_London, February, 1890_. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE V A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST-PRETENSIONS 23 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT 91 MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS 130 PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS 132 MEASURE OF VALUE 134 LETTER IN REPLY TO HAZLITT CONCERNING THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF POPULATION 141 THE SERVICES OF MR. RICARDO TO THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 154 EDUCATION, AND CASE OF APPEAL 160 ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM 215 SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON 225 THE LAKE DIALECT 265 STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY 275 THE ENGLISH IN INDIA 298 ON NOVELS (WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM) 354 DE QUINCEY'S PORTRAIT 357 A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST PRETENSIONS: _By way of Counsel to Adults who are hesitating as to the Propriety of Studying the Greek Language with a view to the Literature; and by way of consolation to those whom circumstances have obliged to lay aside that plan._ No. I. No question has been coming up at intervals for reconsideration more frequently than that which respects the comparative pretensions of Pagan (viz. Greek and Roman) Literature on the one side, and Modern (that is, the Literature of Christendom) on the other. Being brought uniformly before unjust tribunals--that is, tribunals corrupted and bribed by their own vanity--it is not wonderful that this great question should have been stifled and overlaid with peremptory decrees, dogmatically cutting the knot rather than skilfully untying it, as often as it has been moved afresh, and put upon the roll for a re-hearing. It is no mystery to those who are in the secret, and who can lay A and B together, why it should have happened that the most interesting of all literary questions, and the most comprehensive (for it includes most others, and some special to itself), has, in the first place, never been pleaded in a style of dignity, of philosophic precision, of feeling, or of research, proportioned to its own merits, and to the numerous 'issues' (forensically speaking) depending upon it; nor, in the second place, has ever received such an adjudication as was satisfactory _even at the moment_. For, be it remembered, after all, that any provisional adjudication--one growing out of the fashion or taste of a single era--could not, at any rate, be binding for a different era. A judgment which met the approbation of Spenser could hardly have satisfied Dryden; nor another which