the subordination of construction to expression, the choice of unworthy subjects, and the lack of care in execution.

We do not assert that Mr. Swinburne has shown any remarkable tendency to fall into any of these vices of style, but neither can we declare that he is wholly exempt from them. An exuberant fertility of expression, such as Mr. Swinburne is gifted with, degenerates sometimes into a rank overgrowth of verbal conceits and tricks of language; ease in writing, too, lures the poet to dally with trivialities, to pluck flowers and play with pebbles by the wayside, while he should be treading the rugged rising path that leads to the temple of glorious, perfected Beauty. To resist such temptations as have beguiled even greater than he, to go back no further than half a century-Byron and Keats,demands no common vigour of character, no common enthusiasm for art. We have, perhaps, been mistaken in attributing these high qualities to Mr. Swinburne; indolence, or vanity, or erroneous judgment may defeat their operation; but of one thing there can be no doubt. If Mr. Swinburne has earnestly at heart the attainment of artistic perfection, if thereby he desires to touch the higher nature of his fellows and to take a permanent place in English literature, he will not fail through any natural incompetency. Fame is not to be won save by self-discipline and humility: art must be wooed through labour and patience. So he hopes to reach these, the poet must learn and unlearn much; but if he falters not in the fight, the prize must fall to him in the end.

PEEL.

BY GOLDWIN SMITH,

Professor at the Ithaca University, U. St.

[Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1868.]

"

PEEL he belongs now to the past, and the baronetcy may be laid aside had the misfortune to be bred a Tory, and deeply committed to Toryism at a moment when the end of Toryism was near. This, with the fell exigencies of party, darkened a career which, though in a certain sense eminently successful, is spoken of on the whole rather with a feeling of sadness. He was more fortunate, however, than William Pitt: Pitt setting out as a popular Minister, ended by being the slave of oligarchic reaction; Peel setting out as the servant of oligarchic reaction, ended by being the Minister of the nation. In the early character of each man we see as usual the germ of the later. Pitt, a parliamentary and economical reformer, did not hesitate to allow himself to be made Minister by an unconstitutional exercise of the power of the Crown. Peel, as a youthful Irish Secretary, carrying on the work of Tory coercion in Ireland, was already an Irish reformer. Peel sprang, and derived the leading features of his

from the very core of English industry. His were yeomen in the north of England. His and grandfather were leaders in the great march

of industry which marked the latter part of the last century, and which made Lancashire what it is. They were not inventors, like Hargreaves, Arkwright, or Watt, but they were clear-sighted and open-minded appreciators of inventions, which they applied with energy and success. They were, in short, as manufacturers, what their descendant was as a statesman. Solid work, integrity, fortitude, indomitable perseverance, the best qualities of the industrial character grafted on that of the yeomanthe qualities by which English trade, in that day at least, was distinguished, and of which it had reason to be proud-marked the industrial career of the Peels. The vicissitudes of trade they encountered with brave hearts. Sir Lawrence Peel has told us how, at the time of a great financial crisis, when sinister rumours touching Mr. Peel's solvency were abroad, Mrs. Peel put on her best clothes and went to church to brave out calumny. Conflicts with machine-breaking artizans, which the Peels, like the other introducers of machinery, had to encounter, may have given a Tory bias to the temper of the house. Immense wealth in the end flowed in: as usual, a great part of it was invested in land; and, as usual, the object now was to found a family. The baronetcy came from Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, who, by studying the commercial interests and financial questions which the aristocratic and classical statesmen of the day commonly disdained, had bound commerce to his fortunes. One of the most devoted of these commercial Pittites was the first Sir Robert Peel. He embraced with fervour the whole creed of his leader, its fallacies included. He voted for the Resolution, that a depreciated paper note was as good as a pound sterling; and he suffered great anguish when he found

himself the father of a bullionist and a resumer of cash payments.

The old man conceived very ambitious hopes for his promising son, and did, it seems, some mischief by not keeping them to himself. The young Peel (born 1788,) was to be a second Pitt, and he was led in his boyhood to the altar and devoted to the gods of Castlereagh and Eldon. Thus he was a bondsman to Toryism before he had begun to think. As a set-off he was reared in a home where the middle class virtues reigned, where the moral law was observed, where labour was honoured, where frugality was regarded in the midst of wealth. It was also a religious home, and Peel to the end of his life was a religious man with a sincere sense of responsibility to God.

He was sent to the most aristocratic school of the day, and to the most aristocratic college of the most aristocratic university. Both at school and at college he worked hard. His examination in the Oxford schools was an ovation, and gained him what were then unprecedented honours. According to Oxford tradition, he had already contracted the heaviness and pompousness of diction which official life confirmed, and which were fatal, not to business speaking, but to eloquence. He is said, in translating the passage of Lucretius, Suave mari magno, to have rendered suave, 'It is a source of gratification.' Harrow and Oxford taught him only classics and mathematics; but his speeches show that he read a good deal of history, and he acquired law enough for the purposes of a legislator. In after life he loved scientific men, and took interest in, and was capable of forming a rational judgment on scientific questions. The philosophy of history was still unborn,

and therefore history was to him, not a chart and compass, but at most a record of experience. His theology seems to have remained simply the Church of England Protestantism, though he grew, later in life, more liberal in his sentiments towards Roman Catholicism and Dissent. His ecclesiastical appointments, when he was a Minister, were mainly 'High and Dry.' He abhorred the Neo-Catholic school of Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman, and by it he was in turn abhorred. In him Anglo-Saxon antipathy to priestly domination was the root of the aversion.

Entering Parliament (1809) under the evil star of a great school-boy reputation, he nevertheless succeeded, not in a brilliant, but in a solid way. The doom of his mental independence was soon sealed by promotion to office under Percival. Shortly afterwards, under the Liverpool government, he was sent, when only twentyfour years old, as Chief Secretary to Ireland. It was a proof that his business qualities and his strength of character were respected, but a more calamitous distinction could not have been conferred upon a young man. For six years, the most critical years of all for the formation of character and opinion, he was engaged in upholding Ascendancy and doing the evil work of coercion. The embers of 1798 were still glowing, the struggle for Catholic Emancipation was raging, and large districts of the island were a prey to agrarian conspiracy, and outrage, which assumed almost the dimensions of an agrarian civil war. Peel's associates were the satellites of Ascendancy, some of them red with the blood of '98, men whose cruelty towards the subject race was equalled only by their corruption. Corruption and force were, in fact, the only springs of