At first it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the French Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its powerful episode of the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from such movements as these. The French Revolution found, undoubtedly, its motive power in the intelligence of men, and not in their practical sense. It appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain, permanent. The year 1789 asked of a thing: Is it rational? That a whole nation should have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason is a very remarkable thing when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy or quickening as mind, comes into the motives which in general impel great masses of men. In spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives, from the force, truth and universality of the ideas which it took for its law, a unique and still living power; and it is, and will probably long remain, the greatest, the most animating event in history. But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for hours. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with; but to transport them abruptly into the world of politics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world to their bidding--that is quite another thing. "Force and right are the governors of the world; force till right is ready" Joubert has said. The grand error of the French Revolution was that it set at naught the second great half of that maxim--force till right is ready--and, rushing furiously into the political sphere, created in opposition to itself what I may call an epoch of concentration. The great force of that epoch of concentration was England, and the great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. I will not deny that his writings are often disfigured by the violence and passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was bounded and his observations therefore at fault; but for those who can make the needful corrections what distinguishes these writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth--they contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration. Now, an epoch of expansion seems to be opening in this country. In spite of the absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material progress, this progress is likely to lead in the end to an apparition of intellectual life. It is of the last importance that English criticism should discern what rule it ought to take, to avail itself of the field now opening to it. That rule may be summed up in one word--disinterestedness.