pressure of practical considerations a little, it is checked,
it is made to feel the chain. We saw this the other day in the
extinction so much to be regretted of the _Home and Foreign Review_;
perhaps in no organ of criticism was there so much knowledge, so much
play of mind; but these could not save it. It must needs be that men
should act in sects and parties, that each of these sects and parties
should have its organ, and should make this organ subserve the interest
of its action; but it would be well too that there should be a criticism,
not the minister of those interests, nor their enemy, but absolutely and
entirely independent of them. No other criticism will ever attain any
real authority, or make any real way towards its end,--the creating a
current of true and fresh ideas."

This, it must be remembered, was written in 1865. Would Mr. Matthew
Arnold be happier now with the _Fortnightly_ and the _Nineteenth Century_
and others? There is, I think, a good deal of truth in the passage I
have just quoted. I think he might have allowed that, among so many
writers, each advocating his own view or the view of his party or sect,
we ought to have some chance of forming a judgment. A question seems to
get a fair chance of being

"Set in all lights by many minds
To close the interests of all."

But, as I said, there is a good deal in what the writer says. The _Daily
News_ says the Government is all wrong, and the _Daily Telegraph_ says it
is all right; and if any paper ventured to be moderate it would go to the
wall in a week. I think what he says is true, but there is no occasion
to be so angry about it. We really are very thankful for such men as
Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold, and I can't help thinking they have
had their proper share of praise, and have had their share of influence
upon their age. The air of neglected superiority, which they assume,
detracts not a little from the pleasure with which one always reads them.

Perhaps some of my conservative friends will regret the good old times in
which criticism was really criticism, when a book had to run the gauntlet
of a few well established critics of _the_ club, or a play was applauded
or damned by a select few in the front row of the pit. I agree to lament
a past which can never return, but, on the whole, I think we are the
gainers. Also, I very much incline to think that the standard of
criticism is higher now than in the very palmy d