POETS IN PARLIAMENT.

The prominence which the "winged words" of Victor Hugo have recently
given him in the Assembly has called forth sarcastic insinuations and
bitter diatribes from all the Conservative journals. There seems to
be an intensity of exasperation, arising from the ancient prejudice
against poets. A poet treating of politics! Let him keep to
rhymes, and leave the serious business of life to us practical men,
sober-minded men--men not led away by our imaginations--men not moved
to absurdities by sentiment--solid, sensible, moderate men! Let him
play with capricious hand on the chords which are resonant to his
will; but let him not mistake his frivolous accomplishment for the
power to play upon the world's great harp, drawing from its grander
chords the large responses of more solemn themes. Let him "strike
the light guitar" as long as women will listen, or fools applaud. But
politics is another sphere; into that he can only pass to make himself
ridiculous.

Thus reason the profound. Thus saith the good practical man, who,
because his mind is a congeries of commonplaces, piques himself on
not being led away by his imagination. The owl prides himself on the
incontestable fact that he is not an eagle.

To us the matter has another aspect. The appearance of Poets and men
of Sentiment in the world of Politics is a good symptom; for at a
time like the present, when positive doctrine can scarcely be said to
exist in embryo, and assuredly not in any maturity, the presence of
Imagination and Sentiment--prophets who endow the present with some
of the riches borrowed from the future--is needed to give grandeur