The feeling that Mr. Woodberry is a voice from the past that immediately preceded him comes over me most heavily when I read his essays on Lowell's Addresses, on Democracy, and on Wendell Phillips. It may be only the essayist's strict fidelity to Lowell's ideas--no doubt a merit--which leaves the impression that the essayist knows only what Lowell knew and no more, that the pupil has not moved a step beyond the master. It is Lowell over again without the slightest addition from the lessons of time. The London _Nation_ has said of Mr. Woodberry's essays that most of them have "a unity and life that make many of Lowell's seem those of a shrewd but old-fashioned amateur." Yet Lowell was at least a vivid amateur, who expressed something that belonged to the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies; and he had an old gentleman's right to be old in the 'eighties. It is not to be expected that a critic should begin where Lowell leaves off--only a thinker of real genius makes such long strides. But the critic following Lowell in time and not moving half a step ahead of him seems older than Lowell himself. The same thing is true of the address on Wendell Phillips, "The Faith of an American." It is fine, even eloquent, but it is abstract and curiously old-fashioned. Phillips in his own utterances is more of to-day and of to-morrow than is his eulogist who was a child in Beverley when Phillips was in mid-career. The reason, of course, is that Phillips was a fighter, hot with real issues, and it is not the critic's business to fight but to examine the ideas of the fighter. These ideas necessarily become somewhat abstract when a critic quotes or rephrases them, especially since Phillips was an orator and flung at his audiences sweeping generalities which in a less inspired man are mere tall talk. But Mr. Woodberry devitalizes Phillips, especially the later Phillips who went on from one issue to the next until he dropped. Mr. Woodberry has not a single clear, plain word about one of Phillips' last fights, that for the Labor party. Mr. Woodberry stops with the actual Phillips before Phillips stopped, and the end of the address fades out in vagueness and platitude. There is something rather touching about Mr. Woodberry's declaration: "I know that what I have said to-night is heavy with risk." One looks in vain to discover the risk. Surely in 1911, when the address was delivered, a man might talk in Mr. Woodberry's mild way every night in the week and invite no more severe punishment than a scolding from Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler.