me; they were to assist, or at least applaud, the
reforming of this and that abroad. So believing and intending, they
naturally conceived themselves made very little indeed lower than the
angels.

"The contrast with our own day hardly needs pointing. You might now
search long and in vain for a Conservative in public life who would not
admit that reforms are desirable or even urgent, though few might be
prepared with precise statements about particulars.... But their (the
Liberals') confidence in reform, in their ability to improve the body
politic by certain definite measures, is gone. The old Liberal spirit
animating a whole party is dead. It may seem an odd remark to make just
after the late election, but the evidence is abundant, and the
explanation simple. Domestic reform on a large scale and on
individualist lines has reached its limit; but to many Liberals, to many
eminent and authoritative Liberals, reform on socialist lines is
abhorrent.... Consequently there is a large party called Liberal, which,
through the faults of its opponents and the accidents of time, is
successful and has the high spirits of success, but is no more now than
it has been for twenty years a party of homogeneous confidence in
domestic reform, while on the world outside the British islands it looks
with passivity, perhaps timidity, certainly with no intention of
assisting oppressed peoples."

* * * * *

"Theoretical Socialism of a logical and thoughtful kind, not entangled
with Radicalism, has made much progress of late years, more especially,
so far as my own experience goes, in the educated and professional
classes; but in practice it bides its time, with confidence perhaps, but
with a consciousness that the time will be long coming. That is a
different spirit from the buoyant expectancy of the old Liberalism."

Granted the necessity of idealism to individual and social health, Mr.
Street's views do not conduce to optimism. Here we have a competent
observer telling us that the only note of idealism he finds in
contemporary intellectual life is a growing, but half-hearted, belief in
Socialism, which is more noticeable "in the educated and professional
classes."

There is another note of idealism in the life of to-day which Mr. Street
ignores. This is the tendency toward the apotheosis of the individual in
antithesis to society. This is a sign of health, in so far as it is a
revolt against the stifling p