This difficulty is so strongly felt by those who write and read the sort of literature which aspires to permanence, and which, therefore, ought to have a substantial intellectual basis, that either our distinguished poets choose their subjects in actions long past and half-forgotten, or else, when tempted by present excitement, they produce work which is artistically far inferior to their best. Our own generation has witnessed three remarkable events which are poetical in the highest degree. The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Garibaldi is a most perfect subject for a heroic poem; the events which led to the execution of the Emperor Maximilian and deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest possible material for a tragedy; the invasion of France by the Germans, the overthrow of Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic ready to hand that only awaits its Homer; yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who is far gone in intellectual decadence, no great poet has sung of these things yet. The subjects are as good as can be, but too near. Neither poet nor reader is disinterested enough for the intellectual enjoyment of these subjects: the poet would not see his way clearly, the reader would not follow unreservedly. It may be added, however, in this connection, that even past history is hardly ever written disinterestedly. Historians write with one eye on the past and the other on the pre-occupations of the present. So far as they do this they fall short of the intellectual standard. An ideally perfect history would tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as it was ascertainable. Artists are seldom good critics of art, because their own practice biasses them, and they are not disinterested. The few artists who have written soundly about art have succeeded in the difficult task of detaching saying from doing; they have, in fact, become two distinct persons, each oblivious of the other. The strongest of all the reasons in favor of the study of the dead languages and the literatures preserved in them, has always appeared to me to consist in the more perfect disinterestedness with which we moderns can approach them. The men and events are separated from us by so wide an interval, not only of time and locality, but especially of modes of thought, that our passions are not often enlisted, and the intellect is sufficiently free. It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific class, and therefore more than commonly aware of the great importance of disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment when they feel the approaches of disease. They know that it is difficult for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly as his own, even although the person who suffers has the advantage of actually experiencing the morbid sensations.