hardly exerted an appreciable influence on American thought, and the
transitory authority of Coleridge is now merged in more potent agencies;
yet when the essays bearing those great names were first printed in the
periodical then edited by Mill, they made an era in contemporary English
literature, and therefore indirectly modified our own.

Thus, in one way or another, almost all these essays have a value. The
style is always clear, always strong, sometimes pointed, seldom
brilliant, never graceful; it is the best current sample, indeed, of
that good, manly, rather colorless English which belongs naturally to
Parliamentary Speeches and Quarterly Reviews. Not being an American, the
author may use novel words without the fear of being called provincial;
so that _understandable_, _evidentiary_, _desiderate_, _leisured_, and
_inamoveability_ stalk at large within his pages. As a controversialist,
he is a trifle sharp, but never actually discourteous; and it is
pleasant to see that his chivalry makes him gentlest in dealing with the
humblest, while his lance rings against the formidable shield of a
Cambridge Professor or a Master of Trinity as did that of the disguised
Ivanhoe upon the shield of Bois-Guilbert.

The historical essays in this collection are exceedingly admirable,
especially the defence of Pericles and the Athenians, in the second
paper on Crete's History. In reading the articles upon ethical and
philosophical questions, one finds more drawbacks. The profoundest
truths can hardly be reached, perhaps, by one who, at the end of his
life, as at the beginning, is a sensationalist in metaphysics and a
utilitarian in ethics. It is only when dealing with these themes that he
seems to show any want of thoroughness: unfairness he never shows. In
the closing tract on "Utilitarianism," which the American publishers
have added to the English collection, one feels especially this
drawback. As the theory of universal selfishness falls so soon as one
considers that a man is capable of resigning everything that looks like
happiness, and of plunging into apparent misery, because he thinks it
right,--so the theory of utilitarianism falls, when one considers that a
man is capable of abstaining from an action that would apparently be
useful to all around him, from a secret conviction that it is wrong in
itself. There are many things which are intrinsically wrong, although,
so far as one can see, they would do good to all around. T