country. His success as a scholar and a thinker always ran parallel with his success as an administrator and as a parliamentary speaker. He owed his success as much to his moral as to his intellectual faculties. No chancellor of the exchequer ever inspired city men with a greater degree of confidence. His brief, straightforward, inornate addresses were received with a degree of favor hardly accorded to the most scenic budgets of Mr. Gladstone, or the most brilliant orations of Mr. Disraeli. The utmost confidence was felt in his simplicity and good faith, and at the same time it was fully understood that his conclusions were the results of anxious inquiry and sound reasoning. But at the same time it would hardly be thought that he was the man to meet safely a great financial crisis, and although it is probable that, had he lived longer, he might have been the premier of a Whig administration, yet possibly he would have been little more than the bond of union to join together stronger spirits. The same characteristics belonged to the literary as to the political life of Sir George Lewis, and even in a greater degree. He was happier as the editor of the Edinburgh Review than as the chancellor of the exchequer. Indeed, the former employment was much more to his taste than the latter. In the field of criticism, particularly in the field of negative criticism, he was pre-eminent. His, in an especial way, was Bacon's lumen siccum. He pulled down even the ruins of those historical structures which Niebuhr had left. He was little more than destructive, was in no degree synthetic, and had more "light" than "sweetness." Those who are acquainted with Dr. Newman's late remarkable work, "Essays toward a Grammar of Assent," and can conceive a direct contradiction to its every page, will be able to form an idea of Sir George's governing mental characteristics. The result. is that he was not much better than an iconoclast, and has not left-we had almost

said was incapable of leaving-any durable monument to posterity..

There are many points of interest presented by the political and intellectual history of Sir George Lewis. Most of his letters were written at a time when letter-writing was still an art, and postage was so expensive that people were anxious to gain the value of the money. They are, therefore, written with a fullness which, we are afraid, will be wanting to the letters of the next generation of statesmen and authors. He speaks with certain severity of some of his contemporaries, but perhaps not more severely than the truth would warrant ; yet it is easy to see, on the surface of the letters, that, though endued with a common-sense which amounted to positive genius, he made several egregious blunders in his reasoning. For instance, through the unhopefulness of his nature he expected nothing but disappointments in the expedition to the Crimea, and, through his inability to sympathize with forms of genius not akin to his own, he could see little that was likely to be permanently popular in the works of Dickens or Macaulay. In his own mind he gave literature a distinct preference over politics. The meeting of parliament is "that abominable meeting of parliament." After he had lost his seat it was with difficulty that he consented to re-enter the House once more, and with regret that he became a cabinet minister. The main interest of his letters lies in their touches of contemporary politics and literature, which will be a help toward the construction of the history of the period to which they relate. When he succeeded the present premier as chancellor of the exchequer, he writes to say that Mr. Gladstone had been very kind to him, and helped him very much. He was very severe on Macaulay's article on Bacon: "His remarks on ancient philosophy are, for the most part, shallow and ignorant in the extreme. There is generally a want of sound

ness and coherency, and a puerile and almost girlish affectation of tinsel ornament, which, coming from a man of nearly forty, convince me that Macaulay will never be any thing more than a rhetorician." There is much substantial justice in this criticism, but at the same time we see that Sir George was totally incapable of appreciating an order of mind with which he had nothing in common. Lewis had not a spark of Macaulay's genuine brilliancy, and the result is that thousands have read Macaulay where only a reader here and there knows of the "Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics," and the "Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History." His latest and perhaps his best book was a collection of articles in the Edinburgh Review on the Administrations of Great Britain from 1783 to 1830. We find the statement in one of the letters that Macaulay reckoned on thirteen volumes of his history. "It is too long, and overdone with details," writes Lewis; and we may add, that if Macaulay really designed to bring down his history to "a period within the memory of men now living," as he stated, the rate of progress would have required not thirteen, but at least thirty volumes.

Here are some of his judgments on his contemporaries. Of Mr. Disraeli he says: "Disraeli, though a hard hitter in attack, failed as an exponent of a measure or a system of policy." Of Sir Robert Peel: "I can not say that I prized his judgment very highly, nor do I think that as a guide in public affairs, when he had ceased to be an administrator, he was of great value. He did not see far before him-he was not ready in applying theory to practice-he did not foresee the coming storm. Peel's death will exercise a great influence upon the Peelite body. Graham is a great sufferer by the change, as he had constantly stood by Peel when his other friends went different ways. Upon Gladstone it will have the effect of

removing a weight from a spring." Here, again, is perhaps the most damaging sentence that has ever been written concerning the modern House of Commons, with which we may conclude this chapter. It is much to be regretted that Sir George did not draw the obvious exception of men actuated by Christian principle, and apparently does not perceive that Christian principle will alone save a popular legislature from the evil of selfish personal objects.

"I have written a long letter to Tocqueville, to explain to him that the present state of politics is dangerous to nothing, except the morality of public men. I have shown him how this danger equally besets both sides of the House-how public morality is equally promoted by finding excuses for sup.porting men who abandon their principles, and for not supporting men who act upon their principles, the motive in both cases being purely personal."

CHAPTER XIV.

On Turning-Points in National History.

ANOTHER aspect of turning-points in life is that of those in the history of nations. This must be glanced at briefly. National life and individual life are closely connected. The individual is the state seen through a magnifying lens. The state is the individual seen through the diminishing lens. To use the Platonic image, what we read in the one case in small characters we read in the other case in large characters.

There is a well-known book which speaks of such turningpoints as the "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World," an arbitrary enumeration indeed, but still, taking the uncertain for a certain number, indicating the tremendous issues dependent on such decisive turning-points.

For instance, what a moment was that when at Marathon the Medes and Persians, with their cimeters and lunar spears, broke before the Athenians, and were driven back into the marshes! Then Asia precipitated itself upon Europe, and the civilization of the West was for the moment trembling in the balance.

What a moment was that, nigh twenty-three centuries later, when the English had turned the French at Waterloo, and the Duke anxiously waited for Blucher that he might reap the fruits of victory! Again, let us look at that mighty historical drama which has been unrolled during the Franco-Prussian war. Did ever high-handed violence meet with so rapid and overwhelming a retribution? What a moment was that when,