attitude towards home rule are both perfectly defined and perfectly isolated sentiments; just as his intelligent admiration and merciless condemnation of Heinrich Heine stand side by side, living witnesses of a mind that held its own balance, losing nothing that was good, condoning nothing that was evil, as far removed from weak enthusiasm on the one hand as from frightened depreciation on the other.
It is folly to rail at the critic until we have learned his value; it is folly to ignore a help which we are not too wise to need. "The best that is known and thought in the world" does not stand waiting for admission on our doorsteps. Like the happiness of Hesiod, it "abides very far hence, and the way to it is long and steep and rough." It is hard to seek, hard to find, and not easily understood when discovered. Criticism does not mean a random opinion on the last new novel, though even the most dismal of light literature comes fairly within its scope. It means a disinterested endeavor to learn and to teach whatever wisdom or beauty has been added by every age and every nation to the great inheritance of mankind.
