. We live, as
Professor Mahaffy has reminded us, in an Alexandrian age. We are wounded
with archaeology and exquisite scholarship, and must drag our slow length
along . . . We were talking about literature. Where are the essayists,
the Lambs, and the Hazlitts? I know you are going to say Andrew Lang; I
say it every day; it is like an Amen in the Prayer-book; it occurs quite
as frequently in periodical literature. He _was_ my favourite essayist,
during the _last_ fifteen years of the _last_ century. What is he now?
An historian, a folk-lorist, an archaeologist, a controversialist. I
believe he is an expert on portraits of Mary Stuart. You were going on
to say G. K. Chesterton--

L. C. No. I was going to say Max Beerbohm. Some of his essays I put
beside Lamb's, and above Hazlitt's. He has style; but then I am
prejudiced because he is the only modern artist I really admire. He is a
superb draughtsman and our only caricaturist. Then there is George
Moore. I don't care for his novels, but his essays are delightful.
George Moore really counts. Few people know so little about art; yet how
delightfully he writes about it. Everything comes to him as a surprise.
He gives you the same sort of enjoyment as you would derive from hearing
a nun preach on the sins of smart society.

L. T. Moore is one of many literary Acteons who have mistaken Diana for
Aphrodite.

L. C. You mean he is great dear; but he gets hold of the right end of
the stick.

L. T. And he generally soils it. But you know nothing about literature.
The age requires blood and Kipling gave it Condy's Fluid (_drinks barley
water_). The age requires life, and Moore gave us a gallantee show from
Montmartre (_drinks barley water_). Even I require life. To-morrow I am
off to Aix.

L. C.--les Bains?

L. T. No, la-Chapelle!

L. C. Oh, then we shall probably meet. Thanks. I can get on my own
overcoat. I shall probably be there myself in a few weeks.

ABBEY THOUGHTS.

Shall some memorial of Herbert Spencer be erected in the Abbey, or rather
in what journalists love to call the 'National Valhalla,' the 'English
Pantheon,' or the 'venerable edifice,' where, as Macaulay says, the dust
of the illustrious accusers, _et cetera_----? The question was once
agitated in a daily paper. It seems that the Dean, when approached on
the subject, acted like one of his predecessors in the case of Byron. The
Dean is in a very difficult position,