level with the works which suggest its incursions into the privacy of "happy home-life," and we would not have it bettered for the world. Why should we read the prose of Dionysius the Halicarnassian when the gossip of the 'Tatler' is under our eye? And of what worth is the masterpiece of Longinus when it is weighed in the balance against the foremost of our "literary paragraphists"? The serious critic is born, like the poet. Him can no imperious system improve, no sternly authorised teacher instruct. "I cannot see," said Dr Johnson, "that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken." And the serious critic will carry away from a university little that will directly assist his craft. True, he will owe it an admirable training in the classics; but the just comparison of ancient with modern, the right appreciation of English and French literatures, must be the work of his own brain. Nor could it be otherwise. It is only the facile disciples of the Extension system who can teach "æsthetics." Graver professors recognise that taste can only be sincere when it is the result of direct impression and secret study. Though facts may be pumped into a receptive mind, a taste which is dictated from without is no better than the cheap "culture" provided at so much a head by Mr Sadler and his colleagues. And while the serious critic needs no aid, the real practitioner can learn nothing from our ancient seats of learning. His best allies are the charwoman and the office-boy, whose erudition he need not rival, and whose intelligence it is not the business of Oxford or Cambridge to shape. The work he achieves is amusing—that is all. It is forgotten as soon as the works which are its excuse, and if the best of modern literature is obscured by the tittle-tattle of the critics, that does not matter. If there were no critics, it would be obscured by somebody (or something) else. But sooner or later the flail of time winnows the threshing-floor of literature, and posterity may separate the wheat from the chaff. The real universities. For Wherefore we feel no resentment against the futility of our critics; we can hope no better fate for our philanthropists' scholarship than that it should encounter but little competition; and while we lesson of our admit the truth of our philanthropists' implied reproach, we do not like the remedy. All the encroachments that have been made upon the curricula of our universities during the last quarter of a century have been unhappily inspired. They have tended to divert our academic energy from its true channel. The innovators forget that the highest function of an academy is to teach its alumni to learn, to think, and to act. many centuries our English universities have educated their pupils without thought of the future: the undergraduates learned the art of converse one from another; in the freedom of college-rooms they practised the eternal contest of wits; and the classics not only revealed to them the finest literature of the world, but proved the value of mental discipline. So, in the pleasant confusion of bodily and intellectual athletics, our students grew into statesmen or writers or governors. No writer has better expressed the true spirit of Cambridge that FitzGerald, whose 'Euphranor' celebrates the battle not only of the wits but of the boats. A strenuous race follows a strenuous argument, and "the crews pulling with all their might compacted into perfect rhythm,' belong as intimately to the place as do the young scholars, who dispute of Shakespeare and the 'Broad Stone of Honour.' "Bravo, St John's!" "Go it, Trinity!"-these cries are a better part of our education than many courses of English literature. And where, save in Greece and in Plato, shall you match the sentiment of the last page? "Then," says the writer, "waiting a little while to hear how the winner had won and the loser lost, and watching Phidippus en gaged in eager conversation with his defeated brethren, I took Euphranor and Lexilogus under either arm (Lycion having got into better company elsewhere), and walked home with them across the meadow leading to the town, whither the dusky troops of gownsmen with all their confused voices seemed, as it were, evaporating in the twilight, while a Nightingale began to be heard among the flowering Chestnuts of Jesus." Here is a reminis cence which neither the denunciation of the moderns nor the ill-advised generosity of Mr Passmore Edwards can either improve or decry. The Candid MAY. "Give me th' avow'd, th' erect, the manly foe, DURING the past year the pro-Boers, lending an eager ear to every unsupported calumny, have displayed with an acrid insolence the hatred they bear to their own country. England can do no right that is their motto; and so keen is their joy in what they believe England's failure, that no concession would appease their greedy detestation. Happily they find approval where they pledge their affection abroad; at home their spiteful ignorance is sternly neglected save in their own packed and guarded meeting-houses. But there is another cannibal active in the land, who would publicly devour his own kin. And he is more dangerous, because less ingenuous, than the disciples of Stead. For he is a Candid Friend he wishes nothing but well to the Empire. It is nothing less than patriotism which moves him to reveal the horrid truth that Great Britain is ruined body and soul. Of course, there is one possible method of retrievement. If only the rulers of the empire will listen to the profound advice of the Candid Friend, all will be well. So he wanders up and down, fatuous and irascible. You may hear him in clubs murmuring, "Monstrous! monstrous!" He bustles about, prophesying disaster, and growing every day more and more arrogant. Nor can we pass him by with a shrug of contempt, for the man has an easy knack of deceiving the unwary. His noisy protestation of patriotism does not sound so hollow as it should to those who know not the type, while the facile schemes which he sketches over a whisky-andsoda seem quite pleasant to his friends through the haze of tobacco-smoke. Moreover, he loses no opportunity of ill-doing: being idle, he is preternaturally busy in his idleness. He is carried hither and thither in a whirlwind of talk; he writes uninformed articles in sensational journals, and he is so desperately in love with himself that he spurns his muffin every day that his name does not shine in print. The Candid Friend, then, is a grotesque figure; but unhappily he is dangerous as well as grotesque. His reckless jeremiads are read by thousands ignorant as himself, and since he appeals to the imposing vanity of smug persons, he is sure of a large and appreciative audience. The mob takes a genuine pride in what it believes to be the mistakes of others. A gentle glow of superiority warms the heart of the citizen when he is told that this general is a madman, or that Minister a miscreant. Republics have been known to live upon abuse of this kind, and there are many in England who would push their country, if they could, into the lowest pit of democracy. So the Candid Friend, knowing his audience, shouts that England is on the very point of dissolution. Her trade is gone to Germany or America; the late war, which has made us the laughing-stock of Europe, proves our incapacity to fight; and as for our navy, everybody knows that it is a collection of tin-pots, every one warranted to go to the bottom at the mere sight of an enemy. Such is the story which we read day after day in our newspapers, and the Candid Friends, who are never weary of telling it, reck little enough of the harm which they may inflict. For even if the charges, thus hastily brought, were true, our Candid Friends would still be the enemies of |