two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had indeed no revolutionary ideas of universal liberty, but yet, what answered the purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and English character, by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of universal right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called, for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time.” In this article, also, one may see something of Lowell’s feeling about England, which again was almost a traditionary sentiment. He saw the mother country through the glass of New England, and especially valued that Puritan strain in English history which had found such free play in New England. “Puritanism,” he says, “believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy;” and he found in the governmental attitude of England toward America in his own day a reminder of the policy exercised after the Restoration toward New England. Lowell’s letters make it clear that at this time he was not given to the enjoyment of much hospitality. Mrs. Lowell was frequently an invalid, and though he had familiar friends to stay with him, as Rowse the painter, and gave cordial invitations to such as might be passing through Cambridge, he neither entertained much himself nor accepted entertainment at other houses. Now and then some man of letters came over from England or France and Lowell was asked to meet him. He records such an experience in a letter dated 20 September, 1861:-- “I dined the other day with Anthony Trollope, a big, red-faced, rather underbred Englishman of the bald-with-spectacles type. A good roaring positive fellow who deafened me (sitting on his right) till I thought of Dante’s Cerberus. He says he goes to work on a novel ‘just like a shoemaker on a shoe, only taking care to make honest stitches.’ Gets up at 5 every day, does all his writing before breakfast, and always writes just so many pages a day. He and Dr. Holmes were very entertaining. The Autocrat started one or two hobbies, and charged, paradox in rest--but it was pelting a rhinoceros with seed-pearl. “_Dr._ You don’t know what Madeira is in England? “_T._ I’m not so sure it’s worth knowing. “_Dr._ Connoisseurship in it with us is a fine art. There are men who will tell you a dozen kinds, as Dr. Waagen would know a Carlo Dolci from a Guido. “_T._ They might be better employed! “_Dr._ Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. “_T._ Ay, but that’s begging the whole question. I don’t admit it’s _worse_ doing at all. If they earn their bread by it, it may be _worse_ doing (roaring). “_Dr._ But you may be assured--