handmaidens wash the linen on t Lavengro's philology is an essenti acter. For scientific philology he if a word attracts his attention, thinks over it until he discovers, o covered, whence it came. He loo things with a real interest, which does not possess. He is the very "swell" of these days, admirably ca blasé boyish hero, who exclaims :good; I should be quite content me harm." Everything does La thoroughly happy when comforting ale, or teaching Isopel Berners A horse Mr. Petulengro advised him Fair. And in Wild Wales, Mr. Bor is the same fine out-of-door advent remarkable realising power. I do to walk quite so far as he used, glibly; but he has not lost the

VOL. II.

powers, the power of seeing clearly, and of telling clearly what he sees. If you want a humorous companion in travel, go to the Levant with Mr. Curzon; if you want a clever comrade, who knows he is clever, and takes care to make it known, you will find him in Eōthen; if a lightflavoured cynicism suit your palate, Mr. Thackeray will give it you all the way from Cornhill to Cairo; while, if you like a poetic fellow-traveller, such as Goethe may have been in his youth, go to Corsica with Gregorovius. But if you would see a country as Homer might have seen it in the days before he rhapsodised and became blind with excess of light, let Lavengro lead you along the highways of England and over the mountains of Wales.

Imagine this Bohemian in London for the first time, with little money and a trunk full of poetry. Weary with wandering through the streets, he entered the coffee-room of an hotel, and called for claret. His reflections over his wine are suggestive. "Here I was now with my claret before me, perusing perhaps the best of all the London journals-it was not The Times-and I was astonished : an entirely new field of literature appeared to be opened to my view; it was a discovery, but, I confess, rather an unpleasant one; for I said to myself, 'If literary talent is so common in London that the journals-things which, as their very name denotes, are ephemeral-are written in a style like the article I have been perusing, how can I hope to distinguish myself in this big town, when, for the life of me, I don't think I could write anything half so clever as what I have been reading?' Whereupon (viz., upon a glass of claret) I resumed the newspaper; and as I

an article in The Times to-mo: are a few hundred men who beforehand almost verbatim. G day Review is to contain an essay or on "Spurgeon's Last Sensat couple of dozen gentlemen (and 1 would previously produce the accuracy. It is almost a matter day a certain number of ideas f atmosphere of London, much as tl in its physical atmosphere; and it in any set or clique without be those ideas. A man must be ve the influences of a mighty metro changeful, brilliant, mental tournan of brain. These marvellously clev to the men who write them; the whole City. The journalist is s than the which he uses; he ca

pen

hour, and sets it down in the stereotyped style of the leading papers. Well thought Lavengro that to have translated Welsh ballads and cronied with Romany Chals was no preparation for work like this. But will it not enable a man to do better work? The motto of London literary life might well be Burke's famous ejaculation, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue !"

Almost a century ago there was born a man who, with scarce any means of support, resolved that his whole life should be given to writing poetry. He had not the art of writing popular verse. He utterly despised the fashionable style of the day. He avoided cities, and passed his years by the shores of the northern lakes which he loved. He was neither brilliant, nor humorous, His manners were rough and reserved; he cared for the society of none but friends. In his long and tranquil life he revolutionised the poetry of England. Although he possessed no special subtleties of music or felicities of style, he threw over all that he touched

nor satirical.

"The light that never was on sea or land."

Had William Wordsworth written nothing but the simple ballad entitled The Two April Mornings, his name would have endured as long as our language. He tells how old Matthew, the village schoolmaster, met by the grave of his little daughter a girl as young and beautiful as her whom he had lost :

His daily teachers had bee The silence that is in the sta The sleep that is among th

The false, factitious life of cities v powerless. Matthew Arnold, wr who was more completely Wor almost any man of his day, obse nalia of ignoble personal passion for literary success, in old and offers so sad a spectacle, he neve yet traduced his friends, nor fla disparaged what he admired, nor I Those who knew him well had t with time, these literary arts woul

These literary arts! These ar we not call them untrue. Too of literary. Too much is there of e those who are called "literary me for its own sake is a rare achieve stately verse of

"That last infirmity of