“Almost everybody,” says Stevenson, “can understand and sympathize with an admiral, or a prize-fighter”; which genial sentiment is less contagious now than when it was uttered, thirty years ago. A new type of admiral has presented itself to the troubled consciousness of men, a type unknown to Nelson, unsuspected by Farragut, unsung by Newbolt. In robbing the word of its ancient glory, Tirpitz has robbed us of an emotion we can ill-afford to lose. “The traditions of sailors,” says Mr. Shane Leslie, “have been untouched by the lowering of ideals which has invaded every other class and profession.” The truth of his words was brought home to readers by the behaviour of the British merchant marine, peaceful, poorly paid men, who in the years of peril went out unflinchingly, and as a matter of course, to meet “their duty and their death.” Many and varied are the transgressions of seafaring men; but we have hitherto been able to believe them sound in their nobler parts. We should like to cherish this simple faith, and, though alienated from prize-fighters by the narrowness of our civic and social code, to retain our sympathy for admirals. It cannot be that their fair fame will be forever smirched by the tactics of a man who ruined the government he served. The function of criticism is to clear our mental horizon, to get us within close range of the criticized. It recognizes moral as well as intellectual issues; but it differentiates them. When Emerson said, “Goethe can never be dear to men. His is not even the devotion to pure truth, but to truth for the sake of culture,” he implied that truth, besides being a better thing than culture, was also a more lovable thing, which is not the case. It takes temerity to love Goethe; but there are always men--young, keen, speculative, beauty-loving men--to whom he is inexpressibly dear because of the vistas he opens, the thoughts he releases, the “inward freedom” which is all he claimed to give. It takes no less temerity to love Emerson, and he meant that it should be so, that we should climb high to reach him. He is not lovable as Lamb is lovable, and he would not have wanted to be. A man who all his life repelled unwelcome intimacies had no desire to surrender his memory to the affection of every idle reader. It is such a sure thing to appeal from intelligence to the moral sense, from the trouble involved in understanding to the ease with which judgment is passed, that critics may be pardoned their frequent misapprehensions. Problems of conduct are just as puzzling as problems of intellect. That is why Mr. Stevenson pronounced a sneaking kindness to be “instructive.” He offered it as a road to knowledge rather than as a means of enjoyment. Not that he was unaware of the pleasures which follow in its wake. He knew the world up and down well enough to be thankful that he had never lost his taste for bad company. The Divineness of Discontent