existing for society in that country; a most imperfect medus vivendi indeed, but the only one practically attained there up to this time as a substitute for anarchy. Simply to leave to the Irish people the free and entire disposal of their own affairs is recommended by some counsellors as the one safe solution of the Irish difficulty. But the safety of this solution depends upon the state and dispositions of the people to whom we apply it. May not a people be in such a state that Shakespeare's words hold true of it—

Your affections are

A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil?

And may it not be affirmed, that if ever those words seemed true of any people, they seem true of the Irish at this hour?

To heal the estrangement between Ireland and England is what is needed above all things, and I cannot say that the Land Act appears to me to have in itself the elements for healing it. Nor can I see the use of pretending to find them in it if they are not really there.

will say that the English Government has done them a service without intending it, and without understanding and acknowledging the justice of their case. But so strong was the justice of their case, they will say, that it victoriously established itself as soon as the English Government, not dreaming of any such result, gave them a tribunal for determining a fair rent.

It seems to me impossible not to see this, if one does not either shut one's eyes or turn them another way. We shall have brought about a radical change, we shall have established by law a divided ownership full of critical consequences, we shall have disturbed the ac cepted and ordinary constitutive characters of property,— and we shall get little or no gratitude for it; we shall be said to have done it without intending it. Our measure is not likely, therefore, of itself to avail to win the affections of the Irish people to us and to heal their estrangement. Yet to make a radical change, without doing this, opens no good prospect for the future. To break down the landlords in Ireland, as we have already broken down the Protestant Church there, is merely to complete the destruction of the modus vivendi hitherto

the state and iscestors I te geme

apply May at a pele e si Shakespeare i waris bil me f

And may it not be afirmed a free 1 seemed true of any people, they seem me of fie

Nothing, indeed, could be more absurd than for irresponsible people to press seriously their fancy solutions, though they may properly enough throw them out, on a suitable occasion, for purposes of discussion and illustration. Nothing, moreover, is further from my thoughts, in what is here said, than to find fault with the responsible Government, which has to provide not a fancy solution for difficulties, but a solution which may be put in practice. I know that it was as impossible to go on governing Ireland by means of the landlords as by means of the Protestant Church. I am ready to admit that the Government, the power and purchase at their disposal being what it is, could not well but have had recourse to some such measure as the Land Act. I think, even, as I have said in the following pages, that the Land Act of the Government, with what it does and what it gives the power of doing, is probably quite capable of satisfying the Irish people as a Land Act, if a certain other indispensable condition is complied with. But this condition the Land Act will not of itself realise. The indispensable condition is, that England and English civilisation shall become more attractive; or, as I began by saying, that we should not only do to Ireland something different

from what we have done hitherto, but should also be something different. On this need of a changed and more attractive power in English civilisation almost all the essays in the present volume, and not alone those dealing directly with Ireland, will be found to insist.

The barren logomachies of Plato's Theatetus are relieved by half a dozen immortal pages, and among them are those in which is described the helplessness of the philosopher in the ways of the world, the helplessness of the man of the world in a spiritual crisis. The philosopher Thales in the ditch had been an easy and a frequent subject for merriment; it was reserved for Plato to amuse himselt with the practical politician and man of the world in a spiritual crisis. Mr. Jowett is uncommonly happy in his translation of Plato's account of the man of the world, at such a crisis, 'drawn into the upper air,' having to 'get himself out of his commonplaces to the consideration of government and of human happiness and misery in general,-what they are, and how a man is to attain the one and avoid the other.' 'Then, indeed,' says Plato, 'when that narrow, vain, little practical mind is called to account about all this, he gives the philosopher his revenge. For dizzied by the height at which he is