128 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



human brain to those of inferior tribes; Lyell, a new work 

 on The Antiquity of Man; and Tyndall, a new work on the 

 mechanical theory of heat. He reads nothing but what 

 bears on the immediate thing he is writing, and but little 

 of that. He expects to be reviewed by Mansel, whom he 

 has thrust into an embarrassing position. Goldwin Smith 

 and Mansel, at the same university, are at loggerheads 

 over the doctrine of Mansel's Limits to Religious Thought. 

 Smith charges him with atheism, and quotes Spencer's use 

 of the doctrine as proof of it. Yet, when one of Spencer's 

 parts is delayed, Goldwin Smith writes him a very kind let- 

 ter of solicitude for his health, and is thus liberal and gen- 

 tlemanly though thoroughly antagonistic. He says there 

 is obviously a growing liberality of thought and speech 

 toward the United States. 



I broke off abruptly this morning, as I was forced away. 

 I tried to put down everything material about Spencer. If 

 I remember anything further I will record it. He knows 

 nothing about the state of practical education, never heard 

 of the Home Colonial Training School, and thinks there is 

 nothing here to be imitated. Viewed through English 

 lenses, things look gloomy enough at the North. Every- 

 body regards the independence of the South as a fixed and 

 foregone and irreversible fact, and they look upon the 

 movements of the North as the blind, infatuated, impotent 

 struggling of political pride. Every success of the South 

 is hailed with pleasure, and only the gloomy side of North- 

 ern affairs is presented. Even Mr. Spencer regards disso- 

 lution as determined, and deludes himself with the weakest 

 sophistry to explain the present confused attitude of Eng- 

 land. Your " conscription " and the frantic efforts to evade 

 it are made everything of. . . . AVe leave to-morrow morn- 

 ing for Dover, Ostend, Brussels, Cologne, Basel, and where 

 else Heaven only knows, to be gone a fortnight or three 

 weeks. We shall not hear from you in all that time, but 



