raising the calibre of the national mind, | immortality we are told he never wavered. conscience, and taste." All this of course While approving the doctrine of evolution is simply so much treason to the immova- by natural selection as giving a higher conble Conservative, and the vaunter of the ception of the Creator than the old docvirtues and courage of the British Lion. trine of mechanical design, he rejected the But some of Bagehot's political principles, materialistic view of the new doctrine. if carried out in their entirety, would tend Doubtful as to the value of the historic to arrest national progress rather than to evidence of Christianity, sceptical as to the accelerate it; and here comes in again the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel, and peculiar constitution of his mind. One in suspense upon the question of miracles, half of it seems as broad and liberal in its he yet believed in an all-wise creator and ideas as the most advanced thinker could governor of the universe. This is demonwish it to be, while the other seems to hold strated by his essay on Bishop Butler. its fellow in check, and to cause it to fall back for support upon the old order of things. Neither to Liberal nor Conservative could Bagehot have been altogether satisfactory. Though averse to spending recklessly himself, he was rather in favor of efficiency than the mere reduction of expenditure for the sake of saving. He failed in his efforts to get into Parliament, though in 1866 he was nearly being returned for Bridgewater. A futile attempt was afterwards made to connect him with the bribery which prevailed in his borough. Mr. Hutton quotes somes of his answers to the commissioners, which are most shrewd and terse. He had also a fund of original humor. On one occasion he wrote to a friend, "Tell that his policies went down in the Colombo,' but were fished up again. They are dirty, but valid." Mr. Hutton once asked him whether he had enjoyed a particular dinner, to which he responded, "No, the sherry was bad; tasted as if L- had dropped his h's into it." To a friend who had a church Through the whole of the essay whence in the grounds near his house, Bagehot this extract is taken there runs what we remarked, "Ah, you've got the church in we may call a believing tone; and in one the grounds. I like that. It's well the place, after enlarging upon the limited tenants should be quite sure that the land-range of human vision and capacity, the lord's power stops with this world." When pressed by his mother to marry, he replied laughingly, "A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault."

With regard to religious questions there is some difficulty in arriving at the exact position assumed by Bagehot. Mr. Hutton states that early in life he was "orthodox," and that though he afterwards receded greatly from this, he never at any time, "however doubtful he may have become on some of the cardinal issues of historical Christianity, accepted the Unitarian position." Late in life he once referred to the Trinitarian doctrine "as probably the best account which human reason could render of the mystery of the self-existent mind." Though a great reader of Darwin, he had ideas other than Darwinian, and on the subject of personal

In every step of religious argument we require the assumption, the belief, the faith, if the word is better, in an absolutely perfect Being; in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent as well as most holy; who moves on the face of the whole world, and ruleth all things by the word of his power. If we grant this, the difficulty of the opposition between what is here called the natural and the supernatural religion is removed; and without granting it, that difficulty is perhaps insuperable. It follows from the very idea and definition of an well as without us; ruling the clouds of the infinitely perfect Being, that he is within us as air and the fishes of the sea, as well as the fears and thoughts of men; smiling through the smile of nature, as well as warning with the pain of conscience- "sine qualitate, bonum; sine quantitate, magnum; sine indigentiâ, creatorem; sine situ, præsidentem; sine habitu, omnia continentem; sine loco, ubique totum; sine tempore, sempiternum; sine ullâ sui mutatione, mutabilia facientem, nihilque without this, all is dark. If we assume this, life is simple; patientem."

writer observes: "When our knowledge increases — when, by a revelation, that plan (of the universe) is unfolded to us when God vouchsafes to communicate to us the system on which he acts, then it is rational to expect our difficulties would diminish would gradually disappear as the light dawned upon us would vanish finally when the dayspring arose upon our hearts." The author evidently believed in a deity, not as a blind force, but as a moulding and permeating power- a power never sleepless, but ever actively engaged in controlling and directing the universe he has made.

Mr. Bagehot died at the comparatively early age of fifty-one. He expired, apparently without suffering, on March 24, 1877, at Herd's Hill, near Langport, a family residence built by his grandfather. What

friendships he contracted appear to have | by most persons. On the contrary, he been deep and lasting ones, not made to knew no fear, his vision was too keen and be put on readily and cast off like old gar-searching to permit of that; but in matments. Mr. Hutton says he was inti- ters political and religious he was the very mately known only to the few, but these must have a keen and poignant sense of their loss. They "will hardly find again in this world a store of intellectual sympathy of so high a stamp, so wide in its range and so full of original and fresh suggestion, a judgment to lean on so real and so sincere, or a friend so frank and constant, with so vivid and tenacious a memory for the happy associations of a common past, and so generous in recognizing the independent value of divergent convictions in the less pliant present."

a

essence of bigotry. Mr. Bagehot pays a well-deserved tribute to the founders of the Edinburgh Review, who fearlessly attacked the abuses of the time, and in one well-chosen sentence he thus hits off the character of the Whigs: "The Whigs are constitutional by instinct, as the Cavaliers were monarchical by devotion." Their political creed was the improvement of the Constitution, not its maintenance upon the old effete lines, nor yet its abolition. Describing Francis Horner, who was a "striking example of the advantage of keeping an atmosphere," who excited universal respect without any one's precisely knowing why, Bagehot says it is no explanation of the widely-felt regret at his premature death, that he was a considerable political economist.

soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political No real English gentleman, in his secret economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life. There is an idea that he has something to do with statistics; or, if that be exploded, that he is a person who writes upon "value;" says that rent is - you cannot very well make out what; talks excruciating currency; he may be useful, as drying-machines are useful; but the notion of crying about him great, but it will not explain the mourning for is absurd. The economical loss might be

Francis Horner.

One great charm of Mr. Bagehot's literary studies is that they are not moulded upon the style of any other writer. What he gives us is his own, and we can always learn something from a man who is original, who throws a tone and color of his own into the questions which he handles. In almost all these essays are to be discovered some new ideas, and many forcible resettings of old ones. The characteristics of an author are seized upon almost as by intuition, and the reader rises from the perusal of each essay knowing far more upon the subject than he did before. Nor do the essays (except, perhaps, in the case of Shakespeare) take limited range, over which the writer exhausts himself. He not only brings out many excellent things from his treasury, This is a very happy definition of the but he has a great facility for suggesting popular view of a political economist. others one of the most invaluable quali- And Horner's life to some extent bore it ties in an author. The first of these out. When he was ill, he was advised to essays, on "The First Edinburgh Re- read amusing books; but the nearest apviewers," is probably one of the best. Mr. proach to a word of this character found Bagehot traces the origin of the new in his library was "The Indian Trader's order of periodical literature with great Complete Guide." Horner was mourned skill, and then gives us striking portraits because he was a specimen of that rare of the early reviewers, who "cultivated lit- individual, an eminently "safe man; he erature on a little oatmeal." We do not was also manly without boasting, and always agree with him in his estimates. agreeable without being fawning. He was A case in point arises in his view of the single-hearted, and, as Sydney Smith said, character of Lord Eldon. Speaking of "the Ten Commandments were written on the terror which the French Revolution his countenance." Upon his asseveration, exercised over the minds of conservative men would almost believe the impossible. Englishmen, and referring to the great Bagehot is admirable in defining the litchancellor in particular, he says: "It was erature hastily produced (and necessarily not any peculiar bigotry in Lord Eldon so) by Jeffrey and his coadjutors: "You that actuated him, or he would have been must not criticise papers like these, rappowerless; it was genuine, hearty, idly written in the hurry of life, as you craven fear; and he ruled naturally the would the painful words of an elaborate commonplace Englishman, because he sage, slowly and with anxious awfulness sympathized in his sentiments, and ex- instructing mankind. Some things, a few celled him in his powers." This is not things, are for eternity; some, and a good the character of Lord Eldon as accepted many, are for time. We do not expect

...

modate himself more to town manners and pursuits. Mr. Bagehot shows the fallacy of the comparison frequently made between Sydney Smith and Swift: "The whole genius of the two writers is emphatically opposed. Sydney Smith's is the idea of popular, riotous, buoyant fun; it cries and laughs with boisterous mirth; it rolls hither and thither like a mob, with elastic and commonplace joy. Swift was a detective in a dean's wig; he watched the mob; his whole wit is a kind of dexterous indication of popular frailties; he hated the crowd; he was a spy on beaming smiles, and a common informer against genial enjoyment. His whole essence was

the everlastingness of the pyramids from | ter with the great Whig writer and humorthe vibratory grandeur of a Tyburnian ist, in a worldly sense, if he had been able mansion." The character of Jeffrey is to trim or temporize a little, and to accomsummed up with great justness and penetration. The author's final conclusion is that he was neither a pathetic writer nor a profound writer; but he was a quickeyed, bustling, black haired, sagacious, agreeable man of the world. He had his day, and was entitled to his day; but a gentle oblivion must now cover his already subsiding reputation." He confidently declared that Wordsworth's poetry would never do; but it has done, and is now exercising a profound influence, while the writings of the clever attorney of the press are forgotten. Jeffrey was totally unable to appreciate the mystical, the religion of the imagination, and had scant sympathy for poets like Wordsworth, who endeav-a ored to penetrate to the heart of nature. In illustrating this point, we may quote from Mr. Bagehot the following passage, which is amongst the most flowing and eloquent to be found in these essays.

The beauty of the universe has a meaning, its grandeur a soul, its sublimity an expression. As we gaze on the faces of those whom we love; as we watch the light of life in the dawning of their eyes, and the play of their

features, and the wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments a varying sign; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the tone of a voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems to roam in the ear; as a trembling fancy hears words that are unspoken: so in nature the mystical sense finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves, and a meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in the blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light, an unbounded being in the vast void air,

and

Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars.

There is a philosophy in this which might be explained if explaining were to our purpose. It might be advanced that there are original sources of expression in the essential grandeur and sublimity of nature, of an analogous though fainter kind, to those familiar, inexplicable signs by which we trace in the very face and outward lineaments of man the existence and working of the mind within. But, be this as it may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth preached this kind of religion, and that Lord Jeffrey did not believe a word of it.

Sydney Smith, the third of the great trio of Edinburgh reviewers, Mr. Bagehot describes as Liberalism in life. There was no circumlocution about him, and he was just the man to puzzle a refined aristoLord Melbourne declined to make him a bishop, and it would have gone bet

crat.

soreness against mortality." Sydney Smith had some love for humanity, and never ceased to enjoy life, though he did not obtain preferment; Swift became sour and morose through disappointment; cursed the day upon which he was born, and when he sat down to write, dipped his pen in gall.

For

Mr. Hutton considers the essay on Hartley Coleridge" the most perfect in style of any of Mr. Bagehot's writings; but here I, for one, cannot agree with him. It is quite as suggestive and as deepsearching as any other, and furnishes us with an admirable portrait of a very remarkable man; but in point of literary style it is not carefully executed. example, here is a very singularly constructed sentence: "He soon, however, went down to the Lakes, and there he, with a single exception, lived and died." The italics are, of course, ours, but the phraseology should belong to no one. There are some errors of quotation in these essays which obviously do not belong to Mr. Bagehot, and which it would be well to have corrected in future editions. On page 56 we find two well-known lines misquoted as follows, with the sense, of course, destroyed

The native view of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

On page 99 a very fine image of Shelley's is thus quoted:

Life, like a doom of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until death tramples it to fragments.

This is nonsense as it stands, but with
"dome " in the place of "doom" anks as
a piece of high imaginative writing. There
is also an ungrammatical slip of the pen

There was a reserve of cold-blooded ferocity in St. Just that was wholly absent in Shelley. The chief article in the political creed of the latter was toleration of the widest and most universal character. The toleration in the creed of the leaders of the French Revolution extended only to those who took the same views as themselves. It is not possible to conceive of Shelley as a persecutor the whole tone and temper of the man forbid it.

on page 181 of the first volume (from | alien to an essential benevolence. "There which we have hitherto been quoting): is no difficulty," he remarks, "in imagin"It is from a tried and a varied and a ing Shelley cast by the accident of fortune troubled moral life that the deepest and into the Paris of the Revolution; hurried truest ideas of God arises." Again, on on by its ideas, undoubting in its hopes, page 203: "Hamlet or Lear are not to be wild with its excitement, going forth in the thought of except as complex characters." name of freedom conquering and to conThough the analysis of Hartley Cole- quer; and who can think that he would ridge is very fine, many will think that the have been scrupulous how he attained such author awards too high praise to one who an end? It was in him to have walked lacked the informing genius, the real fire, towards it over seas of blood. One could of his father. The younger Coleridge was almost identify him with St. Just, the 'fairto the elder but as "moonlight unto sun-haired republican.' I cannot think so. light, and as water unto wine." Nor had his unfortunate career everything to do with this. He was not so richly endowed by nature; and though all his poetry may be read with great pleasure, we miss in it that light which gleams across the page of "The Ancient Mariner," a light whose presence all can feel, but which is very difficult to define. Hartley Coleridge wanted something besides connectedness and steadiness of purpose to produce poetry which should seize hold of the heart of humanity. His father was what we may describe as a fragmentary man; but he possessed lofty genius. Hartley Coleridge, on the contrary, was also a fragmentary man, but his genius was of a much lower type. He lacked depth, body. Sensibility and fancy he possessed to a very considerable degree, but these alone are not sufficient to constitute a great poet. It is melancholy to reflect upon the career of Hartley Coleridge, and perhaps our best attitude towards him is one of pity, not unmingled with affection.

There is some exaggeration also in the statement that Shelley has delineated in his works no character except his own, or characters most strictly allied to his own. His mythological beings, it is true, have a good deal of his own personality in them, but Julian and Maddalo are distinct indi vidualities, and "The Cenci" shows that he could go out of himself. The personification of passions and impulses was a favorite mode of writing with Shelley, but it is a mistake to suppose that he was incapable of reproducing actual human character, or that he would not have done so had his life been extended. His nature was constantly in a state of effervescence anger at the presence and power of evil in the universe-and this threw him back upon sceptical opinions, which he only began to cast away before the stronger light of wisdom and experience. Not having many points of contact with ordinary humanity, he naturally turned within, and gave to his poetry in consequence an autobiographical character.

The essay upon Shelley is well worth reading, even after all that has recently been written upon this distinguished poet. Much of the criticism is profound; though Shelley is one of those poets who will never command such a unanimity of opinion as, for example, men like Byron. If his nature is simple, it is a simplicity not easily grasped and understood by men of the world. Judged by ordinary standards, indeed, much in Shelley's life and character must appear mere foolishness. It is very difficult to preserve in manhood the heart of a child; but Shelley did this, and in some quarters he has been little apprehended in consequence. The impul that of the man, but this is excellently siveness which clung to him through life is set forth. The writer shows that Shakeout of keeping with the cautious and speare was not only a poet in the sense of shall I say?- selfish instincts of manhood. observing the larger and general aspects It almost gives a touch of fanaticism to of nature, but that he studied man and his character. But Mr. Bagehot is surely surrounding objects minutely. Shakewrong in saying that under certain circum- speare was a man, too, who had a stake in stances this intense enthusiasm would the world; who held his own with others have carried Shelley into positions most in matters of business, while vastly supe

The essay on Shakespeare is worthy of all the praise Mr. Hutton gives it. It takes only one side of the great dramatist - who can be exhaustive on this subject?

rior to them in other respects. He could shall be · as well as it could be, or better take care of his earnings and invest them than otherwise!" Shakespeare's vocab. to the best advantage, even while dream-ulary shows that he knew every man's ing of "the cloud-capped towers and gor- language, and this is one reason why he is geous palaces." It is here that he is so every man's poet. He has the speech marvellous. He could be equally at home universal. So copious is his expression with the child, the huckster, the merchant, that he uses in his works no fewer than the choice spirits of the Mermaid, the play- fifteen thousand words, while the vocabuers, the courtiers, and the sovereign herself. lary of our second great poet Milton emThe great and the minute, the lofty and the braces only eight thousand words. But humble, were alike within his ken. He we must hurry from the subject with which surveyed the universe, and made it captive we are immediately concerned, lest it ento his imagination, and yet "if he walked gross us too deeply. Mr. Emerson has, down a street he knew what was in that perhaps, touched more comprehensively street." All these, and kindred points, the than any other writer, within a brief space, essayist enlarges upon. He proves that upon certain aspects of Shakespeare which Shakespeare had an enormous specific strike every reader, and which are collatacquaintance with the common people, and erally referred to by Mr. Bagehot. that this acquaintance can only be obtained by sympathy. This is our final glimpse of Shakespeare as he appears to the mind's eye of Mr. Bagehot: —

In the paper on Milton, while doing justice to the poet's great epic, Mr. Bagehot unshrinkingly points out its defects. He complains, for example, that by a curiously It pleased him to be respected by those fatal error Milton has selected for delineawhom he had respected with boyish reverence, tion exactly that part of the divine nature but who had rejected the imaginative manwhich is most beyond the reach of the on their own ground, and in their own sub-human faculties, and which is the least ject, by the only title which they would regard effective to our minds when we attempt to in a word, as a moneyed man. We seem describe it. He has made God argue, and to see him eyeing the burgesses with good- this led Pope to say that Providence, in humored fellowship and genial (though sup- the pages of Milton, "talks like a school pressed and half-unconscious) contempt, drawdivine." "And there is the still worse ing out their old stories, and acquiescing in their foolish notions, with everything in his error, that if you once attribute reasonhead, and easy sayings upon his tongue-a ing to him, subsequent logicians may disfull mind and a deep dark eye, that played cover that he does not reason very well." upon an easy scene now in fanciful solitude, Then, too, the number and insipidity of now in cheerful society; now occupied with the good angels in "Paradise Lost" set deep thoughts, now, and equally so, with Satan in a strongly interesting light. One trivial recreations, forgetting the dramatist in critic has recommended that, after a few the man of substance, and the poet in the alterations, Milton's masterpiece might happy companion; beloved and even respected, well be rechristened "Satan." The symwith a hope for every one, and a smile for all. pathy created with the fallen archangel is Our author does not write with the elo- great, and Mr. Bagehot remarks with requence of a De Quincey, neither can he gard to his grand aim, the conquest of vie with the deep and quaint suggestive- Adam and Eve, that we are at once struck ness of Emerson. He touches upon some with the enormous inequality of the conpoints which have been referred to by flict. "The idea in every reader's mind Carlyle - notably the comparison between is, and must be, not surprise that our first Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott-but parents should yield, but wonder that the larger questions associated with the Satan should not think it beneath him to poet and the dramatist he purposely does attack them. It is as if an army should not deal with. Those points which he invest cottage." Dr. Johnson said that handles, however, he elucidates and en-"Paradise Lost" was one of the books forces with power and insight. It has which no one wished longer; and Dryden been left to Mr. Carlyle to insist upon the observed that Milton became tedious when grand unconsciousness of Shakespeare, he entered upon "a tract of Scripture." and to indicate its lesson: "Beyond draw- Mr. Bagehot, following up this point, and ing audiences to the Globe Theatre, alluding to Milton's paraphrase of the Shakespeare contemplated no result in account of the creation in the Book of those plays of his. Yet they have had Genesis, describes this paraphrase as results! Utter with free heart what thy" alike copious and ineffective. The uniown dæmon gives thee: if fire from heaven, it shall be well; if resinous firework, it

verse is, in railway phrase, 'opened,' but not created; no green earth springs in a