likely to interest the whole reading public. Now Mr. Anstey might have passed his infancy in an egg, for all the English magazines have to tell us on the subject. His books are bought, and read, and laughed over, and laid aside, and when there is a bitter cadence in his mirth, people are disappointed and displeased. England has always expected her jesters to wear the cap and bells. She would have nothing but foolish fun from Hood, sacrificing his finer instincts and his better parts on the shrine of her own ruthless desires, and yielding him scant return for the lifelong vassalage she exacted. It is fitting that an English humorist should have written the most sombre, the most heart-breaking, the most beautiful and consoling of tragic stories. Du Maurier in "Peter Ibbetson" has taught to England the lesson she needed to learn.
The best-loved workers of every nation are those who embody distinctly national characteristics, whose work breathes a spirit of wholesome national prejudice, who are children of their own soil, and cannot, even in fancy, be associated with any other art or literature save the art or literature of their fatherland.
