t Mill; but his
philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its
method. He was a type-hunter among mankind. He despised small game and
insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen,
letting them go by like sea-weed; but show him a refined or powerful
face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish for him with
a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning or
ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. "There was a
man, there was a woman," he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task
of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.

And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic
interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All
comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork;
and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish
his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art
he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman
can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show
littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he
continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a
character is only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the
other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When
we are merely studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a
series of allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to sympathise;
for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and
virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists
for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick
Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human
creeping things whom he had met and studied.

One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking, two-legged
animal of the international genus, and by profession of general and more
than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some
standing in a colony, and portraits signed "Van Tromp" had celebrated
the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had
been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap.
What w