The London Mercury has a caustic article by Mr. E.
T. Raymond on " Modern Political Oratory as Literature." " W. T. Stead accustomed us to automatic writing.' Mr. Lloyd George is an example of ' automatic speaking.' He seems to be only the medium through which now a noble impulse and now a small calculating electioneering spirit expresses itself, and everything depends on which influence happens to be in the ascendant. He is at his very worst, in a literary sense, when he attempts the grand manner with a mean .end in view." Mr. Raymond discusses other politicians, too, and gives some typical extracts from their speeches. Mr. Reginald Blunt, in an article on " Mrs. Carlyle and her Cariana," gives some new letters from Mrs. Carlyle, revealing her womanly sympathies and her humour in a correspondence with a girl friend. Mr. John Beresford calls attention to the poems of Charles Cotton, author of the second part of the Compleat Angler. Coleridge and Wordsworth thought highly of them, and not without reason, as the selections printed by Mr. Beresford will show.
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