cation and reception of knowledge was the real cause of his pen's inactivity. In this respect, as in some others we could mention, he was more an ancient Athenian than a modern Englishman. He would have been quite at home in the Porch or the Garden: he would have delighted in the logomachies of the philosophers; and he perhaps might not have been very constant to either Epicurus or Zeno, since nothing delighted him more than the study of the different phases under which truth may be presented. He took more interest in ethical and theological problems than in the solution of them. He was somewhat of a chartered libertine' in philosophical speculations. Defining creeds and limiting articles had few charms for him. He liked well the ardor certaminis, the animation of the chase, but did not greatly care for being in at the death' of a disputed question.

Let it not, however, be supposed that the versatility we have spoken of precluded or was incompatible with sincerity and seriousness of mind on the subjects of highest importance to mankind. In his journal he occasionally disappoints or surprises us by apparent indifference to the great political changes that he witnessed. He does not display any particular exultation when Catholics were emancipated or Parliament was reformed. But on the subject of the abolition of slavery, he was an eager and an uncompromising partisan, and he naturally hailed with delight the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act. We have copied his account of his early Jacobinism; but although he ceased to be a Jacobin, he never regretted or was alarmed at the progress of social and political freedom. On all religious questions his voice was for war against every needless barrier to the liberty of speech: against the outworks and

entrenchments by which priests. have masked or narrowed the approaches to the pure and humane doctrines of the Gospel: against all that weakens a truth or maketh a lie in the province of theology. In his journal are found continual traces of his sympathy with every form of religious earnestness. He regarded Roman Catholicism and Calvinism as the two most objectionable forms of Christianity; but he had not in his composition a particle of persecuting zeal, and he could recognise some virtues in the discipline of Rome, and some in the doctrine of Geneva. Perhaps he did not fully comprehend the character or position of the Anglican Church-and indeed they are easier to admire than to describe. Yet he had studied some of that Church's most eminent divines and was wont to avow his admiration of Barrow's power of reasoning, and Taylor's power of eloquence. He was a constant attendant, after his first introduction to it, on the teaching of Robertson of Brighton, and numbered him on the list of his friends; the energy of Arnold commanded and received his applause; he highly esteemed Irving without following him into the eccentric maze of his doctrines, and the piety and learning, the virtues and the eloquence of James Martineau and John James Tayler were his frequent themes of conversation.

We must now close this very imperfect sketch of the Diary. The readers of it will have more reason to complain of our omissions from it, than of the space we have given to it in the foregoing remarks. Should any one read these volumes without interest, or lay them down with weariness, let him be assured he would have been no co-mate for their author, since he is present in spirit in nearly every page. For persons of different and, in our judgment at least, happier mould, they need not our commendation.

We had purposed to make some mention of what may be termed Mr. Robinson's public works-works on which his name is indelibly inscribed -University Hall and the Flaxman Gallery, and of his conversational powers, but for all these points we cannot do better than to refer generally to Mr. De Morgan's appendix, extracting from it only the concluding sentences. After saying that 'the elements of H. C. R.'s conversational powers were a quick and witty grasp of meaning, a wide knowledge of letters and men of letters, a sufficient, but not too exacting, perception of the relevant, and an extraordinary power of memory,' he proceeds, some pages further on:

The elements of his powers of conversation have been enumerated, but all put together will not explain the charm of his society. For this we must refer to other points of his character, which, unassisted, are compatible with dullness and taciturnity. A wide range of sympathies, and sympathies which were instantaneously awake when occasion arose, formed a great part of the

whole. This easily excited interest led to that feeling of communion which draws out others. Nothing can better illustrate this than reference to the old meaning of conversation. Up to the middle of the last century, or near it, the word never meant colloquy alone; it was a perfect synonym for companionship. So it was with Crabb ship and his companionship was conversaRobinson; his conversation was companion. tion.

With equal force and equal truth the late John James Tayler said in his address to the followers of the funeral:

His house was a centre of attraction for

minds from the most opposite points in the wide horizon of opinion. Softened by Es genial spirit, and animated by his cheerful flow of kindly and interesting talk, Tores and Liberals, High Churchmen and Dissenters, found themselves side by side st his hospitable board, without suspecting that they were enemies, and learned there, if they had never learned it before, how much deeper and stronger is the common human heart, which binds us all in one, than those intellectual differences which are the witness of our weakness and fallibility, and sometimes the expression of our obstinacy and self-will.

failed to answer his main allega

which the Times relieved the tedium of the long vacation, was far more interesting than such controversies generally are. Our readers will probably remember its general purport. As a clergyman repeated the Creed, a youth named Biland fired a pistol at him, by way of making an emphatic protest against the general insincerity which, according to the assassin's view of the matter, was the only possible explanation of the fact that an educated man continued to profess to believe in Christianity. Upon this the Berlin correspondent of the Times took occasion to give an account of the state of religious feeling in North Germany. Its result in a few words was, that Biland's view of the case was so far right that a large majority of the educated men and women of North Germany had practically ceased to believe in Christianity to such an extent that the country could no longer with any propriety be described as Christian. This naturally provoked a considerable controversy, in which many persons, professing to be specially acquainted with the subject, took part. The impression which it left upon our minds, and probably on the minds of most of those who read it, was that the Times correspondent made good his point, and that his critics altogether

VOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCLXXIX.

meet with in establishing the existence of partial exceptions to the state of things which he described. One of the strongest illustrations which he gave of his general position consisted of an account of a controversy between a Berlin newspaper and the head of an association called the Protestant Union, the object of which is to organise, if possible, some sort of Protestant ecclesiastical body upon an undogmatic basis, a society, in a word, by no means unlike the Free Christian Union which has been set on foot in England. The critic of this association in the Berlin Volk's Zeitung, declared it to be a feeble compromise between inconsistent principles. According to this writer religion in general, and religious organisations in particular, had become utterly useless. Morality only is necessary or important; and morals are gether independent of religion. The advocate of the association took a very different view of the subject. He pointed out to his critic the fact that religion always had played an important part in the history of the world, and insisted that the rejection of all religion, and especially of all religious organisation, by men of sense and education, would not destroy religion, but would throw the control

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