There is unquestionably about the personal attitude of Watts something that in the vague phraseology of modern times would be called Puritan. Puritan, however, is very far from being really the right word. The right word is a word which has been singularly little used in English nomenclature because historical circumstances have separated us from the origin from which it sprang. The right word for the spirit of Watts is _Stoicism_. Watts is at one with the Puritans in the actual objects of his attack. One of his deepest and most enduring troubles, a matter of which he speaks and writes frequently, is the prevalence of gambling. With the realism of an enthusiast, he has detected the essential fact that the problem of gambling is even more of a problem in the case of the poorer classes than in the case of the richer. It is, as he asserts, a far worse danger than drink. There are many other instances of his political identity with Puritanism. He told Mr. W. T. Stead that he had defended and was prepared to defend the staggering publications of the “Maiden Tribute”; it was the only way, he said, to stem the evil. A picturesque irradiation asserts indeed that it was under the glow of Hebraic anger against these Babylonian cruelties of Piccadilly and the Strand that he painted as a symbol of those cruelties that brutal and magnificent picture _The Minotaur_. The pictures themselves of course bear sufficient attestation to this general character: _Mammon_ is what we call a Puritan picture, and _Jonah_, and _Fata Morgana_, and _For he had Great Possessions_. It is not difficult to see that Watts has the Puritan vigilance, the Puritan realism, and the Puritan severity in his attitude towards public affairs. Nevertheless, as I have said, he is to be described rather as a Stoic than a Puritan. The essential difference between Christian and Pagan asceticism lies in the fact that Paganism in renouncing pleasure gives up something which it does not think desirable; whereas Christianity in giving up pleasure gives up something which it thinks very desirable indeed. Thus there is a frenzy in Christian asceticism; its follies and renunciations are like those of first love. There is a passion, and as it were a regret, in the Puritanism of Bunyan; there is none in the Puritanism of Watts. He is not Bunyan, he is Cato. The difference may be a difficult one to convey, but it is one that must not be ignored or great misunderstandings will follow. The one self-abnegation is more reasonable but less joyful. The Stoic casts away pleasure like the parings of his nails; the Mystic cuts it off like his right hand that offends him. In Watts we have the noble self-abnegation of a noble type and school; but everything, however noble, that has shape has limitation, and we must not look in Watts, with his national self-mastery, either for the nightmare of Stylites or the gaiety of Francis of Assisi. It has already been remarked that the chief note