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CHAPTER XL 



THE DRUID S MANY-SIDED SYMPATHIES. 



T is difficult in a few words to 

 analyse the causes which made 

 " The Druid " so popular as a 

 public writer while he was still 

 alive, and have kept his memory so fresh, 

 now that he has been for nearly a quarter of 

 a century in the grave, that a new edition of 

 his work is demanded by a younger genera- 

 tion of admirers who never saw him in the 

 flesh. Briefly comprehended, I should say 

 that his greatest charm was the universality 

 of his sympathies. Homo sum ; humani nihil 

 a me alienum puto : "I am a man, and con- 

 sider nothing that touches or affects my fellow 

 creatures to be a matter of unconcern to my- 

 self," was the motto which he might have 

 prefixed to every chapter that he ever wrote. 



