said the other day at Pittsburg, "No politics will suffice of themselves to make a nation's soul." It is indeed a law of social forms, of national institutions, that they are always expressive of national character. They come into existence bearing its impress, and they live only so long as it supplies them with vitality. To change institutions for the better we need to change men for the better. And to do this we must, and shall ever, need religious motive. "Let all men know the truth, and the truth shall make them free."

Now this was the spirit, partly unconscious perhaps, but none the less real, of the teaching which the "poore priestes" of Wycliff had given to the peasantry of England in the fourteenth century, and which bore its fruit both in the social emancipation of that age, and in the great acts of religious freedom of the next. This is also the essential spirit of William Langland's poems. He, like the greatest poet of his age, Dante, saw that the world was out of joint. He too looked with longing for the deliverer who should set it right; he too, with all the powers of his soul, wrestled for the knowledge of social salvation, for himself as for others; he too lifted up his voice in warning and menace before the great and mighty of the earth, before princes and priests; he too held up a mirror to the world, in which it saw both its own image and the ideal to which it had grown faithless.

But, unlike Dante, Langland did not reach a full and clear ideal of life; and hence he failed perfectly to interpret, much less to transfigure, what he had lived

and seen, into a symmetrical, distinctly drawn picture, with the personality of the poet in its centre. The poem of "Piers the Plowman," therefore, is rather perhaps a series of paintings, than a well-conceived artistic whole, whose mutual connection lies more in the intention than in the execution, and each of such paintings has, beside clearly illuminated groups, others which seem enveloped in mist, whose outlines we feel rather than perceive, and still others whose dim figures first receive colour and fancy from our own imagination.

And yet the mind and temper of the poet is allpervading. Somehow at least so it affects meLangland takes hold of the heart of his reader, and compels him to enter into the secret purpose of his prophetic burden. It is not certainly, as in the case of Chaucer, by the music of his language, or by the charm of his imagery, that he is able to do this, but, as I think, by the simple directness of his speech, flashing out suddenly into some salient line which, as Mr. Lowell has said, “ gets inside our guard with the home-thrust of a downright word." Langland was not a cheerful and companionable man like Chaucer, but rather, like the satirist of our own age, the peasant philosopher Thomas Carlyle, a sincere, outspoken preacher of righteousness. And in Langland's verse, just as in the prose of Carlyle, the grim earnestness of reforming zeal is tempered by thoughts and maxims in which rude, rustic common sense and broad Hogarthian humour are combined; and never is there missing in his message to his countrymen the note of social passion, of hearty contempt for hypocrisy, of strong, almost

vindictive moral fervour. And it is, I think, largely because of this quality in his verse that we find in "Piers the Plowman" rather than in the " "Canterbury Tales"-most true as is that picture of fourteenthcentury English life-the distinctive "note" of English religion; that godliness, grim, earnest, and puritan, which was from henceforth to exercise so deep an influence on the national character."

I have only time to give you the merest sketch of the poem.

In the prologue the poet describes himself as wandering on the Malvern hills

"I was very for wandered and went me to rest
Under a broad bank, by a burnside,

And as I lay and leaned and looked in the water
I slumbered in a sleeping, it sweyved so merry."

And in his sleep he dreamed, and this was the opening of his dream :

"A fair field full of folk I there between

Of all manner of man the mean and the rich,
Working and wandering as the world asketh.
Some put them to the plough played full seldom
In setting and in sowing swonken full hard
And won what masters with gluttony waste.
And some put them to pride, apparelled them thereafter
In countenance of clothing come disguised in

prayer and penance.

And some chose chaffer, they thrive the better
As it seemeth to our sight as such men thrive
And some mirth to make as minstrels conneth
Getting gold with their glee, yet guiltless, I trust."

And some, he says, were

"Japers and jugglers,

Judas's children, and some beggars with bags
Crammed full of bread, and drunken and lazy."

Some were pilgrims and palmers, journeying to Rome, and having "leave to tell lies all their life after." Some weavers and craftsmen, burghers and bondmen, bishops and friars, pardoners and parish priests. Of these, alas! he has little good to say.

"Parsons and priests plained them to the bishop

That their parishes were poor since the pestilence time.
To have licence and leave at London to dwell

And sing there for simony, for silver is sweet."

But whoever the people were of which our dreamer dreamt, it is plain that they were all of the everyday English working world. They are the same folk, in fact, or almost the same, that Chaucer pictures for us assembling at the Tabard Inn, preparing to make their pilgrimage to Canterbury. Langland's crowd also has a pilgrimage to make, but not along the sunny highroads of Kent. These pilgrims travel in a mystic land. Three hundred years before Bunyan's Christian they progress along the way of life in quest of truth and the supreme good, and in this Pilgrim's Progress of Langland realities and shadows intermingle, tangible realities, changing shadows. The scheme of the poem defies analysis. There is indeed no skill of artistry about it. All the effects are gained, as it would seem, at haphazard, and without being sought. Langland does not select, or contrive, or arrange. There is no art of change any

where. It is the scene-shifting of a dream. "With that," says the poet; and we are hundred miles away, and among an entirely different set of characters. "And then," he cries; and once more the scene shifts. The Court of Heaven has faded away, and we find ourselves in a Cornhill ale tavern. On the Malvern Hills the mists lie low, and are at times so fine that we cannot say "it begins here," "it ends there." It is the same with Langland's visions.

And so once in his dream he sees a lovely lady, the Holy Church, and from her he asks the meaning of the High Tower and the Darksome Dungeon which he sees set over against the Fair Field of the world. She tells him that the High Tower is the abode of Truth, the daughter of God the Creator who gives gifts to men; and the Darksome Dungeon is the Castle of Care, where lives the Father of Falseness. And she teaches how great a treasure Truth is, and how the road to the Tower is the way of Love.

"When all treasures are tried, quoth she, Truth is the best.
'God is Love,' saith the text, and it teaches you all

That Truth can be trusted, like dear God Himself.
Who is true of his tongue and telleth no other,
Doeth works that go with it and willeth no man an ill,
Is a god, by the Gospel, aground and aloft,
Yea, like to our Lord, by S. Luke's own words.
And clerks who know this should teach it about,
For Christian and unchristian lay claim to the Truth.

So then is Love leader of the Lord's folk in Heaven

And a mean as the Mayor is between the King and the Commons,

Right so is Love a leader and the Law shapeth,

Upon man for his misdeeds he taxeth the merchment.