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 nation rather than instruction and practical effects, and appeal to general rather than specialised knowledge. Every element of this definition clearly depends on limited spheres of social and mental evolution—the separation of imagination from experience, of didactic purpose from æsthetic pleasure, and that specialisation of knowledge which is so largely due to the economic development known as "division of labour." In truth, our definition will carry us, and is intended to carry us, a very short way satisfactorily—perhaps no distance at all beyond conditions of art and science under which we live, or similar to these. If the student has expected something better, let him reflect that breadth of definition is only to be purchased by flagrant violations of the facts but just stated. He can, indeed, have no better introduction to the scientific study of literature than a definition which shall bring home one of the great lessons to be learned from this and every other science, the limited truth of human ideas.

We have spoken of our study as a "science;" let us