eir_ place in a
sound historical scheme!'

* * * * *

'It is discreditable now for the man of intelligence to
refuse to read his Livy in the light of his Mommsen. My
object has been to help in making it discreditable to him to
refuse to read his Christian documents in the light of a
trained scientific criticism. We shall have made some
positive advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly
capable of dealing sanely with legend in one connection, and,
in another, will insist on confounding it with history
proper, cannot do so any longer without losing caste, without
falling _ipso facto_ out of court with men of education. It
is enough for a man of letters if he has helped ever so
little in the final staking out of the boundaries between
reason and unreason!'

And so on. These are mere ragged gleanings from an ample store. The
discussion in reality ranged over the whole field of history, plunged
into philosophy, and into the subtlest problems of mind. At the end of
it, after he had been conscious for many bitter moments of that same
constriction of heart which had overtaken him once before at Mr.
Wendover's hands, the religious passion in Elsmere once more rose with
sudden stubborn energy against the iron negations pressed upon it.

'I will not fight you any more, Mr. Wendover,' he said, with his moved
flashing look. 'I am perfectly conscious that my own mental experience
of the last two years has made it necessary to re-examine some of these
intellectual foundations of faith. But as to the faith itself, that is
its own witness. It does not depend, after all, upon anything external,
but upon the living voice of the Eternal in the soul of man!'

Involuntarily his pace quickened. The whole man was gathered into one
great, useless, pitiful defiance, and the outer world was forgotten. The
squire kept up with difficulty a while, a faint glimmer of sarcasm
playing now and then round the straight thin-lipped mouth. Then suddenly
he stopped.

'No, let it be. Forget me and my book, Elsmere. Everything can be got
out of in this world. By the way, we seem to have reached the ends of
the earth. Those are the new Mile End cottages, I believe. With your
leave, I'll sit down in one of them, and send to the Hall for the
carriage.'

Elsmere's repentant attention was drawn at once to his companion.

'I am a selfish idiot,' he said hot