. K. Chesterton for example?"

"To the personal influence of Dr. Johnson and his contemporaries. H. G.
Wells would seem to have had no earthly experiences since he was a
priest of Bel, or if he had they were comparatively colourless. Rudyard
Kipling knew and loved the spacious times of Elizabeth. How clearly we
can trace the Roman exquisite in Walter Pater and the _bravo_ in George
Moore. Stevenson was a buccaneer in whom repentance came too late, and
who suffered the extreme penalty probably under Charles II. The author
of _The Golden Bough_ was conceivably a Chaldean librarian, and from the
writings of Anatole France steps forth shadowy a literary _religieux_ of
the sixteenth century; but it is when we come to consider such cases as
those of Spencer and Darwin that we meet with insurmountable obstacles.
The _patientiotype_ process of Victor Hugo defies this system of
analysis also, as does the glorious humanity of Mark Twain, and although
Pinero proclaims himself a wit of the Regency, Bernard Shaw's spiritual
pedigree is obscure. Nevertheless, all are weavers of the holy carpet,
and our lives are drawn into the loom. All began weaving in the
childhood of the world and each has taken up the thread again at his
appointed hour."

Paul spent a great part of his time in Jules Thessaly's company.
Thessaly had closed his town house, and was living in chambers adjoining
Victoria Street. His windows commanded a view of an entrance to
Westminster Cathedral, "from whence upward to my profane dwelling," he
declared, "arises an odour of sanctity." From Thessaly's flat they set
out upon many a strange excursion, one night visiting a private
gaming-house whose patrons figured in the pages of Debrett, and, perhaps
on the following evening, Thessaly's car would take them to a point in
the West India Dock Road, from whence, roughly attired, they would
plunge into the Asiatic underworld which lies hidden beneath the names
of Three Colt Street and Pennyfields. They visited a foul den in
Limehouse where a crook-backed Chinaman sat rocking to and fro before a
dilapidated wooden joss in the light of a tin paraffin lamp, listened to
the rats squealing under the dirty floor and watched men smoke opium.
They patronised "revue" East and West, that concession to the demand of
youth long exiled from feminine society which had superseded the
legitimate drama. "There are three ingredients essential to the success
of such an entertainment," Thessal