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 ATTACK ON SEBASTOPOL. 231 lather than a loser from the -wliolcsome rivahy chap. XIV forced upon it by its now and mysterious asso- '_ ciate. It was the public which lagged. Men commonly take a long time to adapt themselves to the successive advances of civilisation ; and the people were backward in fitting themselves to deal with the increasing ability and the increas- ing knowledge of the public writer. They indeed hardly knew the true scope of the change which liad been taking place ; for whilst the writer was a personage chosen for his skill, and acting with the force which belongs to discipline and organi- sation, the readers were men straying loose ; and for their means of acting in anything like concert with one another, they were dependent in a great degree upon that very engine of publicity which was fast usurping their power. jMoreover, these readers of public prints were slow to understand the new kind of duty which had come upon them. They were slow to see that it became them to look in a very critical spirit upon the writings of a stranger, unseen and unknown, who was not only proposing to guide them, but even to speak in their name ; and they did not yet understand that they ought to read print, not, perhaps, in a captious spirit, but, to say the least, with some- thing of the measured confidence which their forefathers had been accustomed to place in the "words of princes and statesmen. The blessing conferred by print will perhaps be complete when 'the diligence, the wariness, and, above all, the ■'courageous justice of those who read, shall be