the

the running comment of derisive smiles with which he will, no doubt, listen to our observations, let us venture awhile to solicit his ear, and his utmost patience. We can imagine, then, a vast country, where wealth, unaccompanied by more solid causes of respect, should be looked on with comparative indifference by all but its possessors; and even they find it difficult to keep up mammon-worship, when the principal charm-the admiration of others-is wanting. We can imagine the cause of this to be, the universal respect, distinction, and rank, accorded to learning and intellectual pre-eminence; and this too on so wise a system that even the grades of ability shall rise one above the other in correspondence with their natural importance and value. Thus, for instance, as one of the lowest of the influences that a civilised government can use, is brute force, military men must take the lowest position among the aristocracy of talent; and, as the highest influences that such a government can use are love, wisdom, and knowledge, the men of letters, whose business and whose glory it is to cultivate and to enforce these qualities, assume the highest position among the more elevated of their fellow-men.

"Nay, my good friend, have patience; hear me out. My Utopia may be as absurd as your own. I say it not in sarcasm, but to induce you to extend to others' aberrations the charity that I must presume has been taught you by yours. But if it be ever so absurd, hear me out my conclusion, at least, will be worth your attention.

"In this country, then, of my fancy, I imagine, all the great business of government-including, of course, all its chief honours and emoluments to be distributed among the men of superior learning or ability, without the smallest regard to birth or to possessions. I imagine a vast machinery, extending through every part of the empire for the discovery of the men so qualified. We will suppose, for instance, that in every great city there are halls, where public examinations shall be held yearly, open to the people at large of the district. We must have no partiality; therefore the candidates shall not be known personally to the examiners. There must be no triumph for superficial cleverness, or the mere readiness to answer, independent of the depth of the answer; therefore the examinations shall be by the best of mediums,-pen, ink, and paper. There must be no "cramming," after the fashion of the great British universities, in order to adapt all intellects and knowledge to one peculiar cut-mathematical or otherwise; but

such a general examination in religion, poetry, philosophy, and in the principles and practices of government, as shall best develope the respective abilities and elevate the characters of the candidates. And, as the child learns his first letters, as the boy takes his earliest lessons in the abstruser mysteries of language and education, as the youth, advancing daily nearer and nearer to the goal, prepares himself by the severest intellectual training for the race, these examinations, and their consequences, are a constant incentive. Were there no other provision for universal education, they would ensure it. Well, the struggle is over; all who have been worthy of success have succeeded; the first public honour is conferred on them. Henceforward, they are known by a distinctive appellation; suppose we say Bachelors. The next movement upwards of our men of letters can only be achieved by more arduous efforts. The provincial examiner gives place to one from the central seat of government, and who is a member of a body entirely composed of those whose genius, talents, or learning have made them illustrious. The civic hall, too, is exchanged for the hall of the capital of a province; the yearly for a triennial examination. This is a momentous trial; for every one who shall pass successfully through it, becomes at once entitled to public employment as vacancies may occur; and, in the mean time, has his position and claims solemnly acknowledged by a new title of honour. We will call him Licentiate.

1

"And now the path grows steeper and narrower; and fewer and fewer can hold on. What then? The honours and dignities. sought, ascend in value and importance in a like proportion. So bating" no jot of heart, or hope," or exertion, the Licentiates crowd up towards the metropolis of the Empire, where their next examination is to take place, and before the eyes of the whole world of their intellectual hemisphere. Thirty only can now be chosen, to become doctors. There may possibly be many who are too poor, to bear the expenses of a long journey-then of course the State pays what is necessary. In our Utopia, we imagine that the State wants its most able men, and is as anxious to find them and aid them to develope their abilities, as in other very un-Utopian countries, one near at home for instance, the State is anxious to reject them, when through a thousand difficulties they have succeeded in showing their desert.

"And now for the last or topmost step. Men pause, and some, the boldest and bravest, tremble before they attempt to take it,

so great is the ordeal through which they must pass, so momentous its consequences if they do pass it. It is enough to make their brains dizzy, just when they most need perfect self-possession and. self-command. Behind, as it were, that awful tribunal composed of the chief men, sitting in the chief court, in the chief palace of the empire, behind that tribunal-which is to decide upon their claims to be admitted to the august body to which the tribunal itself belongs, stands the sovereign, waiting to dispense among them, as members of the body they have joined, the very highest offices of the state. Thenceforward they will, each according to his ability, participate in the supreme government of countless millions of people. And could they be better prepared for their mighty vocation? Can they be otherwise than worthy of it?"

Such is our Utopia; but ours only for the occasion. The original scheme is to be found in a book where one hardly knows what to esteem as truth, what as fiction, when we find this Utopia, in all its details, gravely set down as a FACT. Mr. now Sir John Davis, her Majesty's Superintendent at Hong Kong, would have us believe, that in a country of two or three hundreds of millions of people, this system is in practical, complete, every-day operation; nay he goes so far as gravely to state that this system of governing by means of the ablest men-the literati of the empire, "lies probably at the bottom of the greatness and prosperity of the empire." What on earth can the writer be thinking of? He seems totally to forget he is writing of a semi-barbarous state, and to the foremost among all civilised nations. China act thus--and England act as it does! No, no; the joke is a good one enough, but, thank God, there are patriots in England too wise to believe it to be anything more.

And if it were true (ridiculous as that supposition must be to an Englishman), could not any practical man tell us that the genius of a country must perish in such an atmosphere of respect, and comfort, and prosperity--that it has become a by-word, that singing birds must not be too well fed-that, in short, great intellects are to ordinary ones something like what the finest tropical plants are among the commoner productions of his garden, and require as near an approach, as is practical, to the broken brick-bats, and gravel, and water, upon which they so luxuriate? And as his gardener occasionally pinches his cacti when they seem reluctant to produce their superb flowers, so does he see corresponding necessity for a state-pinching of men of genius, by handing them

over to the tender mercies of a host of tormentors, among whom Hunger himself is often seen busily engaged.

The success, again, he says, is so unanswerably demonstrated. "Look at our great poets for instance; have they not for the most part been poor-miserably poor? Of course then, that was

the origin of their greatness."

"And if the principle is apt to extend itself a little too far, and kill off prematurely a man's body now and then, while his soul is being so carefully nurtured and cherished, as in the cases of an Otway and a Burns, why of course it is not the principle that is to blame, there must be casualties-must be exceptions to the ordinary run of success?"

"Precisely. We must look only at the results. Most of our great poems have been produced because the poet wanted bread, or to push his way in the world."

The Canterbury Tales then must be excepted, composed when the poet's worldly career was over, and when he was not likely to get much pecuniary benefit for its production."

"Yes, yes, that's an exception.'

66

Shakspere, of course you except, who wrote some of his noblest plays, also after his retirement from the world, and whilst in the possession of an ample competence?"

"Milton too, you do not include in your hypothesis? His Paradise Lost was written also after his retirement from the world; and it is not very likely he looked forward to the bookseller's rewardten pounds-for a maintenance in his old age?"

"Oh yes, I exclude Milton, and I dare say a good many more; but what's the utility of reckoning up these exceptions; the thing is clear to every one's own common sense and experience. Why should I write great poems if I am not somehow or other to be well paid for them? I fancy that's the idea of the world generally, and it's mine."

"It is worthy of you and it. I presume then that you do not sanction this Chinese absurdity of employing our eminent literary men in the higher offices of the state; or of conferring upon them the highest state honours?"

"Oh, certainly not. It may do in a semi-barbarian country like China, but not here. Yes, yes, it may do well enough in China." "And in Spain, perhaps, where the dramatist Martinez de la Rosa was lately a minister?"

66

too."

Ah, yes, Spain is not much more advanced.

It may do there

And in Prussia, where Humboldt is at once a peer and a minister ?"

"Why, Prussia 's so despotically governed."

"And in the United States, where Washington Irving is employed as an ambassador ?"

66

66

The United States! why, they are all republicans.'

And in France, where Victor Hugo has been made a peer."

I hate France: all that sort of thing may do there.' "And in Belgium, where they have just raised the journalist, M. Van de Weyer, to the chief office in the government?"

"Ah, I always said England was the greatest country in the world; and these, I dare say, are the things that help to keep other countries so inferior to us. We are practical men. We leave government to those who were born to it-lords, and country gentlemen, and rich merchants; and we leave poetry, and philosophy, and essays, and all that, to the men of letters. I wonder where England's greatness would be if the book men got hold of her government. Besides, where would the system end if it were once begun. Who knows?-perhaps in some unlucky hour, even the dreamy poets might be intrusted with posts requiring men of solid judgment and steady character. Where would England

be then?"

A pertinent question and it reminds me of various reminiscences of our past history, connected with men of the kind that you approve of. There was a time, several centuries ago, when one of the most eminent of English monarchs, thought he had a right to endeavour to place himself upon the French throne; and though he failed in his undertaking, he left as mementoes of his attempts, to all ages, the household words-Cressy, and Poictiers. Edward had in his service a squire, who so distinguished himself during this eventful period, that the sovereign could find no other public occasion befitting the acknowledgment of his services than when he and all his nobles were met in high festivity at Windsor on St. George's day. That same squire after Edward the Third's death, was employed by Richard II, to negociate on one of the most important and delicate of subjects; his own marriage with Anne of Bohemia. Then, as now, the business of State in every department, had its servants who were useful and those superadded who were simply ornamental. That the squire be