doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.  The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England.  But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually threaten him.

For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account.  But it is not easy to lead a practical man,—­unless you reassure him as to your practical intentions, you have no chance of leading him,—­to see that a thing which he has always been used to look at from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it,—­that this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our practical allegiance.  Where shall we find language innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to the political Englishmen that the British Constitution itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the speculative side,—­with its compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of clear thoughts,—­that, seen from this side, our august Constitution sometimes looks,—­forgive me, shade of Lord Somers![41]—­a colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines?  How is Cobbett[42] to say this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of political practice? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this field with his Latter-day Pamphlets?[43] how is Mr. Ruskin,[44] after his pugnacious political economy?  I say, the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural and thence irresistible manner.