First Visit to England. 131 



room." Then, turning to me with a smite, " Mr. Herbert 

 is a great favourite in the house." *' Mr. Herbert " curtly 

 remarked that he " wasn't aware of it." As soon as we were 

 out of doors he burst out : " The shallow hypocrite ! I 

 have done nothing to make myself popular in the house, 

 least of all with her." 1 may dismiss the woman with an 

 incident Silsbee mentioned. Sitting on the sofa, sewing, 

 one day, she suddenly exclaimed : " Mr. Spencer, you are 

 fond of books ; here is Scott's Marmion ! " pulling the vol- 

 ume out of her basket and tendering it to him. The dinner 

 hour was half past six. I went home, and was back ten 

 minutes before the time. Was taken upstairs to the sitting- 

 room, where Spencer received me and introduced me to 

 Dr. Morell. Oh, my ! my ! my ! A youngish, jolly, jaunty, 

 sandy-haired, thin-bearded, gold-spectacled, small-headed, 

 little-nosed, undersized individual, the total reverse of all 

 I had supposed.* We got acquainted the first moment. 

 He had never heard of me before ; did not understand 

 and could not remember my name; but I knew him, and 

 that was enough for both. He is a laughing, joking, smart 

 conversationalist, who makes indifferent puns. We went to 

 the dinner table. Morell talks German, and Spencer un- 

 fortunately seated him beside the most diabolical bore of 

 a German that ever happened in the wrong place. He 

 monopolized the conversation, to my great torment. I 

 tried to turn it in some other direction, but the Dutchman 

 would argue. 



I learned that Morell wrote his History of Philosophy 

 at the age of twenty-six ; that he is ashamed of it every 

 time he looks at it; and that it continues to sell. Morell 

 got Boase's work on The Duality of Forces, read five pages, 

 could get no further, and shelved it. Can't read Bain — " he 

 is all very well, but I have no patience to read him ; he is so 



.* Youmans was still apparently in that period of inexperience when 

 one takes it for granted that distinguished authors must look distinguished. 



