thick hedges, white with hawthorn blossoms.  In the distance there is a great rocky hill, which bounds the horizon.  There is not a sound, save when a little flaw of air brushes a twig against the wall some feet below me.  The smoke of two or three scattered cottages rises here and there.  The sky is very bright blue, with many fleecy clouds.  Quiet, quiet!  And all this while the omnibuses, cabs, carriages, drays, horses, men, are hurrying, sweltering, and fretting along Cheapside!

Man and his Dwetting-Place!  Truly a comprehensive subject.  For man’s dwelling-place is the universe; and remembering this, it is plain that there is not much to be said which might not be said under that title.  But, of course, there are sweeping views and opinions which include man and the universe, and which colour all beliefs as to details.  And the author of this remarkable book has arrived at such a sweeping view.  He holds, that where-as we fancy that we are living creatures, and that inanimate nature is inert, or without life, the truth is just the opposite of this fancy.  He holds that man wants life, and that his dwelling-place possesses life.  We are dead, and the world is living.  No doubt it would be easy to laugh at all this; but I can promise the thoughtful reader that, though after reading the book he may still differ from its author, he will not laugh at him.  Very moderately informed folk are quite aware of this—­that the fact of any doctrine seeming startling at the first mention of it, is no argument whatever against its truth.  Some centuries since you could hardly have startled men more than by saying that the earth moves, and the sun stands still.  Nay, it is not yet forty years since practical engineers judged George Stephenson mad, for saying that a steam-engine could draw a train of carriages along a rail-way at the rate of fourteen miles an hour.  It is certainly a startling thing to be told that I am dead, and that the distant hill out there is living.  The burden of proof rests with the man who propounds the theory; the prima facie case is against him.  Trees do not read newspapers; hills do not write articles.  We must try to fix the author’s precise meaning when he speaks of life; perhaps he may intend by it something quite different from that which we understand.  And then we must see what he has to say in support of a doctrine which at the first glance seems nothing short of monstrous and absurd.

No:  I cannot get on.  I cannot forget that May magazine that is lying in the corner.  I must be thoroughly done with it before I can fix my thoughts upon the work which is to be considered.  Mr. Buckle has done a service to my mind, entirely analogous to that which would be done to a locomotive engine by a man who should throw a handful of sand into its polished machinery.  I am prepared, from personal experience, to meet with a flat contradiction his statement that a man does you no harm by trying to cast doubt and discredit upon the doctrines you hold most dear.