large residuum which is like nothing but itself. If I could give you the lecture word for word, it would be of little use; for though the lecture is much, the man is more. His best things are telling enough in themselves, and you would feel them to be so if you read them in `the quiet of your own room; but from his lips they are ever so much more telling, for they come with all the impetus of a strong individuality behind them. A cannon ball, if it drop on your toes, will crush them by the simple force of its own weight; but when projected from an Armstrong gun, it will shiver to splinters a mass of opposing granite. When you hear George Dawson, you have the ball from the cannon, or, perhaps I ought to say, the bullet from the rifle; for his artillery is effective rather than heavy. His mission is to hit folly with an epigram, not to batter down crime with a denunciation ; and if we wanted a new reformation, we might look to him to play the part of an Erasmus, not of a Luther. (You know how much I admire Erasmus; so you won't, as many people would, suppose that I mean this for an accusation.) He has plenty of confidence in himself: you see this at once; but somehow he seems to have a right to it. He talks to his audience in a way that in another man would be an impertinence; but you can't feel that he is impertinent. I noted down two or three of the sayings which struck me; but as I couldn't send George Dawson with them, perhaps you would not see much in them, though I see a good deal still. One of

his figures was however so very happy that I can send it to you without any fear of its deterioration upon the journey. I do not even need to label it "This side up; with care!" It will do any side up. He used it in speaking of the memoirs of Pepys and Evelyn, and of all those books which bring down to us the light chit-chat of the ages which without them would be to us as dead -ruthlessly suffocated by the dignity of history. "Contemporary gossip," said he, "is contemptible; the gossip of two hundred years ago is charming. The fly, when it has got into the amber, is worth its weight in gold; but the fly, before it gets into the amber, is a pestilence and a nuisance." I guess, as the Yankees say, that I have added another link to your chain of associated ideas. You will never see a fly in amber now without thinking of gossip and George Dawson.

I write to you to-day at what I really hope is the end of a second deluge. Unless it has occasionally left off for a few minutes in the middle of the night (which I don't believe), it has rained unceasingly for more than a week. From this state of things two consequences have flowed: (1) Every one has been compelled to keep within doors; and, (2) Every one has been very cross. You will easily imagine that with me a third consequence has followed these: a hasty and agonized flight from the wrangling of society to the sweet solace of

literary loneliness. I really fear I have been indulging in a literary debauch, and that I shall be the worse for it after. You shall hear and judge. At all events, I hope the rain will stop when I get to the end of the book I am working upon at present; for if I am tempted to begin another the consequences must be terrible. I am reading, for the second time, Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy;" and I must confess it gives me very great pleasure. Though so many parts of the book are intensely repellent to me, the style, with its exquisite clearness and ease-here and there its absolute brilliance has a wonderful charm. Its general conclusion, -that the best and wisest of men in all ages have, like the baby crying for the moon, been striving after something which no man can possibly grasp―seems to me horribly incredible. We are beings, and no positive philosophy will ever eradicate the craving for a knowledge of being; neither M. Comte nor Mr. Lewes will ever persuade mankind to be satisfied with the barren field of phenomena. If, as Mr. Lewes says, reason will not carry us beyond the field of phenomena, we must fall back upon faith; and though he exclaims against a mixture of faith and philosophy, he cannot himself avoid it. Belief in the law of gravitation, when carefully analysed, is discovered to be as real an exercise of faith as is belief in the existence of a God with certain attributes. Both are conclusions which are not found in the premisses; or, rather, the major premiss in both cases is assumed.

Both are (considered philosophically) consistent hypotheses, which fit the facts they are intended to explain; but they are not found in the facts, and belief in them is therefore an act of faith. When I say, "the force of attraction is (in every instance with which we are acquainted) directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance," I have science and philosophy to back me; but if I leave out the parenthetical words of qualification, I am as truly in the region of faith as I am when I say, "God is love!"

So much for philosophy and Mr. Lewes. I will not so far delude you as to let you suppose that his biographical history is a fair sample of my deluge studies. I have been going heavily into poetry and fiction; and, in consequence, my mind seems full of floating nebulous thoughts, which persistently refuse to resolve themselves into definite, starry spheres. I made, however, an observation or criticism-call it what you will-so lately as this morning while lazily turning over the leaves of my Tennyson. It is this. There are some poems which have more of the characteristics of music than of poetry: that is, their power lies more in what they suggest than in what they express. Just as the musician, by a few simple chords, is able to interpret for us the mystery of love, agony, aspiration,—so there are some poets who, with means equally incommensurate-such, for example, as the grouping of a few of the simplest natural objects-are able to bring home to

us a new wealth of passion and emotion. I don't think there is a better illustration of this than Tennyson's "Break, break, break!" It is one of the most perfect and adequate poems he has written; and yet if you estimate it by common-sense measurement, there is nothing in it but a little bit of marine landscape, and a short sigh for a vanished past. Read two verses :—

"Oh well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!

Oh well for the sailor-lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

"And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But, oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still !"

How much is suggested here, but how little is said; and even in what is said there is an unconnectedness, an inconsequence. Why is it well for the sailor-lad that he sings in his boat on the bay? We feel why, but the poem does not tell us; just as we feel the untold meaning of one of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, for which we have to find our own subject. Again: what is the connection between the first and the second half of the latter of the two verses? The logical man will say, "None at all;" and he will be right from his point of view, for the link which binds together in one perfect verse the stately ships and the vanished hand is not