might be in the hidden-things of politics. Far from it. They are too thickly crowded by daily detail to see permanent outlines, too much pushed about by a thousand little influences to detect accurately the force or the direction of the big and lasting influences. They 'cannot see the forest for the trees.' They are no more fitted to be instructors because they are practical politicians than lawyers are fitted to fill law-school chairs because they are active practitioners. They must be something else besides to qualify them for the high function of teaching, and must be that something else in so masterful a fashion that no distraction of active politics can for a moment withdraw their vision from the great and continuous principles of their calling.

The active statesman is often an incomparable teacher, however, when he is himself least conscious that he is teaching at all, when he has no thought of being didactic, but has simply a heart full of the high purpose of leading his fellow-countrymen to do those things which he conceives to be right. Read the purposes of men like Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln, men untutored of the schools-read their words of leadership, and say whether there be anything wiser than their home-made wisdom. It is such reflections as these whether my examples be well chosen or not-which seem

to me to lead directly to the right principle of study for every one who would go beyond the law and know the life of states. Not every state lets statutes die by mere disuse, as Scotland once did; and if you are going to read constitutions with only lawyers for your guides, be they never so learned, you must risk knowing only the anatomy of institutions, never learning anything of their biology.

"Men of letters and of thought," says Mr. Sidney Colvin, where one would least expect to find such a remark-in a "Life of Walter Savage Landor"

"Men of letters and of thought are habitually too much given to declaiming at their ease against the delinquencies of men of action and affairs. The inevitable friction of practical politics generates heat enough already, and the office of the thinker and critic should be to supply not heat, but light. The difficulties which attend his own unmolested task, the task of seeking after and proclaiming salutary truths, should teach him to make allowance for the still more urgent difficulties which beset the politician -the man obliged, amidst the clash of interests and temptations, to practise from hand to mouth, and at his peril, the most uncertain and at the same time the most indispensable of the experimental arts."

Excellent! But why stop there? Must the man of letters and of thought observe the friction of politics only to make due allowance for the practical politician, only to keep his

own placid conclusions free from any taint of scorn or cavil at men whose lives are thrown amidst affairs to endure the buffetings of interest and resist the tugs of temptation? Is not a just understanding of the conditions of practical politics also an indispensable prerequisite to the discovery and audible proclamation of his own 'salutary truths?' No truth which does not on all its sides touch human life can ever reach the heart of politics; and men of 'unmolested tasks,' of mere library calm, simply cannot think the thoughts which will tell amidst the noise of affairs. An alert and sympathetic perception of the infinite shifts of circumstance and play of motive which control the actual conduct of government ought to permeate the thinking, as well as check the criticisms, of writers on politics.

In a word, ought not the 'man of the world' and the 'man of books' to be merged in each other in the student of politics? Was not John Stuart Mill the better student for having served the East India Company and sat in the House of Commons? Are not Professor Bryce and Mr. John Morley more to be trusted in their books because they have proved themselves worthy to be trusted in the Cabinet?

The success of great popular preachers contains a lesson for students of politics who would themselves convert men to a saving doctrine.

The preacher has, indeed, an incalculable advantage over the student of politics in having as his text-book that Bible which speaks of the human heart with a Maker's knowledge of the thing He has made; by knowing his book he knows the deepest things of daily life. But the great preacher reaches the heart of his hearers not by knowledge, but by sympathy-by showing himself a brother-man to his fellow-men. And this is just the principle which the student of politics must heed. He must frequent the street, the counting-house, the drawing-room, the club-house, the administrative offices, the halls-yes, and the lobbies-of legislatures. He must cross-examine the experience of government officials; he must hear the din of conventions, and see their intrigues; he must witness the scenes of election day. He must know how men who are not students regard government and its affairs. He will get many valuable suggestions from such men on occasion; better than that, he will learn the available approaches to such men's thoughts. Government is meant for the good of ordinary people, and it is for ordinary people that the student should elucidate its problems; let him be anxious to keep within earshot of such.

This is not to commend the writer on politics to narrow 'practical' views and petty comment; it is not to ask him to find a philosophy of

government which will fit the understanding and please the taste of the 'ward politician:' it is only to ask him to keep his generalizations firmly bottomed on fact and experience. His philosophy will not overshoot the hearts of men because it is feathered with high thought unless it be deliberately shot in air. Thoughts do not fail of acceptance because they are not commonplace enough, but because they are not true enough; and, in the sort of writing about which we are here speaking, truth is a thing which can be detected better by the man who knows life than by the man who knows only logic. You cannot lift truth so high that men cannot reach it; the only caution to be observed is, that you do not ask them to climb where they cannot go without leaving terra firma.

Nor is the student, who naturally and properly loves books, to leave books and sit all his time in wiseacre observation amidst busy men. His books are his balance-or, rather, his ballast. And of course the men of his own day are not the only men from whom he can learn politics. Government is as old as man; men have always been politicians; the men of to-day are only politicians of a particular school; the past furnishes examples of politicians of every other school, and there is as much to be learned about government from them as from their successors.