f "great writer" to Carlyle
is merely absurd--is one of those caprices which somebody once told us
are the eternal foes of art--he is not unjust in denying that title to
Emerson. But after justifying his policy of not "cracking up" by still
further denying his subject the title of a great philosophic thinker,
he proceeds to find a pedestal for him at last as a friend and leader
of those who would "live in the spirit." With such a judgment one has
no fault to find, because it must be in all cases an almost purely
personal one. To some Gautier, with his doctrine of

"Sculpte, lime, cisele,"

as the great commandment of the creative artist, has been a friend and
leader in the life of the spirit: to Mr Arnold he was only a sort of
unspiritual innkeeper. To Mr Arnold, Maurice de Guerin, with his
second-hand Quinetism, was a friend and leader in the life of the
spirit; others scarcely find him so. "This is this to thee and that to
me."

The third (strictly the middle) piece fortunately requires no
allowances, and suffers from no drawbacks. "Literature and Science" is
an apology for a liberal education, and for a rationally ordered
hierarchy of human study, which it would be almost impossible to
improve, and respecting which it is difficult to think that it can
ever grow obsolete. Not only was Mr Arnold here on his own ground, but
he was fighting for his true mistress, with the lance and sword and
shield that he had proved. And the result is like that, of the
fortunate fights of romance: he thrusts his antagonists straight over
the crupper, he sends them rolling on the ground, and clutching its
sand with their fingers. Even Mr Huxley, stoutest and best of all the
Paynim knights, never succeeded in wiping off this defeat; and it is
tolerably certain that no one else will. The language of the piece is
unusually lacking in ornateness or fanciful digression; but the logic
is the strongest that Mr Arnold ever brought to bear.

The three last essays we have mentioned, apart from the pathetic and
adventitious interest which attaches to them as last, would be in any
case among the best of their author's, and their value is (at least,
as it seems to me) in an ascending scale. To care very much for that
on Count Tolstoi is not easy for those who are unfashionable enough
not to care very much for the eloquent Russian himself. Nothing is
satisfactory that one can only read in translations. But Mr Arnold, in
whom a certain perennial