of a dulness not to be surpassed; and whether, therefore, it
might not be worth our while to spend a little time in studying the
English tongue, and the art of touching human hearts and minds.

But to return: this improved tone (if the truth must be told) is
owing, far more than people themselves are aware, to the triumphs of
those liberal principles, for which the Whigs have fought for the
last forty years, and of that sounder natural philosophy of which
they have been the consistent patrons. England has become Whig; and
the death of the Whig party is the best proof of its victory. It
has ceased to exist, because it has done its work; because its
principles are accepted by its ancient enemies; because the
political economy and the physical science, which grew up under its
patronage, are leavening the thoughts and acts of Anglican and of
Evangelical alike, and supplying them with methods for carrying out
their own schemes. Lord Shaftesbury's truly noble speech on
Sanitary Reform at Liverpool is a striking proof of the extent to
which the Evangelical leaders have given in their adherence to those
scientific laws, the original preachers of which have been called by
his Lordship's party heretics and infidels, materialists and
rationalists. Be it so. Provided truth be preached, what matter
who preaches it? Provided the leaven of sound inductive science
leaven the whole lump, what matter who sets it working? Better,
perhaps, because more likely to produce practical success, that
these novel truths should be instilled into the minds of the
educated classes by men who share somewhat in their prejudices and
superstitions, and doled out to them in such measure as will not
terrify or disgust them. The child will take its medicine from the
nurse's hand trustfully enough, when it would scream itself into
convulsions at the sight of the doctor, and so do itself more harm
than the medicine would do it good. The doctor meanwhile (unless he
be one of Hesiod's 'fools, who know not how much more half is than
the whole') is content enough to see any part of his prescription
got down, by any hands whatsoever.

But there is another cause for the improved tone of the Landlord
class, and of the young men of what is commonly called the
aristocracy; and that is, a growing moral earnestness; which is in
great part owing (that justice may be done on all sides) to the
Anglican movement. How much soe