qually free from any desire to
destroy for the sake of destroying. Like the other Utilitarians of
those days, he was a moderate optimist, expecting the world to grow
better steadily, though not swiftly; and he went to America in the
belief that he should there find more progress secured, and more of
further progress in prospect, than any European country could show. It
was the land of promise, in which all the forces making for good on
which the school of Mill relied were to be found at work, hampered
only by the presence of slavery. I note this fact, because it shows
that the pessimism of Mr. Godkin's later years was not due to a
naturally querulous or despondent temperament.

So too was his mind admirably fitted for the career he had chosen.
It was logical, penetrating, systematic, yet it was also quick and
nimble. His views were definite, not to say dogmatic, and as they were
confidently held, so too they were confidently expressed. He never
struck a doubtful note. He never slurred over a difficulty, nor
sought, when he knew himself ignorant, to cover up his ignorance.
Imagination was kept well in hand, for his constant aim was to get
at and deal with the vital facts of every case. If he was not
original in the way of thinking out doctrines distinctively his own,
nor in respect of any exuberance of ideas bubbling up in the
course of discussion, there was fertility as well as freshness in
his application of principles to current questions, and in the
illustrations by which he enforced his arguments.

As his thinking was exact, so his style was clear-cut and trenchant.
Even when he was writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high
level of form and finish. Every word had its use and every sentence
told. There was no doubt about his meaning, and just as little about
the strength of his convictions. He had a gift for terse vivacious
paragraphs commenting on some event of the day or summing up the
effect of a speech or a debate. The touch was equally light and firm.
But if the manner was brisk, the matter was solid: you admired the
keenness of the insight and the weight of the judgment just as much as
the brightness of the style. Much of the brightness lay in the humour.
That is a plant which blossoms so much more profusely on Transatlantic
soil that English readers of the _Nation_ had usually a start of
surprise when told that this most humorous of American journalists was
not an American at all but a European, and