ng tide. But one cannot help feeling that too much is at
stake; that year by year the younger generation, which ought to be sent
out alive to intellectual interests of every kind, in a period which is
palpitating with problems and thrilled by wonderful surprises, is being
starved and cramped by an obstinate clinging to an old tradition, to a
system which reveals its inadequacy to all who pass by; or, rather, our
boys are being sacrificed to a weak compromise between two systems, the
old and the new, which are struggling together. The new system cannot
at present eject the old, and the old can only render the new futile
without exercising its own complete influence.

The best statesmanship in the world is not to break rudely with old
traditions, but to cause the old to run smoothly into the new. My own
sincere belief is that it is not too late to attempt this; but that if
the subject continues to be shelved, if our educational authorities
refuse to consider the question of reform, the growing dissatisfaction
will reach such a height that the old system will be swept away root
and branch, and that many venerable and beautiful associations will
thereby be sacrificed. And with all my heart do I deprecate this,
believing, as I do, that a wise continuity, a tendency to temperate
reform, is one of the best notes of the English character. We have a
great and instinctive tact in England for avoiding revolutions, and for
making freedom broaden slowly down; that is what, one ventures to hope,
may be the issue of the present discontent. But I would rather have a
revolution, with all its destructive agencies, than an unintelligent
and oppressive tyranny.

X

AUTHORSHIP

I have been sometimes consulted by young aspirants in literature as to
the best mode of embarking upon the profession of letters; and if my
inquirer has confessed that he will be obliged to earn his living, I
have always replied, dully but faithfully, that the best way to realize
his ambition is to enter some other profession without delay. Writing
is indeed the most delightful thing in the world, if one has not to
depend upon it for a livelihood; and the truth is that, if a man has
the real literary gift, there are very few professions which do not
afford a margin of time sufficient for him to indulge what is the
happiest and simplest of hobbies. Sometimes the early impulse has no
root, and withers; but if, after a time, a man finds that his heart is
en