1. In the March number of the Contemporary Review appeared two papers, by writers of reputation, which I cannot but hope their authors will perceive upon reflection to have involved errors only the more grave in that they have become, of late, in the minds of nearly all public men, facile and familiar. I have, therefore, requested the editor's permission to offer some reply to both of these essays, their subjects being intimately connected.

The first of which I speak was Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which appeared under the title of “The Bias of Patriotism” But the real subject of the paper (discussed in its special extent, with singular care and equity) was only the bias of National vanity; and the debate was opened by this very curious sentence,—“Patriotism is nationally, that which Egoism is individually.”

Mr. Spencer would not, I think, himself accept this statement, if put into the clear form, “What is Egoism in one man, is Patriotism in two or more, and the vice of an individual, the virtue of a multitude.” But it is strange,—however strictly Mr. Spencer may of late have confined his attention to metaphysical or scientific subjects, disregarding the language of historical or imaginative literature—it is strange, I repeat, that so careful a student should be unaware that the term ls patriotism” cannot, in classical usage, be extended, to the action of a multitude. No writer of authority ever speaks of a nation as having felt, or acted, patriotically.