impassive face, which at your greeting expands into a pleased smile; to drive away along the old road, recognising cottages and trees; to come in sight of the house again, your friend's conversation and the entire aspect of things bringing up many little remembrances of the past; to look out of your chamber window before dinner and to recognise a large beech or oak which you had often remembered when you were far away, and the field beyond, and the hills in the distance, and to know again even the pattern of the carpet and the bed curtains; to go down to dinner, and meet the old greeting; to recognise the taste of the claret; to find the children a little bigger, a little shy at first, but gradually acknowledging an old acquaintance; and then, when your friend and you are left by yourselves, to draw round the fire (such visits are generally in September), and enjoy the warm, hearty look of the crimson curtains hanging in the selfsame folds as twenty-four months since, and talk over many old things.

We feel, in opening the new volumes of Friends in Council, as we should in going to pay a visit to an old friend living in the same pleasant home, and at the same pleasant autumnal season in which we visited him before. We know what to expect. We know that there may be little variations from what we have already found, little changes wrought by time; but, barring great accident or disappointment, we know what kind of thing the visit will be. And we believe that to many who have read with delight the previous volumes of this work there can hardly be any pleasanter

anticipation than that of more of the same wise, kindly, interesting material, which they remember. A good many years have passed since the first volume of Friends in Council was published; a good many years even since the second: for, besides various conversations which are not included in the present series, the essays and discourses now given to the public form the third published portion of the work. Continuations of successful works have proverbially proved failures; the author was his own too successful rival; and intelligent readers, trained to expect much, have generally declared that the new production was, if not inferior to its predecessor, at all events inferior to what its predecessor had taught them to look for. But there is no falling off here. The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival. No one in modern days can discuss a grave subject in a style so attractive; no one can convey so much wisdom with so much playfulness and kindliness; no one can evince so much earnestness unalloyed by the least tinge of exaggeration. The order of thought which is contained in Friends in Council is quarried from its author's best vein. Here he has come upon what gold-diggers call a pocket: and he appears to work it with little effort. However difficult it might be for others to write an essay and discourse on it in the fashion of this book, we should judge that its author does so quite easily. It is no task for suns to shine. And it will bring back many plea

sant remembrances to the minds of many readers to open these new volumes, and find themselves at once in the same kindly atmosphere as ever; to find that the old spring is flowing yet. The new series of Friends in Council is precisely what the intelligent reader must have expected. A thoroughly good writer can never surprise us. A writer whom we have studied, mused over, sympathised with, can surprise us only by doing something eccentric, affected, unworthy of himself. The more thoroughly we have sympathised with him; the more closely we have marked not only the strong characteristics which are already present in what he writes, but those little matters which may be the germs of possible new characteristics; the less likely is it that we shall be surprised by anything he does or says. It is so with the author of Friends in Council. We know precisely what to expect from him. We should feel aggrieved if he gave us anything else. course there will be much wisdom and depth of insight; much strong practical sense: there will be playfulness, pensiveness, pathos; great fairness and justice; much kindness of heart; something of the romantic element; and as for style, there will be language always free from the least trace of affectation; always clear and comprehensible; never slovenly; sometimes remarkable for a certain simple felicity; sometimes rising into force and eloquence of a very high order: a style, in short, not to be parodied, not to be caricatured, not to be imitated except by writing as well. The author cannot sink below our expectations; cannot rise above them. He has already written so much, and so many

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thoughtful readers have so carefully studied what he has written, that we know the exact length of his tether, and he can say nothing for which we are not prepared. You know exactly what to expect in this new work. You could not, indeed, produce it; you could not describe it, you could not say beforehand what it will be; but when you come upon it, you will feel that it is just what you were sure it would be. You were sure, as you are sure what will be the flavour of the fruit on your pet apple-tree, which you have tasted a hundred times. The tree is quite certain to produce that fruit which you remember and like so well; it is its nature to do so. And the analogy holds further. For, as little variations in weather or in the treatment of the tree-a dry season, or some special application to the roots-may somewhat alter the fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circumstances a little affect an author's writings, but only within a certain range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never produce an orange, neither will it yield a crab.

When we have sufficiently enjoyed the external and material characteristics of the volumes, we shall find ourselves among our old friends. We should have good reason to complain had Dunsford, Ellesmere, or Milverton been absent; and here they are again just as before. Possibly they are even less changed than they should have been after thirteen or fourteen years, considering what their age was at our first introduction to them. Dunsford, the elderly country parson, once fellow and tutor of his college, still reports the conver

sations of the friends; Milverton and Ellesmere are, in their own way, as fond of one another as ever; Dunsford is still judicious, kind, good, somewhat slow, as country parsons not unnaturally become; Ellesmere is still sarcastic, keen, clever, with much real worldly wisdom and much affected cynicism overlying a kind and honest heart. As for Milverton, we should judge that in him the author of the work has unconsciously shown us himself; for assuredly the great characteristics of the author of Friends in Council must be that he is laborious, thoughtful, generous, well-read, much in earnest, eager for the welfare of his fellow-men, deeply interested in politics and in history, impatient of puritanical restraints, convinced of the substantial importance of amusement. Milverton, we gather, still lives at his country seat in Hampshire, and takes some interest in rustic concerns. Ellesmere continues to rise at the bar; since we last met him has been Solicitor-General, and is now Sir John, a Member of the House of Commons, and in the fair way to a Chief Justiceship. The clergyman's quiet life is going on as before. But in addition to our three old friends we find an elderly man, one Mr. Midhurst, whose days have been spent in diplomacy, who is of a melancholy disposition, and takes gloomy views of life, but who is much skilled in cookery, very fat, and very fond of a good dinner. Also Mildred and Blanche, Milverton's cousins, two sisters, have grown up into young women of very different character: and they take some share in the conversations, and, as we shall hereafter see, a still more important part in the action of the story. We feel that we are in the midst