264 The Museum Gazette 



" His imagination often exercised on him a tyrannous sway, 

 endowing past or fictitious events with a stronger and more 

 importunate reality than the actual circumstances which 

 surrounded him." . . A partial counteraction to the pre- 

 dominence of this inward life was supplied by his love of 

 natural scenery, but even here his interest was rather in the 

 grand and sublime than in the beautiful, and Nature awakened 

 his strong enthusiasm more frequently than it inspired him 

 with quiet and genial enjoyment. 



At the age of 22 he threatened to give up reading novels : — 



" I sometimes think I will read no more : so many of them are 

 romantic and so many insipid. Besides, is there any such thing as 

 learning the art on science of feeling. I think the person who without 

 reading novels, would not be amiable and worthy, will never become 

 such by reading them." 



One of the most interesting sections of his " Life " are the 

 pages devoted to selections from his private diary. This 

 diary was kept in early life, 25 to 30; from it the following are 

 taken. It might be read with much interest in contrast with 

 Amiel's Diary, the one recording the feelings of thoughtful 

 but emotional Frenchmen in the end of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, the other those of meditative Englishmen at the end of 

 the eighteenth. 



The following are some brief extracts from the Diary : — 



" I desire to be an intellectual painter, and I review Nature's 

 scenery so often to possess myself of colours." 



"Youth is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh and fair 

 by wearing sparingly." 



" I am not observing, I am only seeing ; for the beam of my eye is 

 not charged with thought." 



" This soul shall either govern this body or shall quit it." 



" Regret that interesting ideas and feelings are the comets of the 

 mind ; they transit off." 



" One of the strongest characteristics of genius is— the power of 

 lightifig its own fire" 



From a letter at much later date : — ■ 



" The cause of religion is but in rather a languid state. It would 

 be happy if the evils of the times were to work a religious effect, but I 

 fear there are no very strong signs of this. By one means or another, 

 however, religion will most certainly make its promised advances, 



