Some years after this I brought from Rome as a present for my much valued friend and lady-Doctor, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D. (widow of Dr. George Hoggan), a large photograph of the statue in the Vatican of Minerva Medica. Under it I wrote these lines:—

The first dinner-party I ever attended in London, before I went to live in town, was at Mr. Bagehot’s house. I sat beside Mr. Richard Hutton, who has been ever since my good friend, and opposite us there sat a gentleman who at once attracted my attention. He had a strong dark face, a low forehead and hair parted in the middle, the large loose mouth of an orator and a manner quite unique; as if he were gently looking down on the follies of mortality from the superior altitudes of Olympos, or perhaps of Parnassus. “Do you know who that is sitting opposite to us?” said Mr. Hutton. I looked at him again, and replied: “I never saw him before, and I have never seen his picture, but I feel in my inner consciousness that it can only be Mr. Matthew Arnold;” and Mr. Arnold, of course, it was,—with an air which made me think him (what he was not) an intellectual coxcomb. He wrote, about that time or soon afterwards, some dreadfully derisive things of my Theism; not on account, apparently, of its intrinsic demerits, but because of what he conceived to be its upstart character. We are all familiar with a certain tone of lofty superiority common to Roman Catholics and Anglicans in dealing with Dissenters of all classes; the tone, no doubt, in which the priests of On talked of Moses when he led the Israelitish schism in the wilderness. It comes naturally to everybody who stands serenely on “the old paths,” and watches those who walk below, or strive to fray new ways through the jungle of poor human thoughts. But when Mr. Arnold had himself slipped off the old road so far as to have liquefied the Articles of the Apostles’ Creed into a “Stream of Tendency;” and compared the doctrine of the Trinity to a story of “Three Lord Shaftesburys;” and reduced the Object of Worship to the lowest possible denomination as “a Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness;” he must, I think, have come to feel that it was scarcely his affair to treat other people’s heresies as new-fangled, and lacking in the sanctities of tradition. As one after another of his brilliant essays appeared, and it became manifest that his own creed grew continually thinner, more exiguous, and less and less substantial, I was reminded of an old sporting story which my father told of a town-bred gentleman, the “Mr. Briggs” of those days, who for the first time shot a cock-pheasant, and after greatly admiring it laid it down on the grass. A keeper took up the bird and stroked it, pretending to wonder at its size, and presently shifted it aside and substituted a partridge, which he likewise stroked and admired, till he had an opportunity of again changing it for a snipe. At this crisis “Mr. Briggs” broke in furiously, bidding the keeper to stop stroking his bird: “Be hanged to you! If you go on like that, you’ll rub it down to a wren!” The creed of many persons in these days seems to be undergoing the process of being patted and praised, while all the time it is being rubbed down to a wren!

But whatever hard things Mr. Arnold said of me, I liked and admired him, and he was always personally most kind to me. He had of all men I have ever known the truest insight,—the true Poet’s insight,—into the feelings and characters of animals, especially of dogs. His poem, Geist’s Grave, is to me the most affecting description of the death of an animal in the range of literature. Indeed, the subject of Death itself, whether of beasts or of men, viewed from the same standpoint of hopelessness, has never, I think, been more tenderly touched. How deeply true to every heart is the thought expressed in the stanzas, which remind us that in all the vastness of the universe and of endless time there is not, and never will be, another being like the one who is dead! That being (some of us believe) may revive and live for ever, but another who will “restore its little self” will never be.

We knew dear Geist, I am glad to say. When Miss Lloyd and I came to live at Byfleet Mr. Arnold and his most charming wife,—then living three miles off at Cobham,—kindly permitted us to see a good deal of them, and we were deeply interested in poor Geist’s last illness. He was a black dachshund, not a handsome dog, but possessed of something which in certain dogs and (those dogs only) seems to be the canine analogue of a human soul. As to Mr. Arnold’s poem on his other dog, Kaiser, who is there that enjoys a gleam of humour and dog-love can fail to be enchanted with such a perfect picture of a dog,—not a dog of the sentimental kind, but one—

Does not every one feel how true is the likeness of a happy loving dog to sunshine in a house?

I met Mr. Arnold one day in William and Norgate’s bookshop, and he inquired after my dog, and when I told him the poor beast had “gone where the good dogs go,” he said, with real feeling, “And you have not replaced her? No! of course you could not.” I asked his leave to give a copy of “Geist’s Grave” for a collection of poems on animals made for the purpose of humane propaganda, and he gave it very cordially. I was, however, deeply disappointed when he returned the following reply to my application for his signature to our first Memorial inviting the R.S.P.C.A. to undertake legislation for the restriction of vivisection. I do not clearly understand what he meant by disliking “the English way of employing for public ends private Societies and Memorials to them.” The R.S.P.C.A. is scarcely a “private society;” and, if it were so, I see no harm in “employing it for public ends,” instead of leaving everything to Government to do; or to leave undone.

“Your letter was directed to Oxford, a place with which I have now no connection, and it reaches me too late for signing your Memorial, but I should in any case have declined signing it, strongly as your cause speaks to my feelings; because, first, I greatly dislike the English way of employing, for public ends, private societies and Memorials to them; secondly, the signatures you will profit by, in this case, are not those of literary people, who will at once be disposed of as a set of unpractical sentimentalists. To yourself this objection does not apply, because you are distinguished not in letters only, but also as a lover and student of animals. I hope if you read my paper in the Contemporary, you observe how I apologise for calling them the lower animals, and how thoroughly I admit that they think and love.

In my first journey to Italy on my way to Palestine I made acquaintance with R. W. Mackay, the author of that enormously learned, but, perhaps, not very well digested book, the Progress of the Intellect. I afterwards renewed acquaintance with him and his nice wife in their house in Hamilton Terrace. Mr. Mackay was somewhat of an invalid and a nervous man, much absorbed in his studies. I have heard it said that he was the original of George Elliot’s Mr. Casaubon. At all events Mrs. Lewes had met him, and taken a strong prejudice against him. That prejudice I think was unjust. He was a very honest and real student, and a modest one, not a pretender like Mr. Casaubon. His books contain an amazing mass of knowledge, (presented, perhaps, in rather a crude state) respecting all the great religious doctrines of the world. I had once felt that both his books and talk were hard and steel-cold, and that his religion, though dogmatically the same as mine, was all lodged in his intellect. One day, however, when he called on me and we took a drive and walk in the Park together, I learned to my surprise that he entirely felt with me that the one direct way of reaching truth about religion was Prayer, and all the rest mere corroboration of what may so be learned. To have come round to this seemed to me a great evidence of intellectual sincerity.

I forget now what particular point we had been discussing when he wrote me the following curious bit of erudition:—

“Dixit Rabbi Simeon Ben Lakis,—Nomina angelorum et mensium ascenderunt in domum Israelis ex Babylone.”

“This occurs in the treatise Rosh Haschanah, which is part of the Mischna.

“The Mischna (the earliest part of the Talmud) is said to have been completed in the 3rd century, under the auspices of Rabbi Judah the Holy, and his disciples.

“I send the above as promised, The professed aversion of the Jews for foreign customs seems strangely at variance with their practice, as seen, e.g., in their names for the divisions of the heavenly hosts; the words ‘Legion and Sistra (castra) are evidently taken from the Roman army. Four Chief Spirits or Archangels are occasionally mentioned, as in Pirke Eliezer and Henoch, cf. 48, 1. Others make their number seven, as Tobit 12, 5; Revel. 2, 4–3, 1–4, 5. The angelic doings are partly copied from the usages of the Jewish Temple, hence the Jerusalem Targum renders Exod. 14, 24. ‘It happened in the morning watch, the hour when the heavenly host sing praises before God’—comp.: Luke 2, 13,—and the same reason is applied by the Targumist for the sudden exit of the angel in Genes. 32, 26. One may perhaps, however, be induced to ask whether (as in the case of Euthyphron in the Platonic dialogue) a better cause for departure might not be found in the inconvenience of remaining!

“Though I have Haug’s version of the Gathas, I am far from able to decipher the grounds of difference between him and Spiegel. Non nostrum est tantas componere lites, a volume entitled Erân by Dr. Spiegel contains, among other Essays, one entitled Avesta and Veda, or the relation of Iran and India, and another Avesta and Genesis, or the relation of Iran to the Semites. Weber’s Morische Skizzen also contains interesting matter on similar subjects. We were speaking about the magical significance of names. See as to this Origen against Celsus, 1–24; Diod. Sicul, 1–22; Iamblicus de Myst, 2, 4, 5.

“Socrates himself appears superstitiously apprehensive about the use of divine names in the Philebus 1, 2 and the Cratylus 400e. The suppression of it among the Jews, (for instance in the Septuagint, where Κυριος is substituted for Jehovah, and Sirach, Ch. 23, 9) express the same feeling.

“We were talking of the original religion of Persia. You, of course, recollect the passage on this subject in the first book of Herodotus, Ch. 131, and Strabo 15, see 13, p. 732 Casaub. The practice of prohibiting selfish prayer mentioned in the next following chapter in Herodotus, is remarkable.

“I hope that in the above rigmarole a grain of useful matter may be found. Mrs. Mackay is, I am glad to say, better to-day.

Another early acquaintance of mine in London was Lady Byron, the widow of the poet. I called on her one day, having received from her a kind note begging me to do so as she was unable to leave her house to come to me. She had been exceedingly kind in procuring for me valuable letters of introduction from Sir Moses Montefiore and others, which had been very useful to me in my long wanderings.

Lady Byron was short in stature and, when I saw her, deadly pale; but with a dignity which some of our friends called “royal,” albeit without the smallest affectation or assumption. She talked to me eagerly about all manner of good works wherein she was interested; notably concerning Miss Carpenter’s Reformatory, to which she had practically subscribed £1,000 by buying Red Lodge and making it over for such use. During the larger part of the time of my visit she stood on the rug with her back to the fire and the power and will revealed in her attitude and conversation were very impressive. I bore in mind all the odious things Byron had said of her:

Also the sneers at her (very genuine) humour:

I thought that for a man to hold up such a woman as this, and that woman his wife, on the prongs of ridicule for public laughter was enough to make him detestable.

A lady whom I met long afterwards told me, (I made a note of it Nov. 13th, 1869) that she had been stopping, at the time of Lady Byron’s separation, at a very small seaside place in Norfolk. Lady Byron came there on a visit to Mrs. Francis Cunningham, née Gurney, as more retired than Kirkby Mallory. She had then been separated about six weeks or two months. She was (Mrs. B. said) singularly pleasing and healthful looking, rather than pretty. She was grave and reticent rather than depressed in spirits; and gave her friends to understand that there was something she could not explain to them about her separation. Mrs. B. heard her say that Lord Byron always slept with pistols under his pillow, and on one occasion had threatened to shoot her in the middle of the night. There was much singing of duets going on in the two families, but Lady Byron refused to take any part in it.

Miss Carpenter, who was entirely captivated by her, received from her some charge amounting to literary executorship; but after one or two furtive delvings into the trunks full of papers (since, I believe, stored in Hoare’s bank), she gave up in despair. She told me that the papers were in the most extraordinary confusion; letters both of the most trivial and of the most serious and compromising kind, household accounts, poems, and tradesmen’s bills, were all mixed together in hopeless disorder and dust. As is well known, Byron’s famous verses:

were written on the back of a butcher’s bill—unpaid like most of the rest. Miss Carpenter vouched for this fact.

Lady Byron was at one time greatly attracted by Fanny Kemble. Among Mrs. Kemble’s papers in my possession are seven letters from Lady Byron to her. Here is one of them worth presenting:

“The note you wrote to me before you left Brighton made me revert to a train of thought which had been for some time in my mind. I alluded once to “your Future.” I submit to be considered a Visionary, yet some of my decided visions have come to pass in the course of years let me tell you my Vision about you—That you are to be something to the People; that your strong sympathy with them (though you will not let them touch the hem of your garment) will bring your talents to bear upon their welfare; that the way is open to you, after your personal objects are fulfilled. My mind is so full of this, that though the time has not arrived for putting it in practice, I cannot help telling you of it. I am neither Democratic nor Aristocratic. I do not see those distinctions in looking at Humanity, but I feel most strongly that for every advantage we have received we are bound to offer something to those who do not possess it. Happy they who have gifts to place at the feet of their less favoured fellow-Christians!

“I cannot believe that a relation so truthful as yours and mine will be merely casual. Time will show. I might not have an opportunity of saying this in a visit.

It is an unsolved mystery to me why such a woman did not definitely adopt one of either of two courses. The first (and far the best) would, of course, have been to bury her husband’s misdeeds in absolute silence and oblivion, carefully destroying all papers relating to the tragedy of their joint lives. Or, if she had not strength for this, to write exactly what she thought ought to be known by posterity concerning him, and put her account in safe hands with all the needful pièces justificatives before she died. That she did not adopt either one course or the other must be a source of permanent regret to all who recognized her great merits and honoured them as they deserved.

Among our neighbours in South Kensington, whom we were privileged to know were many delightful people, who are still, I am happy to say, living and taking active part in the world. Among them were Mr. Froude, Mr. and Mrs. W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mrs. Brookfield, Mrs. Simpson, and Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. But of several others, alas! “the place that knew them knows them no more.” Of these last were Mr. and Mrs. Herman Merivale, Sir Henry Maine, Mrs. Dicey, Lady Monteagle (who had written some of Wordsworth’s poems to his dictation as his amanuensis), and my dear old friend Mrs. de Morgan.

Sir Henry Maine’s interest in the claims of women and his strong statements on the subject, made me regard him with much gratitude. I asked him once a question about St. Paul’s citizenship, to which he was good enough to write so full and interesting a reply that I quote it here in extenso:—

“There is no question that for a considerable time before the concession of the Roman citizenship to the whole empire, quite at all events, B.C. 89 or 90,—it could be obtained in various ways by individuals who possessed a lower franchise in virtue of their place of birth or who were even foreigners. The legal writer, Ulpian, mentions several of these modes of acquiring it; and Pliny, more than once solicits the citizenship for protégés of his own. There is no authority for supposing that it could be directly purchased (at least legally), but it could be obtained by various processes which came to the same thing as paying directly, e.g., building a ship of a certain burden to carry corn to Rome.

“I suspect that St. Paul’s ancestor obtained the citizenship by serving in some petty magistracy. The coins of Tarsus are said to show that its citizens in the reign of Augustus, enjoyed one or other of the lower Roman franchises; and this would facilitate the acquisition by individuals of the full Roman citizenship.

“The Roman citizenship was necessarily hereditary. The children of the person who became a Roman citizen came at once under his Patria Potestas, and each of them acquired the capacity for becoming some day a Roman Paterfamilias.

“St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, lived under the Roman Law of Persons, but he remained under the local Law of Property. His allusions to the Patria Potestas and to the Roman Law of Wills and guardianship (which was like the Patria Potestas), are quite unmistakeable, and more numerous than is commonly supposed. In the obscure passage, for example, about women having power over the head, “Power” and “Head” are technical terms from the Roman Law.

George Borrow who, if he were not a gipsy by blood ought to have been one, was, for some years, our near neighbour in Hereford Square. My friend was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions, recorded in the “Bible in Spain,” and his translations of the scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift, were by no means consonant with his real opinions concerning the veracity of the said Bible. Dr. Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before. Borrow had persuaded several of his other companions to rob their fathers’ tills, and then the party set forth to join some smugglers on the coast. By degrees the truants all fell out of line and were picked up, tired and hungry along the road, and brought back to Norwich school where condign chastisement awaited them. George Borrow it seems received his large share horsed on James Martineau’s back! The early connection between the two old men as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind. Somehow when I asked Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some friends at our house he accepted our invitation as usual, but, on finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of the party, hastily withdrew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor did he ever after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining that Dr. Martineau would not be present!

I take the following from some old letters to my friend referring to him:

“Mr. Borrow says his wife is very ill and anxious to keep the peace with C. (a litigious neighbour). Poor old B. was very sad at first, but I cheered him and sent him off quite brisk last night. He talked all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations went to prove that it was not our gospels they had in their hands. I knew most of it before, but it was admirably done. I talked a little theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of his ‘horrors’) and he abounded in my sense of the non-existence of Hell, and of the presence and action on the soul of a Spirit, rewarding and punishing. He would not say ‘God;’ but repeated over and over that he spoke not from books but from his own personal experience.”

Some time later—after his wife’s death:

“Poor old Borrow is in a sad state. I hope he is starting in a day or two for Scotland. I sent C. with a note begging him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent back word, ‘Yes.’ Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a most agitated manner said he had come to say ‘he would rather not. He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.’ I made him sit down, and talked as gently to him as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me’. But it was all of no use. He was so cross, so rude, I had the greatest difficulty in talking to him. I asked about his servant, and he said I could not help him. I asked him about Bowring, and he said: ‘Don’t speak of it.’ [It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who was an acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to mediate.] ‘I asked him would he look at the photos of the Siamese,’ and he said: ‘Don’t show them to me!’ So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr. L——, who told me of certain curious books of mediæval history. ‘Did he know them?’ ‘No, and he dare said Mr. L—— did not, either! Who was Mr. L——?’ I described that obscure individual, [one of the foremost writers of the day], and added that he was immensely liked by everybody. Whereupon Borrow repeated at least 12 times, ‘Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely liked!’ quite insultingly. To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he was in trouble) ‘I said I had just come home from the Lyell’s and had heard—.’... But there was no time to say what I had heard! Mr. Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who stands at the door (of some den or other) and bets?’ I explained who Sir Charles was, (of course he knew very well), but he went on and on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you will meet those sort of people here, Mr. Borrow. We don’t associate with blacklegs, exactly.’”

Here is an extract from another letter:

“Borrow also came, and I said something about the imperfect education of women, and he said it was right they should be ignorant, and that no man could endure a clever wife. I laughed at him openly, and told him some men knew better. What did he think of the Brownings? ‘Oh, he had heard the name; he did not know anything of them. Since Scott, he read no modern writer; Scott was greater than Homer! What he liked were curious, old, erudite books about mediæval and northern things.’ I said I knew little of such literature, and preferred the writers of our own age, but indeed I was no great student at all. Thereupon he evidently wanted to astonish me; and, talking of Ireland, said, ‘Ah, yes; a most curious, mixed race. First there were the Firbolgs,—the old enchanters, who raised mists.’... ‘Don’t you think, Mr. Borrow,’ I asked, ‘it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan who did that? Keatinge expressly says that they conquered the Firbolgs by that means.’ (Mr. B., somewhat out of countenance), ‘Oh! Aye! Keatinge is the authority; a most extraordinary writer.’ ‘Well, I should call him the Geoffrey of Monmouth of Ireland.’ (Mr. B., changing the venue), ‘I delight in Norse-stories; they are far grander than the Greek. There is the story of Olaf the Saint of Norway. Can anything be grander? What a noble character!’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘what do you think of his putting all those poor Druids on the Skerry of Shrieks and leaving them to be drowned by the tide?’ (Thereupon Mr. B. looked at me askant out of his gipsy eyes, as if he thought me an example of the evils of female education!) ‘Well! well! I forgot about the Skerry of Shrieks. Then there is the story of Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his burning ship to die.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Borrow! that isn’t a Saxon story at all. It is in the Heimskringla! It is told of Hakon of Norway.’ Then, I asked him about the gipsies and their language, and if they were certainly Aryans? He didn’t know (or pretended not to know) what Aryans were; and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture of odd knowledge and more odd ignorance. Whether the latter were real or assumed, I know not!”

With the leading men of Science in the Sixties we had the honour of a good deal of intercourse. Through Dr. W. B. Carpenter (who, as Miss Carpenter’s brother, I had met often) and the two ever hospitable families of Lyell, we came to know many of them. Sir William Grove was also a particular friend of my friend Mrs. Grey. He and Lady Grove and their daughter, Mrs. Hall, (Imogen), were all charming people, and we had many pleasant dinners with them. Professor Tyndall was, of course, one of the principal members of that scientific coterie, and in those days we saw a good deal of him. He was very friendly as were also Mr. and Mrs. Francis Galton. Mr. Galton’s speculations seemed always to me exceedingly original and interesting, and I delighted in reviewing them. The beginning of the Anti-vivisection controversy, however, put an end to all these relations, so that since 1876, I have seen few of the circle. It is curious to recall how nearly we joined hands on some theological questions before this gulf of a great ethical difference opened before us. Some readers may recall a curious controversy raised by Prof. Tyndall on the subject of the efficacy of prayer for physical benefits. Having read what he wrote on it, I sent him my own little book, Dawning Lights, which vindicates the efficacy of prayer, for spiritual benefits only. The following was his reply, to which I will append another kindly note referring to a request I had proffered on behalf of Mrs. Somerville.

“Our minds—that is yours and mine—sound the same note as regards the economy of nature. With clearness and precision you have stated the question. In fact, had I known that you had written upon the subject I might have copied your words and put my name to them.

“I intend to keep your book, but I have desired my publisher to send you a book of mine in exchange—this is fair, is it not?

“Your book so far as I have read it is full of strength. Of course I could not have written it all. Your images are too concrete and your personification of the mystery of mysteries too intense for me. But as long as you are tolerant of others—which you are—the shape into which you mould the power of your soul must be determined by yourself alone.

“I would do anything I could for your sake and irrespectively of the interest of your subject.

“Had I Faraday’s own letter, I could decipher at once what he meant, for I was intimately acquainted with his course of thought during the later years of his life. It would however be running a great risk to attempt to supply this hiatus without seeing his letter.

“I should think it refers to the influence of time on magnetic action. About the date referred to he was speculating and trying to prove experimentally whether magnetism required time to pass through space.

In a letter of mine to a friend written after meeting Prof. Tyndall at dinner at Edgbaston during the Congress of the British Association in Birmingham, after mentioning M. Vambéry and some others, I said; “The one I liked best was Prof. Tyndall, with whom I had quite an ‘awful’ talk alone about the bearing of Science on Religion. He said in words like a fine poem, that Knowledge seemed to him ‘like an instrument on which we went up, note after note, and octave after octave; but at last there came a note which our ears could not hear, and which was silent for us. And at the other end of the scale there was another silent note.’”

Many years after this, there appeared an article in the Pall Mall Gazette which I felt sure was by Prof. Tyndall, in which it was calmly stated that the scientific intellect had settled the controversy between Pantheism and Theism, and that the said Scientific Intellect “permitted us to believe in an order of Development,” and would “allow the religious instincts and the language of Religion to gather round that idea;” but that the notion of a “Great Director” can by no means be suffered by the same Scientific Intellect.

I wrote a reply, begging to be informed when and where the controversy between Pantheism and Theism had been settled, as the statement, dropped so coolly in a single paragraph, was, to say the least, startling; and I concluded by saying, “We may be driven into the howling wilderness of a Godless world by the fiery swords of these new Cherubim of Knowledge; but at least we will not shrink away into it before their innuendoes!”

I have also lost in quitting this circle, the privilege of often meeting Mr. Herbert Spencer; though he has never (to his honour be it remembered!) pronounced a word in favour of painful experiments on animals.

With the great naturalist who has revolutionized modern science I had rather frequent intercourse till the same sad barrier of a great difference of moral opinion arose between us. Mr. Charles Darwin’s brother-in-law, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, was, for a time tenant here at Hengwrt; and afterwards took a house named Caer-Deon in this neighbourhood, where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin and their boys also spent part of the summer. As it chanced, we also took a cottage that summer close by Caer-deon and naturally saw our neighbours daily. I had known Mr. Darwin previously, in London, and had also met his most amiable brother, Mr. Erasmus Darwin, at the house of my kind old friend Mrs. Reid, the foundress of Bedford Square College. The first thing we heard concerning the illustrious arrivals was the report, that one of the sons had had “a fall off a Philosopher;” word substituted by the ingenious Welsh mind for “velocipede” (as bicycles were then called) under an easily understood confusion between the rider and the machine he rode!

Next,—the Welsh parson of the little church close by, having fondly calculated that Mr. Darwin would certainly hasten to attend his services, prepared for him a sermon which should slay this scientific Goliath and spread dismay through the ranks of the sceptical host. He told his congregation that there were in these days persons, puffed up by science, falsely so called, and deluded by the pride of reason, who had actually been so audacious as to question the story of the six days Creation as detailed in Sacred Scripture. But let them note how idle were these sceptical questionings! Did they not see that the events recorded happened before there was any man existing to record them, and that, therefore, Moses must have learned them from God himself, since there was no one else to tell him?

Alas! the philosopher, I fear, never went to be converted (as he surely must have been) by this ingenious Welsh parson, and we were for a long time merry over his logic. Mr. Darwin was never in good health, I believe, after his Beagle experience of sea sickness, and he was glad to use a peaceful and beautiful old pony of my friend’s, yclept Geraint, which she placed at his disposal. His gentleness to this beast and incessant efforts to keep off the flies from his head, and his fondness for his dog Polly (concerning whose cleverness and breeding he indulged in delusions which Matthew Arnold’s better dog-lore would have swiftly dissipated), were very pleasing traits in his character.

In writing at this time to a friend I said:—

“I am glad you like Mill’s book. Mr. Charles Darwin, with whom I am enchanted, is greatly excited about it, but says that Mill could learn some things from physical science; and that it is in the struggle for existence and (especially) for the possession of women that men acquire their vigour and courage. Also he intensely agrees with what I say in my review of Mill about inherited qualities being more important than education, on which alone Mill insists. All this the philosopher told me yesterday, standing on a path 60 feet above me and carrying on an animated dialogue from our respective standpoints!”

Mr. Darwin was walking on the footpath down from Caer-Deon among the purple heather which clothes our mountains so royally; and impenetrable brambles lay between him above and me on the road below; so we exchanged our remarks at the top of our voices, being too eager to think of the absurdity of the situation, till my friend coming along the road heard with amazement words flying in the air which assuredly those “valleys and rocks never heard” before, or since! When we drive past that spot, as we often do now, we sigh as we look at the “Philosopher’s Path,” and wish (O, how one wishes!) that he could come back and tell us what he has learned since!

At this time Mr. Darwin was writing his Descent of Man, and he told me that he was going to introduce some new view of the nature of the Moral Sense. I said: “Of course you have studied Kant’s Grundlegung der Sitten?” No; he had not read Kant, and did not care to do so. I ventured to urge him to study him, and observed that one could hardly see one’s way in ethical speculation without some understanding of his philosophy. My own knowledge of it was too imperfect to talk of it to him, but I could lend him a very good translation. He declined my book, but I nevertheless packed it up with the next parcel I sent him.

On returning the volume he wrote to me:—

“It was very good of you to send me nolens volens Kant, together with the other book. I have been extremely glad to look through the former. It has interested me much to see how differently two men may look at the same points. Though I fully feel how presumptuous it sounds to put myself even for a moment in the same bracket with Kant—the one man a great philosopher looking exclusively into his own mind, the other a degraded wretch looking from the outside through apes and savages at the moral sense of mankind.”

There was irony, and perhaps not a little pride in his reference to himself as a “degraded wretch looking through apes and savages at the moral sense of mankind”! Between the two great Schools of thinkers,—those who study from the Inside (of human consciousness), and those who study from the Outside,—there has always existed mutual animosity and contempt. For my own part, while fully admitting that the former needed to have their conclusions enlarged and tested by outside experience, I must always hold that they were on a truer line than the (exclusively) physico-scientific philosophers. Man’s consciousness is not only a fact in the world but the greatest of facts; and to overlook it and take our lessons from beasts and insects is to repeat the old jest of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. A philosophy founded solely on the consciousness of man, may; and, very likely, will, be imperfect; and certainly it will be incomplete. But a philosophy which begins with inorganic matter and the lower animals, and only includes the outward facts of anthropology, regardless of human consciousness,—must be worse than imperfect and incomplete. It resembles a treatise on the Solar System which should omit to notice the Sun.

I mentioned to him in a letter, that we had found some seeds of Tropæolum, very carefully gathered from brilliant and multicoloured varieties, all revert in a single year to plain scarlet. He replied:—“You and Miss Lloyd need not have your faith in inheritance shaken with respect to Tropæolum until you have prevented for six or seven generations any crossing between the varieties in the same garden. I have lately found the very shade of colour is transmitted of a most fluctuating garden variety if the flowers are carefully self-fertilized during six or seven generations.”

The Descent of Man of which Mr. Darwin was kind enough to give me a copy before publication, inspired me with the deadliest alarm. His new theory therein set forth, respecting the nature and origin of conscience, seemed to me then, and still seems to me, of absolutely fatal import. I wrote the strongest answer to it in my power at once, and published in the Theological Review, April, 1871 (reprinted in my Darwinism in Morals, 1872). Of course I sent my review to Down House. Here is a generous message which I received in reply:—

“Mr. Darwin is reading the Review with the greatest interest and attention and feels so much the kind way you speak of him and the praise you give him, that it will make him bear your severity, when he reaches that part of the review.”

Referring to an article of mine in the Quarterly Review (Oct., 1872) on the Consciousness of Dogs, Mr. Darwin wrote to me, Nov. 28th, 1872:—

“I have been greatly interested by your article in the Quarterly. It seems to me the best analysis of the mind of an animal which I have ever read, and I agree with you on most points. I have been particularly glad to read what you say about the reasoning power of dogs, and about that rather vague matter, their self-consciousness. I dare say however that you would prefer criticism to admiration.

“I regret that you quote J. so often: I made enquiries about one case (which quite broke down) from a man who certainly ought to know Mr. J. well; and I was cautioned that he had not written in a scientific spirit. I regret also that you quote old writers. It may be very illiberal, but their statements go for nothing with me and I suspect with many others. It passes my powers of belief that dogs ever commit suicide. Assuming the statements to be true, I should think it more probable that they were distraught, and did not know what they were doing; nor am I able to credit about fetishes.

“One of the most interesting subjects in your article seems to me to be about the moral sense. Since publishing the Descent of Man I have got to believe rather more than I did in dogs having what may be called a conscience. When an honourable dog has committed an undiscovered offence he certainly seems ashamed (and this is the term naturally and often used) rather than afraid to meet his master. My dog, the beloved and beautiful Polly, is at such times extremely affectionate towards me; and this leads me to mention a little anecdote. When I was a very little boy, I had committed some offence, so that my conscience troubled me, and when I met my father, I lavished so much affection on him, that he at once asked me what I had done, and told me to confess. I was so utterly confounded at his suspecting anything, that I remember the scene clearly to the present day, and it seems to me that Polly’s frame of mind on such occasions is much the same as was mine, for I was not then at all afraid of my father.”

In a letter to a friend (Nov., 1869) I say:—

“We lunched with Mr. Charles Darwin at Mr. Erasmus D——’s house on Sunday. He told us that a German man of science, (I think Carl Vogt), the other day gave a lecture, in which he treated the Mass as the last relic of that Cannibalism which gradually took to eating only the heart, or eyes of a man to acquire his courage. Whereupon the whole audience rose and cheered the lecturer enthusiastically! Mr. Darwin remarked how much more decency there was in speaking on such subjects in England.”

This pleasant intercourse with an illustrious man was, like many other pleasant things, brought to a close for me in 1875 by the beginning of the Anti-vivisection crusade. Mr. Darwin eventually became the centre of an adoring clique of vivisectors who (as his Biography shows) plied him incessantly with encouragement to uphold their practice, till the deplorable spectacle was exhibited of a man who would not allow a fly to bite a pony’s neck, standing forth before all Europe (in his celebrated letter to Prof. Holmgren of Sweden) as the advocate of Vivisection.

We had many interesting foreign visitors in Hereford Square. I have mentioned the two Parsee gentlemen who came to thank me for having made (as they considered) a just estimate of their religion in my article “The Sacred Books of the Zoroastrians.” The elder of them, Mr. Nowrozjee Furdoonjee, was President of the Parsee Society of Bombay; but resided much in England, and had an astonishing knowledge of English and American theological and philosophic literature. He asked me one day to recommend him the best modern books on ethics. My small library contained a good many, but he not only knew every one I possessed, but almost all others which I named as worthy of his attention. We talked very freely on religious matters and with a good deal of sympathy. I pressed him one day with the question, “Do you really believe in Ahriman?” “Of course I do!” “What! In a real personal Evil Being, who is as much a person as Ormusd?” “O no! I did not mean that! I believe in Evil existing in the world;”—and obviously in nothing more!

My chief Eastern visitors, however (and they were so numerous that my artist-minded friend was wont to call them my “Bronzes”), were the Brahmos of Bengal, and one or two of the same faith from Bombay. There were very remarkable young men at that date, members of the “Church of the One God;” nearly all of them having risen from the gross idolatry in which they had been educated into a purer Theistic faith, not without encountering considerable family and social persecution. Their leader, Keshub Chunder Sen at any other age of the world, would have taken his place with such prophets as Nanuk (the founder of the Sikh religion) and Gautama; or with the mediæval Saints like St. Augustine and St. Patrick, who converted nations. He was, I think, the most devout man with whose mind I ever came in contact. When he left my drawing-room after long conversations on the highest themes,—sometimes held alone together, sometimes with the company of my dear friend William Henry Channing—the impression left on me was one never-to-be-forgotten. I wrote of one such interview at the time to my friend as follows (April 28, 1870):

“Keshub came and sat with me the other evening, and I was profoundly impressed, not by his intellect but by his goodness. He seems really to live in God, and the single-mindedness of the man seemed to me utterly un-English; much more like Christ! He said some very profound things, and seemed to feel that the joy of prayer was quite the greatest thing in life. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about the future, but I only know that when I pray I feel that my union with God is eternal. In our faith the belief in God and in Immortality are not two doctrines but one.’ He also said that we must believe in intercessory prayer, else the more we lived in Prayer the more selfish we should grow. He told me much of the beginning of his own religious life, and, wonderful to say, his words would have described that of my own! He said, indeed, that he had often laid down my books when reading them in India, and said to himself: ‘How can this English woman have felt all this just as I?’”

In his outward man Keshub Chunder Sen was the ideal of a great teacher. He had a tall, manly figure, always clothed in a long black robe of some light cloth like a French soutane, a very handsome square face with powerful jaw; the complexion and eyes of a southern Italian; and all the Eastern gentle dignity of manner. He and his friend Mozoomdar and several others of his party spoke English quite perfectly; making long addresses and delivering extempore sermons in our language without error of any kind, or a single betrayal of foreign accent. Keshub in particular, was decidedly eloquent in English. I gathered many influential men to meet him and they were impressed by him as much as I was.

The career of this very remarkable man was cut short a few years after his return from England by an early death. I believe he had taken to ascetic practices, fasting and watching; against which I had most urgently warned him, seeing his tendency towards them. I had argued with him that, not only were they totally foreign to the spirit of simple Theism, but dangerous to a man who, living habitually in the highest realms of human emotion, needed all the more for that reason that the physical basis of his life should be absolutely sound and strong, and not subject to the variabilities and possible hallucinations attendant on abstinence. My friendly counsels were of no avail. Keshub became, I believe, somewhat too near a “Yogi” (if I rightly understand that word) and was almost worshipped by his congregation of Brahmos. The marriage of his daughter—who has since visited England—to the Maharajah of Coosh Behar, involved very painful discussions about the legal age of the bride and the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage, which were insisted on by the bridegroom’s mother; and the last year or two of Keshub’s life were, I fear, darkened by the secessions from his church which followed an event otherwise gratifying.

Oddly enough this Indian Saint was the only Eastern it has ever been my chance to meet who could enjoy a joke thoroughly, like one of ourselves. He came to me in Hereford Square one day bursting with uncontrollable laughter at his own adventures. Lord Lawrence, when Governor-General of India, had been particularly friendly to him and had bidden him come and see him when he should arrive in England. Keshub’s friends had found a lodging for him in Regent’s Park, and having resolved to go and pay his respects to Lord Lawrence at once, he sent for a four-wheeled cab, and simply told the cabman to drive to that nobleman’s house; fondly imagining that all London must know it, as Calcutta knew Government House. The cabman set off without the remotest idea where to go; and after driving hither and thither about town for three hours, set his fare down again at the door of his lodgings; told him he could not find Lord Lawrence; and charged him fourteen shillings! Poor Keshub paid the scandalous charge, and then referred to an old letter to find Lord Lawrence’s address, “Queen’s Gate.” Oh, that was quite right! No doubt the late Governor-General naturally lived close to the Queen! “Drive to Queen’s Gate.” The new cabman drove straight enough to “Queen’s Gate”; but about 185 houses appeared in a row, and there was nothing to indicate which of them belonged to Lord Lawrence; not even a solitary sentinel walking before the door! After knocking at many doors in vain, the cabman had an inspiration! “We will try if the nearest butcher knows which house it is;” and so they turned into Gloucester Road, and the excellent butcher there did know which number in Queen’s Gate belonged to Lord Lawrence, and Keshub was received and warmly welcomed. But that he should have to seek out a butcher’s shop (in his Eastern eyes the most degraded of shops) to learn where he could find a man whom he had last seen as Viceroy of India, was, to his thinking, exquisitely ridiculous.

Ex-Governors-General and their wives must certainly find some difficulty in descending all at once so many steps from the altitude of the viceregal thrones of our great dependencies to the level of private citizens, scarcely to be noticed more than others in society, and dwelling in ordinary London houses unmarked by the “guard of honour” of even a single policeman!

At a later date I had other Oriental visitors, one a gentleman who had made a translation of the Bhagvat-Gita, and who brought his wife and children to England, and to my tea-table. The wife wore a lovely, delicate lilac robe wrapped about her in the most graceful folds, but the effect was somewhat marred by the vulgar English side-spring boots, (very short in the leg), which the poor soul had found needful for use in London! The children sat opposite me at the tea-table, silently devouring my cakes and bon-bons; staring at me with their large black eyes, veritable wells of mistrust and hatred, such as only Eastern eyes can speak! I like dark men and women very well, but when the little ones are in question, I must confess that a child is scarcely a child to me unless it be a little Saxon, with golden hair and those innocent blue eyes which make one think of forget-me-nots in a brook. Where is the heart which can help growing soft at sight of one of these little creatures toddling in the spring grass picking daisies and cowslips, or laughing with sheer ecstacy in the joy of existence? A dark child may be ten times as handsome, but it has no pretension, to my mind, to pull one’s heart-strings in the same way as a blonde babykins.

A Hindoo lady, Ramabai, for whom I have deep respect, came to me before I left London and impressed me most favourably. She, and a few other Hindoo women who are striving to secure education and freedom for their sisters, will be honoured hereafter more than John Howard, for he strove only to mitigate the too severe punishment of criminals and delinquents; they are labouring to relieve the quite equally dreadful lot of millions of innocent women. An American Missionary, Mr. Dall, long resident in India, told me that thousands of these unhappy beings never put their feet to the earth or go a step from the house of their husbands (to which they are carried from their father’s Zenana at 9 or 10 years old) till they were borne away as corpses! All life for them has been one long imprisonment; its sole interest and concern the passions of the baser sort of love and jealousy! While writing these pages I have come across the following frightful testimony by the great traveller Mrs. Bishop (née Isabella Bird) to the truth of the above observation concerning the dreadful condition of the women of India:—

“I have lived in Zenanas and harems, and have seen the daily life of the secluded women, and I can speak from bitter experience of what their lives are; the intellect dwarfed, so that the woman of twenty or thirty years of age is more like a child of eight intellectually, while all the worst passions of human nature are stimulated and developed in a fearful degree; jealousy, envy, murderous hate, intrigue, running to such an extent that in some countries I have hardly ever been in a woman’s house or near a woman’s tent without being asked for drugs with which to disfigure the favourite wife, to take away her life, or to take away the life of the favourite wife’s infant son. This request has been made of me nearly two hundred times.”

(Quoted by Lady Henry Somerset in the Woman’s Signal, April 12th, 1894).

I had the pleasure also of visits from several French and Belgian gentlemen who were good enough to call on me. Several were Protestant pastors of the École Moderne; M. Fontanés, M. Th. Bost, and M. Leblois being among them. I had long kept up a correspondence with M. Felix Pécaut, author of a beautiful book “Le Christ et la Conscience,” of whom Dean Stanley told me that he (who knew him well) believed him to be “the most pious of living men.” I never had the happiness to meet him, but seeing, some twenty years later, in a Report by Mr. Matthew Arnold on French Training Schools, enthusiastic praise of M. Pécaut’s school for female teachers, at Fontenaye-aux-Roses, near Paris, I sent it to my old friend, and we exchanged a mental handshake across time and space.

An illustrious neighbour of ours, in South Kensington sometimes came to see me. Here is a lively complimentary letter from him:—

“From M. le Sénateur Victor Schœlcher to Miss Cobbe.