of a characteristic in people of extreme culture to allow Nature her most contradictory reactions.  This tendency, opposed as it is to all our ideal conceptions of the intellectual life, is the merest commonplace of biography.  “The most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and painting have frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness.  Within the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene Chateaubriand that would burst forth in talk that no biographer would repeat.  I have heard the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine.  We know that Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor on the spree.  A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living geniuses, ’You can have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes:  he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough brutality.’” To this specious and damaging objection our author makes the excellent reply, that in observing whole classes we generally see an advance in morals go along with an advance in culture.  The gentleman of the present day is superior to his forefather whom Fielding described:  he is better read and better educated, and at the same time more sober and more chaste.  The man of genius does not, then, by his oscillations of temperament, retard or misdirect the company whose course he points.  It is an interesting question, nevertheless, what are the moral standards of our apologist for the intellectual life, and what degree of ethical perfection would satisfy him in a world of various spheres all regenerated by culture.  There is one letter in which he undertakes to pick out the special virtue which most helps his ideal way of life, and here, in chanting the praises of disinterestedness, he takes rather a superior tone toward so homespun a grace as honesty:  “The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward the forming of an effective intellectual character.”  This refinement of ethics, which leaves the humdrum commandments away out of sight, is doubtless very fine, but we cannot be sure that Mr. Hamerton has the same standard for all the different strata of people whom he addresses.  Pretty soon we find him addressing a young clergyman, who appears to have apprehensions lest intellectual doubts may come to disturb his satisfaction in Bible-teaching.  To this the author replies with the following odd encouragement:  “It may be observed, however, that the regular performance of priestly functions is in itself a great help to permanence in belief by connecting it closely with practical habit, so that the clergy do really and honestly often retain through life their hold on early beliefs which as laymen they might have lost.”  This hint on the efficacy of continued rowing for stopping a leak in the bottom, if it be really meant for encouragement, shows an odd principle of honor, if not of “honesty.”  When it comes to the large and attractive class which