S/X WALTER SCOTT. 47 



star shall reappear in undiminished lustre, and young and old will 

 clap their hands and rejoice in its purity and power. Some years 

 ago arose a school of poetry that flared and flickered for a season, 

 and found admirers on the same mysterious principle, we suppose, 

 that Antoinetta Bourignon and Joanna Southcott found followers. 

 It was happily styled the " spasmodic " school ; and it died and 

 disappeared — the best thing it could do. A new school has suc- 

 ceeded, that may be called the sensuous, and, we had almost said, 

 the lascivious, and with a strong tendency to the reproduction in 

 modern guise of all that was worst and best in the ancient Greek 

 drama. Of this school, Mr. Swinburne is, facile princeps, the chief. 

 It also will last but for a season, and will die and disappear ignomi- 

 niously, as did its predecessor. There is yet another school, that has 

 existed for some time longer — full of missyism, sentimentalism, and 

 languid goodyism — "too good for banning, too bad for a blessing." 

 It also is slowly dwindling, and dwining, and dying, and must soon 

 expire, leaving people hardly any better or worse than it found 

 them. And so with the novels of the day, with their " sensations," 

 their seductions, murders, and unspeakable horrors, worse than were 

 mingled in the bubbling cauldron of the witches in Macbeth : their 

 day is doomed ; for purer taste, banished but for a moment, must 

 reappear — is already reappearing — and people, awakening as if from 

 a dream, will once again consent to quench their thirst at healthier 

 fountains, and to wander in less questionable bye-paths. The poetry 

 and novels of Scott will then resume their attraction and reassert 

 their influence and power; and whithersoever he leads, no parent need 

 be ashamed to follow, or feel obliged in the interests of morality 

 to forbid and forego the companionship of wife or children through 

 scenes where there is everything to delight and nothing to offend. 

 It is well that in the world of poetry and fiction, as in social and 

 political affairs, the maxim holds true that — 



" Kes nolunt diu male administrari." 



