Page:Varia.djvu/171

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OLD WINE AND NEW.
159

wise speculations on political science, based upon historic certainties. Her safest lessons, Professor Seeley tells her warningly, are conveyed in "Blue Books and other statistics," with which, indeed, no living man can hope to recreate himself; and her essential outgrowths are "political philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political economy, and international law," a witches' brew with which few living men would care to meddle. It is even part of his severe discipline to strip her of the fair words and glittering sentences with which her suitors have sought for centuries to enhance her charms, and "for the beauty of drapery to substitute the beauty of the nude figure." Poor shivering Muse, with whom Shakespeare once dallied, and of whom great Homer sang! Never again shall she be permitted to inspire the genius that enthralls the world. Never again shall "mere literature" carry her name and fame into the remotest corners of the globe. She who once told us in sonorous sentences "how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted," is now sent into studious retirement, denied