ealth has
for many years incapacitated him for persistent application. Owing
partly to his ill health, and partly to the absorbing nature of his
occupation, his life has been a retired one, and in the ordinary sense
of the term, uneventful. He has never married, and, although the high
opinion of his writings formed by contemporaries has led to many
academic honors being pressed upon him at home and abroad, these have
all been declined. It only remains to mention that in 1882 he visited
the United States, where the importance of his speculations had been
early recognized, and that his home is now in Brighton, England.

II.

In Mr. Spencer's latest book, "Facts and Comments," a little light is
thrown on the author's habits, opinions, and predilections. Referring to
the athleticism to which so much attention is paid just now in English
and American universities, he points out how erroneous it is to identify
muscular strength with constitutional strength. Not only is there error
in assuming that increase of muscular power and increase of general
vigor necessarily go together, but there is error in assuming that the
reverse connection cannot hold. As a matter of fact, the abnormal powers
acquired by gymnasts may be at the cost of constitutional deterioration.
In a paper on "Party Government" the author maintains that what we boast
of as political freedom consists in the ability to choose a despot, or a
group of oligarchs, and, after long misbehavior has produced
dissatisfaction, to choose another despot or group of oligarchs: having
meanwhile been made subject to laws, some of which are repugnant.
Abolish the existing conventional usages, with respect to party
fealty,--let each member of parliament feel that he may express by his
vote his adverse belief respecting a government measure, without
endangering the government's stability,--and the whole vicious system of
party government would disappear. In a paper on "Patriotism," Mr.
Spencer says that to him the cry "Our country, right or wrong," seems
detestable. The love of country, he adds, is not fostered in him by
remembering that when, after England's Prime Minister had declared that
Englishmen were bound in honor to the Khedive to reconquer the Soudan,
they, after the reconquest, forthwith began to administer it in the name
of the Queen and the Khedive, thereby practically annexing it; and when,
after promising through the mouths of two colonial Ministers not to
int