about social conventions, as vigorous as Mr. Greatheart, and with a tenderness for the feebler sort of pilgrims.  To-day he was blithe and yet serious; he allowed me to ask him questions, and he explained to me technical terms.  I felt like a child dandled in the arms of a sage, allowed to blow upon his watch till it opened, and to pull his beard.  “No,” he said, “I don’t advise you, at your age, to try and study philosophy.  It requires rather a peculiar kind of mind.  You will have to divest words of poetical associations and half-meanings, and arrive at a kind of mathematical appreciation of their value.  You had much better talk to me, if you care to, and I will tell you all I can.  Besides,” he added, “much modern philosophy is a criticism of methods; it has become so special a business that we have most of us drifted quite beyond the horizon, like the higher mathematicians, into questions that have no direct meaning for the ordinary mind.  We want a philosopher with a power of literary expression, who can make some attempt to translate our results into ordinary language.”  “Why could you not do it?” I said, “Ah,” said he, “that is not my line!  It needs a certain missionary spirit.  The thing amuses and interests me; but I don’t feel sure that it can be made intelligible—­and moreover, I do not think it would be wholly profitable either.  We have not determined enough; besides, ordinary people had better act by intuition rather than by reason.  There are, too, many data missing, and perhaps the men of science will some day be in a position to give us some, but they have not got far enough yet.”

And then we plunged into the subject; but I will not attempt to reproduce what was said, because I cannot remember it, and I should no doubt grossly misrepresent my master.  But he led me a fine dance.

It was like a walk I took the other day when I was staying in a mountain country.  A companion of mine, tired like myself of inaction, went off with me, and we climbed a high mountain.  For some hours we walked in the clouds, in a close-shifting circle of mist, seeing nothing but the little cairns that marked the way, and the bleak grasses at our feet.  Now and then we crossed a cold stream that came bubbling into our dim circle, and raved hoarsely away in fretted cataracts.  Once we passed a black and silent tarn, with leaden waves lapping among the stones.  Once or twice, as we descended, the skirts of the cloud drew up suddenly, and revealed black crags and rocky bastions, and down below a great valley, with sheep grazing, pastures within stone enclosures, little farms, and mountain bases red with fern.

That was like my mental excursion to-day.  It was very cold and misty on the heights of my friend’s mind.  I recognised sometimes familiar things, but all strangely enlarged and transfigured.  Once or twice, too, the whole veil flew up, and disclosed a familiar scene, which I felt had some dim connection with the chill and vaporous height, but I could not discern what it was; and when we came down again, the heights were still impenetrably shrouded.