lustrous, mystical yet clear. Thought, rather than melancholy, spoke from the pensive passion of his eyes; while on his lofty forehead glittered a star that threw a solemn radiance on the repose of his majestic forehead.' After explaining that he was the Angel of Arabia, this person told Tancred to 'announce the sublime and solacing doctrine of Theocratic Equality.' But when Tancred, after his startling adventures, got back to Jerusalem, he found his anxious parents, the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont, accompanied by the triumvirate of bear-leaders which their solicitude had appointed to look after him--Colonel Brace, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, and Dr. Roby. And thus the novel ends like the address of Miss Hominy. 'Out laughs the stern philosopher,' or, shall we say, the incarnation of commonplace, 'What, ho! arrest me that wandering agency; and so, the vision fadeth.' Theocratic equality has not yet taken its place as an electioneering cry. Has our guide been merely blowing bubbles for our infantile amusement? Surely he has been too solemn. We could have sworn that some of the passages were written, if not with tears in his eyes, at least with a genuine sensibility to the solemn and romantic elements of life. Or was he carried away for a time into real mysticism for which he seeks to apologise by adopting the tone of the man of the world? Surely his satire is too keen, even when it causes the collapse of his own fancies. Even Coningsby and Lord Marney, the heroes of the former novels, appear in 'Tancred' as shrewd politicians, and obviously Tancred will accept the family seat when he gets back to his paternal mansion. We can only solve the problem, if we are prosaic enough to insist upon a solution, by accepting the theory of a double consciousness, and resolving to pray with the mystic, and sneer with the politician, as the fit takes us. It is an equal proof of intellectual dulness to be dead to either aspect of things. Let us agree that a brief sojourn in the world of fancy or in the world of blue-books is a qualification for a keener enjoyment of the other, and not brutally attempt to sever them by fixed lines. Each is best seen in the light reflected from the other, and we had best admit the fact without asking awkward questions; but they are blended after a perfectly original fashion in the strange phantasmagoria of 'Tancred.' Let the images of crusaders and modern sportsmen, Hebrew doctors and classical artists, mediæval monks and Anglican bishops, perform their strange antics before us, and the scenery shift from Manchester to Damascus, or Pall Mall to Bethany, in obedience to laws dictated by the fancy instead of the reason; let each of the motley actors be alternately the sham and the reality, and our moods shift as arbitrarily from grave to gay, from high-strung enthusiasm to mocking cynicism, and we shall witness a performance which is always amusing and original, and sometimes even poetical, and of which only the harshest