f personal affection) a certain air of gradually
increasing constraint, in relation to the subject which I knew
and felt to be all-important. Alas! my prophetic soul took it
aright; this constraint was the faint penumbra of a disastrous
eclipse indeed! He was not, as so many profess to be, convinced
by any particular book (as that of Strauss, for example) that
the history of Christianity is false; nay, he declares that he
is not convinced of that even now; he is a genuine sceptic, and
is the subject, he says, of invincible doubts. Those doubts have
extended at length to the whole field of theology, and are due
principally, as he himself has owned, to the spectacle of the
interminable controversies which (turn where he would) occupied
the mind of Germany. Even when he returned home he does not appear
to have finally abandoned the notion of the possibility of
constructing some religious system in the place of Christianity;--
this, as he affirms, is a later conviction formed upon him by
examining the systems of such men as have attempted the solution
of the problem. He declares the result wholly unsatisfactory; that,
sceptical as he was and is with regard to the truth of Christianity,
he is not even sceptical with regard to these theories; and he
declares that if 'the undoubtedly powerful minds which have
framed them have so signally failed in removing his doubts, and
affording him a rock to stand upon, he cannot prevail upon himself
to struggle further.

And so, instead of stopping at any of those miserable road-side
inns between Christianity and scepticism, through whose ragged
windows all the winds of heaven are blowing, and whose gaudy "signs"
assure us there is "good entertainment within for man and beast,"--
whereas it is only for the latter,--Harrington still travelled on in
hopes of finding some better shelter, and now, in the dark night,
and a night of tempest too, finds himself on the open heath. To
employ his own words, "he could not rest contented with one-sided
theories or inconsequential reasonings, and has pursued the
argument to its logical termination." He is ill at ease in mind,
I hear, and not in robust health; and I am just going to visit him.

I shall have some melancholy scenes with him; I feel that. Do you
remember, when we were in Switzerland together, how, as we wound
down the Susten and the Grimsel passes, with the perpendicular
cliffs some thousand feet above us, and a torrent as many feet
be