crimes of a great man are at bottom virtuous acts, for they are inspired by a moral instinct taking as it were a strange original form. But I fancy human nature is wider than this theory. Wickedness, I fear, is not always weakness. There really is a human type, in which vast intelligence is found dissociated from virtue. Nay, what is stranger still, this kind of hero, whose very existence seems to Mr. Carlyle inconceivable, may exert an irresistible attraction upon his fellow-men, may be served with passionate loyalty, and may arouse in others noble sentiments of which he is incapable himself. In the career of Bonaparte, in his ideal schemes, and in the idolatry which has been paid to him, we seem to get a glimpse of this type of man. To do good was not his object. And here I am compelled to leave the subject. That I have treated it so very imperfectly does not cause me much regret, because I never expected to do otherwise. I shall consider myself to have succeeded in some degree if I have conveyed to any of you a clear notion of the way in which I think great historical phenomena should be treated, that is by shaking off the trammels of narrative, proposing definite problems and considering them deliberately; I shall have succeeded still better if I have shown you how the historian should regard himself as a man of science, not a man of literature; how he must have not only a rigid method in research but a precise political philosophy with principles fixed and terms defined much more carefully than historians have generally thought necessary; but I shall only have succeeded altogether to my wish if I have also impressed upon some of you the immense importance of these great topics of recent history, the urgent necessity, if we would handle properly the political problems of our own time, of raising the study of recent history out of the unaccountable neglect in which it lies, and if I have raised in the minds of those of you who are conscious of any vocation to research and discovery the question whether this task, the task, that is, of welding together into an inseparable union history and politics, so that for the future all history shall end in politics and all politics shall begin in history, be not the best and worthiest task to which they can devote their lives.-Macmillan's Magazine. THE FIRST ENGLISH POET. BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. DWELT a certain poor man in his day, Streaneshalch in Anglo-Saxon speech, Cadmon was he call'd; he came and went, Modest, meek, unmemorable man, Moving slowly into middle age, Toiling on-twelve hundred years ago. Still and silent, Cadmon sometimes sat With the serfs at lower end of hall; Till his heart-strings trembled. Other while, Handing round the harp to each in turn, Sad and silent would he creep away, Who made all things. As the Book declared In the beginning He made Heaven and Earth." Thus lived Cadmon, quiet year by year; Listen'd, learn'd a little, as he could; Worked, and mused, and prayed, and held his peace. Toward the end of harvest time, the hinds Cadmon, sing to me!" "I cannot sing. Wherefore-wo is me !-I left the house. "Sing, I bid thee !" "What then shall I sing?" Sing the Making of the World. Whereon Cædmon sung: and when he woke from sleep Still the verses stay'd with him, and more Sprang like fountain-water from a rock. Fed from never-failing secret springs. Praising Heaven most high, but nothing proud, Pious Princess Hilda, pure of heart, Thenceforth Holy Hilda greeted him He grew Famedest monk of all the monastery; Singing many high and holy songs. Folk were fain to hear, and loved him for : NOTE. This alliterative metre is not at all an imitation, but in some degree a reminiscence of the old English poetry. ON THE BUYING OF BOOKS. BY A BOOKWORM. THE lover of books may be distinguished by one trick he has which betrayeth him. If he is in a strange house he makes straight for the shelves; before anything else he hastens to take stock of the library; blue china cannot turn him aside, nor pictures detain him. There are other peculiarities by which he may be known. If he passes a bookseller's shop he may not choose but stop; if it is a second-hand shop, which is at all times more interesting than a shop of new books, his feet without any volition on his part and of their own accord draw him within it. However poor he is, his shelves grow continually larger and groan more deeply with new additions. However large his own library may be, every other man's library is an object of curiosity to him for the strange and unknown wonders it may possess. I, who write this paper, am one of these lovers of books. I love them beyond all other earthly things. I love them because they are books, good and bad alike. To me they are as living things, and possess a soul. It gives me a glow of pleasure, even after many years of experience, to buy a new book. To carry it home, cut the leaves, turn over the pages and look in it here and there is joy enough to last the whole evening. At such a time one does not curiously criticise the contents; one enjoys the fresh aroma of new print--I believe it is caused by the use of turps ;" one is grateful to the author and the publisher; there is a charm about the binding; the very type has a beauty of its own. In the morning when the daily paper comes I pass over the foolish politics, the speeches, the enthusiasm of the idiotic multitude who expects any good thing, any improvement for themselves, from the "Mouthy One," the "Bletherer," the Snarler, or the "Bawler, the "Brawler," the "Down-crier," the "Common Liar," or the "Promiscuous Promiser"-I believe politicians may nearly all be divided into these classesand I turn straight to the advertisements of new books and the reviews. As for the former, they are copious enough to inflame the least ardent imagination ; and as for the latter, they are meagre enough to infuriate the most patient of publishers. Every wretched little farce stolen from the French and put upon the boards is counted worthy of serious dis cussion in a half-column all to itself, miliates one to state it baldly and openeven when the House is quarrelling the ly, and though it makes one tremble at whole night long; yet, for books, we thinking of the monotony of human namust fain put up with "Current Litera- ture and the dreadful sameness of men's ture" ladled out as if it was so much minds, there are to be found among the padding, put in when there was nothing "better sort"'—a phrase I love because of real interest or importance. Why it beautifully connects virtue with wealth cannot one paper at least have the cour--but two or three classes or descripage to say, Messieurs les Abonnes, we tions of library: have too long neglected the interests of literature; henceforth there shall be for every day in the year a whole column specially devoted to the publishers; and the contents of that column shall be provided for you by just, honest, and Godfearing men, if any such yet remain. Would it pay that paper to do this great and beneficent thing for literature? I venture to think it would. People would begin to look for it day after day; curiosity would be awakened; the literary taste of the public would be cultivated. As for myself, I should certainly take that paper, and so would all those who are like minded with me. But as no daily paper exists which cares for literature, my favorite reading is the Athenæum, and next to that, I prefer the latter half of the Saturday. For good instructive reading give me, in addition to these comparatively incomplete organs, one of which admits science, and the other politics, the Publishers' Circular. My wanderings among other people's libraries have led me to make a few discoveries which may or may not be original. Thus, I have laid down the general maxim that, as is the average man, so is the average library. I look not, therefore, for aught beyond the commonplace. Bookshelves are made to match their owner; the books upon them are a counterpart of the man who possesses them. Thus a beautiful harmony reigns in this as well as in other departments of nature. I am tempted to believe that after learning the profession of a man, studying his face, dress, and bearing, and hearing him talk for a single quarter of an hour, I should be able to tell, within a dozen books or so, all that he has ever bought. The converse of this proposition is certainly true, namely, that a very short examination of a library is sufficient to enable one to describe the in general and unmistakable For the fact is, although it hu owner terms. Every one, for instance, knows the great, solid mahogany bookcase-perhaps two or three such cases-filled from top to bottom with inherited books which once belonged to a scholar of the family long deceased. Among these are old college prizes bound in Russia, stamped with college arms. There are editions of the classics; there are the standard" works of Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, Alison, Paley, Young, Hervey (his Meditations"), Johnson, and perhaps those sound and judicious divines, Andrews, Hooker, Bull, and Jeremy Taylor. All those books of the original collection which were not handsomely bound have long since been sent away and sold at a shilling the volume, sorted out. Those with leather backs were retained to stand in rows, and act as furniture; they are but the dry bones, the skeleton of the old library; for they were formerly the books of reference, the necessaries of the life and the daily work of the defunct scholar, who lived in his library. But the soul of his collection is gone; the duodecimoes which he read in daily, the tattered old volumes which helped his research and stimulated his thought, the actual food of his brainthese have vanished; what is left is a mere shell. This is the Furniture Library. None of these books are ever taken down; none are opened or read; the library is like a marble statue which lacks the breath of life, or a sealed fountain whose waters are drunk by neither man nor beast. A pretty allegory might be made showing how a certain Pygmalion collected together a divine library, so beautiful, so perfect, so harmonious in all its parts, that he who made it and gazed upon it was straightway smitten with a passion which made his heart to beat and his. cheeks to glow; and how presently the library became alive to him, a beneficent being, full of love and tender thought, as good as she was beautiful, a friend who never failed him; and how they were united in holy wedlock and lived together, and never tired of each other until he died, when the life went also out of the library, his wife, and she fell all to separate pieces, every piece a precious seedling of future life should it be planted in the right place. Is there not. here the material for an allegory? A library, you will perceive, is essentially feminine; it is receptive; it is responsive; it is productive. You may lavish upon it—say, upon her as much love as you have in your nature, and she will reward you with fair offspring, sweet and tender babes-ideas, thoughts, memories, and hopes. Who would not love the mother of such children? Who would not be their father? The Furniture library never gets a new book added to it at all. But even this poor dead and dispirited thing is better than the Flimsy Library, common among persons who have had no scholar in their family, or else no family among their scholars. The volumes of the Flimsy Library consist almost wholly of the books collected during youthful and prænuptial days. They are beautifully bound in crimson cloth and gold, with a leaning toward too much ornament. They are the books which used to be presented to young ladies-ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, according to the age of the house. The titles vary, but the taste remains much the same; they are books on the domestic affections, the immortal works of Mesdames Ellis, Hemans, Sigourney, Sewell, and Yonge; Keble in many bindings; the "Gentle Gentle Life ;" Longfellow, Scott, Tupper, Wordsworth, and so forth. Perhaps there is a row of the Waverley Novels," and there are one or two Handbooks. The Flimsy Library can go no farther. A third class of library, and a very common one, may be called the Railway Library. It consists of two-shilling novels-nothing else and each one represents a railway journey. They stand in rows with their paper bindings in red, black, and yellow; they are treasured by their owners as if they were Elzevirs at the least; there may be also among them, perhaps, a Bret Harte or a Mark Twain-humorists who have caught the popular taste. Burnand, Lowell, Le land, Gilbert, who somehow seem to have missed the uncritical ear, will not generally be seen on the shelves of the Railway Library. These three classes of library represent the broad divisions. There are, however, others-subdivisions-which should not be forgotten. Thus, there is the Fashionable Library, in which every volume marks a passing phase of literary fashion, in genre, printing, or binding, from the Minerva school down to a Ballade or a Villanelle; there is the Casual Library, in which the books seem to have been bought by the yard just to fill up the shelves; the Technical Library, in which the seeker after literature finds the Dead Sea apples of scientific and professional works-fancy Charles Lamb shut up for an afternoon with a mathematical library! the GoodyGoody Library, where the works are certainly intended to disgust the young with virtue and religion; the Milk-andWater Library, most of the books in which are at least thirty years of age, and were written by ladies who wore a velvet band about their brows, were great on morals, and knew how to value their Christian privileges; the Baby Library, consisting of new books quite recently written and illustrated by wicked people with the object of making sweet little children self-conscious, morbid, and conceited; the Theological Library, devoted entirely to controversial works now happily forgotten; the Fast Library, in which the works of "Ouida" are found complete, and a great many French novels in yellow present the appearance of having been welcomed more affectionately than tenderly; and, finally, the Good Library, in which one may sit among the best, the wisest, the most delightful, the wittiest, the tenderest men who have lived and written for our solace and instruction-happy heaven be their lot! And oh, dear me! how rare it is to find such a library! The most remarkable feature of all these collections, except the last, is that you never find among them any new books at all except a few two-shilling novels. Yet, if you talk with the people who own them, you find that, thanks to a circulating library, they have some kind of acquaintance, greater or less, with current literature. They are not |