to select names from such a crowd of distinguished litterateurs. But also, as we have already suggested, it may be seriously questioned whether we can boast of any writer of consummate genius: whether amongst our poets we can point to anyone who is for us, in any comparable degree, what Tennyson and Browning were for the last generation -anyone of at all equal originality and power; and in imaginative prose, whether we have any novelist of the highest creative faculty, or of the finest penetration and insight-anyone whose survey of our time is both broad and deep. And this absence of superior genius in the region of literary art is probably due to the character of our age. While there is much to encourage and to cheer us when we look around, there is undoubtedly much to perturb and to scare. If the sun shines on us, there are frowning clouds also clouds black and threatening. Institutions that we have regarded as firm and fast for ever are trembling to their base. There is a sense of uncertainty and of revolution. Some ears already catch the roar of Niagara, as they think, and are persuaded we are rapidly drifting towards the fatal precipice; and others, that are less timorous and hysterical, yet warn us of breakers ahead. And, indeed, even the lightest-hearted are conscious of strange disquiets and disturbances in the encircling atmosphere. It is a time of profound agitations and commotions, of spiritual and moral mutinies and rebellions which may at any time translate themselves into action-a weary and heavy-laden time.

In the midst of such rumblings and uproars, no wonder if men fancy themselves on the verge of some portentous earthquake, and their hearts fail them for fear. No wonder if they forget how great are the restorative forces of nature, or how merciful and moderated her processes may be. The storm breaks and the labours of men and oxen lie in rack

and ruin; but the landscape is soon recruited and revived. The changes from summer to winter and to summer again are immense, but are not abrupt. Still, no wonder if our age is perplexed and distressed when its best statesmanship seems baffled by the problems that beset it, and, at so many points, inscrutable difficulties face and obstruct us. Hence the pessimism of our time, which presents in this respect a curious contrast to the buoyancy and sanguineness of the century in some of its earlier years. 'It is very wonderful to me now,' says Mr Ruskin in a note to his Frondes Agrestes a series of selections from his Modern Painters'to see what hopes I had once; but Turner was alive then ; and the sun used to shine and rivers to sparkle.' He, too, had some joy in his time, and some hope of it in his old days. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected with the benevolence and liberty of the age. So he writes in the passage in a note to which appear the first quoted words. But he cannot sufficiently abuse the present age. Neither Carlyle nor he could or can find vials large enough to contain all their disgust and wrath. They exhaust all the resources of objurgation and anathema. And lesser men feel, or assume, a like horror and desperation. A poet is the mouthpiece of his time; and how can sweet or harmonised sounds issue from him when the time is out of temper or out of heart?

1

But the republic is not to be despaired of. It has passed through dark days before, days not less dark than are ours ; it has weathered storms not less malignant and dire. The flood may rise yet higher, but the ark shall go over the face of the waters—that is, if we keep it taut and trim, and steer 1 Mr Ruskin says he forgets what he meant by 'liberty' here; did he mean liberty-loving spirit?

warily and wisely, if the English breed is not degenerate; and why should we suspect so terrible a decay? And when the present tyranny is overpast, it shall set forth on a fresh career of enterprise and success and honour. In other words, when the evolution, whose throes we are now suffering, is complete, and society is once more satisfactorily adjusted and settled, we may trust that the spirit of depression that now invades and usurps us will be exorcised, and poetry will recover its heart and its mind and its voice.

So Milton, amidst the confusion and antagonisms of his middle life, was unable to sing. He could only dream of a day when he should be free to give poetic expression to the thoughts that arose in him. To a noble recital of some of these thoughts he adds these concluding words: 'With such abstracted sublimities as these it might be worth your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding, not in these noises.'

INDEX