to me as I must have appeared to a neighbour in a local
debating club when he dismissed metaphysical depths and pointed at me
saying: "There is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his
sport therein." . . .

There also I met Balfour, obviously preferring any philosophers
with any philosophies to his loyal followers of the Tory Party.
Perhaps religion is not the opium of the people, but philosophy is
the opium of the politicians.

My father belonged to another group besides the Synthetic Society for
which it seemed to him that Gilbert was even more ideally fitted.
_The_ Club was founded by Dr. Johnson, the home of the best talk in
the land, where Garrick and Goldsmith were at times shouted down by
the great Lexicographer--a sign, said Chesterton, of his modesty and
his essential democracy: Johnson was too democratic to reign as king
of his company: he preferred to contend with them as an equal. The
old formula still in use had informed my father "you have had the
honour to be elected," but Wilfrid Ward felt that the election of the
modern Dr. Johnson would be an honour to The Club. To his intense
disgust he found that only George Wyndham could be relied upon for
whole-hearted support. What may be called the "social" element in the
Club had become too strong to welcome a man who boasted in all
directions of belonging to the Middle Classes and whose friends
merely urged the claim that he was one of the few today who could
talk as well as Johnson.

Gilbert met many politicians in other ways but only with one of them
did he feel a really close harmony. Of George Wyndham's opinions he
said in the _Autobiography_ that they were "of the same general
colour as my own," and he went on to stress the word "colour" as
significant of the whole man. To depict him in political cartoons as
"St. George" had not in it the sort of absurdity of the pictures of
the more frigid and philosophic Balfour as "Prince Arthur." George
really did suggest the ages of chivalry. "He had huge sympathy with
gypsies and tramps." There was about him "an inward generosity that
gave a gusto or relish to all he did."

The Chestertons' appreciation of George Wyndham was deepened for them
both by an affection, indeed almost a reverence, for "the deep
mysticism of his wife; a woman not to be forgotten by anyone who ever
knew her, and still less to be merely praised by anyone who
adequately appreciated her." For a period at any rat