and novel. Novels form an immense proportion of all books and seriels which are issued, but a far larger proportion of the matter that is read. But the novelistic element (if we may use such a word), has a much wider diffusion in our literature than in the form of tale or fiction merely ; and the general craving for excitement is met by writing for effect in the newspaper article, the magazine essay, the review, and even the sermon. Nay, is it not true that our popular histories are popular, just in proportion as they are imbued with the elements which attract in fiction?

The great craving is not for instruction, but for excitement and diversion, and the modern Press is ever becoming more and more the slave of the law of Demand-and-Supply. Competition has run down the price of the papers and popular magazines (as against the amount of letter-press), to the lowest, and writers are acceptable, not as they meet the intellectual and moral wants ofreaders, but in proportion as they can cater successfully for their tastes and cravings. "Literature," says Carlyle, "when noble is not easy, but only when ignoble. Literature too is a quarrel, an internecine duel, with the whole world of darkness that lies without one and within one." Few, however, have the courage to maintain such a combat, in either relation. It is more pleasant to glide along with the current. Hence a prevailingly ignoble literature. And hence, too, follows the unwelcome truth, that a reading age may by no means be a wise one,-may be made unwise in the highest and most practical sense, by the most potent instructional instrument the world has ever known. No: the diffusion of knowledge is one thing, the growth of wisdom another. Indeed, when we look at the treasures of moral insight and practical sagacity, stored up in any collection of national proverbs we are led to doubt whether, as we are gaining in knowledge, we are not losing in true wisdom. Those early sages, though they could not penetrate the secrets of Nature, had a keen eye for moral truth; and it is that, after all, which must yield the true life guidance. Proverbs do not always embody either indubitable truth or the most exalted principles, but the moral and spiritual intuitions they have embalmed, were, we have strong reason to conclude, freshest and most vivid in early times. As the world advanced, prudential maxims-the product of generalized experience -came to form a larger and larger proportion of national proverbs, and these often took in a large alloy of worldly wisdom. A chronology of proverbs, were such attainable, would form an invaluable contribution to the Philosophy of History. It would enable us to trace the moral and social state of mankind through the pre-historic ages. The result we have strong ground to believe-would show that the course of the early world was one of degeneracy, not of progress. Indeed, we are apt to allow ourselves to be imposed upon as to what constitutes true advancement, and especially as to what constitutes real education. Edu

cation consists neither of what is put on (in the way of surface polish), nor of what is laid in (of stores of knowledge). Nothing enters into the real education of a man, save what affects his principles of action, so as to mould his life and conduct. Formal and real education may thus be out of all proportion, the one to the other. "There is," says Mr Sharon Turner, an education of mind, distinct from the literary, which is gradually imparted by the contingencies of active life." "In this education," he adds, our ancestors were never deficient." We would not go quite so far as this with respect to our predecessors, but there are, at any rate, many indications that our superiority over them in this respect, by no means corresponds to our apparent advantages. These do not necessarily make us superior to our forefathers in anything belonging to the highest elements of well-doing and well-being. Much depends on the way we use them very much more than we are accustomed to think. Apart from regard had to the proper use of them, our very facilities may become

snares.

Far otherwise. But the

Do we then undervalue our advantages? higher our estimate of them, the deeper must be our regret at our misuse of them-the greater our anxiety as to the moral and social issue, should that misuse continue and increase. We shall be told that we need not forego any of the wisdom of our forefathers-that we may combine it with the great advantages of our later times. The proverbial wisdom, not of one nation only, but of all nations, is open to us through books while we have all the vast stores of modern literature superadded. The fact is indeed so, and yet we may be doubly misled by it. Do the great bulk of the common people-who in other times found their intellectual food and moral nurture so largely in proverbs-read the master-pieces of our literature? Only, we apprehend in exceptional cases, and those, both mentally and morally, above the average of their class. The mental fare of the many is of a grosser and more stimulating kind than Milton or Shakspere, Wordsworth, and Tennyson-than Addison, Foster, and Charles Lamb supply. And as for imbibing proverbial wisdom through reading, the thing is preposterous. It is like attempting to gulp the food of a month at a meal. Proverbs are to be digested and assimilated singly, and only on fitting occasions. Their main value lies in their being aptly applied. They are the current coin of conversation in practical life, but are passed from hand to hand for purposes of business, not of display.

There is a principle in mechanics to the effect that what is gained in power is lost in time; in our modern popular literature you lose both in time and in power, and gain only in bulk. How many volumes of popular tales, and even of sermons, might we not profitably give in exchange for this old Italian proverb, "You are in debt, and run in far

N

ther; if you are not yet a liar you will be one;" or, this other, "No man is greater in truth than he is in God's esteem;" or this, "We ought not to give the fine flour to the devil, and the bran to God," which may have suggested Henry Ward Beecher's famous saying that "Many pray cream and live skimmed milk;" or this English one, "God's mill grinds slow but sure;" or, this again, "The body is sooner well dressed than the soul," or, "The devil tempts others, an idle man tempts the devil." "Pleasure gives law to fools, God to the wise;" this one saying, fully understood and practically accepted, will give better life-guidance than can be found in all the writings of George Eliot. What a deep moral insight is treasured in this, "Every man's censure is usually first moulded in his own nature." "Pension never enriched young men," is a lesson the world needs none the less the older and wealthier it becomes. In this Scotch proverb-" It's a guid tongue that says nae ill, but a better heart that thinks nane"-we have embodied a realisation, at once of the highest reach of Christian perfection, and of the steps towards its difficult attainment. Again, what a knowledge of human nature in two of its main phases, is revealed in this-" A fool is mair happy in thinkin' weel o' himsel', than a wise man is in others thinkin' weel o' him." Whoever gave out--"A great fortune with a wife is a bed full of brambles" -must have been an inductive philosopher with no contemptible means of observation.

Then, good things were recognised and treasured in those days. They were recognised because the taste was not perverted; they were treasured because the need of them was felt. And, once recognised and accepted, they were conveyed from lip to lip more widely, and securely too, if not more rapidly, than the best thoughts of the wisest amongst us are or can be. The publication of the proverb cost nothing; there was no bookseller's commission, and no advertising charges. Indeed, the proverb, like the traveller in those early times, passed from house to house and from land to land on the general hospitality.

Then, our vile modern habit of doubting every thing that cannot be proved by hard figures or hard logic, was unknown to those ages of faith. Nor had they any reason to doubt; these terse embodiments of truth and wisdom verified themselves in each one's consciousness or experience. They did so because they were either intuitions of the moral reason or generalisations from wide observation. For it is quite a mistake to assume that the inductive, any more than intuitive method was unknown in those days. It was largely applied-if not in the domain of nature, yet in the more important sphere of human life. Of this, national proverbs supply innumerable examples. Here are one or two :-" Frost and fraud have always foul ends;" "Diseases are the interest of pleasures ;" "He who eats but of one dish never wants a physician;"

"Extravagant offers are a kind of denial;" "God keep me from him whom I trust, from him whom I trust not I shall keep myself."

We have said proverbs-according to the class to which they belong -verified themselves either in the moral consciousness or the relational experience of every one. In either case there was induced a healthy, and, indeed, altogether invaluable mental process. In the first you saw one of your own life principles under a fresh light and in wider relations. In the second, you were led to review and verify the cases ranging under the same category which you had yourself observed. The train of reflection awakened in either case might well be worth more than a twelvemonth's popular reading of much that the million are now supplied with.

XXVIII.-LITERATURE AND NATIONAL LIFE.

THE relation of a national literature to the social life of a nation constitutes one of the most momentous questions which can engage the attention of thoughtful men. It has been always so; but much more now, by reason of the spread of popular education, a habit of reading ever extending amongst the people, and the fresh stirrings of Thought and Inquiry, leaving nothing now to be accepted on authority or trust.

Literature exercises two distinct kinds of influence-each highly important-the one on the aesthetic culture, the other on the beliefs of a people; and these two unite in forming a third not less important, viz., that exercised on the moral sentiments of the people and the moral tone of society. Now, of these three sorts of influence, the first is, if perhaps the most potent, yet the most limited, being exercised only by a highclass literature, and on a minority of cultivated and susceptible minds. There is indeed a distinction to be noted here, between the literature of popular sentiment and the literature embodying the ideas and moods peculiar to thoughtful and cultivated minds. Of the one class, Burns is a well known and distinct example, and Tennyson of the other. The one, of course, appeals to a much more numerous class than the other. The one appeals to the sympathies and hearts of the people, and presupposes no special susceptibility or culture to qualify for being appreciated and enjoyed, whilst the other requires some corresponding culture, and presupposes a community of mood and sentiment. A very subtle question might be raised, how far a literature which can be at once enjoyed by all,

can act as an instrument of æsthetic culture. Judging from the influence of the poetry of Burns as refining agent on the common people of Scotland, we would be led to say, only to a limited extent. At all events, the literature of Popular Sentiment must be much inferior as an instrument of æsthetic culture to the literature of Ideas.

But what is the real distinction between the two? It consists, we apprehend, in this. The literature of popular sentiment gives vivid artistic expression to the feelings common to humanity, or the sentiments which have exercised abiding traditional sway in a nation for ages; whilst the literature of ideas embodies the thoughts and emotions which are stirring in the most original and productive minds of the time. And here, again, we have no better illustration of the two classes respectively than Burns and Tennyson. Burns sang of the loves and friendships of the people, and of the common sentiments of our Scottish patriotism, with a depth of realising emotion, and a felicity and beauty of diction never surpassed; but there were no new ideas-there was no fresh moral vitality—in his song. This was probably due, in part, to the cast of his genius, but still more to the fact, that such were not stirring in the social atmosphere under which his tone of thought and sentiment were formed and matured-under which the finest of his pieces were written. Ere he had become affected by the new tide of thought and sentiment which rose so high, and burst so violently on the old landmarks, in the French Revolution, his moral feelings had undergone a process of debasement, which more than neutralised the expansion and deepening of Thought that was, or might have been, thus induced. The consequence is, that the works of Burns-amid all the wide and various influence they have exercised over his countrymen-have given no impulse to the intellectual and moral life of the natiou.

Ere it can do this great service, a literature must embody one of two elements. It must give vivid artistic expression to the thoughts which are stirring in the most active, productive, and original minds of the time, or to the fresh moral convictions which social progress and unwonted social exigencies are inducing. And, clearly, the power and influence of a writer will be greatest when he combines both. Tennyson does so. In In Memoriam, you meet the deepest problems of the time, laid hold of with marvellous grasp, and expressed with rare fidelity and appreciation, irradiated or shaded (as the case may be) by their appropriate or inevitable moral and spiritual implications. What Matthew Arnold says of Heinrich Heine is true of Tennyson "He has touched all the great points in the career of the human race, and with a wand which brings them under a light where the modern eye cares to see them." touched them with strokes sounding deeper, and ringing

And he has truer than