It is very easy to speak words of wisdom from a comfortable distance, when one sees no reality, no details, none of the effect on men's minds. What is glorious is the way in which Mr. Gladstone rides on the whirlwind. You need not wonder much what I am thinking of it all.
As long ago as 1870 I ceased to be sanguine that we could govern Ireland successfully. The best influence over the Irish people is the influence of the clergy, and an ultramontane clergy is not proof against the sophistry by which men justify murder or excuse murderers. The assassin is only a little more resolutely logical or a little bolder than the priest.
I hope you will read and like Montégut's articles on George Eliot, especially the second, in the Revue of March 15. See pp. 307 and 329 for some very excellent criticism.
Miss B. met Cross here at lunch, was intensely excited, and explained it by saying that he is Ladislaw. But I cannot believe it. They say that Dorothea is here too. H—— has been in great force. He is unwell now, but looks forward to M——'s arrival to-day, declaring, with accurate self-knowledge, that he likes nothing so much as an impostor.
He has given me Bradley's Recollections to read, from which I learned very little, and Stephen's very curious history of our criminal law.
Oscar Browning is here, divided between the French Revolution and the Gracchi—the most interesting of all purely secular topics.
La Madeleine March 31, 1883
The Wickhams are most inaccessible people, only to be seen on the road to Gourdon or St. Cézaire. I have had only a glimpse of them; but we hope to overtake them between Château Scott and S. Paul's on Sunday. They have some wild scheme of visiting Languedoc.
Cross told me that he had asked for some criticisms of mine which you told him of. I answered that I did not believe you would send them, and he said that if you did, he would forward them unread. But I am sure there is nothing of any possible use to him. He is very communicative, and I am to see her letters and to advise as to publication. What I have seen is of such a kind that merely strung together with a few short notes, it would make a very interesting book: "Memorials of George Eliot."
The real answer to your remark[[198]] about that list[[199]] is that which Johnson gave about fetlock.[[200]] I have nothing to say about physical science that is not a reminiscence of conversations with Owen or Hooker, Paget or Tyndall; and it would be important to put down all the decisive works in those branches. I have tried to know the books on the history and method of discovery, the laws of scientific progress, and the tests of truth and error; and I find that this is a matter which very few scientific men take any interest in.