mend it; at best let us hope to mend ourselves. I
declare I sometimes think of throwing down the Pen altogether as a
worthless weapon; and leading out a colony of these poor starving
Drudges to the waste places of their old Mother Earth, when for sweat
of their brow bread _will_ rise for them; it were perhaps the
worthiest service that at this moment could be rendered our old world
to throw open for it the doors of the New. Thither must they come at
last, 'bursts of eloquence' will do nothing; men are starving and
will try many things before they die. But poor I, _ach Gott_! I am
no Hengist or Alaric; only a writer of Articles in bad prose; stick
to thy last, O Tutor; the Pen is not worthless, it is omnipotent to
those who have Faith.

Henri Beyle (Stendhal), the great, I am often tempted to think the
greatest of French novelists, writes her a charming letter about
_nuances_. 'It seems to me,' he says, 'that except when they read
Shakespeare, Byron, or Sterne, no Englishman understands "_nuances_"; we
adore them. A fool says to a woman "I love you"; the words mean nothing,
he might as well say "Olli Batachor"; it is the _nuance_ which gives
force to the meaning.' In 1839 Mrs. Austin writes to Victor Cousin: 'I
have seen young Gladstone, a distinguished Tory who wants to re-establish
education based on the Church in quite a Catholic form'; and we find her
corresponding with Mr. Gladstone on the subject of education. 'If you
are strong enough to provide motives and checks,' she says to him, 'you
may do two blessed acts--reform your clergy and teach your people. As it
is, how few of them conceive what it is to teach a people'! Mr.
Gladstone replies at great length, and in many letters, from which we may
quote this passage:

You are for pressing and urging the people to their profit against
their inclination: so am I. You set little value upon all merely
technical instruction, upon all that fails to touch the inner nature
of man: so do I. And here I find ground of union broad and
deep-laid. . . .

I more than doubt whether your idea, namely that of raising man to
social sufficiency and morality, can be accomplished, except through
the ancient religion of Christ; . . . or whether, the principles of
eclecticism are legitimately applicable to the Gospel; or whether, if
we find ourselves in a state of incapacity to work through the