The American Government gives them their full share of its small patronage; and if Americans, why not Englishmen ?" In this a great subject is discussed which would be too long for these pages; but I think that there now exists a feeling that literature can herself, for herself, produce a rank as effective as any that a Queen's minister can bestow.

Surely it would be a repainting of the lily, an adding a flavour to the rose, a gilding of refined gold to create to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron Carlyle, or a Right Honourable Sir Robert Browning.

And as for pay and pension, the less the better of it for any profession, unless so far as it may be payment made for work done.

Then the higher the payment the better, in literature as in all other trades.

It may be doubted even whether a special rank of its own be good for literature, such as that which is achieved by the happy possessors of the forty chairs of the Academy in France.