people to break down in the race, who in averagely prosperous circumstances might have lived pleasantly and reputably.  But the deeper we plunge into nature, the deeper we explore life, the more immutable we find the grip of law.  What could appear to be a more fortuitous spectacle of collision and confusion than a great ocean breaker thundering landwards, with a wrack of flying spray and tossing crests?  Yet every smallest motion of every particle is the working put of laws which go far back into the dark aeons of creation.  Given the precise conditions of wind and mass and gravitation, a mathematician could work out and predict the exact motion of every liquid atom.  Just so and not otherwise could it move.  It is as certain that every minute psychological process, all the phenomena that we attribute to will and purpose and motive, are just as inevitable and immutable.

The other day I went by appointment to call on an elderly lady of my acquaintance, the widow of a country squire, who has settled in London on a small jointure, in an inconspicuous house in a dull street.  She has always been a very active woman.  As the wife of a country gentleman she was a cordial hostess, loving to fill the house with visitors; and in her own village she was a Lady Bountiful of the best kind, the eager friend and adviser of every family in the place.  Now she is old and to a great extent invalided.  But she is vigorous, upright, dignified, imperative, affectionate, with a stately carriage and a sanguine complexion.  She is always full to the brim of interest and liveliness.  She carries on a dozen small enterprises; she is at daggers drawn with some of her relations, and the keen partisan of others.  Everything is “astonishing” and “wonderful” and “extraordinary” that happens to her; and it is an unceasing delight to hear her describe the smallest things, her troubles with her servants, her family differences, the meetings of the societies she attends, the places she visits.  Her talk is always full of anecdotes about mysterious people whose names are familiar to me from her talk but with whom I have never come into contact.  It is impossible to forecast what circumstances may fill her with excitement and delight.  She will give you a dramatic account of a skirmish with her Vicar about some incredibly trifling matter, or describe with zest how she unveiled the pretentious machinations of some undesirable relative.  She is full of malice, anger, uncharitableness, indignation; but, on the other hand, she is just as full of compassion, goodwill, admiration, and enthusiasm.  Everyone she knows is either perfectly delightful or else entirely intolerable; and thus she converts what would seem to many people a confined and narrow sphere of action into a stormy and generous clash of great forces.