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 months, with what seems to my poor understanding the most admirable good sense and temperance, the most perfect moderation and loyalty. I venture to dwell upon this division of Hugo's life and labours with as little wish of converting as I could have hope to convert that large majority whose verdict has established as a law of nature the fact or the doctrine that 'every poet is a fool' when he meddles with practical politics; but not without a confidence grounded on no superficial study that the maintainers of this opinion, if they wish to cite in support of it the evidence supplied by Victor Hugo's political career, will do well to persevere in the course which I will do them the justice to admit that—as far as I know—they have always hitherto adopted; in other words, to assume the universal assent of all persons worth mentioning to the accuracy of this previous assumption, and dismiss with a quiet smile or an open sneer the impossible notion that any one but some single imbecile or eccentric can pretend to take seriously what seems to them ridiculous, or to think that ridiculous which to their wiser minds commends itself as serious. This beaten road of assumption, this well-worn highway of assertion, is a safe as well as a simple line of travel: and the practical person who keeps to it can well afford to dispense with argument as palpably superfluous, and with evidence as obviously impertinent. Should he so far forget that great principle of precaution as to diverge from it into the modest and simple course of investigation and comparison of theory with fact and probability with proof, his task maybe somewhat harder, and its result somewhat less satisfactory. I would not advise any but an honest and candid believer in the theory which identifies genius with idiocy—which at