Lord Rosebery was more serious on Tuesday, when " in.
augurating "—why will not "opening" do, as of old ?—the free library, generously given by Mr. Pa.e.e.more Edwards to Whitechapel ; but he was amusing, too, uttering gravely the conceit that, after an election, public opinion, utterly ex- hausted, has to go about for a time in a Bath-chair. He was eloquent on the value of municipal life, which had suddenly revived in London—we wish it had, for the County Council then would be a different body—but passed on to a dissertation on the value of books, especially cheap books, in raising the com- munity till they could even understand "that most marvellous production of the Almighty, Shakespeare's mind." The grand charm of books, however, was as a refuge from the world, as Macaulay had sung when Edinburgh expelled him, and as Cardinal Newman wrote when he closed a controversy. The whole speech was excellent ; but why does Lord Rosebery stoop to use the word "democratic," as if it were an adjective of admiration ? It includes badness as well as goodness, sometimes more badness than goodness ; and so Lord Rosebery would let us know if he wore his thoughts outside. Nor are we at all sure that the influence of literature, whether cheap or dear, is either democratic or democratising. The reading classes in our day grow Con- servative, as Mr. Gladstone recently complained, and unless we mistake the symptoms, culture tends to produce a violent difference of classes. Lord Rosebery and his groom can understand one another about a horse, but not about a poet. We quite believe the Daily News' story of the coalhea.ver who recently corrected a lecturer's Greek ; but we suspect that coalheaver voted on the Unionist side. Certainly a working gardener we know of, who can quote most English poets with intelligence, does.
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