see, else I am sure you might. Here is a good hard flint for you to see your next essay in.

MILVERTON. It will do very well, as my next will be on the subject of population.

ELLESMERE. What day are we to have it? I think I have a particular engagement for that day.

MILVERTON. I must come upon you unawares. ELLESMERE. After the essay you certainly might. Let us decamp now and do something great in the way of education, teach Rollo, though he is but a shorthaired dog, to go into the water. That will be a feat.

CHAPTER IX.

ELLESMERE Succeeded in persuading Rollo to go into the water, which proved more, he said, than the whole of Milverton's essay, how much might be done by judicious education. Before leaving my friends, I promised to come over again to Worth Ashton in a day or two, to hear another essay. I came early and found them reading their letters.

"You remember Annesleigh at college," said Milverton, "do you not, Dunsford ?"

MILVERTON. Here is a long letter from him. He is evidently vexed at the newspaper articles about his conduct in the matter of -, and writes to tell me that he is totally misrepresented.

DUNSFORD. Why does not he explain this publicly?

MILVERTON. Yes, you naturally think so at first, but such a mode of proceeding would never do for a man in office, and rarely, perhaps, for any man. At least so the most judicious people seem to think. I have known a man in office bear patiently, without attempting any answer, a serious charge which a few lines would have entirely answered, indeed turned the

other way. But then he thought, I imagine, that if you once begin answering, there is no end to it, and also, which is more important, that the public journals were not a tribunal which he was called to appear before. He had his official superiors.

DUNSFORD. It should be widely known and acknowledged then, that silence does not give consent in these cases.

MILVERTON. It is known, though not, perhaps, sufficiently.

DUNSFORD. What a fearful power this anonymous journalism is !

MILVERTON. There is a great deal certainly that is mischievous in it but take it altogether, it is a wonderful product of civilization-morally too. Even as regards those qualities which would in general, to use a phrase of Bacon's, "be noted as deficients" in the press, in courtesy and forbearance for example, it makes a much better figure than might have been expected; as any one would testify, I suspect, who had observed, or himself experienced, the temptations incident to writing on short notice, without much opportunity of afterthought or correction, upon subjects about which he had already expressed an opinion.

DUNSFORD. Is the anonymousness absolutely neces

sary?

MILVERTON. I have often thought whether it is. If the anonymousness were taken away, the press would lose much of its power, but then why should it not lose a portion of its power, if that portion is only built upon some delusion.

ELLESMERE.

It is a question of expediency. As

government of all kinds becomes better managed, there is less necessity for protection for the press. It must be recollected, however, that this anonymousness (to coin a word) may not only be useful to protect us from any abuse of power; but that, at least, it takes away that temptation to discuss things in an insufficient manner, which arises from personal fear of giving offence. Then, again, there is an advantage in considering arguments without reference to persons. If well-known authors wrote for the press and gave their signatures, we should ofte pass by the arguments unfairly, saying, "Oh, it is only so-and-so: that is the way he always looks at things," without seeing whether it is the right way for the occasion in question.

MILVERTON. But take the other side, Ellesmere. What national dislikes are fostered by newspaper articles, and

ELLESMERE. Articles in Reviews, and by books. MILVERTON. Yes, but somehow or other, people imagine that newspapers speak the opinion of a much greater number of people

ELLESMERE. Do not let us talk any more about it. We may become wise enough and well-managed enough to do without this anonymousness: we may not. How it would astound an ardent Whig or Radical of the last generation, if he could hear such a sentiment as this as a toast, we will say "The Press: and may we become so civilized, as to be able to take away some of its liberty."

MILVERTON. It may be put another way. May it become so civilized, that we shall not want to take away any of its liberty. But I see you are tired of

this subject: shall we go on the lawn and have our essay?

We assented, and Milverton read the following:

UNREASONABLE CLAIMS IN SOCIAL AFFECTIONS AND RELATIONS.

We are all apt to magnify the importance of whatever we are thinking about, which is not to be wondered at; for every thing human has an outlet into infinity, which we come to perceive on considering it. But with a knowledge of this tendency, I still venture to say that, of all that concerns mankind, this subject has, perhaps, been the least treated of in regard to its significance. For once that unreasonable expectations of gratitude have been reproved, ingratitude has been denounced a thousand times: and the same may be said of inconstancy, unkindness in friendship, neglected merit, and the like.

To begin with ingratitude. Human beings seldom have the demands upon each other which they imagine. And for what they have done they frequently ask an impossible return. Moreover, when people really have done others a service, the persons benefitted often do not understand it. Could they have understood it, the benefactor, perhaps, would not have had to per