thousand to one) than they were thirty years ago. But I have a special right to rely on the English of Mr Davison. "I hold in my hand," as gentlemen so often say at

public meetings, "a certificate from Herr Schiosser, that to quote Mr Davison is to quote him." The English translation is one which Mr Schlosser "durchgelesen hat, und für deren genauigkeit und richtigkeit er bürgt” [has read through, and for the accuracy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. Mr Schlosser was so anxious for the spiritual welfare of us poor islanders, that he not only read it through, but he has even aufmerksam durchgelesen it [read it through wide awake], und geprüft [and carefully examined it]; nay, he has done all this in company with the translator. "Oh, ye Athenians! how hard do I labour to earn your applause!" And, as the result of such Herculean labours, a second time he makes himself surety for its precision; "er bürgt also dafür wie für seine eigne arbeit" [he guarantees it accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were it not for this unlimited guarantee, I should have sent for the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait; and all complaints on this score I defy, above all from Herr Schlosser.*

* Mr Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who ought to have a keen eye for the English version of his own book, after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr Davison with general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the original: they tell their own story. And one of these I here notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter-not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. ii., in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his attempt to introduce the notion of negave greatness into philosophy. Negative greatness! What strange bird ay that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr Schlosser was t wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon e advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of negave quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden truth. ere it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting