ly and absolutely
false, and yet no one takes the trouble to question them. I am always
coming across them. Such as this: _No one is more incapable of
affection than a profligate._ This, in my judgement, is a ludicrous
error, though it is the statement of no less a moral physician than
Lacordaire. If by affection you mean 'sustained, pure, disinterested
emotion,' such as patriotism--well and good; but affection!--the two
most affectionate persons I have ever known were thoroughly
dissolute; and I mean by affection, not a slobbering sentimental
passion of a purely sensual type, but an affection quite untainted,
to all appearances leading them to make considerable sacrifices for
the sake of it, and causing them the acutest misery when not
reciprocated. In so far as profligates are selfish brutal natures,
as they often are, it is true; but that is not the case with half
of them. They are not unfrequently people of infirm will, strong
affections, and a violent animal nature. It is selfishness, regard to
personal _comfort_ at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature,
and can not be raised except through pain.

"Speaking of Lacordaire, another favourite position of his will
illustrate my point. He was constantly inveighing in his seminary
against desultory reading. Homer, Plutarch, Racine, Bossuet, and a
few other books, are all he wishes a man to have read. He calls
miscellaneous reading a subtle dissipation, a moral poison.

"It seems to me to depend entirely upon temperament. Some natures are
like _mills_, converting everything that comes in their way into grist;
and in that case, no doubt, it is deleterious. They are people of
slow-revolving mind, to whom statements in books are of the nature of
authorities. Lacordaire was one, I think.

"But there are others who are like sieves; who want a constant
passing of materials of all kinds over them to let a little fall
through; people who draw from a huge jumble of miscellaneous facts,
theories, and thoughts, a little sediment of truth of the precise
size to suit them. Such a person was Macaulay.

"I believe that interference does more harm than good. If you thrust
books upon a mind of the first type, the result is confusion and
weariness. If you deny them to the latter, all you get is poverty of
ideas, and morbidity, and mawkishness. I make a rule never to
interfere with anybody's reading."

Four years passed. I went during that time once to Tredennis--in the
summer,