the county in Parliament, I asked them how they came to make such a mistake as to fancy that I knew what was their interest, or anyone else’s?  I am becoming more and more of an animal; fragmentary, inconsistent, seeing to the root of nothing, unable to unite things in my own mind.  I just do the duty which lies nearest, and looks simplest.  I try to make the boys grow up plucky and knowing-though what’s the use of it?  They will go to college with even less principles than I had, and will get into proportionably worse scrapes, I expect to be ruined by their debts before I die.  And for the rest, I read nothing but “The Edinburgh” and “The Agricultural Gazette.”  My talk is of bullocks.  I just know right from wrong enough to see that the farms are in good order, pay my labourers living wages, keep the old people out of the workhouse, and see that my cottages and schools are all right; for I suppose I was put here for some purpose of that kind-though what it is I can’t very clearly define-And there’s an end of my long story.”

“Not quite an animal yet, it seems?” said I with a smile, half to hide my own sadness at a set of experiences which are, alas! already far too common, and will soon be more common still.

“Nearer it than you fancy.  I am getting fonder and fonder of a good dinner and a second bottle of claret-about their meaning there is no mistake.  And my principal reason for taking the hounds two years ago was, I do believe, to have something to do in the winter which required no thought, and to have an excuse for falling asleep after dinner, instead of arguing with Jane about her scurrilous religious newspapers-There is a great gulf opening, I see, between me and her-And as I can’t bridge it over I may as well forget it.  Pah!  I am boring you, and over-talking myself.  Have a cigar, and let us say no more about it.  There is more here, old fellow, than you will cure by doses of Socratic Dialectics.”

“I am not so sure of that,” I replied.  “On the contrary, I should recommend you in your present state of mind to look out your old Plato as quickly as possible, and see if he and his master Socrates cannot give you, if not altogether a solution for your puzzle, at least a method whereby you may solve it yourself.  But tell me first-What has all this to do with your evident sympathy for a man so unlike yourself as Professor Windrush?”

“Perhaps I feel for him principally because he has broken loose from it all in desperation, just as I have.  But, to tell you the truth, I have been reading more than one book of his school lately; and, as I said, I owe you no thanks for demolishing the little comfort which I seemed to find in them.”

“And what was that then?”

“Why-in the first place, you can’t deny that however incoherent they may be they do say a great many clever things, and noble things too, about man, and society, and art, and nature.”

“No doubt of it.”