towards the weddings (it may be supposed that the happy couples are this September on their wedding tours) is traced with much skill and much knowledge of the fashion in which such things go; and it supplies a peculiar interest to the work, which will probably tide many young ladies over essays on such grave subjects as Government and Despotism.  Still, we confess that we had hardly regarded Ellesmere and Milverton as marrying men.  We had set them down as too old, grave, and wise, for at least the preliminary stages.  We have not forgotten that Dunsford told us [Footnote:  Friends in Council, Introduction to Book II.] that in the summer of 1847 he supposed no one but himself would speak of Milverton and Ellesmere as young men; and now of course they are twelve years older, and yet about to be married to girls whom we should judge to be about two or three and twenty.  And although it is not an unnatural thing that Ellesmere should have got over his affection for the German Gretchen, whose story is so exquisitely told in the Companions of my Solitude, we find it harder to reconcile Milverton’s marriage with our previous impression of him.  Yet perhaps all this is truthful to life.  It is not an unnatural thing that a man who for years has settled down into the belief that he has faded, and that for him the romantic interest has gone from life, should upon some fresh stimulus gather himself up from that idea, and think that life is not so far gone after all.  Who has not on a beautiful September day sometimes chidden himself for having given in to the impression that the season was so far advanced, and clung to the belief that it is almost summer still?

In a preliminary Address to the Reader, the author explains that the essay on War, which occupies a considerable portion of the first volume, was written some time ago, and intends no allusion to recent events in Europe.  The Address contains an earnest protest against the maintenance of large standing armies; it is eloquent and forcible, and it affords additional proof how much the author has thought upon the subject of war, and how deeply he feels upon it.  Then comes the Introduction proper, written, of course, by Dunsford.  It sets out with the praise of conversation, and then it sums up what the ‘Friends’ have learned in their longer experience of life:—­

We ‘Friends in Council’ are of course somewhat older men than when we first began to meet in friendly conclave; and I have observed as men go on in life they are less and less inclined to be didactic.  They have found out that nothing is, didactically speaking, true.  They long for exceptions, modifications, allowances.  A boy is clear, sharp, decisive in his talk.  He would have this.  He would do that.  He hates this; he loves that:  and his loves or his hatreds admit of no exception.  He is sure that the one thing is quite right, and the other quite wrong.  He is not troubled with doubts.  He knows.

I see now why, as men go on in life, they delight, in anecdotes.  These tell so much, and argue, or pronounce directly, so little.