excellent in themselves, and may be allowed to control his actions in other matters; but when the question at issue is the abstract beauty of a poem, a painting, a statue, or a piece of architecture, he is expected to stand apart from his every-day self, and to judge of it by some higher and universal law. This is a difficult task for most men, who do not respire easily in such exceedingly rarefied air, and who have no especial taste for blotting out their individuality. With Macaulay, for instance, political considerations frankly outweigh all others; he gives us the good Whig and the wicked Tory on every page, after the fashion of Hogarth's idle and industrious apprentices. Mr. Bagehot, while a far less transparent writer, manifests himself indirectly in his literary preferences. When we have read his essay on Shakespeare, we feel pretty sure we know his views on universal suffrage. Mr. Andrew Lang has indeed objected vehemently to the intrusion of politics into literature, perhaps because of a squeamish distaste for the harsh wranglings of the political field. But Mr. Arnold was incapable of confusing the two ideas. His taste for Celtic poetry and his
