Evelina_ in a day? 'The
thing is impossible,' cried Burke; 'they took me three days doing nothing
else.' Now, _Evelina_ is a good novel, but _Silas Marner_ is a better.

Wordsworth has been called the High Priest of Nature. Burke may be
called the High Priest of Order--a lover of settled ways, of justice,
peace, and security. His writings are a storehouse of wisdom, not the
cheap shrewdness of the mere man of the world, but the noble, animating
wisdom of one who has the poet's heart as well as the statesman's brain.
Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the
springs of Burke. 'Have you read your Burke?' is at least as sensible a
question to put to a parliamentary candidate, as to ask him whether he is
a total abstainer or a desperate drunkard. Something there may be about
Burke to regret, and more to dispute; but that he loved justice and hated
iniquity is certain, as also it is that for the most part he dwelt in the
paths of purity, humanity, and good sense. May we be found adhering to
them!

THE MUSE OF HISTORY.

Two distinguished men of letters, each an admirable representative of his
University--Mr. John Morley and Professor Seeley--have lately published
opinions on the subject of history, which, though very likely to prove
right, deserve to be carefully considered before assent is bestowed upon
them.

Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland Institute, and speaking in the
Town Hall of Birmingham, said: 'I do not in the least want to know what
happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly
through what is happening to-day,' and this same indifference is
professed, though certainly nowhere displayed, in other parts of Mr.
Morley's writings. {178}

Professor Seeley never makes his point quite so sharp as this, and
probably would hesitate to do so, but in the _Expansion of England_ he
expounds a theory of history largely based upon an indifference like that
which Mr. Morley professed at Birmingham. His book opens thus: 'It is a
favourite maxim of mine that history, while it should be scientific in
its method, should pursue a practical object--that is, it should not
merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view
of the present and his forecast of the future. Now, if this maxim be
sound, the history of England ought to end with something that might be
called a moral.'

This, it must be admitted, is a large order. The ta