arrange the government of a State on just and equable lines; the only tyranny that he would originate would be the tyranny of common-sense.  The only thing which he would be hard on would be unreasonableness in any form.  I am very fond of reasonableness myself; I think it a very fine and beautiful quality, and I think that it wins probably the best victories of the world.  But I desire in the world a certain driving force, whereas to me Meyrick only represents an immensely strong regulating force.  When I am away from him I think subordination and regulation are very fine things, but when I am with him I feel that my liberty is somehow strangely curtailed.  I cannot be fanciful or extravagant in Meyrick’s company; his polite laugh would be a disheartening rebuke; he would think my extravagance an agreeable conversational ornament, but he would put me down as a man unfit to be placed upon a syndicate.  I do not feel that I am being consciously judged and condemned; I simply feel that I am being unconsciously estimated; which fills me with inexplicable rage.

I wrote this on Sunday evening, having spent an hour or two in his company, I can still see him as I stopped to say farewell to him on the long, straight road leading to Cambridge.  “Going to turn back here?  Well, I must be getting on—­very good of you to give me luncheon—­good-bye!” with a little brisk smile—­he never shakes hands, I must add, on these occasions.  I stood for an instant to watch him walk off at a good pace down the road.  His boots rose and fell rhythmically, and he put his stick down at regular intervals.  He never turned his head, but no doubt plunged into some definite train of thought.  Indeed, I have little doubt that he had arranged beforehand exactly what he would think out when I left him alone.

So the little, trim, compact figure trudged away, like a spirit of law, decency, and order, with the long fields stretching to left and right with their distant clumps of trees.  He seemed to me to be the embodiment of sensible civilisation, knowing his own mind perfectly, a drill-sergeant of humanity, with a strong sense of responsibility for, but no sympathy with, all lounging, fanciful, and irresolute persons.  How useful, how competent, how good, how honourable he was!  What a splendid guide, mentor, and guardian! and yet I felt helplessly that he possessed and desired none of the things that make humanity dear and the world beautiful.  I often feel very impatient with the way in which writers, and particularly clerical writers, use the word spiritual; it often means, I feel, that they are only conscious of the entire inadequacy of the motives for conduct that they are themselves able to supply; but the moment that I set eyes upon Meyrick, I know what the word means, that it is the one great quality that, for all his virtue and strength, he misses.  I do not know what the quality is exactly, but I do know that he is without it; and in the dry light of Meyrick’s