as
surely as it spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that
the finest appreciation of Carlyle--a man whom every critic among
English-speaking races had picked to pieces and discussed and
reconstructed a score of times--was left to be uttered by an inspired
loafer in Camden, New Jersey. I love to read of Whitman dropping the
newspaper that told him of Carlyle's illness, and walking out under
the stars--

"Every star dilated, more vitreous, larger than usual. Not as in
some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the
rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible and
just as high. Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones. To
the north-east and north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids,
Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through
the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and
bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying."

In such a mood and place--not in a club after a dinner unearned by
exercise--a man is likely, if ever, to utter great criticism as well
as to conceive great poems. It is from such a mood and place that we
may consider the following fine passage fitly to issue:--

"The way to test how much he has left his country were to
consider, or try to consider, for a moment the array of British
thought, the resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as
existing to-day, _but with Carlyle left out._ It would be like an
army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich
one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more--horsemen and rapid
infantry, and banners flying--but the last heavy roar so dear to
the ear of the trained soldier, and that settles fate and
victory, would be lacking."

For critic and artist, as for their fellow-creatures, I believe an
open-air life to be the best possible. And that is why I am glad to
read in certain newspaper paragraphs that Mr. Gilbert Parker is at
this moment on the wide seas, and bound for Quebec, where he starts to
collect material for a new series of short stories. His voyage will
loose him, in all likelihood, from the little he retains of club art.

Of course, a certain proportion of our novelists must write of town
life: and to do this fitly they must live in town. But they must
study in the town itself, not in a club. Before anyone quotes Dickens
against me, let him reflect, first on the immens