but on the other hand, no signs of culture, and, indeed, no regularity in paying bills, will make a "ramshackle" household "respectable." Among the chief guardians and patrons of the Respectable Ideal are policemen, small clergymen, domestic servants, tradespeople, menial persons in general, parochial officers, and landlords of small properties. On the whole, the essential features of the Respectable Ideal may be described as Physical Comfort and Menial Vanity. The relation of Physical Comfort to the progress of Science has been touched by a friend of mine in passages to which I shall have to refer hereafter, in resuming the subject of the transition from 1820 to 1870. In the meanwhile, to prevent as far as I can any cynical inferences, or at least to prevent any one's supposing that such inferences are of my own drawing, I may state in small compass my own belief upon a small but important part of the question of progress. It is this-The majority of the human race, civilised or not, are low in type; they have poor consciences; the merest film of poetic sensibility; and, though capable of much kindness and friendliness, are, on the whole, moved by poor motives. But most people mean well, and, in ways which only Heaven understands, the lower social forces are, in fact, controlled by the upper, in such wise that the total outcome is a general movement of things towards the Best Thing. It would be almost trivially obvious to remark that the problem of the efficient causes of the real progress of the last thirty years or so is one of the deepest complexity; it must necessarily be so. In the course of the general gossip with which it is proposed to break up the inevitable egotism of these autobiographical notes, I shall hope to deal with several portions of the problem from my own point of view. But in this number I can only signalise two or three points. There are certain words which inevitably come to the front when we compare our own times with those of our fathers or grandfathers. Yet the changes have been rung so often on some of those words that when pronounced to-day they have something of the effect of novelty. Fifteen years ago, the first two of the words I am now going to write down would have roused the cry of trite! or commonplace !—and deservedly. But after doing duty in public till we all got sick of them, they retired to the background, and remained there so long that they may now reappear with something of the gloss of their first yesterdays upon them. The three words I write down after this apology are, the steam-engine; the printing press (from which, indeed, the steam-engine cannot in practice, though it may in logic, be separated); and organization. Leaving the first two of these words for the present, we will have at once just a sentence or two about the third. In all the historic ages men have been prompted to organization and have found the uses of it. But most of its later forms seem to me to be in essence religious. They have been combinations prompted, or at least strongly approved by the conscience, for purposes which it was believed the Ruling Power of the world would help the combining persons to consummate. I believe the French Revolution and Methodism to have been both of them outbreaks at opposite poles of the same religious force. As far as this country is concerned I believe the secret of that wonderful force of voluntary conscientious organization which fills so large a place in the story of to-day, to have been begged, borrowed, stolen, or caught from Methodism. I will not pursue this topic any farther till I come to the steamengine question, or to Charles Knight's "Penny Magazine," to which my obligations were and are inexpressible. But to prevent misconceptions in the matter of loyalty, I will just add that I have personally no republican hankerings whatever. So long as government does its duty-the chief part of that duty being, in my eyes, to make people leave others free to carry out their own ideas of duty and happiness-my natural tastes would incline me to a form of government in which "the untouched and the ornamental" played a conspicuous part. I may explain the force of this expression by an anecdote, though it will be out of its place here as to date. I was a member of the Society of Friends of Italy in the days when Mr. Masson was Secretary and Mr. Stansfeld Assistant Secretary. Being present at one of their soirées at Freemasons' Hall, I there heard Mr. Masson read, in his emphatic way, a letter of apology for absence from Leigh Hunt; that is to say, I caught part of the document. I gathered from what reached me that Leigh Hunt flinchedor at least that the people on the platform, Mazzini, Masson, Stansfeld, F. W. Newman, and others, thought he flinched-from the whole concern because its programme was republican. At all events his letter expressed an opinion that healthy and cultivated human nature demanded "the untouched and the ornamental" at the top of the social fabric. An ironical smile went round the faces of the upper powers of the meeting, and a stout gentleman near me whispered"pension." Let no one dream that I repeat the sarcasm approvingly. The sentiment was eminently characteristic of Leigh Hunt, Not to make this paper too long, I pause here, because I want to introduce certain lines about White Conduit House, which some readers may be amused to see. They come from the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1760: "WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE. And to White Conduit House, We will go, will go, will go.' "WISH'D Sunday's come-mirth brightens ev'ry face, 336 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IRRECONCILEABLE. Or alley kennel-wash'd, Cheapside, Cornhill, Or Cranborne, thee for calcuments renown'd, [?] They walk, they sit, they stand. What crowds press on First vacant bench or chair in long room plac'd. Here prig with prig holds conference polite, And indiscriminate the gaudy beau And sloven mix. Here he, who all the week Took bearded mortals by the nose, or sat Weaving dead hairs, and whistling wretched strain, And compliments extern, 'twould swell my page While tea and cream and butter'd rolls can please, So long, White Conduit House, shall be thy fame." It must be borne in mind that in what I said about White Conduit House in the previous paper, as in many other cases, I am often, necessarily, scenting my way rather than speaking from particular knowledge. What I say will always be representatively true, but there may be errors in small matters: for example, there may been no spring of water rising under the white flint hut that was mentioned. AN IRRECONCILEABLE. have (To be continued.) PROSE AND VERSE. THE "music of the future " is at last slowly approaching its apotheosis; since "Lohengrin" has signally triumphed in Italy, and the South is opening its ears to the subtle secrets of the Teutonic Muse. The outcome of Wagner's consummate art is a war against mere melody and tintinabulation, such as have for many long years delighted the ears of both gods and groundlings. Is it too bold, then, to anticipate for future "Poetry" some such similar triumph? Freed from the fetters of pedantry on the one hand, and escaping the contagion of mere jingle on the other, may not Poetry yet arise to an intellectual dignity parallel to the dignity of the highest music and philosophy? It may seem at a first glance over-sanguine to hope so much, at the very period when countless Peter Pipers of Verse have overrun literature so thoroughly, robbing poetry of all its cunning, and "picking their pecks of pepper" to the delight of a literary Music Hall; but, in good truth, when disease has come to a crisis so enormous, we have good reason to hope for amendment. A surfeit of breakdowns and nigger-melodies, or of Offenbach and Hervé, or of "Lays" and "Rondels," and " Songs without Sense," is certain to lead to a reaction all in good time. A vulgar taste, of course, will always cling to vulgarity, preferring in all honesty the melody of Gounod to the symphony of Beethoven, and the tricksy, shallow verse of a piece like Poe's "Bells" to the subtly interwoven harmony of a poem like Matthew Arnold's "Strayed Reveller." True Art, however, must triumph in the end. Sooner or later, when the Wagner of poetry arises, he will find the world ready to understand him ; and we shall witness some such effect as Coleridge predicteda crowd, previously familiar with Verse only, vibrating in wonder and delight to the charm of oratio soluta, or loosened speech. Already, in a few words, we have sketched out a subject for some future æsthetic philosopher or philosophic historian. A sketch of the past history of poetry, in England alone, would be sufficiently startling; and surely a most tremendous indictment might be drawn thence against Rhyme. Glance back over the works of British bards, from Chaucer downwards; study the delitice Poetarum Anglicorum. What delightful scraps of melody! what glorious bursts of song! Here is Chaucer, wearing indeed with perfect grace his metrical dress; for it sits well upon him, and becomes his hoar antiquity, and we would not for the world see him clad in the freedom of prose. Here is Spenser; and Verse becomes him well, fitly modulating the faëry tale he has to tell. Here are Gower, Lydgate, Dunbar, Surrey, Gascoigne, Daniel, Drayton, and many others: each full of dainty devices; none strong enough to stand without a rhyme-prop on each side of him. Of all sorts of poetry, except the very best, these gentlemen give us samples; and their works are delightful reading. As mere metrists, cunning masters of the trick of verse, Gascoigne and Dunbar are acknowledged masters. Take the following verses from the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins": "Then Ire came in with sturt and strife, He brandeist like a beir; Boasters, braggarts, and bargainers, All boden in feir of weir... Next in the dance followed Envy, Hid malice and despite. For privy hatred that traitor trembled, And flatterers unto men's faces, With rowmaris of false leasings; Of them can ne'er be quite!" This, allowing for the lapse of years, still reads like "Peter Piper" at his best; easy, alliterative, pleasant, if neither deep nor cunning. For this sort of thing, and for many higher sorts of things, Rhyme was admirably adapted, and is still admirably adapted. When, however, a larger music and a more loosened speech was wanted, Rhyme went overboard directly. On the stage even, Rhyme did very well, as long as the matter was in the Ralph Royster Doyster vein; but a larger soul begot a larger form, and the blank verse of Gorboduc was an experiment in the direction of loosened speech. How free this speech became, how by turns loose and noble, how subtle and flexible it grew, in the hands of Shakspeare and the Elizabethans, all men know; and rare must have been the delight of listeners whose ears had been satiated so long with mere alliteration and jingle. The language of Shakspeare, indeed, must be accepted as the nearest existing approach to the highest and freest poetical language. Here and there rhymed dialogue was used, when the theme was rhythmic and not too profound d; as in the pretty love-scenes of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the bantering, punning chat of Love's Labour's Lost. True song sparkled up in its place like a fountain. But the level dialogue for |