Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to Mr. Douglas Camp-
bell, the author of an American work, entitled " The Puritan Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to Mr. Douglas Camp- bell, the author of an American work, entitled " The Puritan
in Holland, England, and America," thanking him for the presentation copy of his book, and especially for his deeply interesting preface. This letter has called forth a somewhat indignant rejoinder from Mr. Goldwin Smith, who knows the book, and describes a great part of it as "a laborious and prolix disparagement of one of the most glorious periods of English history." The author "seeks to show," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "that whatever is good in American charac- ter and institutions, had its source, not in England, but in Holland." Mr. Douglas Campbell is, according to the same authority, very severe even upon Shakespeare, whom he describes as "the embodiment of a barbarous time." Mr. Goldwin Smith holds that Mr. Douglas Campbell is one of those who " evidently cannot bear to feel that America owes anything to England." Mr. Gladstone's acknowledg- ments of the book are written in a complimentary strain, though it is only fair to say that he had not read the book when he wrote, but only the preface. He describes himself to Mr. Douglas Campbell as a pure Scotchman," and speaks of the English race as "a great fact in the world," and likely so to continue. But he adds, in relation to Mr. Douglas Campbell's depreciatory view of Englishmen, that "no race stands in greater need of discipline in every form, and, among other forms, that which is administered by criticism vigorously directed to canvassing their character and claims." This letter has given a good deal of offence to our own Press, though we usually conceive ourselves, not perhaps quite truly, to be too thick-skinned to mind unfavourable criticism. Still, an English Prime Minister may not be the better fitted for his post for being a little anti- English, and rather pleased than pained at seeing England disparaged by external criticism. Englishmen will certainly take a good deal of chastening criticism, or, as Mr. Gladstone calls it, " discipline," before they are up to the standard of Mr.
Gladstone's national ideal. There is almost as little of the "babes and sucklings" of the Psalm quoted the other day by Mr. Gladstone, in our moral constitution, as there is in the Irishman who " moonlights " and " boycotts." Mr. Gladstone feels but little political sympathy for the English, which is partly our fault and partly, also, his own.
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