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lost all faith in the recognised deities of the country? These they do not set at defiance openly, for conformity until absolutely intolerable is a law of Ydgrun, yet they have no real belief in the objective existence of beings which so readily explain themselves as abstractions, and whose personality demands a quasi-materialism which it baffles the imagination to realise; but they keep their opinions greatly to themselves, inasmuch as most of their countrymen feel strongly about the gods, and they hold it wrong to give pain, unless for some greater good to come of it than seems likely to arise from their plain speaking.

On the other hand, their silence tended to increase the haze and fog of men's minds,—a great, and I was told, a growing evil. This haze and fog are to a man's life what foulness or turbidity is to a scheme of colour, or slovenliness of outline to a drawing. Neutral tones are one thing, muddiness is another; the losing in deep shadow is one thing, a diffused smudginess or fuzziness is another. No picture is great unless both drawing and colour are in some parts found, and again in others lost in formlessness and neutrality; and no man's mind is great which does not admit uncertainty on many questions; but in the picture let that which is lost be lost, that which is found be found, and that which is midway between them be treated vaguely; but let not that which should be found be lost, nor what should be lost be found—this is fatal; above all, let there not be a diffused losing, a diffused finding, or a diffused vagueness.

The same holds good in matters of opinion; and surely those whose own minds are clear about any given matter (even though it be only that there is