literary ambition, while the decisions pronounced have primary reference to mechanism rather than to organism. When we are told that in Tennyson we have "every aspect of poetry as an art ;” that in Arnold we find “a passion of the intellect;" that in Swinburne we see the farthest extreme of rhythm and diction reached at this stage of metrical art," and that the study of Robert Browning "at once excites discussion as to the nature of poetic expression," it is evident at once that we are examining an order of literature in which the outer is made supreme over the inner, the how over the what. Mr. Gosse in his recent laudation of those seventeenth century authors whose writings are as spiritless as they are correct, but reveals the increasing hold which this merely artistic tendency is gaining over the minds of intelligent English critics. Here again, the hope of the era lies in the counter tendency already effectively expressing itself on behalf of a vital authorship, in which spirit shall control structure, and strong, sterling sense be ever held superior to mere propriety. Morris, Procter, Hood, Jean Ingelow, and, above all, Mrs. Browning, may be said to mark the rapid progress of this principle in verse, while it is especially in the sphere of prose expression-in fiction, history, biography and miscellany-that decided advance is now making in all that pertains to strength and spirit in letters. Dickens, Thackeray, Kingsley and others opened the way in this direction. Froude and Freeman, Greene and McCarthy have reversed Macaulay's method at this point, and substituted matter for mechanism in historical prose, while even in the broader field of English miscellanies there is a steady improvement in mental width and vigor. Though we are living in an era when mere pretence is a characteristic feature of all spheres of life, it is safe to say that such pretence as exhibited in literature has never met with stouter opposition from certain quarters. Literature is an organism-a body of vital processes and functions. Though as a species of human activity it involves in its very nature something of the ideal, its basis, after all, is in the real, and its final aim is to instruct and inspire. Most of the best writers of the present decade are seeking to present it on its philosophic side and to make it what it ought to be, a great national educator. Even in poetry and imaginative prose intelligent readers are demanding ideas rather than words, stimulus rather than structure, while in the higher realm of narrative and philosophic prose nothing will suffice save "that strong meat that belongeth unto them who are of full age." The fact that English prose is becoming the dominant literary form, and that in prose itself the substantial varieties are taking the place of the merely superficial, is quite sufficient evidence of the general drift toward what is better. To this most desirable result every English author and reader should direct his effort. Of mere literary technique, good in its place, but not the highest good, have we not had enough? Culture is one thing; genius is another and a better thing. Cousin is right when he tells us, "Form is not form only, it is the form of something." That something is the sense and spirit beneath it. We fully believe with Mr. Whipple in Literature and Life, that there is something better yet in store

for English letters than the resonant verse of Swinburne or the finished prose of Arnold.

3. Literature, we are told, is a subject distinctive in method, function and purpose. Ethics is another, while their relation to each other is simply that which subsists between any two independent systems of thought. The litterateur is bound, it is said, to keep within his own assigned domain as the moralist must abide in his. In fine, the art of letters is thus a purely secular one as to its basis, processes and ends, making no inquiries in the course of its development as to what is technically called the ethical. All forms of literary expression may thus take the name assigned by Mr. Gosse to one particular school of English verse, the "mundane order." Though there is, as Wordsworth teaches, such a power as "the vision and the faculty divine;" though Shakspere is right in speaking of the poet's eye as "glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and though Milton's solemn invocation of the aid of the spirit in his poetic work is acknowledged and justified, these, after all, are merely figurative phrases within the area of poetic license, and have nothing to do in determining the author's moral and spiritual attitude. In literature, as in philosophy, science, art, and common life, the decided drift is toward naturalism as a sufficient explanation of all worthy literary effort hitherto, and a sufficient source of stimulus to all future product in prose and verse. Hence it is that literary history is written by many as the history of civilization has been written by Mr. Buckle, with the ethical facts eliminated. Such poets as Massey and Swinburne have adopted this “mundane" theory of poetic art and have often overreached it, as have Whitman and Poe, of this country, in the direction of the sensuous and revolting. Mr. Stedman's trenchant criticism of the indifferent ethics of Browning and the "pagan fatalism of William Morris are but too well deserved, while the Laureate himself has never yet taken the ground of a pronounced and positive advocacy of the moral function of English letters. The leading name in modern English fiction still awaits a satisfactory defender against the charge of personal immorality, while the highest purpose of her literary work never rises to the level of the supernatural and spiritual. Lewes and Mill, Froude and Leckey as historians, have worked on the same earthly plane as interpreters of national life, while in the general department of English miscellany Arnold, Mallock and Stephens have wielded their pens on behalf of this divorce of literature and ethics.

Here as elsewhere, however, we note the action of a counter agency in the form of a decided moral purpose. Though from the days of Alfred such an agency has been at work in our national literature, there are signs at present of its increasing efficiency. No one has done worthier service in this direction than Henry Morley of London, a most suggestive contrast in this respect to the equally celebrated John Morley in his portraitures of Voltaire, Diderot and other Gallic authors. Mr. Selkirk in his Ethics and Esthetics of English Poetry has taken the highest ground in this important

topic. Stopford Brooke in his Theology of the English Poets has called attention to the verse of Pope and Cowper, Coleridge and Wordsworth as illustrative of this ethical feature. Principal Shairp in his Culture and Religion has clearly shown that neither Mr. Huxley's scientific theory of culture, nor Mr. Arnold's literary theory will answer, but that all true intellectual and æsthetic training finds its best support and expression in the sphere of the supernatural. Mr. Morison in his lately published treatise on The Great Poets as Religious Teachers explains in full the office of the imagination in religion, and illustrates the teaching by frequent reference to English letters. Pattison and Hutton, Church and Courthope and a host of others have been of late devoting all their energies to the right determination of the moral drift of our present authorship, and their efforts are not fruitless. Nor can it be forgotten that, toward this most desirable result, other English agencies than those that are purely literary must direct their individual endeavors. Modern English philosophy, as based on theism and evangelic teaching, must protest as never before against this materializing tendency in letters. Modern English institutions, educational and social, must, in so far as Christian, express with emphasis a similar protest, while the modern English religious press must do a work in this connection second to that of no other agency. In fine, Christian philosophy and Christian education, Christian journalism and the sentiment of the general Christian public must heartily coöperate with literature itself in lifting the standard of our vernacular letters to the highest ethical basis. Quantity must give place to quality, verbal structure to sense and spirit, and the merely natural in origin and end to the presence and supremacy of the spiritual element. There is a Providence in literature as well as in history. There are tendencies to evil and tendencies to good, and though the influence of such authors as Smollett and Byron, Hobbes and Gibbon, Moore and Shelley are still too potent among us and too often reproduced in modern verse and prose, the outlook is altogether hopeful and cheering. "My faith in the reality of progress," writes Mr. Stedman, "is broad enough to include the field of poetic art." It may safely be broad enough with each of us, we may add, to include the still wider field of general English letters.

IN Mr. Schuyler's American Diplomacy, we have a work by an American diplomat of great knowledge, experience, and capacity. He has gathered into a volume the lectures relating to American diplomacy, delivered by him in 1885 at the Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University. The first chapters of the book give an account of the foreign representation and business of this country. They are upon the State Department, the Consular System, and the Diplomatic Agents. The second part deals with the ser*American Diplomacy. By Eugene Schuyler. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1886.

vices which American diplomacy has rendered to trade and navigation. These essays are not free from those faults of style which pass current in the lecture room, and there are evidences of hasty proof-reading; but they are the production of a mind very full of the subjects they discuss. Perhaps no American diplomat has had so various an experience as Mr. Schuyler. He has been seventeen years in the service, and was minister to Greece, Rumania, and Serbia, when his salary was suddenly abolished by Congress. What would be thought of an individual who should act in such a manner toward a trusted agent? But the standard of public morals should be at least as high as that to which private individuals endeavor to conform. We do not doubt that the Government by such acts lowers itself, not only in the eyes of the world, but of its own citizens, and further (for the example of government in the midst of a vast community must be powerful) that its effect is to vulgarize the individual mind and to blunt the edge of private honor.

Mr. Schuyler's book is not fault-finding; indeed, his account of our foreign representation and the relation of the Government thereto is tolerant and moderate. But it is impossible to read any truthful statement on this subject without being struck by the wide divergence of our practice from common-sense and decency. At the root of this fact is a carelessness of all larger interests, a wanton disregard of everything but temporary convenience and the immediate vulgar motive. Many of Mr. Schuyler's statements illustrate this. The United States preceded other countries in entering into commercial relations with Corea, and sent that country an envoy extraordinary. As the representative of the highest rank and the first on the ground, he took the lead of his colleagues in arranging the terms of diplomatic and consular intercourse. His advice was followed both by the diplomats and by the Coreans, inexperienced in dealing with foreigners. After a year or two, in which American influence in Corea stood high, his rank, through some freak of the sub-committee on Appropriations, was reduced to that of minister resident. From the head of the corps he went to the foot. The Corean Government, supposing that his conduct had been disapproved, treated him accordingly; and American influence in Corea was for the time extinguished. We have no doubt that the statesman who was responsible for this thought he had done a clever thing. The practice of appointing as consuls in foreign countries naturalized citizens who are natives of these countries, is another instance of our preference of an immediate convenience to the real interests of business, which, as is of course the case with all diplomatic interests, are placed a good way off. The complaint is often made in European towns : Have you no Americans who are fit to be consuls here? Send any one you like and we shall be glad to be polite to him and to be of service to him, but you cannot expect us, with our habits and traditions, to introduce to our families So and So, whom we have all known as occupying such and such a position in life. We should aim to propitiate foreign nations in making appointments, we hardly see, however, that it would be

possible for us to conform to foreign views by refraining from sending clergymen as diplomats. It would be exceedingly difficult to define just what would constitute a clergyman with us, or at any rate to hit upon a definition which the Government would be able to recognize. We might search for the line without finding it between a priest of the Latin Church on the one hand, and a street preacher or a captain in the Salvation Army on the other. This is, perhaps, a matter which we had best let foreign governments decide. It would no doubt be well, however, to inquire of the foreign government to which an agent is about to be sent, whether the appointment will be agreeable.

We fully approve of Mr. Schuyler's suggestion that diplomatic officers should be nominated to a grade, as is done in the case of officers in the Army and Navy, and that the selection of the post be left to the State Department. Indeed, we are sure that the solution of the difficulties in connection with our diplomatic service will be found in giving the control of it very largely to the Department of State and in equipping the department with reference to the discharge of that duty.

The remarks upon ourselves of one, who, like Mr. Schuyler, has seen many men and cities, are of course interesting. Mr. Schuyler finds that in ordinary times the Government of the United States is a nearly irresponsible despotism under the rule of five or six men-the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, and the Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. The legislation for the diplomatic service has hitherto been in the hands of the Committee on Appropriations. The Committee on Foreign Affairs have had little to do except with the making of treaties. The annual tinkering with the diplomatic and consular services has been the result of a contest between the sub-committees of the two houses in the last hours of the session, the House Committee aiming at the reduction of salaries and the abolition of places, and the Senate Committee resisting the proposed alterations. The control of the diplomatic appropriations in the House has been recently given to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Mr. Schuyler favors the abolition of the Red Book, thinking, perhaps rightly, that the despatches of diplomats should not be published at all. But the Red Book is an extremely useful publication. Mr. Grant Duff, a particularly good authority, told the writer that he considered it the best publication of the kind he knew.

Nearly all of the faults of our foreign representation touched upon by Mr. Schuyler will disappear upon the establishment of a permanent service, properly organized and administered. When that has been achieved, the country's money will be laid out to the best advantage. If we employ men. for a long instead of for a short term, giving them a certainty of a permanent tenure during good behavior, we can of course get better men ; we shall be under no temptation to fill places with those scamps who have so often