No, reader, we do not pretend that our selection of topics is infallible, or the literary merits of our writers infinite. In fact, there is only one power that can sift out the thoughts of an age, and hold just what is important and precious, and that is Time. What will this age be remembered for in a thousand years? That is the secret of the world, to know which were more than to share with Tithonus in the prayers of Eos, or even to bathe in the fountain of immortal youth. The scattered energies and efforts of these times will be summed up in a few great contributions to the life of the race, and all that will not be summed up in these is naught. How it would surprise us to know what these shall be! What a contempt we should have for much that makes a loud noise now!

For example, there are Mrs. Stowe's amazing discoveries about Lord and Lady Byron, to which really no phrase properly applies but the homely old one of "a mare's nest.' Could such stuff ever see the light, or at most become the general table-talk of the literary world, in a self-respecting age, of genuine tastes? To be sure, it has its quietus now, since the last Quarterly prints letters from Lady Byron herself to Lady Augusta Leigh, written just after the former, as Mrs. Stowe says, had been driven from home and hope by the latter's execrable crime, calling her "dearest friend," and overflowing with love, sympathy, and trust. This leaves Byron's widow in a sad fix, but we all feel for her, bitterly wronged as she was, and acquit her of a deliberate outrage on her husband's memory, on the ground of insanity, or call it delusion. She, at least, never published her vile imaginations, but used them only to work on credulous minds in private, and to win their pity. Strange that the world should have listened to the story, and that it should cost so much trouble to silence it and keep it out of history. Well, the mill of Time has ground it slowly, but has ground it "exceeding small." How much fills our ears to-day that ought to follow it, and must?

What a thing it were, then, to leap forward a millennium; to catch the spirit of the far future; to look down upon our own age, with its uncertain conflicts and its dim perceptions, from the serene height of remote

posterity, and in the light of the final judgment of history; and then to bring back into its working-day life such an order and purpose as that vision would inspire! Had the poorest scribbler in Charlemagne's day had but a peep into this century, he would surely have left us an immortal record of the things he saw, and which no man can ever see again, such as would now solve some of the hardest problems of history. But how do we know that all the worlds of words now written and printed every day really express what the coming generations will want to know-that they really tell what the future will ask about us? Shakespeare was but of yesterday; the great-grandfathers of men we have known might possibly have seen him; yet what would you not give for a page of this maga zine, from one of his friends, telling the truth about him?

We shall not have that page, nor make any of these fine dreams into experience. But he who would be a just critic must take up Time into his mind; must have for his point of view the far future; must bring his intellect into the few broad lines of thought into which the movement of the age is to concentrate itself at last, and which are to be prolonged to other ages. At least he must aim at this; and the nearer he can come to it the greater his success. True criticism has for its best feature the sense for what is abiding, for what is immortal; detects this and honors it, and so does for the day the work of time. It is certainly a rare article. Was it ever rarer than now? This is often called an age of criticism; but is it not rather an age of impatient and shallow judgments? It produces abundantly, and in part greatly, but does not know its own greatness, nor divide wheat and chaff. In recent American literature there are enough and able strictures on many things in government, in society, and in books; but where is there a contribution of note to that form of culture which makes each mind a test of truth, informing it with the principles by which societics and books live and die?

Perhaps there has been nothing of this kind lately more important than the Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, which his wife has just edited so tastefully for Macmillan and Co., of London. When an author has been

dead nine years, it seems late to introduce him; but it is a fact that Mr. Clough has had no fair introduction to the American or even the English public until this charming monument appeared. As for direct criticism, the book contains less of it than it provokes ; except a few of his essays here reprinted, with two charming "Letters of Parepidemus," first published in Putnam's Monthly in 1853, there is hardly any thing formal in this line. Yet the tone of the man is so high, partakes so much of that which is of no age or nation, but of humanity, that the genuine enjoyment of it is a good help to forming a literary judg ment, a werdende Einsicht. Clough's was a poorly husbanded mind. His powers, gathered up early and concentrated on a worthy purpose, would surely have achieved work among the best, and, indeed, none but a mind capable of this can be a true judge of others' work. The critic may not be an actual producer, but he must have the capacity which, rightly trained, could have done the thing he judges. Yet, to go to the bottom of the thought at once, has not every man this capacity entire? Is not humanity as a whole in each one-the undeveloped Homer, Bacon, Washington, folded up in germ and hidden away in the depths of each? Well, not denying this, it is safe to say that, as the wing must be feathered before it can fly, the intelligence must be brought out of the rudimentary form into consciousness and cultivation before it can appreciate. Clough's strong passion was hatred for the rudiments of literary organs in himself, and desire for finish, for perfectness, that every writing might be a living form aptly embodying exact truth of thought.

He was a poet, too; but in poetry as well as criticism he was out of tune with his times, and is only growing into popularity with the next generation. His love and reverence for Tennyson were profound, perhaps just because they differed so widely. Tennyson's best art has never been the delight of the multitude; but a poem by him is not only a perfect work of art, it is a battalion of phrases, an army of thoughts, from which stragglers find their way through all literature. These "jewels, five words long," make most of his popularity. But Clough is rarely quotable. He has one thing to say; his poem is the way to say it; and he struggles to make it mean just that, and nothing besides. No fine words or thoughts divert his attention, or arrest him for a moment. Homer did much the same, and Dante; but their greater

genius blazed out sideways also in immortal gleams of beauty, because they could not help it. The greatest of all poets is the most quoted, having said the best and wisest things; but his greatness is shown far more in wholes than in parts, and would not seem less to those who have caught a real sight of it, if all the pretty sayings commonly known were left out. We are not comparing Clough with these men; in him not only all the pretty sayings are left out, but all else, except indications of the severe and high ideal he was growing toward. He has left but one complete poem which can make a very intense impression-his Easter Day in Naples; a bold utterance of the warfare in his mind between traditional faith and its sweet associations, on one side, and the skeptical culture of the times on the other. It is a struggle to save the chief symbol of his religion, while reason, though trying in vain to wrest it from him, quite changes its meaning. Even this fine poem lacks, the author plainly felt its lack, of just the perfect touch which signals greatness; but as long as the unending war of faith and fate, of the ideal and the actual, shall be waged with the weapons that are now clashing in it, with the creeds and the doubts of these times, so long will men find their unrest soothed by the expression such lines as these give it :

Is he not risen, and shall we not rise?
Oh, we unwise!

What did we dream, what wake we to discover?
Ye hills, fall on us, and ye mountains, cover 1
In darkness and great gloom,

Come ere we thought it is our day of doom;
From the cursed world, which is one tomb,
Christ is not risen !

Eat, drink, and play, and think that this is bliss;
There is no heaven but this
;

There is no hell,

Save Earth, which serves the purpose doubly well, Seeing it visits still,

With equalest apportionment of ill, Both good and bad alike, and brings to the same dust

The unjust and the just

With Christ, who is not risen.

Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved;
Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope
We are most hopeless, who had once most hope,
And most beliefless, that had most believed.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

As of the unjust, also of the just-
Yea, of that Just One, too!

It is the one sad Gospel that is true,
Christ is not risen.

But in a later hour I sat and heard
Another voice that spake-another graver word,
Weep not, it bade, whatever hath been said,
Though he be dead, he is not dead,
Nor gone, though fled,

Not lost, though vanished; Though he return not, though He lies and moulders low,

In the true creed

He is yet risen indeed,

Christ is yet risen.

Clough's greater friend, the laureate, has finished his new series of Idylls, "The Search for the Holy Grail," and we hope to read it before Christmas. There is a literary event, indeed! We often think what a thing it was to welcome a new play by Ben Jonson or a new poem by Milton, and wonder how the contemporaries of such men felt in expectancy of such works and in the supreme moment of grasping the prize. It is a great thing to be at hand, at the birth into the world of a permanent addition to its stock of high thoughts, of truth incarnated in a perfect form; but either all signs have failed, and new stars have ceased to shine in heaven above the cradle where the loved ones of the muses is laid, or else it will be our privilege to welcome to literature one of the songs of the immortals, in Tennyson's coming poem. Yet his greatest works are not those most quoted and most popular, and if the new Idyll should surpass the old ones, it may still bring less present praise than they did.

Were we a critical people, two events of the coming season in literature would be awaited more eagerly than a presidential election: the new Homer by Bryant and the new Essays by Emerson; the mature productions of writers who have passed the time of fever and struggle, and now speak from the calm heights of assured fame. If any man living can make the Iliad a household word in homes of this century, and in the English language of our artificial modern life, it is this New York poet of ours, who so wonderfully unites deep insight into men and nature with the simplicity and the loftiness of spirit which mark the true Epic genius. Emerson is known to all as of our greatest, but is less known still than he will be when real culture is more general. As the most perfect master of the English prose-sentence that ever wrote, and at the same time the most eloquent in these days of those whose eloquence is in thoughts, not words, he will be studied long, and will teach to our children's children

"Things wiser than were ever said in book, Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness."

But was there ever a truly critical people, outside of the Athens of Pericles? Not in Art, certainly. This province of criticism is much vulgarized of late, and indeed has little matter among us to work nobly on. Silence

is the best judgment now upon most of what pass for works of art among us, as it will surely and soon be the final one. Table-talk is full of chromo-lithographs now, which, if not art, are a sort of art interpreters. "They will do for painters what printing has done for authors," says one; "bring them to the people." Another answers: "Their fatal facility will vulgarize art, as the printingpress did literature; and as we now have proverbial philosophies and the like where we once had Iliads and Infernos, so we shall have Graces and Orends from the Demimonde in place of Raphael's Madonnas, and mock-life in rich dresses painted to sell, for Calame's glorious Alpine solitudes." But great popular inventions do not heed small cavils; the chromos go on improving, and breaking down the walls that have so long shut painters in from the mass of men. They already begin to enter into the general culture, and promise yet to win a greater triumph for art than it won in bringing the universal empire of Rome to the feet of her classic captive. The painter's fine touches and noblest contrasts begin to be copied, and he will soon paint, as the poet writes, at once for both hemispheres and a thousand homes. Without the printing-press, should we have Shakespeare? Perhaps; but were chromos old enough, we should have also Zeuxis and Parrhasius and Apollodorus.

If art, life's flower, is scarcely in bloom in America, the arts, its solid stem and support, are well rooted here. The great Fair of the American Institute has stood open in New York through October, with attractions for every eye that can appreciate comfort or skill. It was full of ingenious devices to make labor effective and life a luxury,-to save the organist the trouble of pressing the keys, the writer that of dipping his pen, the reader that of holding his book; cunning ways of handling outside blinds without opening the window, of holding the sash open or shut, immovably, as the hard chanced to leave it, and of ringing notice through all the chambers when any meddlesome intruder touches a door or window; new trunks, which it is pure pleasure to pack; new beds, too comfortable for any breakfast to entice one out of them; new ranges, stoves, tables, china, and chairs, so attractive that breakfast would draw Tithonus from Aurora's bed; new wash-tubs, work at which, considered as mere enjoyment, would rival the last novel. There was a confused nebula of enginery, too, which scrutiny resolved into stars of skill,

each with a good purpose and destiny of its own. The daily papers have told all about it; what they have not told is, that the display was, after all, a meagre expression of American invention, its samples, on the whole, less striking, less perfect, and far less cheap than any of at least four nations of Europe can show. If this Fair has told the whole story, then our manufacturing industry is fast falling behind, in the great competitive race with Christendom at large. Why is this? Because our tariff laws are crushing it, says Commissioner Wells. Then down with our tariff laws, every good citizen will answer.

The greatest mechanical work of the year was not brought to the Fair-the Pacific Railroad; but some of the visitors to the Fair went to see it. This is an old story now, and the Old World has really succeeded in setting up a very creditable rival to it, in the Suez Canal. That huge ditch-no doubt the hugest ever dug by man-makes Africa an island, and extends the Mediterranean Sea, for the purposes of commerce, onward to Iudia. It was to be opened, with due ceremony, on the seventeenth of November, to the ships of the world; and the Egyptian authorities, with the French capitalists who have put money in it, have made every effort to bring together an august assembly worthy of the occasion, which makes an era in the trade of the East. It is understood that no less than twelve formal invitations were sent to the United States; and those who have read Mr. De Leon's admirable account of the Canal in our June number will not be surprised to learn that Putnam's Magazine was asked to be present. Our invitation, translated, reads thus:

"PARIS, September 25, 1869.

TO THE EDITOR OF PUTNAM'S MAGAZINE, NEW YORK:

"SIR: The Suez Canal is to be opened on November 17. This undertaking, executed under so many material difficulties, is of a nature to interest all enlightened minds. In view of these auspicious circumstances, his Highness the Khedive would be happy to have you assist at the inauguration of the canal, and has charged me to invite you on his behalf. Accept, sir, the expression of my most distinguished consideration. By order, "J. NABARAOUY [Bey].

THE ROUTE.

"The persons invited, who may wish to limit their trip to the Maritime Canal of Suez, must leave Paris on November 7, at the latest; those who desire to visit Upper Egypt are solicited to make their wish known by September 1, as they must leave Paris by

October 7, embark at Marseilles on the 9th, and be at Cairo on October 16. The departure for Upper Egypt, as far as the First Cataract, will take place during the second fortnight in October, and the return to Cairo will be arranged so that they can be present at the inauguration. The persons invited will not be required to secure railroad passes, as they will be delivered to them in Paris. Cabins will be retained for their use on board of the steam packets of the Messageries Imperiales, or on board of the Peninsular Company, at their convenience, and also for their stay in Egypt. The return journey can be effected direct from Alexandria to Marseilles, or from Alexandria to Brindisi, and thence by the Italian and French railroads.

"The invited guests will be furnished with all further information they may require by Mr. Nabaraouy Bey, delegate of his Highness the Khedive, No. 9 Rue Roy, Paris."

Need we say that this invitation was too highly appreciated to be neglected, and that the Magazine, unable to leave America in person, sent a representative?

The American mind certainly thinks a good deal, in a more or less loose way, about social questions; but the meeting of the Social Science Association in New York, at the end of October, did not excite it much. A number of excellent essays were read, and it is foolish to say, with some of the newspapers, that no good was done. But the result was small, compared with the need for work of this kind, or with what the British Association is doing. The meeting was not generally regarded as a great event; and public opinion went on in the old, careless, slipshod way, afterwards as before, even upon the matters best cleared up. For instance, such an admirable exposition of the wants of the Civil Service as Mr. Curtis gave, or such a demonstration of the stolid absurdities of the Electoral Colleges as that by Mr. Adams, ought to have been enough to fill the land with the demand for reform. As it is, they have a present effect on a very few minds; and but a small proportion of these will ever do any thing to extend the impression. Yet some will do so; and perhaps the Association itself will gradually find some way to make its sessions more generally interesting. This will require them to be free and lively discussions, and not mere lectures.

The Association did not touch the main social question of the day at all, or only incidentally. That question we take to be whether the machine of organized society in this country shall be run by and for the people, or by and for a set of unscrupulous and insolent gamblers. There was a time