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 the still virgin machinery of his engine against the greater Corneille? What was Molière in its eyes? and what was not Boileau? Where now are its great men, in an age for France so fruitful of literary greatness? Does it include one of high and fine genius besides Mérimée? and do the rest of the sacred forty respect in him the official antiquary or the faultless writer on whose dawn Goethe looked out and prophesied overmuch? There are names indeed still greater on its roll, but you do not see appended to them the academic title. Once for all, waiving its mere theories and reserving its mere pretensions, let us inquire if in effect it now does, if it ever has done, if it ever will do, any real and good service whatever to pure literature? The advice which Mr. Arnold gives by implication to his English audience while preaching on the text of academies is precious and necessary in itself, if the mass of English literature now current or floating is ever to be in any measure elevated or purified; but the selection of text is merely fantastic, the process of deduction vicious and baseless. This double impression was made on me by the lecture when I heard it delivered at Oxford; I have read it since more than once, and the impression is strengthened and deepened. It is possible to start from some incongruous or ignorant assumption and yet proceed to speak words of truth and soberness; the sermon may be useful and noble though the text be strained and misapplied. For the Revue des Deux Mondes I have as earnest a respect as Mr. Arnold; so far from regarding it with the eyes of irreverence and ribaldry, as an old lady of pleasure, a Delilah of dangerously gay repute, the ideas