nd what will become of those vaster multitudes which
are treading and will tread the same wonderful path?--these are the
great insoluble problems which ought to be seldom mentioned but never
forgotten. Strange as it may appear to popular lecturers, they do make
it seem rather unimportant whether, on an average, there is a little
more or less good nature, a little more or less comfort, and a little
more or less knowledge in the world.' Such thoughts were indeed often
with him, though seldom uttered. The death of a commonplace barrister
about this time makes him remark in a letter that the sudden contact
with the end of one's journey is not unwelcome. The thought that the man
went straight from the George IV. Hotel to 'a world of ineffable
mysteries is one of the strangest that can be conceived.'

I have quoted enough from the essays to indicate the most characteristic
vein of thought. They might have been more popular had he either
sympathised more fully with popular sentiment or given fuller and more
frequent expression to his antipathy. But, it is only at times that he
cares to lay bare his strongest convictions; and the ordinary reader
finds himself in company with a stern, proud man who obviously thinks
him foolish but scarcely worth denouncing for his folly. Sturdy common
sense combined with a proud reserve which only yields at rare intervals,
and then, as it were, under protest, to the expression of deeper
feeling, does not give the popular tone. Some of the 'Cornhill' articles
were well received, especially the first, upon 'Luxury' (September
1860), which is not, as such a title would now suggest, concerned with
socialism, but is another variation upon the theme of the pettiness of
modern ideals and the effeminate idolatry of the comfortable.

These articles deal with many other topics: with the legal questions in
which he is always interested, such as 'the morality of advocacy' and
with the theory of evidence, with various popular commonplaces about
moral and social problems, with the 'spirit-rapping' then popular, with
various speculations about history, and with some of the books in which
he was always interested. One is the 'laudation' of Macaulay which I
have noticed, and he criticises Carlyle and speaks with warm respect of
Hallam. Here and there, too, are certain philosophical speculations, of
which I need only say that they show his thorough adherence to the
principles of Mill's 'Logic' He is always on the