of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and Chicago are barbaric.  Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives, if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate.  Not many, I say, but one.  Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone; we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in the low world.  Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not quite right—­as, indeed, he proved in his proper person.  I tell you, Shiel, I know whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know—­as clearly, as precisely, as a man can know—­that Beatrice Cenci was not “guilty” as certain recently-discovered documents “prove” her, but that the Shelley version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one.  It is possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit—­or say a hand, or a dactyl—­to your stature; you may develop powers slightly—­very slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree—­in advance of those of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you live.  But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the mass—­when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the Cultured Mood has at length arrived—­that their exercise will become easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what presciences, prisms, seances, what introspective craft, Genie apocalypses, shall not then become possible to the few who stand spiritually in the van of men.

’All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening the very little puzzle you have placed before me—­one which we certainly must not regard as difficult of solution.  Of course, looking at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead.  They are avowed enemies; he is the fiance of a princess whose husband he is probably too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his father dies; and so on.  All that appears on the surface.  On the other hand, we—­you and I—­know the man:  he is a person of gentle blood, as moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the world.  It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons that present themselves.  In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we could hardly believe it of him.  Earls’ sons do not, in fact, go about murdering people.  Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other motives—­strong, adequate, irresistible—­and by “irresistible” I mean a motive which must be far stronger than even the love of life itself—­we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.