ness of the understanding and a propensity to evil." This amiable theory was, I think, first advanced by Lord Beaconsfield, who sorely needed some such emollient for his bruises. In Lothair, when that truly remarkable artist Mr. Gaston Phœbus, accompanied by his sister-in-law Miss Euphrosyne Cantacuzene,—Heaven help their unhappy sponsors!—reveals to his assembled guests the picture he has just completed, we are told that his air "was elate, and was redeemed from arrogance only by the intellect of his brow. 'To-morrow,' he said, 'the critics will commence. You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.'" If Lord Beaconsfield thought to disarm his foes by this ingenious device, he was most signally mistaken; for while several of the reviews were deferentially hinting that perhaps the book might not be so very bad as it seemed, Blackwood stepped alertly to the front, and in a criticism unsurpassed for caustic wit and merciless raillery held up each feeble extravagance to the inextinguishable laughter of the world. Even now, when few people venture upon the palatial dreariness of the novel itself, there is
