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 standard of Shelley's as of Goethe's work. To compare "Cain" with "Prometheus," the "Prophecy of Dante" with the "Ode to Naples," is to compare "Manfred" with "Faust." Shelley was born a son and soldier of light, an archangel winged and weaponed for angel's work. Byron, with a noble admixture of brighter and purer blood, had in him a cross of the true Philistine breed.

There is no other word than this yet devised which will carry the exact weight of meaning wanted. The use of it is however, it seems, offensive to certain persons; one writer has actually signed his name to an article in which he asserts that Mr. Matthew Arnold and I after him use or abuse it as a reproachful synonym for the name of Christian. Anonymous fiction of this kind no man will notice who respects the truth or himself; but some exposition of the meaning of words may be permissible and serviceable for the correction of an error or the exposure of a falsehood. It is not the correction of an error that is for the minute my task. This writer, whose article was signed with the name of Peter Bayne, undertakes the defence of his gods in heaven above and on earth beneath against Mr. Arnold and myself with engines and artillery of a somewhat shaky and explosive kind. For myself, it appears that I, "who am refined" (teste Bayne) "in my language, and have quite the manners of a gentleman" (this I fear is the scathing expression of a pungent irony), have denounced the whole race of "Christians" at one fell swoop as "noisome Philistines;" exceeding Mr. Arnold by the addition of an epithet. I am not concerned to dispute the degrees of gentility with a falsifier of the sense of words, to question the breeding