tion.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this
vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr.
Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly
a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it
is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us
what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime
Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and
deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a
big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a
Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an
idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be,
and many are, thankful for it.

TAR AND WHITEWASH

I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all
made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the
fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore,
glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the
great, generous public was buying the _Lives of Twelve Bad Women_, by
Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it
should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies
_Twelve Good Men_, it probably never occurred to him that the title
suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them,
_Twelve Bad Men_ and _Twelve Bad Women_, have made their appearance. I
still await, with great patience, _Twelve Good Women_. Twelve was the
number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask,
Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no
need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit.

My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any
means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who
would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly
good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and
Masters of Colleges are good men--in fact, they must be so by the
statutes--but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness.
Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious
man--undeniably, when he came to die, an old man--but he was no better
than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all
through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not
understand the principle of selection. I did no