No wonder that he fails; no wonder that in the vast majority of cases he produces much the same impression of his heroes as is produced of them at spiritualistic séances. The attempt, however, will always continue to be made. It is a literary cactus-form that blooms every fifty years or so. As I calculate its periodicity, some one should shortly be producing a new series. BIOGRAPHY.—Very few biographers have been anywhere near the level of mind of their subjects, and fewer still have been able to describe even what they have understood. The character of a great man is so complex that a genius for grasping essentials must be assumed in his perfect biographer: at the same time, it is so tedious in the analysis that the narrative must be condensed to represent it. Between the subtlety to be described, and the simplicity with which it must be described, the character of a man is likely to fall in his portrait into the distortion of over-elaboration or into the sketch. Though difficult, however, the art has been frequently shown to be not impossible. We could not ask for a better portrait of Johnson than Boswell’s. Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_ is as good as we desire it to be. Plato’s _Socrates_ is truer than life; and there are others. On the whole, the modern gossiping method is not likely to become popular in a cultured country. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRESS.—From his little brush with the Press, Dr. Lyttelton has come off badly. It was not because his case was bad, but because he had not the moral courage to stick to his guns. His case was that Parliament had practically ceased to be the leader of the nation, and that its place had been taken by the Press. Unfortunately, however, the Press had come to depend for its living upon sensationalism, with the consequence that its tendency was to prefer fiction to fact. A perfectly good case, I say, who know more of Fleet Street than Dr. Lyttelton will ever know. Every word of the indictment is well within the truth. But when challenged by the Press to substantiate his charges, Dr. Lyttelton, instead of inviting the world simply to _look_ at the Press and to contrast its reports with facts, proceeded to exculpate the editors and to put the whole blame on the public. It is the public, he said, that is responsible, and there is no use in rating the editors, who merely supplied what the public wanted. But so long as public men adopt this cowardly attitude nothing can possibly be done, for the “public,” like a corporation, has neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned. Relatively to the proprietors and editors of the Press the public consists of irresponsible individuals, who merely choose from among what is laid before them. They are mostly as innocent as children who deal at a tuck-shop, and, perchance, buy sweets and cakes that are bad for them as readily as things that are good for them. The responsible parties are the proprietors and editors, and, above them, the law.