72 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 



The influence of external circumstance in changing 

 nerve organisation, and consequently character, is most 

 powerful, but it may be easily over-estimated. It has 

 probably been so in Bunyan's case. He himself, in 

 obedience to the Puritan habit, now gone out of 

 fashion, of self-accusation, described his early life as 

 that of the vilest of sinners. In reality he was a youth 

 of naturally high character honest, truthful, chaste. 

 It is true that he swore with so much pungency, that 

 the old women of Els tow, who had no notion of Charles 

 Kingsley ; s interjectional theory, were terrified ; but he 

 had not the faintest idea of calling down a curse on 

 anybody or anything. He had in a marvellous degree 

 the gift of expression, but behind this there lay ex- 

 traordinary capacity and an extraordinary impulse to 

 action. Youth passed, and other ideas and impulses 

 came. Capacity, expression, action, all had to be un- 

 folded how unfolded, circumstance, locality, and the 

 time decided. He first swore with eloquence and 

 impressiveness, and afterwards preached with eloquence 

 and impressiveness, but his nature was not radically 

 changed; he was a good lad and a good man. 



If we turn to the political world we have the advantage 

 of a fairly ample knowledge of its leading figures, which 

 includes both their mental and their bodily character- 

 istics. I shall, here and elsewhere, avoid dwelling on 

 living persons with one or two exceptions, Mr. Gladstone 

 and Mr. Ruskin whose characters and bodily con- 

 figurations teach us so much. Of the two overuling 

 temperaments, Mr. Gladstone* has both the bodily and 

 intellectual characteristics of the active and less 



* These notes were written before Mr. Gladstone's retirement from 

 parliamentary life, and I have thought it best to retain the present 

 tense. 



