languages are in all respects identical. The Greek often has eroinσa where in English we should say I have done, or I had done; yet it is certain that our English forms contain an idea of completed action which is foreign to the Greek aorist. In like manner, it is conceivable that what in one language is viewed as an assumed (not an asserted) reality, should in another be viewed and expressed as a possibility. There is nothing, certainly, in the general relations of different languages, to prevent us from admitting this. We are not now asserting that all the uses of the indicative do in fact have one common element characteristic of the mood. We know that in the Greek genitive are combined two cases, a genitive and an ablative, which were originally distinct; and so, in the Greek dative, three cases, a dative, an instrumental, and a locative of the primitive language. To trace all the uses of the Greek genitive, or the Greek dative, to a single root, would be a futile attempt. And it may be so with the indicative mood. The question, however, is one which grammatical science cannot forbear to raise, ― Do all these uses of the indicative spring from one roos, and, if so, what is it? or from two or more roots, and, if so, how many and what are they? It may be that the means are as yet wanting which would furnish an answer - a fully satisfactory answer to such inquiries. In that case we can only state to ourselves the most probable conclusions thus far arrived at, recognizing the uncertainty which may attach to them, and leaving the rest to future research. Care must be used, of course, not to mistake probabilities for certainties, and especially not to warp the facts given in actual usage, in order to make them consistent with our theoretical results. It is notorious that in too many cases such care has not been exercised; that abstract notions of modality have been made to furnish a host of false or unmeaning explanations, to the prejudice of careful ob-ervation and sound criticism. It is not surprising that a sober and cautious scholar, disgusted with this misuse, should go to the opposite extreme of rejecting all ideas properly modal, at least as regards the three moods in question. But if this procedure relieves him from some difficulties, a single instance will show that it is not without disadvantages of its own. We have already noticed Professor Goodwin's treatment of the forms ἐὰν ποιῇ and εἰ ποιοίη. But there is another forma, made by el with the future indicative, which, like these, is used in suppositions that relate to a particular event in the future. Thus we have εἰ ἐλεύσεται, if he cornes (i.e. shall come, — the Anglo-Saxon present serves also as a future), iàv on, if he come, and ei ëλoo, if he should come; in all which our author recognizes a difference only in vividness, the first being more vivid than - NO. 210. VOL. CII. 20 the second, and the second than the third. But it is hard to believe that the language should have created three such forms of expression with an original and permanent difference in vividness alone; and still more, when we find the same threefold distinction reproduced in our English idiom. We cannot help feeling that such a difference is a fact which requires to be accounted for. If now we could recognize in the first form an element of reality (a reality assumed, not asserted) which does not appear in the second, and in the second form an element of expectation which does not appear in the third, the progressive differences in vividness would be simply and naturally accounted for. Explanations like these, even if founded on views which are more or less doubtful, may yet have the value often allowed to hypothesis in science, that of connecting together, and bringing into intelligible order, what would otherwise appear as isolated facts. In a similar way, one might account for the facts, already stated, to which our author gives prominence in his treatment of conditional sentences. Thus in particular suppositions, when the condition is a future event, it is natural that it should be conceived as a possibility, as something liable to occur, rather than as actually occurring in the future. And in general suppositions, it is equally natural that the indefinite condition should be conceived as something liable to occur, something that may or might occur on any occasion, rather than as an actual occurrence. By such considerations we should not, of course, expect to show that the Greek must of necessity use the forms he did. But if we can only show that it was natural for him to use them, we may at least take from the rules that we lay down that disconnected and arbitrary character which would otherwise belong to them. But we are dwelling too long on matters which, if not without scientific interest, do not seriously affect the practical value of the work before us, -a work which we confidently regard as the best yet produced on the subject of which it treats. 10. Sesame and Lilies. Two Lectures delivered at Manchester in 1864. By JOHN RUSKIN, M. A. 1. Of Kings' Treasuries; 2. Of Queens' Gardens. Second Edition, with Preface. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1865. pp. xxiii., 196. DURING the eight years that have elapsed since the publication of "The Political Economy of Art," Mr. Ruskin's thought, which by nature and habit directs itself to analysis and the solution of problems, has mainly spent itself on the consideration of questions of public economy and public morality. The fine arts have still engaged a part of his attention, but secondarily, and as it were parenthetically. The present work consists of two lectures which are more immediately devoted to personal education, and particularly to the proper use of books. It seems to Mr. Ruskin, as it seems to every thinker of our time, that the desire for amusement is becoming the controlling desire of the people, especially of the upper classes; that the disregardful spirit which, as we all know, the present generation shows toward art, it shows also in a less but in an increasing degree toward literature, and indeed toward every manifestation of intellectual and moral life; and that the persistent rejection of thought, and of subjects of occupation requiring thought, is fast depriving people of the power of thought. The truth of these propositions he endeavors to establish, and the right way to deal with the evil is what his lectures are intended to suggest. Criticism of the highest rank must often take the form of analysis of the existing thing, with the view of suggesting the possible improvement. For criticism is not properly limited to giving an opinion of a single work or a group of works, nor even to giving such an opinion fortified by the statement of reasons and of principles of judgment. Criticism has for its very highest function the setting of the actual thing in its true light, and the setting of the possible thing also in its true light. It is the chief end of criticism to teach people to judge things as they are, and not as they have been said to be, or as tradition and custom represent them to be. Mr. Ruskin's power of analysis and habit of subtile and close reasoning are, therefore, more important tools to him as a critic, than even his acquired knowledge of art and literature. But his peculiar gift, which marks him out among men of almost or quite equal intellectual power, is the force of imagination, which is so evident and remarkable in all his reasoning. This union of the reason and the imagination is perhaps the peculiar intellectual excellence of modern literature and of modern thought as opposed to ancient. As it has been well said that scientific inquiry cannot be successfully prosecuted without the aid of a lively imagination, so inquiry into the laws of society and of life cannot be of any great value, nor the decisions arrived at of any authoritative force, unless vigorous and penetrating imagination has aided the slower reason. It is not necessary that we should mention the numerous thinkers of modern times, some of them our contemporaries, who fail to see the whole of any subject of which they treat, and from whose treatment of any subject nothing but doubt and uncertainty results, because of the lack of imagination in their ways of thought. The union of imagination and thought is the most remarkable feature of the volume before us. The first, which is much the longer lecture, has for its subject the general one, how to read books; and the current of thought is closely confined to the subject, throughout nearly the whole length of the discourse. It would seem to an unimaginative person that the lecture on this topic might be made very short; and if any one should decline to read the lecture on the ground that he could himself, a priori, give as good advice on the subject as he needed, his claim would not appear wholly ridiculous. The subject is of the oldest and most hackneyed. How to read, and, more generally, How to improve the mind, is no new science, like Political Economy or International Law (so called), but has been a subject of discussion for many ages. But in the book before us fresh and highly disciplined thought married to penetrative imagination has taken up the old subject, and we find it to be a new one. Does the imagination sometimes overpass its proper bounds, and supersede rather than clear and strengthen the thought? Perhaps so. If the book have a fault of matter, it is this. Thus, in the attempt to prove that we should seek the society of wise and great men in print, because we all desire, and but seldom can have, the society of wise and great men in life, there is a certain forcing of the similitude which sometimes detracts from the real strength of the argument. It is, for instance, not wholly nor in every case true that sensible people, "if put behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet or the prince's chamber," would "be glad to listen to their words, though forbidden to advance beyond the screen." But it is undoubtedly true, in general, that many of the advantages which are sought for in the best society of living men are to be found in the proper use of books. There are two kinds of good books, good books for the hour, and good books for all time; and those of the last class only are properly books, those of the second class being in essence merely newspapers bound up. It is of the proper use of the real books, written to last forever, that Mr. Ruskin treats. Now it is the tendency of the prevailing desire for amusement, novelty, and excitement, to make people forget how to use good books aright. And it is the tendency of the self-sufficient spirit, common to energetic and vigorous people, to lead them to suppose their own judgment sufficient to them in most cases requiring decision. So an unpractised reader revolts against something in this plain injunction: Have "a true desire to be taught by them [authors of good books], and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe, not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects." Now it seems --- to us that this, and the amplification of the thought which follows, are not put in the best way, but that language might be used which would be more persuasive and convincing. But the very briefness and crispness of the short, emphatic, epigrammatic statements have a charm for all those who like truth so well, and know it so well, that they can recognize it in strange garb. And so here is another capital thing, and one which three quarters of the readers of the book are probably astonished at,– the statement that a man may know many languages, and yet be wholly illiterate, so long as he does not know them, nor his own, thoroughly well. And it is accuracy of meaning, and not of pronunciation or orthography, that the lecturer demands. This matter of the true meaning of words is a favorite subject of thought with Mr. Ruskin. Whether in translation from foreign tongues or in original use of English, the exact force and significance of a word, helped and emphasized by derivation, are of great importance to so generally accurate a thinker. And his researches into the meaning of words, as we might with propriety call this favorite task, are as delightful and suggestive to the reader, as they seem to have been pleasant and necessary to the author. But there is a second thing to be done. If we would use books rightly, we must not only understand what the authors say, and so enter into their minds, we must feel with them also, and enter into their hearts. And in the consideration of this second point, the wide and deep and grave questions of sentiment and sensation, gentleness and vulgarity, righteousness and unrighteousness, justice and injustice, wide sympathies and narrow prejudices, all come up for examination. The - author thinks the English nation, as it exists, not a wholly noble, or just, or gentle nation, but too avaricious and too thoughtless to be either. To his view, his countrymen have rendered themselves incapable of giving thought to literature, science, and art, in their insanity of avarice and longing for amusement. To his mind, it seems, indeed, to despise literature, science, art, natural beauty, and compassion. And the men who do not, and by whose faithfulness and strength England lives, — these men also England, as a nation, despises. The powerful, and, so far as an American has a right to say, truthful passage, beginning on page 99, we have not space to quote entire, and will not mar by cutting down. But every American will respect the heart and the head of the man who has said: "I have no words for the wonder with which I hear kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a personal property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was to gather; as if Achilles's indignant epithet of |