s mere
bodily palates, and we must protest against any such Procrustean method
of ascertaining whether a man's 'spirit be cleanly and quiet,' or, which
is terrible to contemplate, the reverse. On another page Mr. Harrison
himself loudly deprecates and disclaims any narrow or sectarian view; he
is nothing if not Catholic in his tastes. 'I protest that I am devoted
to no school in particular; I condemn no school; I reject none. I am for
the school of all the great men; and I am against the school of the
smaller men.'

All taste must be founded on knowledge, and between the hard, dry
teaching of the Board School or the Examination Room on the one hand,
and the aetherial atmosphere of Desultory Reading and the purest literary
discernment on the other, there lies an intermediate region, a
'penumbral zone,' which differs from the first in that it is entered
voluntarily, and from the second in that it is attainable by all who
care to enter it. The way through this region, though pleasant is
laborious; system, accuracy, and discipline are essential to him who
would traverse it. To be a desultory reader, in the sense defined by
Lord Iddesleigh, a man must first have been a student; and not to every
student is given the temperament, capacity, and opportunity, to become a
desultory reader--still less can every student aspire to that refined
literary taste, which Mr. Harrison possesses in so large a measure, and
which, in its characteristics, he describes so well.

So far as modern literature is concerned, it may be said, that the
Reviewers are, by their skill and experience, qualified to direct, and
ever ready to aid the wayfarer; and in theory this is true. But, putting
aside the few leading journals and periodicals, daily and weekly--of
which we would only speak with the greatest respect--we fear that the
reviewer's art is at a low ebb in these days. Often the side breezes of
controversy, of private jealousy, or of personal interest, intervene to
divert straightforward criticism; still more often does absolute
incompetence render these guides worthless. A score of books may be
seen, huddled together in an unbroken column of so-called criticism,
with no other bond of union than their publication in course of the same
week. The interested author, wading through this disconnected mass,
suddenly stumbles on a few words extracted--possibly perverted--from his
own preface, to which a line of commonplace commendation is affixed; and