nd finally he died--though a master of legal lore--to have his
last will and testament successfully assailed.

Except as news venders the newspapers--especially newspaper
workers--should give politics a wide berth. Certainly they should have
no party politics. True to say, journalism and literature and politics
are as wide apart as the poles. From Bolingbroke, the most splendid
of the world's failures, to Thackeray, one of its greatest masters of
letters--who happily did not get the chance he sought in parliamentary
life to fall--both English history and American history are full of
illustrations to this effect. Except in the comic opera of French
politics the poet, the artist, invested with power, seems to lose his
efficiency in the ratio of his genius; the literary gift, instead of
aiding, actually antagonizing the aptitude for public business.

The statesman may not be fastidious. The poet, the artist, must be
always so. If the party leader preserve his integrity--if he keep
himself disinterested and clean--if his public influence be inspiring
to his countrymen and his private influence obstructive of cheats and
rogues among his adherents--he will have done well.

We have left behind us the gibbet and the stake. No further need of the
Voltaires, the Rousseaus and the Diderots to declaim against kingcraft
and priestcraft. We have done something more than mark time. We report
progress. Yet despite the miracles of modern invention how far in the
arts of government has the world traveled from darkness to light since
the old tribal days, and what has it learned except to enlarge the area,
to amplify and augment the agencies, to multiply and complicate the
forms and processes of corruption? By corruption I mean the dishonest
advantage of the few over the many.

The dreams of yesterday, we are told, become the realities of to-morrow.
In these despites I am an optimist. Much truly there needs still to be
learned, much to be unlearned. Advanced as we consider ourselves we are
yet a long way from the most rudimentary perception of the civilization
we are so fond of parading. The eternal verities--where shall we seek
them? Little in religious affairs, less still in commercial affairs,
hardly any at all in political affairs, that being right which
represents each organism. Still we progress. The pulpit begins to turn
from the sinister visage of theology and to teach the simple lessons of
Christ and Him crucified. The press, w