Most welcome: for he was voiceful enough on other and his proper subjects. "Falkland," which followed "A French Critic on Milton," in March in the _Fortnightly_, and "George Sand," which followed it, as has been said, in June in the _Nineteenth Century_, somewhat deserved the title (_Mixed Essays_) of the volume in which they were two years later reprinted. But the last essay of the year 1877, that on Mr Stopford Brooke's _Primer_, was, like the "French Critic," and even more than that, pure literature. "A French Critic on Goethe," which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_ for January 1878, followed next. The other pieces of this year, which also, with one exception, appeared in _Mixed Essays_, were, with that exception, evidences of a slight but venial relapse, or let us say of convalescence not yet quite turned into health. "Equality" (_Fortnightly_, March 1878), "Irish Catholicism and British Liberalism" (_Fortnightly_, July 1878), and "Porro Unum est Necessarium" (_Fortnightly_, November 1878), were, if not of "the utmost last provincial band," yet not of the pure Quirites, the genuine citizens of the sacred city of Mr Arnold's thought: and he seceded from this latter in not a few of those estimable but unimportant Irish essays which have been noticed in the last chapter. But the literary contents of _Mixed Essays_ are very interesting, and the Johnson paper (really a preface to the six selected lives, which he edited for Messrs Macmillan in 1878) is a most excellent piece of work. His selection of the Lives is perhaps not quite unerring. For he ought surely to have given the "Cowley," with its (from his own point of view) invaluable _point de repere_ in the estimate of the "metaphysicals." And he might have missed the "Swift," which, though extremely interesting as a personal study from its mixture of prejudice and constraint, its willingness to wound, and yet--not its fear but--its honest compunction at striking, is, for the purpose of the volume, misplaced. But he had a right to give what he chose: and his preface has points of the very highest value. The opening passage about the _point de repere_ itself, the fixed halting-place to which we can always resort for fresh starts, fresh calculations, is one of the great critical _loci_ of the world, and especially involves the main contribution of the nineteenth century to criticism if not to literature altogether. We may exalt, without very much doubt or dread, the positive achievements of the century of Tennyson and Browning, of Carlyle and Thackeray, of Heine and Hugo. But we have seen such strange revolutions in this respect that it may not do to be too confident. The glory of which no man can deprive our poor dying _siecle_ is that not one, of all the others since history began, has taken such pains to understand those before it, has, in other words, so discovered and so utilised the value of _points de repere_. It may be that this value is, except