THE ADMIRABLE VICTORIANS.—I am prepared to apologise if I have ever used “Victorian” in a derogatory sense. But I know I have not. I have too deep a respect for the Victorian character ever to make light of it, and especially for my own generation, that can afford to laugh at so little. Mr. Strachey’s “brilliant” essays, therefore, leave me laughing at him rather than with him. One is impelled to take him personally, and to turn the tables upon Mr. Strachey with the _argumentum ad hominem_. How do you compare with the people you write about? For it is the peculiarity of the Victorians—our grandfathers and great-grandfathers—that whatever we may feel about them in our current opinions, someone has only to sneer at them to provoke us to their defence; and what better defence can they ask than to be compared, man for man, with their critics? As a set-off to the “brilliant” essays of Mr. Strachey—how easy it is to be brilliant nowadays! I have recently read, on the loan of his great-grandson, the privately printed personal memoir of Wm. Mattingly Soundy, who died in 1862, at the full age of 96. For 24 years he was a member of his local Congregational church, and for 46 years he was deacon. During nearly the whole of that time he never missed a meeting, Sunday or week-day, and was never known to be late, though he lived two miles from the church. It is the round of a machine, you may say, and there is no wonder that the age was mechanical. But I think of the passionate mainspring that kept a “machine” going for so long without a psychological breakdown. What an intensity it must have had! What a character! If to love it is impossible, it is impossible not to admire it; and since we truly live by admiration, hope and love, it is something for the Victorians that they can still fill us with admiration. My own generation (now past as a force) has provided the soul of the world with nothing so fine. FRENCH CLARTÉ.—M. Vannier’s _La Clarté Française_ does not throw much light upon the mysteries of French lucidity. He accepts as self-evident Rivarol’s axiom that “what is not clear is not French”—surely worthy to be the national device of France; and he analyses with admirable humour a considerable number of examples of “clarté,” and the want of it. But the mystery of lucidity remains a mystery still. Flaubert’s practice of reading his compositions aloud puts us on the most promising scent, for it is certain that the French “clarté” is eminently readable aloud and in company. A great deal of our own literature is meant for the eye and not for the ear, for the study and not for the salon, with the consequence that at its best it is the grand style simple, but at its worst shocking. Written for the ear, and meant to be read in company, French literature is never grand, but neither is it ever silly. Its range is society, while ours is solitude.