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The last words here have an exquisite truthfulness. We may set beside them the picture of an earlier moment in the dawning: Methought among the lawns together

We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn,

And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds

Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind.

For a lovely specimen of Shelley's vaguer style, that which I compared to music in its want of distinct images, I can only refer to the song of Asia to Panthea.

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Every poet's style expresses his mind also; and in mind and style Keats differed so profoundly from Shelley, that it is no wonder Shelley placed little value on his best poetry. Words can hardly paint with more vivid truth than those which describe the young Lycius led by Lamia to her magic palace.

While yet he spake they had arrived before

A pillar'd porch, with lofty portal door,

Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow
Reflected in the slabbed steps below,

Mild as a star in water; for so new,

And so unsullied was the marble hue,

So through the crystal polish, liquid fine,

Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine

Could e'er have touch'd there.

It is in a still-life scene like this that the art of the poet and the painter seem to coincide most nearly, yet,-like the specimens before given from Paradise Lost, this is no mere word-picture, put in for ornament and the sake of luxury. Lamia's palace is itself but a phantom, created at the moment by the united powers of love and witchcraft: its materials are hence of more than earthly perfection;-"none but feet divine could e'er have touch'd there." Now take the exquisite picture of Madeline in her bower at night. Her vespers done,

Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,

In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

I call these,-to return to the definition given at the beginning of my lecture,-pieces of true pictorial style, not because they describe vividly, but because the characteristic touches of the poet's description are precisely those human, those invisible, touches which the painter cannot render. He, in his turn, as I have before noticed, has his revenge; his special field. Or, to sum up in a general phrase, Every Art succeeds, in proportion as it adheres

VOL. X.

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strictly to its own powers and province :-borrowing from the others, indeed, with freedom, but borrowing, not literally, but by analogy.*

Keats died so young, that the external beauty and bravery of things were as fresh and powerful over him as they are to a child's eye. Had he lived, we may perhaps believe, their soul and inner sentiment would have found a voice in his exquisite art. For many reasons I have avoided bringing our contemporaries before you they are too near us, and shine too brightly, for the mind's eye to see them truly. Yet I must name one picture from "In Memoriam" of such sweet and solemn beauty, that I think we may regard it as a perfect specimen of pictorial style;-Great art in miniature.

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But I must conclude. Much has been said upon criticism in our time. Yet the true aim of it,-the final end,-after all, is to make us understand more, and love more, and love more wisely. It is but one comparatively small stream of study which I have here tried to follow from Homer to Tennyson. And I cannot hope to have tracked it always truly through so long and intricate a course. Yet if I have succeeded in showing how fertile and representative a matter are these fine forms of poetical style which have been before us; if I have made it clear that they may be discriminated with more accuracy than has hitherto been attempted, I shall hope that others may be led to pursue this line of poetical criticism for themselves. They will assuredly not find their hours wasted, nor miss their reward.

*It is here that the pictorial style of Wordsworth and Keats differs from that of the Earthly Paradise, in which, if we look closely, the writer seems in general to have imaged his landscape, buildings, and figures, as they would appear in an actual picture, and has then put the picture into words:-thus restricting one art within the limits of another, and often sacrificing the effects proper to poetry without gaining those peculiar to painting.

THE NEW ELECTORATE IN FRANCE AND THE MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC.

A WELL-KNOWN writer has lately assigned as a reason for fearing lest France should become the "disturbing element in Europe," that her Government is "passing more and more into the hands of the classes who have little to lose by war, and who have the most exaggerated notions of the national right of France to dictate her will to Europe."

I take permission to say there cannot be a greater mistake; the "classes" into whose hands power is not "passing more and more," but into whose hands power has for the present actually passed, are not the "lower classes," the brawlers of Belleville, the men whose mission is to destroy, but the people who distinctly constitute a "class," the by far largest class now existing in France. Power is in their hands, and they would have everything to "lose by war."

Most people know what a "mob" is; Englishmen better, perhaps, than most people, can realise what is meant by mob-rule; but the nouvelles couches sociales, as Gambetta so aptly christened them, are not a mob; they have absolutely nothing in common with it, but they have also nothing in common with the people from whose ranks an ordinary Englishman would imagine the governing forces of a nation to be drawn. The actors in the various Revolutionary dramas since the original one of 1789, had all been previously in some way associated with public affairs, and it was easy to assign to them a reason for being where they were: Girondins, Montagnards, let what will be their name, were an effect the cause was les États-Généraux, whence they issued naturally, and the States-General were a perfectly Constitutional Assembly, called together by the absolute necessity of Reforms. From Mirabeau to Barras and the Directoire, all the men known to French history, have had a political origin. The same thing holds good as to the July Monarchy. The chiefs who established that régime were the leaders of the Opposition under Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and their familiarity with politics made them in many cases more apt to guide the nation's political

career than those who by them were overthrown. In any country where existed what was termed a "Constituted Society," such persons as came to the fore in 1830 could be understood-their ways, modes of action, and their aims could be explained, and the average English politician could parallel them, in his own homeannals, with names such as those of Canning or Sir Robert Peel. The Royer Collards or Casimir Périers or Laffittes were easily accounted for. But with the outbreak of February 1848 all this was altered; and this is probably everywhere, but, above all, in England, insufficiently taken into account.

The confusion in which the France of our day is living (for its great characteristic is "confusion," and a condition of things in which "two and two do not make four ") is derived directly from "'48," and "'48" had no adequate raison d'être. The lowering of the census, the adjunction of "capacity" as a fuller source of electoral rights-in short, the feeblest, mildest, conceivable advance towards Electoral Reform-was absurdly out of proportion with the overthrow of a Government and of every institution whereby it ruled. And so obvious was this that, when all was overthrown," they who had triumphed knew not what they had achieved, having neither meant nor planned anything definite or distinct. Hence the chaotic character of what then took place, and has in a certain measure, and intermittently, endured until now.

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"February" as it is currently denominated, organized and could organize nothing; like an earthquake, it opened a yawning chasm bridged over by the Second Empire with a flimsy, painted bridge. When this fell to pieces it left the former gaping chasm gaping still.

Whereas in the previous popular movements the leaders had come down from a higher level, the leaders of our present epoch have sprung upwards from the soil; curiously, unaccountably propelled from out the depths of the gulf that was opened in 1848.

February" was an accident, it was the unforeseen irruption of a mere crowd, and its factors were anonymous; the mistake was to imagine that anything permanent could be evolved out of such an irrational fact.

One thing did come out of "February" by a kind of spontaneous generation: this was Universal Suffrage.

When, in "'48" Louis Napoleon was made President of the Republic, Universal Suffrage had but just been let loose upon the French. It did not know its own strength, but the conspirator at the Elysee and those around him, saw at once what a lever was put into their hands.

Napoleon III. " took" France as a besieged town is "taken," de guerre lasse, and "occupied " the country very much as the

Germans occupy Alsace and Lorraine. But the Second Empire did little to modify the "classes" or the "masses." As far as regards the former, only the less worthy gathered round the flag that was hoisted on the 2nd December 1851. The "classes soon learnt what was meant, and, much to their honour, they, in an overwhelming proportion, resisted. However, in this resistance they stagnated; it was a "barring out" of the great master, life of active, modern life-and though, eighteen years after, when the Empire crumbled away, they were found erect and whole, untainted by the evil atmosphere they had so long inhaled, they were but little fitted for the many new uses and aims of modern public life. They were like unto old children.

This "stagnation" of the natural "governing classes" in France has been productive of incalculable harm. The mission of the Second Empire was never to enlighten or instruct. If the "classes" progressed not, so neither did the "masses"; and, the principle of the régime being compression made easy (pleasant even, if possible) the chief governing medium was ignorance, fostered by frivolity. This became glaringly evident when the régime collapsed; and all the vice and crime, of which during the last fifteen years such astounding examples have been visible, bear the unmistakable hall-mark of Bonapartist Imperialism. During this period-the span of time in which a boy of ten or twelve grows into a man of twenty-five or twenty-seven-two facts had been maturing: one was "cosmopolitanism," the other the tremendous lowering of the middle class standard by the action of Universal Suffrage.

II.

The English public and the English Government alone in Europe took the Second Empire quite au sérieux, and thought it represented France. It was not to the honour of the Government or the public, and could only be explained upon the theory that no country has any save the government it deserves; a theory that in our age of unscrupulousness (and over brain-culture) does not entirely hold good.

Now, the Empire was of its essence opposed to whatever was best and most French in the French people; I repeat, it "occupied" France, and the word must be understood as having more than one meaning. The Second Empire not only “occupied " France as by right of conquest, but also in the sense of diverting the nation from all thought. The Empire was obliged to import, as it were, its notoriety (one cannot call it "popularity") from abroad; it did so, and the consequence was, such a heterogeneous condition of society as has never, perhaps, been witnessed in

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