recognition of obligations, to confess directly or indirectly the fulfilment or neglect of which implies either self-praise or self-blame, which, in ordinary circumstances, are alike indecent. In fact, Emerson was totally deficient in the religious sense, which is very strong in the hearts of a vast number of Englishmen who own to no fixed creed, but who would be revolted by the profound and unconscious irreverence with which Emerson was in the habit of speaking and writing of the most sacred things and names. The name of “Jesus” frequently occurs in such sentences as this: “Nor Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Cæsar, nor Angelo, nor Washington,” etc. If we put aside Emerson’s unconscious malpractices in this sort, the attitude of his mind with regard to the serious beliefs of the world were too childish for resentment or exposure. It is as if one should be angry with a young lady who should simper, “Oh, my religion is the religion of the Sermon on the Mount!” in answer to an attempt to talk with her about Bossuet or Hooker. XX CRABBE AND SHELLEY The firmament of fame is full of variable stars, and they are nowhere thicker than in that great constellation of poets which marks the end of the last and the commencement of this century. Among the names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Burns, Campbell, Crabbe, Cowper, and Scott, there are only two the lustre of whose names has remained perfectly steady and seems likely to remain so. Two or three, which blazed forth at once as luminaries of the first magnitude, have gradually and persistently waned--whether or not ever to recover any part of their lost splendour is very doubtful. The light of one or two others has fluctuated violently, and continues to do so, with a manifest diminution, however, in their total sum of light; one or two others have suffered a distinct degradation from first into second or third class lustres, and at present show no sign of further alteration. Two at least have grown astonishingly in conspicuousness, and now glow like the Dog-star and Aldebaran--though there are not wanting sky-critics who declare that they discern conditions of coming change and retrogression; and one at least has almost disappeared from the heaven of public recognition, not, however, without prognostications from some of an assured reassertion of a moderate if not predominating position.