with whom they had not even a bowing acquaintance; and though the days of his autocracy are over, it has been succeeded by a more fastidious and stringent legislation. We no longer feel it incumbent upon us to profess an intimacy with Thucydides, nor to revere the "Pilgrim's Progress." Indeed, a recent critic has been found brave enough to speak harsh words concerning the Delectable Mountains and the Valley of Humiliation,—words that would have frozen the current of Macaulay's blood, and startled even the tolerant Sainte-Beuve, weary as he confessed himself of the Pilgrim's vaunted perfections. But there is always a little assortment of literary shibboleths, whose names we con over with careful glibness, that we may assert our intimacy in hours of peril; nor should we, in justice, be censured very severely for doing what is too often with us, as with the Ephraimites, a deed of simple self-defense.
These passwords of culture, although their functions remain always the same, vary greatly with each succeeding generation; and, as they make room in turn for one another, they give to the true and modest lovers
