to see how soon the deadly process of shrinkage sets in.  The awful thing to think of is that the cramp may insensibly be set in action by a company which, as I have said, is composed of rather estimable people.  Who can forget Lydgate in “Middlemarch”?  There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent genius; and the type represents only too many human wrecks.  Lydgate was thrown into a respectable provincial society; he was mastered by high ambition, he possessed great powers, and he felt as though he could move the mocking solidities of the world.  Watch the evolution of his long history; to me it is truly awful in spite of its gleams of brightness.  The powerful young doctor, equipped in frock-coat and modern hat, plays a part in a tragedy which is as moving as any ever imagined by a brooding, sombre Greek.  As you read the book and watch the steady, inexorable decline of the strong man, you feel minded to cry out for some one to save him—­he is alive to you, and you want to call out and warn him.  When the bitter end comes, you cannot sneer as Lydgate does—­you can hardly keep back the tears.  And what is it all about?  It simply comes to this, that a good strong man falls into the bad company of a number of fairly good but dull people, and the result is a tragedy.  Rosamund Vincy is a pattern of propriety; Mrs. Vincy is a fat, kindly soul; Mr. Vincy is a blustering good-natured middle-class man.  There is no particular harm among the whole set, yet they contrive to ruin a great man; they lower him from a great career, and convert him into a mere prosperous gout-doctor.  Every high aspiration of the man dies away.  His wife is essentially a commonplace pretty being, and she cannot understand the great heart and brain that are sacrificed to her; so the genius is forced to break his heart about furniture and carpets and respectability, while the prim pretty young woman who causes the ghastly death of a soul goes on fancying herself a model of good sense and virtue and all the rest.  “Of course I should like you to make discoveries,” she says; but she only shudders at the microscopic work.  When the financial catastrophe comes, she has the great soul at her mercy, and she stabs him—­stabs him through and through—­while he is too noble and tender to make reply.  Ah, it is pitiful!  Lydgate is like too many others who are stifling in the mud of respectable dullness.  The fate of those men proves what we have asserted, that bad company is that which does not permit the healthful and fruitful development of a soul.  Take the case of a brilliant young man who leaves the University and dives into the great whirlpool of London.  Perhaps he goes to the Bar, and earns money meantime by writing for the Press.  The young fellows who swarm in the London centres—­that is, the higher centres—­are gentlemen, polished in manner and strict as to the code of honour, save perhaps as regards tradesmen’s bills; no coarse word or accent escapes them, and there is something attractive about their merry stoicism.