sh question. Her determination in this
case as in others, not inwardly to "sell the truth" (this is
Robert Pollok) overbears all prepossessions and longings, strong
as they are, on the German side, and enables her spontaneously to
hold the balance, it seems to me, tolerably even.

_Jan. 14._--I am glad you were not scandalised about my laxity as
to the "public house." But I expected from you this liberality. I
really had no choice. How can I who drink good wine and bitter
beer every day of my life, in a comfortable room and among
friends, coolly stand up and advise hardworking fellow-creatures
to take "the pledge"? However, I have been reading Maguire's _Life
of Father Matthew_, with a most glowing admiration for the Father.
Every one knew him to be good, but I had no idea of the extent and
height of his goodness, and his boundless power and thirst not for
giving only but for loving.

_June 27._--Just at this time when the press and mass of ordinary
business ought to be lessening, the foreign crisis you see comes
upon us, and drowns us deeper than ever. I fully believe that
England _will_ not go to war, and I am sure she _ought_ not. Are
you not a little alarmed at Argyll on this matter? Of the fate of
the government I cannot speak with much confidence or with much
anxious desire; but on the whole I _rather_ think, and _rather_
hope, we shall come through.

Three marriages almost in as many weeks among your own immediate
kin! I look for a dinner at Woolner's with Tennyson to-day: _a sei
occhi_. Last night Manning spent three hours with me; the
conversation must wait. He is sorely anti-Garibaldian. How
beautiful is the ending of Newman's _Apologia_, part VII.

_Oct. 23._--Singularly happy in my old and early political
friendships, I am now stripped of every one of them. It has indeed
been my good lot to acquire friendships in later life, which I
could not have hoped for; but at this moment I seem to see the
spirits of the dead gathered thick around me, "all along the
narrow valley," the valley of life, over and into which the sun of
a better, of a yet better life, shines narrowly. I do not think
our political annals record such a removal of a generation of
statesmen before its time as we have witnessed in the last four
years. I could say a great deal about Newcastle. He w