When St. John the Divine addressed his Apocalypse to the Angels of the Seven Churches, he invented a system of criticism which is worthy of all acceptation. He dwelt first upon the merits of each individual church; not till he had exhausted them did he present the reverse of the coin. In the same spirit, critics who, in the apostle's phrase, have "something against" Mr. Lytton Strachey, will do well to begin by acknowledging what is in his favour. In the first place, he writes sensibly, rapidly, and lucidly--without false ornament of any kind. Some of his pages might, with advantage, be pinned up opposite the writing-tables of our current authors of detestable pseudo-Meredithian and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with _Whiggism in its Relations to Literature_, although it is less discursive and does not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result of individual taste than of fashion? There seems to be no radical change in the methods of style. The extravagant romanticism of rebellion against the leaders of the Victorian Age finds at length an exponent, and behold he writes as soberly as Lord Morley, or as Newman himself! The longest of these biographies is that of Cardinal Manning, and it is the one with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has taken most pains. Briefer than the briefest of the _English Men of Letters_ series of biographies, it is yet conducted with so artful an economy as to give the impression, to an uninstructed reader, that nothing essential about the career of Manning has been omitted. To produce this impression gifts of a very unusual order were required, since the writer, pressed on all sides by a plethora of information, instead of being incommoded by it, had to seem to be moving smoothly in an atmosphere of his own choosing, and to be completely unembarrassed by his material. He must have the air of saying, in Froude's famous impertinence, "This is all we know, and more than all, yet nothing to what the angels know." In the face of a whole literature of controversy and correspondence, after a storm of Purcell and Hutton, Ward and Mozley and Liddon tearing at one another's throats, Mr. Lytton Strachey steps delicately on to the stage and says, in a low voice, "Come here and I will tell you all about a funny ecclesiastic who had a Hat, and whose name was Henry Edward Manning. It will not take us long, and ever afterwards, if you hear that name mentioned, you will know everything about him which you need to remember." It is audacious, and to many people will seem shocking, but it is very cleverly done.