shape, perhaps, on the Petites Dalles sands. It was an unobtrusive art,
his art of government, but a most effective one.

At any moment, as Flaxman often felt, at any rate in the early meetings,
the discussions as to the religious practices which were to bind
together the new association might have passed the line, and become
puerile or grotesque. At any moment the jarring characters and ambitions
of the men Elsmere had to deal with might have dispersed that delicate
atmosphere of moral sympathy and passion in which the whole new birth
seemed to have been conceived, and upon the maintenance of which its
fruition and development depended. But as soon as Elsmere appeared,
difficulties vanished, enthusiasm sprang up again. The rules of the new
society came simply and naturally into being, steeped and halloed, as it
were, from the beginning, in the passion and genius of one great heart.
The fastidious critical instinct in Flaxman was silenced no less than
the sour, half-educated analysis of such a man as Lestrange.

In the same way all personal jars seemed to melt away beside him. There
were some painful things connected with the new departure. Wardlaw, for
instance, a conscientious Comtist refusing stoutly to admit anything
more than 'an unknowable reality behind phenomena,' was distressed and
affronted by the strongly religious bent Elsmere was giving to the work
he had begun. Lestrange, who was a man of great though raw ability,
who almost always spoke at the meetings, and whom Robert was bent on
attaching to the society, had times when the things he was half inclined
to worship one day he was much more inclined to burn the next in the
sight of all men, and when the smallest failure of temper on Robert's
part might have entailed a disagreeable scene, and the possible
formation of a harassing left wing.

But Robert's manner to Wardlaw was that of a grateful younger brother.
It was clear that the Comtist could not formally join the Brotherhood.
But all the share and influence that could be secured him in the
practical working of it, was secured him. And what was more, Robert
succeeded in infusing his own delicacy, his own compunctions on
the subject into the men and youths who had profited in the past by
Wardlaw's rough self-devotion. So that if, through much that went on
now, he could only be a spectator, at least he was not allowed to feel
himself an alien or forgotten.

As to Lestrange, against a man who was as rea