on in the search
for truth was a question to which I do not think that he could give any
distinct answer. He was too much a lover of clearness to be attracted by
the mysticism of Coleridge, and yet he shrank from the results of seeing
too clearly.

I have insisted upon this partly because my father's attitude greatly
affected my brother, as will be presently seen. My brother was not a man
to shrink from any conclusions, and he rather resented the humility
which led my father, in the absence of other popes, to attach an
excessive importance to the opinions of Henry and John Venn--men who, as
Fitzjames observes, were, in matters of speculative inquiry, not worthy
to tie his shoes. Meanwhile, as his health became weaker in later years,
my father seemed to grow more weary of the secular world, and to lean
more for consolation under anxiety to his religious beliefs. Whatever
doubts or tendencies to doubt might affect his intellect, they never
weakened his loyalty to his creed. He spoke of Christ, when such
references were desirable, in a tone of the deepest reverence blended
with personal affection, which, as I find, greatly impressed my brother.
Often, in his letters and his talk, he would dwell upon the charm of a
pious life, free from secular care and devoted to the cultivation of
religious ideals in ourselves and our neighbours. On very rare occasions
he would express his real feelings to companions who had mistaken his
habitual reserve for indifference. We had an old ivory carving, left to
him in token of gratitude by a gentleman whom he had on some such
occasion solemnly reproved for profane language, and who had at the
moment felt nothing but irritation.

The effect of these tendencies upon our little domestic circle was
marked. My father's occupations naturally brought him into contact with
many men of official and literary distinction. Some of them became his
warm friends. Besides Henry Taylor, of whom I have spoken, Taylor's
intimate friends, James Spedding and Aubrey de Vere, were among the
intimates of our household; and they and other men, younger than
himself, often joined him in his walks or listened to his overflowing
talk at home. A next-door neighbour for many years was Nassau Senior,
the political economist, and one main author of the Poor Law of 1834.
Senior, a very shrewd man of the world, was indifferent to my father's
religious speculations. Yet he and his family were among our closest
friends, and i