never been explained and
which still lays its finger on my nerve.

I mixed with the men of the eighteenth century; and we fooled as one
does at a fancy-dress ball. There was Burke as large as life and a great
deal better looking. There was Cowper much larger than life; he ought
to have been a little man in a night-cap, with a cat under one arm and
a spaniel under the other. As it was, he was a magnificent person, and
looked more like the Master of Ballantrae than Cowper. I persuaded him
at last to the night-cap, but never, alas, to the cat and dog. When I
came the next night Burke was still the same beautiful improvement upon
himself; Cowper was still weeping for his dog and cat and would not
be comforted; Bishop Berkeley was still waiting to be kicked in the
interests of philosophy. In short, I met all my old friends but one.
Where was Paley? I had been mystically moved by the man's presence; I
was moved more by his absence. At last I saw advancing towards us
across the twilight garden a little man with a large book and a bright
attractive face. When he came near enough he said, in a small, clear
voice, "I'm Paley." The thing was quite natural, of course; the man was
ill and had sent a substitute. Yet somehow the contrast was a shock.

By the next night I had grown quite friendly with my four or five
colleagues; I had discovered what is called a mutual friend with
Berkeley and several points of difference with Burke. Cowper, I think
it was, who introduced me to a friend of his, a fresh face, square
and sturdy, framed in a white wig. "This," he explained, "is my friend
So-and-So. He's Paley." I looked round at all the faces by this time
fixed and familiar; I studied them; I counted them; then I bowed to the
third Paley as one bows to necessity. So far the thing was all within
the limits of coincidence. It certainly seemed odd that this one
particular cleric should be so varying and elusive. It was singular
that Paley, alone among men, should swell and shrink and alter like a
phantom, while all else remained solid. But the thing was explicable;
two men had been ill and there was an end of it; only I went again
the next night, and a clear-coloured elegant youth with powdered hair
bounded up to me, and told me with boyish excitement that he was Paley.

For the next twenty-four hours I remained in the mental condition of
the modern world. I mean the condition in which all natural explanations
have broken down and no supe