far. His only bigotry is a bigotry
against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a
scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought--a
spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one
thing he is staunch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness.

But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering
him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a
highly diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are
clever, fair-minded men who will write books for him--men very much
above him in knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in
their habits of thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions
of history and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and
save him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among
such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's _History of the Rise and
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ entitles him to a
high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual
amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations
with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral
qualifications, impartiality, seriousness and modesty. This praise is
chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the history of Magic and
Witchcraft, and to the two chapters on the antecedents and history of
Persecution.

A further evidence of her wide culture and reading, and of her large
critical ability, may also be found in the first number of the _Fortnightly
Review_, for which she wrote the first of the "notices of new books" which
it published. This was a review of Mr. Owen Jones's _Grammar of Ornament_.
The author was one of her friends, and the decorator of the rooms in which
her Sunday receptions were held. She praised the book very highly. The
first paragraph of this notice betrays her appreciation of the aesthetic
movement in England, and her sympathy with its objects and spirit. The
moral value of aesthetic influences is characteristically expressed. The
influence of the environment, as she understood it, is here seen. The
largeness of her faith in the moral efficiency of material causes is
nowhere so strongly expressed by her as in the words which follow.

The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdroeckh, was
disbanding hired armies,