little obstacles over which we of earthly origin stumble. He was a believer in the divinity of genius and always opposed a stern disbelief to the objections of those petty cavillers and minor critics who wish to reduce all men to their own miserable level — ”I will make a scientific simile” he would say, “n the manner, if you will, of Dr. Darwin — I consider the alleged errors of a man of genius as the aberrations of the fixed stars. It is our distance from them and our imperfect means of communication that makes them appear to move; in truth they always remain stationary, a glorious centre, giving us a fine lesson of modesty if we would thus receive it.”

I have said that he was a poet: when he was three and twenty years of age he first published a poem, and it was hailed by the whole