with the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his dear little Bobbin.  His outlook upon the world was changed—­the great parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with amazement and horror: 

’How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to Woburn!  This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on Sunday—­the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank—­the entertainment more splendid than usual there.  He expects me to-day, but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of fashion.’

It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and depression of spirits.  It is one of the facts of life.  Young stuck to his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, or nearly so.  He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be tried for them, and that ’I would not be in such a situation for ten thousand worlds.  He was mild and more patient than I expected.’  Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our aristocracy for their ‘politeness.’  In 1808 Young became blind.  In 1815 his wife died.  In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence.

Young’s great work, Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always be a great favourite with somebody.  It will outlive eloquence and outstay philosophy.  It contains some famous passages.

THOMAS PAINE

Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but ’give a dog a bad name and hang him’ is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing author of Common-sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.

Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration.  No circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him.  Even the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas.  He was ‘the infamous Paine,’ ‘the vulgar atheist.’  Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but to be waved on one side as thus:  ’No one of my hearers is likely to be led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.’