t, however, on the whole, be pronounced a singularly intelligent and
able performance. The pace at which Comte was able to compose is a
standing marvel to all who have pondered the great and difficult art of
composition. It must be admitted that the author of the English version
of him was in this respect no unworthy match for her original. Miss
Martineau tells us that she despatched the last three volumes, which
number over 1800 pages, in some five months. She thought the rendering
of thirty pages of Comte a fair morning's work. If we consider the
abstract and difficult nature of the matter, this must be pronounced
something of a feat. We have not space to describe her method, but any
reader who happens to be interested in the mechanism of literary
productions will find the passage in vol. ii. p. 391. _The History of
the Thirty Years' Peace_ is no less astonishing an example of rapid
industry. From the first opening of the books to study for the history
to the depositing of the MS. of the first volume at press, was exactly
six months. The second volume took six months to do, with an interval of
some weeks of holiday and other work!

We think all this worth mentioning, because it is an illustration of
what is a highly important maxim; namely, that it is a great mistake to
expend more time and labour on a piece of composition than is enough to
make it serve the purpose in hand. The immeasurable moment and
far-reachingness of the very highest kinds of literature are apt to make
men who play at being students forget there are many other kinds of
literature which are not in the least immeasurably far-reaching, but
which, for all that, are extremely useful in their own day and
generation. Those highly fastidious and indolent people, who sometimes
live at Oxford and Cambridge, with whom, indeed, for the most part,
their high fastidiousness is only a fine name for impotence and lack of
will, forget that the less immortal kinds of literature are the only
kinds within their own reach. Literature is no doubt a fine art--the
finest of the arts--but it is also a practical art; and it is deplorable
to think how much stout, instructive work might and ought to be done by
people who, in dreaming of ideals in prose or verse beyond their
attainment, end, like the poor Casaubon of fiction, in a little pamphlet
on a particle, or else in mediocre poetry, or else in nothing. By
insisting on rearing nothing short of a great monument more durab