might be due to difference of characteristics, and of political constitutions, of social organism and individual genius, would be a very pretty but rather large problem. I refer to it simply to illustrate the facts, to emphasise the quiet, orderly, if you will, sleepy movement of English thought which, though combined with great practical energy and vigorous investigation of the neighbouring departments of inquiry, admitted of comparative indifference to the deeper issues involved. It did not generate that stimulus to literary activity due to the dawning of new ideas and the opening of wide vistas of speculation. When the French Revolution broke out, it took Englishmen, one may say, by surprise, and except by a few keen observers or rare disciples of Rousseau, was as unexpected as the earthquake of Lisbon. Let us glance, now, at the class which was to carry on the literary tradition. It is known to us best through Boswell, and its characteristics are represented by Johnson's favourite club. In one of his talks with Boswell the great man amused himself by showing how the club might form itself into a university. Every branch of knowledge and thought might, he thought, be represented, though it must be admitted that some of the professors suggested were scarcely up to the mark. The social variety is equally remarkable. Among the thirty or forty members elected before Johnson's death, there were the lights of literature; Johnson himself and Goldsmith, Adam Smith and Gibbon, and others of less fame. The aristocratic element was represented by Beauclerk and by half a dozen peers, such as the amiable Lord Charlemont; Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Wyndham represent political as well as literary eminence; three or four bishops represent Church authority; legal luminaries included Dunning, William Scott (the famous Lord Stowell), Sir Robert Chambers, and the amazingly versatile Sir William Jones. Boswell and Langton are also cultivated country gentlemen; Sir Joseph Banks stood for science, and three other names show the growing respect for art. The amiable Dr. Burney was a musician who had raised the standard of his calling; Garrick had still more conspicuously gained social respect for the profession of actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the representative of the English school of painters, whose works still impress upon us the beauty of our great-grandmothers and the charm of their children, and suggest the existence of a really dignified and pure domestic life in a class too often remembered by the reckless gambling and loose morality of the gilded youth of the day. To complete the picture of the world in which Johnson was at home we should have to add from the outer sphere such types as Thrale, the prosperous brewer, and the lively Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Montague, who kept a salon and was president of the 'Blues.' The feminine society which was beginning to write our novels was represented by Miss Burney and Hannah More; and the thriving booksellers