through this life and beyond it
the Holy Spirit, who unites all the family of God. May I die, as I have
lived, in this simple faith of childhood.

My "Probabilities" has, amongst others apposite, this sentence about the
origin of evil, and the usefulness of temptation: "To our understanding,
at least, there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities
of Goodness and the contrivances of Wisdom but by the infused permission
of some physical and moral evils; mercy, benevolence, design would in a
universe of Best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow
stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's
excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not
then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was
not such existence an antecedent probability?"

CHAPTER X.

FADS AND FANCIES.

In a recent page I have alluded to sundry "fads and fancies of the day,"
some of greater and others of lesser import, and I have been mixed up in
two or three of them. For example;--as an undergraduate at Oxford I
starved myself in the matter of sugar, by way of somehow discouraging
the slave-trade; I don't know that either Caesar or Pompey was any the
better for my small self-sacrifice; but as a trifling fact, I may
mention that I then followed some of the more straitlaced fashions of
Clapham. Also, when in lodgings after my degree, I resolved to leave off
meat, bought an immense Cheshire cheese, and, after two months of
part-consumption thereof, reduced my native strength to such utter
weakness as quite to endanger health. So I had to relapse into the old
carnality of mutton chops, like other folk: such extreme virtue doesn't
pay.

Of course abstinence from all stimulant has had its hold on me
heretofore, as it has upon many others,--but, after a persistent six
months of only water, my nerve power was so exhausted (I was working
hard at the time as editor of "The Anglo-Saxon," a long extinct
magazine) that my wise doctor enjoined wine and whisky--of course in
moderation; and so my fluttering heart soon recovered, and I have been
well ever since.

Now about temperance, let me say thus much. Of course, I must approve
the modern very philanthropic movement, but only in its rational aspect
of moderation. In my youth, the pendulum swung towards excess, now its
reaction being exactly opposite; both extremes to my mind are wrong. And
here let me state (_val