284 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE KOW. 



and the eternity to come. Daily and hourly he felt 

 the abysmal solitude that surrounded him. Endowed 

 with the richest fund of sympathy, and yet sympa- 

 thizing with so little ; burdened with solicitude for 

 the public weal, and yet in no vital or intimate rela- 

 tion with the public he would serve ; deeply absorbed 

 in the social and political problems of his time, and yet 

 able to arrive at no adequate practical solution of 

 them ; passionately religious, and yet repudiating all 

 creeds and forms of worship ; despising the old faiths, 

 and disgusted with the new ; honoring science, and 

 acknowledging his debt to it, yet drawing back with 

 horror from conclusions to which science seemed in- 

 evitably to lead ; essentially a man of action, of deeds, 

 of heroic fibre, yet forced to become a " writer of 

 books ; " a democrat who denounced democracy ; a 

 radical who despised radicalism ; " a Puritan without 

 a creed." 



These things measure the depth of his sincerity ; 

 he never lost heart or hope, though heart and hope 

 had so little that was tangible to go upon. He had 

 the piety arid zeal of a religious devotee, without the 

 devotee's comforting belief ; the fiery earnestness of 

 a reformer, without the reformer's definite aims ; the 

 spirit of science, without the scientific coolness and 

 disinterestedness ; the heart of a hero, without the 

 hero's insensibilities ; he had strugglings, wrestlings, 

 agonizings, without any sense of victory; his foes 

 were invisible and largely imaginary, but all the more 

 terrible and unconquerable on that account. Verily 



