And Mr. Bennett succeeds in interesting us in the ambitious, speculative Cannon mainly by reason of the pathetically inadequate objects on which he lavishes the passion of his energies and his ideals--on a newspaper, a corrupt thing--on a boarding-house, a centre of triviality. And Miss Gailey, whose heart is set on her hot-water bottle and her cup of tea, and the easing of her rheumatism, interests us profoundly, because it is such death-in-life which may prove tragically destructive to the ascendant nature of a Hilda. Mr. Bennett is not afraid of the drab side of life. But he never shows peevishness on the one side nor bloodless romanticism on the other. He sees this drab side, and he sees the passion of life--the aspiring human always trying to be more than it is, or can be, in some desperate, foolish way. This is the tragedy and the hopefulness of tragedy which Mr. Bennett has grasped. To possess a keen faculty of observation by which to present life exactly and realistically, and at the same time to re-imagine these facts so that the vividness, the intensity, the pitiful passion of life are what we mainly remember--to combine these two qualities as Mr. Bennett combines them is to hold a unique position in contemporary literature. IV GILBERT CHESTERTON It has often been pointed out that the intellectuals--the people whose business it is to formulate opinions in Parliament, Press, and Pulpit--are not really expressing public opinion; they are only expressing the opinion of the intellectuals. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that every civilised or semi-civilised human being may be divided into two persons, the one an individual who chooses, walks, eats, feels, and imagines in a private and personal way; the other a sort of official person who registers formal opinions when called upon to do so. The latter corresponds to the "intellectual," and is the dominant element in the souls of the ruling classes; whilst the former--the instinctive, the spontaneous, the common-sense element--dominates the man in the street.