WHEN Lycurgus had fully established his iron code he departed forever from his native land, full of the blessed hope that in after years he should look back from the shores of the "happy isles" on automata of his own construction-of iron thews and sinews--trafficking with an iron currency and ruling the neighboring states with an iron sway. Sparta was perfect and himself the perfecter. His only hope was that she might never change. There are not a few modern Lycurgi who have the same unwavering faith in things present, and consider them the only hopeful type of things to come. They view the idea that change may result in good or that the overthrow of what is established may result in the establishment of something better, as a heterodox dogma professed only by idiots and fanatics. They would not dare to remove the ass' head from Bottom, for fear of spoiling his complexion or ruining his voice. We do not indeed define all conservatives as men of this class; but they are very apt to become such by an undue devotion to their own principles. There is indeed a certain virtue in conservatism by which it

serves to prevent rash and thoughtless innovation. And this we apprehend to be its true office. Burke never spoke more truly than when he said "to innovate is not to reform." The statesman should be ever watchful to prevent abuses from creeping in. But this degree of conservatism is what distinguishes the reformer from the fanatic. He can hardly be called conservative who simply refrains from acting rashly.

But there is another garb of conservatism in which its influence is far more subtle and potent. It clothes itself in the reverend guise of age and pleads for institutions which our fathers reared-even though years may have brought nothing but disease and decrepitude. It mingles its prayers for noxious abuses, with appeals to those feelings with which men regard the home of their youth or the frailties of the aged. It brings before us the evils it would perpetuate and bids us look on them as we look upon some old castle moss-grown and tottering-yet with features which poets love to sing and painters love to copy-whose beauty makes us heedless that the owl hoots from its battlements and turrets, and the viper coils amid the rubbish at its base. And in this manner conservatism by combining with those feelings which it is an honor to us to cherish, cheats us, if not into a toleration of wrong, at least into the endurance of what is worthless.

One of the most fruitful causes of conservatism is ignorance. Men of limited knowledge have little sympathy with social or political advancement. They consider it sacrilege to attempt to improve on the customs of our fathers. "Mine fader ploughed oxen mit der tails and shust so will I," was the reply of a stolid Dutchman to a Yankee who suggested the yoke as an instrument more profitable to the man and more convenient to the beast. Why should he forego a custom under which his father had lived and prospered? And so years ago the English peasantry insisted upon mobbing whoever should make use of steam-ignorantly believing that the decrease of the demand for manual labor would result in starvation to their families. But the ignorant man is not a willful conservative. He does not know that he may better himself by change. Knowledge by removing the ground generally removes the evil also. As he becomes more enlightened he becomes more liberal. And herein he differs from the obstinate man whom nothing can curewho even goes contrary to his own modicum of sense, because it presumes to dictate to him. Solomon knew him of old and described him. "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." But ignorance, though curable, is lamentable. For on it are built the darkest and dreariest

structures of human wrong. In a country like our own it continually hinders good reforms and becomes a dangerous instrument in the hands of dishonest that is to say-of almost all politicians. In other countries it is far worse. What but the mighty conserving power of ignorance has sustained for so many generations the " Autocrat of all the Russias?" The careful suppression of all enlightenment, while it has given Russia a terrible unity and power, has created for the Russian peasant a sad and cheerless destiny, whose brighest point is the grave. The social life of the serf is like his own winter-sunless and cold-lit by constellations in whose gleam is neither warmth nor hope-o'er-shadowed by a ghastly twilight like the robes of death.

Passing on to other causes which nourish conservatism, we find a powerful one in prosperity. When the bitterness of poverty has passed away when the gloom and the sickness-the gaunt form and hollow cheek have given place to cheerfulness, health, protuberance of figure and eyes almost closed with good living-then a wondrous content is infused into the soul. The appearance of the present becomes far more benign. The state of mind induced by an alderinanic state of body is essentially anti-revolutionary. We could hardly conceive of the Bastile being stormed by a rabble of Daniel Lamberts. The fat boy of Mr. Wardle was a model conservative. We do not say that as men change from paupers to Astors, they necessarily change from reformers to conser. vatives. But in poverty and its attendant ills there is a wild restlessness -a feeling that the world is going wrong-a desire for change, confident that it cannot be for the worse, which holds within it the seeds of revolution a certain terrible kind of reform. And as men rise from poverty to affluence there comes over them a certain satisfaction—a feeling that the world is nearly if not quite all right—a reluctance to meddle lest they should mar. The poet Massey is an instance of this. In his youth he bore the stern discipline of want and his earlier songs are full of wild indignation and fierce denunciation of tyrants, by whom he meant nearly all who were in better circumstances than himself. But as years bring better things, his lyrics lose their primal fierceness-he looks with a far greater degree of allowance on the present condition of England -and prefaces an edition of his works with apologies for opinions in the political songs, which he has long ceased to entertain.

The spirit of change fostered by poverty is not a healthy one. It is intensely selfish. It looks simply to personal melioration. Though deep and solemn principles underlie it-it does not work for them or from a knowledge of them. It is querulous and petulant, having none