True; and yet there is consolation in it; for otherwise it would have been impossible to hold intercourse with him at all.  If he had reasoned in order to prove to me that human reason cannot be trusted, or I to convince one who affirmed its universal falsity, it were hard to say whether he or I had been the greater fool.  Your universal sceptic—­if he choose to affect that character,—­no man is it—­is impregnable; his true emblem is the hedgehog ensphered in his prickles; that is, as long as you are observing him.  For if you do not thus irritate his amour propre, and put him on the defensive, he will unroll himself.  Speaking, reasoning, acting, like the rest of the world, on the implied truthfulness of the faculties whose falsity he affirms, he will save you the trouble of confuting him, by confuting himself.

And I am glad, for another reason, that Harrington does not affect this universal scepticism:  for whereas, by the confession of its greatest masters, it is at best but the play of a subtle intellect, so it does not afford a very flattering picture of an intellect that affects it.  I should have been mortified, I confess, had Harrington been chargeable with such a foible.

It is true that, in another aspect, all this makes the case more desperate; for his scepticism, so far as it extends, is deep and genuine; it is no play of an ingenious subtilty, nor the affectation of singularity with him;—­and my prognostications of the misery which such a mind must feel from driving over the tempestuous ocean of life under bare poles, without chart or compass, are, I can see, verified.  One fact, I confess, gives me hopes, and often affords me pleasure in listening to him.  He is an impartial doubter; he doubts whether Christianity be true; but he also doubts whether it be false; and, either from his impatience of the theories which infidelity proposes in its place, as inspiring yet stronger doubts, or in revenge for the peace of which he has been robbed, he never seems more at home than in ridiculing the confidence and conceit of that internal oracle, which professes to solve the problems which, it seems, Christianity leaves in darkness; and in pushing the principles on which infidelity rejects the New Testament to their legitimate conclusion.

I told you, in general, the origin and the progress of his scepticism.  I suspect there are causes (perhaps not distinctly felt by him) which have contributed to the result These, it may be, I shall never know; but it is hardly possible not to suppose that some bitter experience has contributed to cloud, thus portentously, the brightness of his youth.  Something, I am confident, in connection with his long residence abroad, has tended to warp his young intellect from its straight growth.  The heart, as usual, has had to do with the logic; and “has been whispering reasons which the reason cannot comprehend.”  I suspect that passionate hopes have been buried,—­whether in the grave, I know not.  I must add, that an