There is a wonderful sentence in Mrs. Humphry Ward’s “Marriage of William Ashe,” which subtly and strongly protests against the blight of mental isolation.  Lady Kitty Bristol is reciting Corneille in Lady Grosville’s drawing-room.  “Her audience,” says Mrs. Ward, “looked on at first with the embarrassed or hostile air which is the Englishman’s natural protection against the great things of art.”  To write a sentence at once so caustic and so flawless is to triumph over the limitations of language.  The reproach seems a strange one to hurl at a nation which has produced the noblest literature of the world since the light of Greece waned; but we must remember that distinction of mind, as Mrs. Ward understands it, and as it was understood by Mr. Arnold, is necessarily allied with a knowledge of French arts and letters, and with some insight into the qualities which clarify French conversation.  “Divine provincialism” had no halo for the man who wrote “Friendship’s Garland.”  He regarded it with an impatience akin to mistrust, and bordering upon fear.  Perhaps the final word was spoken long ago by a writer whose place in literature is so high that few aspire to read him.  England was severing her sympathies sharply from much which she had held in common with the rest of Europe, when Dryden wrote:  “They who would combat general authority with particular opinion must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.”

Travellers’ Tales

   “Wenten forth in heore wey with mony wyse tales,
    And hedden leve to lyen al heore lyf aftir.”
                                   Piers Plowman.

I don’t know about travellers’ “hedden leve” to lie, but that they “taken leve” no one can doubt who has ever followed their wandering footsteps.  They say the most charming and audacious things, in blessed indifference to the fact that somebody may possibly believe them.  They start strange hopes and longings in the human heart, and they pave the way for disappointments and disasters.  They record the impression of a careless hour as though it were the experience of a lifetime.

There is a delightful little book on French rivers, written some years ago by a vivacious and highly imaginative gentleman named Molloy.  It is a rose-tinted volume from the first page to the last, so full of gay adventures that it would lure a mollusc from his shell.  Every town and every village yields some fresh delight, some humorous exploit to the four oarsmen who risk their lives to see it; but the few pages devoted to Amboise are of a dulcet and irresistible persuasiveness.  They fill the reader’s soul with a haunting desire to lay down his well-worn cares and pleasures, to say good-bye to home and kindred, and to seek that favoured spot.  Touraine is full of beauty, and steeped to the lips in historic crimes.  Turn where we may, her fairness charms the eye, her memories stir