s from all the Conservative journals. There seems to
be an intensity of exasperation, arising from the ancient prejudice
against poets. A poet treating of politics! Let him keep to
rhymes, and leave the serious business of life to us practical men,
sober-minded men--men not led away by our imaginations--men not moved
to absurdities by sentiment--solid, sensible, moderate men! Let him
play with capricious hand on the chords which are resonant to his
will; but let him not mistake his frivolous accomplishment for the
power to play upon the world's great harp, drawing from its grander
chords the large responses of more solemn themes. Let him "strike
the light guitar" as long as women will listen, or fools applaud. But
politics is another sphere; into that he can only pass to make himself
ridiculous.

Thus reason the profound. Thus saith the good practical man, who,
because his mind is a congeries of commonplaces, piques himself on
not being led away by his imagination. The owl prides himself on the
incontestable fact that he is not an eagle.

To us the matter has another aspect. The appearance of Poets and men
of Sentiment in the world of Politics is a good symptom; for at a
time like the present, when positive doctrine can scarcely be said to
exist in embryo, and assuredly not in any maturity, the presence of
Imagination and Sentiment--prophets who endow the present with some
of the riches borrowed from the future--is needed to give grandeur
and generosity to political action, and to prevent men from entirely
sinking into the slough of egotism and routine. Salt is not meat,
but we need the salt to preserve meat from corruption. Lamartine and
Victor Hugo may not be profound statesmen; but they have at least
this one indispensable quality of statesmanship; they look beyond the
hour, and beyond the circle, they care more for the nation than for
"measures;" they have high aspirations and wide sympathies. Lamartine
in power committed many errors, but he also did great things, moved
thereto by his "Imagination." He abolished capital punishment; and he
freed the slaves; had the whole Provisional Government been formed of
such men it would have been well for it and for France.

We are as distinctly aware of the unfitness of a poet for politics, as
any of those can be who rail at Hugo and Lamartine. Images, we know,
are not convictions; aspirations will not do the work; grand speeches
will not solve the problems. The poet is a "