’There is this admirable commonplace, too, which, from long habit of being introduced in such discourses, wishes to come in before I conclude—­namely, that infelicities of various kinds belong to the state here below.  Who are we that we should not take our share?  See the slight amount of personal happiness requisite to go on with.  In noisome dungeons, subject to studied tortures, in abject and shifty poverty, after consummate shame, upon tremendous change of fortune, in the profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship with all that is unlovely and uncongenial—­men, persevering nobly, live on, and live through all.  The mind, like water, passes through all states, till it shall be united to what it is ever seeking.  The very loneliness of man here is the greatest proof, to my mind, of a God.’

One of the things that strikes us most in these essays, is the author’s wise moderation of statement, his habit of looking at all phases of a question, and of saying something appropriate on each.  We believe he makes Ellesmere observe somewhere, that moral essays commonly require another essay from the opposite point of view to temper and qualify their meaning.  This requirement has been closely kept in mind.  There is no undue vehemence, no straining of favourite points, no clap-trap rhetoric or elaborate phrase-makings; but everything is clear, judicious, well considered, and conscientiously set forth.  The man does not write for the sake of writing, but because his soul is full of thoughts, and his remembrances charged with the wholesome lessons of experience.  The thoughts generally are less remarkable for their depth than for their breadth—­a free and unembarrassed all-sidedness, which is, perhaps, one of the most difficult of all attainments in the way of writing.  There is a mild meditative wisdom in his utterances which can have been derived only through a large acquaintance with life and society; with the manifold diversities of motive and aspiration by which men are actuated; with everything, in short, that interests, degrades, or elevates humanity.  Only from an extensive quarry of experience could this strong and graceful pillar of wit, sagacity, and judgment, have been built up.  From this, too, has been acquired that broad liberality of opinion which must be welcome to every candid mind—­the enlarged tolerance, and generous appreciation of all degrees of difference in men’s ways of thinking and of acting, which is one of the most pleasing and most distinctive characteristics of these writings.  Often, in reading, we are inclined to say, here is one of the best-balanced souls in England—­a finely-gifted and highly-cultivated man, to whom the pains and difficulties, the joys, the sorrows, the ambitions, and shortcomings of his race, are all familiar; who has felt them all, seen the good and evil of them all, and, with a calm deliberation, can testify at last, that the great Power of the Universe has so