to accept a new and as yet unrecognised religion, they altogether refuse to do so. They seem not only to believe in an ‘unknown God,’ but in a God whom no man can ever know. Mr. Clough has expressed, in a sort of lyric, what may be called their essential religion: ‘O Thou whose image in the shrine Of human spirits dwells divine! Which from that precinct once conveyed, To be to outer day displayed, Doth vanish, part, and leave behind Mere blank and void of empty mind, Which wilful fancy seeks in vain With casual shapes to fill again! O Thou, that in our bosom’s shrine Dost dwell, unknown because divine! I thought to speak, I thought to say, “The light is here,” “Behold the way,” “The voice was thus” and “Thus the word,” And “Thus I saw,” and “That I heard,”— But from the lips that half essayed The imperfect utterance fell unmade. O Thou, in that mysterious shrine Enthroned, as I must say, divine! I will not frame one thought of what Thou mayest either be or not. I will not prate of “thus” and “so,” And be profane with “yes” and “no,” Enough that in our soul and heart Thou, whatso’er Thou mayst be, art.’ It was exceedingly natural that Mr. Clough should incline to some such creed as this, with his character and in his circumstances. He had by nature, probably, an exceedingly real mind, in the good sense of that expression and the bad sense. The actual visible world as it was, and as he saw it, exercised over him a compulsory influence. The hills among which he had wandered, the cities he had visited, the friends whom he knew,—these were his world. Many minds of the poetic sort easily melt down these palpable facts into some impalpable ether of their own. To such a mind as Shelley’s the ‘solid earth’ is an immaterial fact; it is not even a cumbersome difficulty—it is a preposterous imposture. Whatever may exist, all that _clay_ does not exist; it would be too absurd to think so. Common persons can make nothing of this dreaminess; and Mr. Clough, though superficial observers set him down as a dreamer, could not make much either. To him, as to the mass of men, the vulgar, outward world was a primitive fact. ‘Taxes _is_ true,’ as the miser said. Reconcile what you have to say with green peas, for green peas are certain; such was Mr. Clough’s idea. He could not dissolve the world into credible ideas and then believe those ideas, as many poets have done. He could not catch up a creed as ordinary men do. He had a _straining_, inquisitive, critical mind; he scrutinised every idea before he took it in; he did not allow the moral forces of life to act as they should; he was not content to gain a belief ‘by going on living.’ He said, ‘_Action will furnish belief_; but will that belief be the true one? This is the point, you know.’