stances of time, place, material, means, conditions, &c., interfering with the effectiveness either of the effort by which it was produced, of the result which it was intended to have, or of the impression it is or ought to be calculated to make. Criticism is, therefore, a science of comparison-an exertion of those faculties by which likeness is discerned and discriminated. It is not an intuitional act, but a consciously reasoned procedure. On considering the derivation of the word (pivw), it will be seen to be abundantly evident that criticism, properly speaking, implies the putting asunder into a class or classes, arranged according to its or their merit, of the object or objects submitted to judgment, after due and deliberate investigation, of all the evidence brought forward to substantiate or invalidate a claim put forward on behalf of the matter subjected to trial, and the pronouncing of a definite sentence regarding it in accordance with fixed laws, and altogether apart from considerations arising out of the feelings of the judge, the accidents of the matter, or the opinions of the time regarding it.

The reader will notice in this description of criticism, that it presupposes in the critic (rpurns) fitness of mind not only in power of discernment, but also in knowledge of the law, according to which judgment should be given, and in apprehension of the nature of the evidence on which a decision should be founded. The critical faculty is not only active, but cultured; it does not proceed upon intuitional impressions or the emotional effervescence of the moment, but on the sound, calm dictates of settled law, tested_evidence, and careful inquisition of claim, charge, or proof. Law, order, and righteousness regulate its procedure, and secure for it respect. As a brief statement of the aim and duty of criticism, in our apprehension of it, the following may be taken. The object of criticism is the discovery of the right, the perfect, the best, in regard to that on which its researches are employed. This implies, it is true, the discernment and the denunciation of the wrong, the imperfect, and the objectionable; for without the power to detect worthlessness, no trust adjudication on merit could be made.. Clearness of intellectual vision, sincerity of mental inquisition, and honesty of verdict, are essential to just criticism. It answers the question, What is most excellent? by its previous study of the two preliminary questions-What constitutes true excellence? and, Why do we consider such qualities essential to excellence? Professor Arnold affirms that "its business is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world." We believe it has a prior as well as a loftier aim,-namely, wherefore is it best?

Is true criticism, then, only an application of logic to the determination of the worth or worthlessness of human efforts, considered in regard to the results attained and the aims cherished; to the effects produced and the means used to bring them about; to the coincidence of the actual with the possible; to the effectuation of the ideal in the real? Precisely so: criticism is the logic of excellence. Such a logic, if properly studied and used, could scarcely

fail "to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing; to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things;" "* but these would not be its main objects. Criticism should be studied for its own sake; for the truth it reveals as well as for the advantages it yields. Its subjective structure, as well as its objective strictures, ought to be attended to; as a science it should be intelligently elaborated, and as an art it ought to regulate and overrule all other intellectual elaborations.

Let us attempt to give a sketch, brief and tentative, of what a logic of criticism having for its aim the ascertainment of the reasons of excellence, and the conditions on which the attainment of it depends should be and teach;--a brief outline or syllabus of a predeterminative and overruling series of principles, to which the mind must assent and conform if in its productions it would attain the highest reach of effort of which the age admits, and of which the individual power of the designing mind is capable.

Criticism is the science which enables man to determine what is best in each sphere of activity open to his inspection, or able to be acted upon by his powers. Given a distinct aim, it is for criticism to decide upon the manner in which that may be best effected, and the principles which must overrule the efforts by which it is sought to be attained.

For every distinct species of effort there will therefore be distinct and peculiar canons of criticism, which must be observed by all those who desire to produce any masterly effect in that line. The epic, the drama, and the romance; the tract, the treatise, and the exposition; biography, history, and philosophy; music, painting, and sculpture; mechanical, artistic, and scientific industries; policies, governments, and politics; legal, medical, and economical achievements; martial, moral, and religious endeavours, have all and each their special qualities; and these depend for their effective existence on particular laws which demand observance in each, and therefore require either special aptitudes, opportunities, or knowledge in those who would succeed in them. This is implied in the general adoption as a proverb of the rebuke of Apelles to the Athenian shoemaker-" Ne sutor ultra crepidam."

There must be ultimate principles which govern all success, which, if we could discover, would aid us in accomplishing our designs. In science, art, philosophy, literature; mechanical, commercial, or industrial pursuits, there must be some ideal which all men attempt to realize when they make efforts towards the effectuation of their intents and aims, schemes or inventions. Every ideal is, of course, pursued under the limitations of the material to be employed; but without a governing and predetermining ideal no real success is possible. In the region of the ideal, therefore, are the elements of a true criticism to be found, and Philosophy is the mistress of success.

* Matthew Arnold's "Essays in Criticism," p. 21.

Ideas are the envisaged forms in which we image the aim or object of our intellection, prior to and independently of any sensitive existence of the thing, whatever it is, so presented in thought-the mental archetypes of what we intend to effect-mind-visioned patterns of what we are about to try to bring into actual being. Ideas are subject primarily to the law of intelligible consistency, of homogeneity or self-agreement. Ideas are only tenable when they possess this harmony of parts which constitutes intellectual oneness.

Ideas, in this their earliest stage, ought to be clear, distinct, complete, adequate, and retainable or reproducible at will in the intellection. Only so can they be determinate and capable of being brought forward for the judgment of the critical faculty. Alike in material and mental productivity, this law of conceptive ideation holds. A steam-engine, a rifle, a railway, a bridge, a telegraph, a balloon, a ship, or a statue, no less than an epic poem, a history, a novel, or a treatise on morals, demands for its successful production this prevenient foreshadow and "intelligible form.' Ideas, in the second stage of their existence, under the eye of criticism, are subject to the law of possible reproduction. Intellectual envisagement is not enough: that is perceptible to and delights one only; it wants the life of purpose. When interpenetrated with purpose it seeks a life out of and beyond the mind in which it had its origin. If this be not possible it is nought to humanity-not improbably, nought also to the thinker of it. It is as worthless as a dream, and more intangible than a shadow. Only by being reproducible in some form of effective existence can a thought be beneficial. So long as it is but

"A vision, a delight, and a desire,"

it is unbeinged and unborn; when it is effectually realized, it is worth, for then it is,

"The builder's perfect and centennial flower."

The possible is that for the realization of which all the necessary conditions pre-exist, either in the required order, or in an order easily reducible to that which is required. A thing is said to be possible when there is no contradiction in thought between the idea and its realization. Possible reproductivity, therefore, implies that neither among the contingencies to which things are subject, the known nature of the elements of reproduction, in the choice made or to be made of the elements of reproduction, nor in the power of him who seeks to reproduce, does there exist any prima facie obstacle, impediment, or hindrance to a successful issue.

The best possible is that which can be done with the least resistance of the real to the ideal, provided that ideal be the highest and best of conceivable ones, and the reality employed to bring it effectively about is the best attainable.

Here, then, comes into operation the third law of ideation so far as criticism is concerned, viz., All ideas, to be effective, must be

materially reproductive or suggestible. Half-results are hateful to gods and man.

The material in which any idea is reproduced may vary as much as the thinker chooses-diagrams, speech, writing, colours, stone, metals, &c., or any combinations of these, but materially reproducible it must be.

Criticism as a science predetermines the mode and fashion of this reproductivity; while criticism as an art adjudicates upon the advisability, correctness, and effectiveness of the product.

The materially possible is obnoxious to many counter-checks, impediments, and obstructions. Human power is hampered and hindered by conditions of frame, life, &c., circumstance, opportunity, encouragement or discouragement, &c. Human effort is opposed by accident, by the qualities of things, the state of implements or instruments, the nature of public taste, the conditions of the State in which it is exerted, &c.; and it has besides to contend with all that is past, all that exists, and all that is expected. Correct estimates of these are essential to any just criticism, and a knowledge of their bearing upon the immediate product judged is indispensable to a just exercise of the critic's function as an adviser of the active agent, or as a commissioner in the public service. Administrative criticism often opposes its absolute dictation to the inevitable conditions of material possibility, and so injures the cause of truth, charity, and science; nor until it learns to bestow impartial investigation on the elements of the material possibilities to which any production was inevitably subject can it be a trustworthy intermediate between the public in general and the producer in particular. The infinite variety of contingencies between aim and effect, the complex difficulties that lie between purpose and execution, the inevitable interventions which the abstract has to undergo in its struggle into concrete being, all require from the critic careful appraisement and just consideration.

All human effort is reproductive, is the outcome of the inner being, the offspring of the soul. Life's passion, thought, will, suffering, are in or enter into the spirit before they can be representatively brought forth. Every effort made, is, in its initiation, an attempt to realize an idea, to make something else conformed to or become, what we wish it to be. Action is the exegesis of thought; it not only issues from but explains it. That the true laws of ideation ought to be familiar to the critic cannot be doubted; for without a proper acquaintance with the aim we cannot pertinently judge of the issue. We contend, then, that an exact and extensive knowledge of the laws of formative thought forms the first part of a scientific criticism. Every work postulates an idea;-has that been properly formed, self-harmonized, and envisioned? Has its possibility been tested faithfully by the laws of the intellect, and been affirmed to be theoretically possible, as involving no contradiction? and has it been thoroughly considered in relation to the material in or the means by which it was sought to be realized ?

To such questions as these the critical faculties must address themselves, and to these they must find satisfactory replies, sound, logical, and indubitable, before it can be affirmed of any product that it is right, wrong, or indifferent. The creative intellect is bound to conform to the laws of thought; the critical intellect must know these laws, that it may test whether they have been obeyed, and attest that they have or have not been observed.

Criticism, when it is exercised upon the finished product, undertakes to adjudicate upon the ideation, taste, style, truth, and worth of the works brought before it.

What was seen? How was it seen? Has it been reproduced as seen ?-are the chief questions it puts concerning the mental envisagement of ideas. Do defects inhere in the ideal presentations or in the real representations ? Is the envisioning right and the reproductive effort mistaken? Have the laws of intellection been regarded, or have the possibilities of things been disregarded? Have we had that which was in sight brought into sight? Has the ideal been made the real? In these and similar queries the logic of criticism becomes involved, and unless it is provided with some sound canons of judgment—if it hastily adjudicates from emotion or rashly decides on æsthetic precedents-it is faulty as a judge and worthless as a guide. The philosophy of ideation is a topic far too extensive to be touched off in a sentence; but an effective criticism must be based on that, and it is just in proportion to the logical culture of the critic that his judgment is trustworthy. Criticism demands precise, definite, clear, consistent, and reproductively available ideation; and this is a subject upon which every school Logic bestows such an amount of exemplified teaching that we may safely refer to any one of them for farther information.

Taste concerns itself with the relishableness of that which is produced by that to which it appeals. Taste in the critic is " a quick discerning sense" of the appropriateness or impropriety of the forms which things assume, of the fitness or unfitness of certain qualities in things to please or displease. Taste in the object is its suitability to impart gratification or to provoke disgust. Taste makes certain demands on every producer, and these constitute the laws under which any-nay, every work, is undertaken. Esthetic unity of impression, completeness of adaptation to the sentiments, wholeness of delight-giving power, an entire consistency of effect on all the faculties, alone satisfy all the demands of true taste. To Taste belongs the determination of the laws of appropriateness. Every idea has a "primordial form" in the intellect which entertains it, and every such idea has a best form of representability. If we can determine what that is, we can at once apply a test to any product and decide upon its merits. The laws of appropriateness vary not only in the region of the materially possible, but also of the intellectually possible; not only so, but every product of thought is liable also to animadversions from a consideration of the historically possible and the morally suitable, or the expedient.