s all the prim and
unfashionable air of youths reared in such secluded spots. His pale face
tells of thought. You see in his small clear eye that thought
crystallises in his brain. His clenched hand, his determined teeth, his
shrugged-up shoulders, prepare you for the tenacity with which he clings
to what thoughts come to him. On the hustings and elsewhere, Miall is
the same--not elated when applauded, not depressed when reviled;
unbending, imperturbable, mild of demeanour, yet inflexible in purpose.
Yet, after all, his success has been more personal than in what he has
done. Who ever talks of complete suffrage now?--yet that was Miall's
darling idea when he first appeared in the political world, and the
Association which calls him father--which is to emancipate religion from
the fetters of the State--it must yet be confessed by its most ardent
admirers, has got a considerable amount of work to do.

It does seem strange that so pale, calm, unmoved a man as Mr. Miall seems
to be, should have wandered out of the pulpit and the study, with its old
books and everlasting commentaries, and exchanged all that elysian
dream-land for the fever of politics and the bustle of the newspaper. It
seems stranger still that he should have succeeded, that he should have
found favour with our turbulent democracy, not partial to the use of
soap, or particularly passionate in their attachment to abstract
principles. Strangest of all is it that he should have managed to be
returned as an M.P. We should have been the last to have prophesied for
Miall such a career. Cato at the theatre, Colonel Sibthorp at a Peace
Congress, an Irish patriot speaking common-sense, could not surprise us
more. Yet that Miall has achieved what he has, shows how much may be
done by the possessor of a principle. Miall is a principle, an abstract
principle embodied--that man is everything, that the human being is
divine, that the inspiration of the Almighty has given the meanest of us
understanding. From the Bible he got that principle, and that is the
unerring test by which every case is weighed and every difficulty solved.
In religion it led him to reject ecclesiastical organisations and claims,
the traditions of the Fathers, the pretensions of divines--everything by
which the priest is exalted and the people kept down. In politics, the
same rule held good. If all men are equal--if God has made of one blood
all nations that dwell upon the face of the e