shining example everywhere, that there are always surviving the seed of the just, the salt of the earth, by whose silent agency, and pure love, and honest truth, life is made practicable and the world rolls on. Sir Roger is the great point of the “Spectator,” as the “Spectator” is the truest history of the time. It contains, however, beside, much that is admirable and entertaining, as well as a good deal that was temporary, and is now beyond the fashion of our understanding, or, at least, of our appreciation. Addison’s criticism, or rather exposition, of Milton, which no doubt taught his age a far more general regard for that great poet, is well enough known, but yet not nearly so well known as Sir Roger, and not necessary now as it was then. When these criticisms began it is evident that Addison, as well as his friend Steele, had made a great advance from the time when the young Oxford scholar left Shakspere out of his reckoning altogether, and considered “Old Spenser” only fit to amuse a barbarous age. Though the balance of things had not been redressed throughout the English world, yet these scholars had come to perceive that the greatness of their predecessors had been, perhaps, a little mixed up; that Cowley was not so mighty a genius as their boyhood believed, and that there were figures as of gods behind which it was shame to have misconceived. Throughout all, the meaning was wholesome, and tended toward the elevation of the time. Steele had it specially at heart to discourage gambling, and to put down the hateful tyranny of the duel. And both writers used all their powers to improve and raise the character of theatrical representations, keeping a watch not only over the plays that were performed, but also over the manners of the audience, who crowded the stage so that the players could scarcely be seen, and played cards in their boxes, and used the public entertainment for their own private quarrels and assignations. It is curious, too, to note how these authorities regarded the opera, the new form of amusement which had pushed its way, against all the prejudices of the English, into fashion. Addison himself, indeed, wrote an opera which was not successful; but he did not love that new-fangled entertainment. He devotes two or three numbers to the description of it, for, says he, “There is no question our grandchildren will be very anxious to know the reason why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand.” It is evident by this that his age had not reached to the further sublimity of believing that when the utterance is musical there is no need of understanding at all. “One scarce knows how to be serious,” he adds, “in the confutation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice. If the Italians have a genius