I cannot plead much greater affection for the lucubrations of Amiel than for Count Tolstoi's dealings with that odd compound of crudity and rottenness, the Russian nature; but Mr Arnold's "Amiel" is admirable. Never was there a more "gentlemanly correction," a more delicate and good-humoured setting to rights, than that which he administers to Amiel's two great panegyrists (who happened to be Mr Arnold's own niece and Mr Arnold's own friend). On subjects like Maya and the "great wheel" it would almost be impossible to conceive, and certainly impossible to find, a happier commentator than Mr Arnold, though perhaps in the regions of theology he had a private Maya, a very Great Wheel, of his own. The firmness with which he rebukes the maunderings of the Genevese hypochondriac--of whom some one once unkindly remarked that he was not so much intoxicated with Idealism as suffering from the subsequent headache--is equalled by the kindness of the dealing; and the quiet decision with which he puts his fine writing in its proper place is better still. Nobody could call Mr Arnold a Philistine or one insensible to _finesse_, grace, _sehnsucht_, the impalpable and intangible charm of melancholy and of thought. And his comments on Amiel's loaded pathos and his muddled meditation are therefore invaluable. Nor is he less happy or less just in the praise which, though not the first, he was one of the first to give to by far the strongest side of Amiel's talent, his really remarkable power of literary criticism.