ly all the questions he thus vitalized into artistic
reality, when compared with the great outlying truths and principles
to which he allied them. Feeling this all through his cases, at the
same time that he was moulding them and giving them dramatic
vitality, they took their true position from natural reaction and
rebound, with all the more sharpness of contrast, when he came out of
them. With such a nature, it could be assumed _a priori_ as a
psychological certainty, at any rate it was the fact with him, that a
certain unreality was at times thrown over life and its objects, that
its projects and ambitions seemed games and mockeries, and "this
brave o'erhanging firmament a pestilent congregation of vapors," and
that grave doubts and fears on the great questions of existence were
ever on the horizon of his mind. This gave perpetual play to his
irony, and made it a necessity and a relief of mind. Except when in
earnest in some larger matter, or closely occupied in accomplishing
some smaller necessary purpose or duty, his imagination loved the
tricksy play of exhibiting the petty side of life in contrast to its
realities, just as in his cases it found its exercise in lifting them
up to relations with what is poetic and permanent. But, though irony
was thus the natural language of his mind, it did not pass beyond the
limits of the mischievous and kindly, because there was nothing
scoffing or bitter in his nature. It was fresh and natural, never
studied for effect, and gave his conversation the charm of constant
novelty and surprises. He loved to condense the results of thought
and study into humorous or grotesque overstatements, which, while
they amused his hearers, conveyed his exact meaning to every one who
followed the mercurial movement of his mind. It will readily be seen
how a person with neither insight into his nature nor apprehension of
his meaning should, without intending it, misinterpret his life and
caricature his opinions,--blundering only the more deeply when trying
to be literally exact in reporting conversations or portraying
character.

It has been shrewdly said, that, "when the Lord wants anything done
in this world, he makes a man a little wrong-headed in the right
direction." With this goes the disposition to overestimate the
importance of one's work and to push principles and theories towards
extremes. The saying is true of some individuals at or before certain
crises in affairs; it is not true of t