y ultramontane views. You were, as I have hinted, the
first to abrogate its use in my favour. When you, if not Consul, were at
least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an
essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.' It is not included, for
obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most
of the contents. These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle
miscellaneous and disconnected. Still there is a thread common to all,
though I cannot claim for them uniformity. There is no strict adherence
to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, essay,
criticism, and poetry. Count Tolstoy, however, has shown us that a novel
may be an essay rather than a story. No less a writer than Swift used
the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his
fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays. Plato, Sir
Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to
transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth. Some of
the greatest poets--Ruskin and Pater for example--have chosen prose for
their instrument of expression. If that theory is true of literature--and
I ask you to accept it as true--how much truer is it of journalism, at
least such journalism as mine; though I see a great gulf between
literature and journalism far greater than that between fiction and essay-
writing. The line, too, dividing the poetry of Keats from the prose of
Sir Thomas Browne is far narrower, in my opinion, than the line dividing
Pope from Tennyson. And I say this mindful of Byron's scornful couplet
and the recent animadversions of Lord Morley.

There are essays in my book cast in the form of fiction; criticism cast
in the form of parody; and a vein of high seriousness sufficiently
obvious, I hope, behind the masques and phases of my jesting. The
psychological effects produced by works of art and archaeology, by drama
and books, on men and situations--such are the themes of these passing
observations.

And though you find them like an old patchwork quilt I hope you will
laugh, in token of your acceptance, if not of the book at least of my
lasting regard and friendship for yourself.

Ever yours,
ROBERT ROSS.

5 _Hertford Street_, _Mayfair_, _W_.

A CASE AT THE MUSEUM.

It is a common error to confuse the archaeologist with the mere collector
of ignoble trifles, equally pleased with an unusual postage stamp