liked political society, and was interested in the personalities, the
trivialities, the individual and domestic ins-and-outs, which make so
large a part of political conversation.

But, after all, Politics, in the technical sense, did not afford a
suitable field for his peculiar gifts. It was when he came to the
criticism of national life that the hand of the master was felt. In all
questions affecting national character and tendency, the development of
civilization, public manners, morals, habits, idiosyncrasies, the
influence of institutions, of education, of literature, his insight was
penetrating, his point of view perfectly original, and his judgment, if
not always sound, invariably suggestive. These qualities, among others,
gave to such books as _Essays in Criticism_, _Friendship's Garland_, and
_Culture and Anarchy_, an interest and a value quite independent of
their literary merit. And they are displayed in their most serious and
deliberate form, dissociated from all mere fun and vivacity, in his
_Discourses in America_. This, he told the present writer, was the book
by which, of all his prose-writings, he most desired to be remembered.
It was a curious and memorable choice.

Another point of great importance in his prosewriting is this; if he
had never written prose the world would never have known him as a
humorist. And that would have been an intellectual loss not easily
estimated. How pure, how delicate, yet how natural and spontaneous his
humour was, his friends and associates knew well; and--what is by no
means always the case--the humour of his writing was of exactly the same
tone and quality as the humour of his conversation. It lost nothing in
the process of transplantation. As he himself was fond of saying, he was
not a popular writer, and he was never less popular than in his humorous
vein. In his fun there is no grinning through a horse-collar, no