which, for a wonder in English,
almost keeps the true dactylic movement. How effective is the
rhetorical iteration of

"The famous orators have shone,
The famous poets sung and gone,"

and so on for nearly half a score of lines! How perfect the sad
contrast of the refrain--

"_Ah! so the quiet was!
So was the hush!_"

how justly set and felicitously worded the rural picture of the
opening! how riotous the famous irruption of the New Agers! how
adequate the quiet-moral of the end, that the Past is as the Present,
and more also! And then he went and wrote about Bottles!

"Progress," with a splendid opening--

"The master stood upon the mount and taught--
He saw a fire in his disciples' eyes,"--

conducts us to two other fine, though rhymeless, dirges. In the first,
_Rugby Chapel_, the intensity of feeling is sufficient to carry off
the lack of lyrical accomplishment. The other is the still better
_Heine's Grave_, and contains the famous and slightly pusillanimous
lines about the "weary Titan," which are among the best known of their
author's, and form at once the motto and the stigma of mid-century
Liberal policy. And then the book is concluded by two other
elegies--in rhyme this time--_The Stanzas written at the Grande
Chartreuse_ and _Obermann once more_. They are, however, elegies of a
different kind, much more self-centred, and, indeed, little more than
fresh variations on "the note," as I ventured to call it before. Their
descriptive and autobiographic interest is great, and if poetry were a
criticism of life, there is plenty of that of them. The third
book--_Schools and Universities on the Continent_ (1868)--in which are
put the complete results of the second Continental exploration--is, I
suppose, much less known than the non-professional work, though
perhaps not quite so unknown as the earlier report on elementary
education. By far the larger part of it--the whole, indeed, except a
"General Conclusion" of some forty pages--is a reasoned account of the
actual state of matters in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. It
is not exactly judicial; for the conclusion--perhaps the foregone
conclusion--obviously colours every page. But it is an excellent
example (as, indeed, is all its author's non-popular writing) of clear
and orderly exposition--never arranged _ad captandum_, but also never
"dry." Indeed there certainly are some tastes, and there may be many,
to which the style is a distinct re