Literary Studies. By Walter Bagehot. New Edition. Vol. III. (Longmaus
and Co. 35. 6d.)—This third volume contains three additional essays, two of them contributed to the Spectator, and one written in 1874 and published in its in- complete condition in the Fortnightly Review (December 1st, 1878) after Mr. Bagehot's death. It deals with the subject of "The Chances of a Long Conservative Regime in England," and is an interesting example of political prophecy. The Tories were in power for forty years before 1832; the Liberals had their turn for forty years afterwards, with, of course, the doubtful Peelite interruption. Mr. Bagehot, whose intelligence was singularly detached from party, thought that the "Left Centre," to which by conviction he himself belonged, had and was bound to have but poor prospects. It does not appeal to the popular imagination; it is "in sympathy neither with the intense conservative force nor the intense innovating." It cannot do what its near neighbour, "The Right-Centre," can. Moderate Conservatives can carry proposals which are hopelessly prejudiced when they come from moderate Liberals. Mr. Bagehot was writing shortly after the Election of 1874 which overthrew the Gladstone Cabinet. Of the thirty-two years which followed between that date and the upset of the present year, the Con- servatives secured about twenty-three and their opponents about eight. Mr. Bagehot's prophecy was fairly accurate. What, we wonder, would he have said to the policy which has, for a time at least, abolished the Centre altogether One of the Spectator papers is a holiday essay on Boscastle; the other a criticism of Grote.
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