t of the blind alleys; and I am surer and surer every day, that
there's always sunlight enough for every honest fellow--though I
didn't think so a few months back--and a good sound road under
his feet, if he will only step out on it.

"Talking of blind alleys puts me in mind of your last. Aren't you
going down a blind alley, or something worse? There's no wall to
bring you up, that I can see down the turn you've taken; and
then, what's the practical use of it all? What good would you do
to yourself, or anyone else, if you could get to the end of it? I
can't for the life of me fancy, I confess, what you think will
come of speculating about necessity and free will. I only know
that I can hold out my hand before me, and can move it to the
right or left, despite of all the powers in heaven or earth. As I
sit here writing to you, I can let into my heart, and give the
reins to, all sorts of devil's passions, or to the Spirit of God.
Well, that's enough for me. I _know_ it of myself, and I believe
you know it of yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or
himself; and why you can't be satisfied with that, passes my
comprehension. As if one hasn't got puzzles enough, and bothers
enough, under one's nose, without going a-field after a lot of
metaphysical quibbles. No, I'm wrong,--not going
a-field,--anything one has to go a-field for is all right. What a
fellow meets outside himself he isn't responsible for, and must
do the best he can with. But to go on for ever looking inside of
one's self, and groping about amongst one's own sensations, and
ideas, and whimsies of one kind and another, I can't conceive a
poorer line of business than that. Don't you get into it now,
that's a dear boy.

"Very likely you'll tell me you can't help it; that every one has
his own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that mine are
one sort, and yours another. Well, perhaps you may be right. I
hope I'm getting to know that my plummet isn't to measure all the
world. But it does seem a pity that men shouldn't be thinking
about how to cure some of the wrongs which poor dear old England
is pretty near dying of, instead of taking the edge off their
brains, and spending all their steam in speculating about all
kinds of things, which wouldn't make any poor man in the
world--or rich one either, for that matter--a bit better off, if
they were all found out, and settled to-morrow. But here I am at
the end of my paper. Don't be angry at my jobati