and therefore they are believed. To this | Of course, I need not say that this cause I trace too my fixed folly as to "quality" peculiarly attaches to the Bridgwater. The idea of being member greatest problems of human life. The for the town had been so intensely brought firmest convictions of the most inconsisthome to me by the excitement of a con- ent answers to the everlasting questions test, that I could not eradicate it, and that" whence?" and whither?" have been as soon as I recalled any circumstances of generated by this "interestingness" withthe contest it always came back in all its out evidence on which one would invest a vividness. penny. 3rd. Constancy. As a rule, almost every one does accept the creed of the place in which he lives, and every one without exception has a tendency to do so. There are, it is true, some minds which a mathematician might describe as minds of "contrary flexure," whose particular bent it is to contradict what those around them say. And the reason is that in their minds the opposite aspect of every subject is always vividly presented. But even such minds usually accept the axioms of their district, the tenets which everybody always believes. They only object to the variable elements; to the inferences and deductions drawn by some, but not by all. 4thly. On the Interestingness of the idea, by which I mean the power of the idea to gratify some wish or want of the mind. The most obvious is curiosity about something which is important to me. Rumours that gratify this excite a sort of half-conviction without the least evidence, and with a very little evidence a full, eager, not to say a bigoted one. If a person go into a mixed company, and say authoritatively that the Cabinet is nearly divided on the Russian question, and that it was only decided by one vote to send Lord Granville's despatch," most of the company will attach some weight more or less to the story without asking how the secret was known. And if the narrator casually add that he has just seen a subordinate member of the Government, most of the hearers will go away and repeat the anecdote with grave attention, though it does not in the least appear that the lesser functionary told the anecdote about the Cabinet, or that he knew what passed at it. And the interest is greater when the news falls in with the bent of the hearer. A sanguine man will believe with scarcely any evidence that good luck is coming, and a dismal man that bad luck. As far as I can make out, the professional " Bulls" Bears" of the City do believe a great deal of what they say, though, of course, there are exceptions, and though neither the most sanguine "bull" nor the most dismal "bear" can believe all he and says. 66 In one case, these causes of irrational conviction seem contradictory. Clearness, as we have seen, is one of them; but obscurity, when obscure things are interesting, is a cause too. But there is no real difficulty here. Human nature at different times exhibits contrasted impulses. There is a passion for sensualism, that is, to eat and drink; and a passion for asceticism, that is, not to eat and drink: so it is quite likely that the clearness of an idea may sometimes cause a movement of conviction, and that the obscurity of another idea may at other times cause one too. These laws, however, are complex,can they be reduced to any simpler law of human nature? I confess I think that they can, but at the same time I do not presume to speak with the same confidence about it that I have upon other points. Hitherto I have been dealing with the common facts of the adult human mind, as we may see it in others and feel it in ourselves. But I am now going to deal with the "prehistoric " period of the mind in early childhood, as to which there is necessarily much obscurity. that My theory is, that in the first instance a child believes everything. Some of its states of consciousness are perceptive or presentative, that is, they tell it of some heat or cold, some resistance or non-resistance then and there present. Other states of consciousness are representative, is, they say that certain sensatious could be felt, or certain facts perceived, in time past or in time to come, or at some place, no matter at what time, then and there out of the reach of perception and sensation. In mature life, too, we have these presentative and representative states in every sort of mixture, but we make a distinction between them. Without remark and without doubt, we believe the "evidence of our senses," that is, the facts of present sensation and perception; but we do not believe at once and instantaneously the representative states as to what is non-present, whether in time or space. But I apprehend that this is an acquired distinction, and that in early childhood every state of consciousness is believed, whe ther it be presentative or representative. Certainly at the beginning of the "historic" period we catch the mind at a period of extreme credulity. When memory begins, and when speech and signs suffice to make a child intelligible, belief is almost omnipresent, and doubt almost never to be found. Childlike credulity is a phrase of the highest antiquity, and of the greatest present aptness. So striking, indeed, on certain points, is this impulse to believe, that philosophers have invented various theories to explain in detail some of its marked instances. Thus it has been said that children have an intuitive disposition to believe in "testimony," that is, in the correctness of statements orally made to them. And that they do so is certain. Every child believes what the footman tells it, what its nurse tells it, and what its mother tells it, and probably every one's memory will carry him back to the horrid mass of miscellaneous confusion which he acquired by believing all he heard. But though it is certain that a child believes all assertions made to it, it is not certain that the child so believes in consequence of a special intuitive predisposition restricted to such assertions. It may be that this indiscriminate belief in all sayings is but a relic of an omnivorous acquiescence in all states of consciousness, which is only just extinct when childhood is plain enough to be understood, or old enough to be remembered. and believe with no kind of difficulty future facts as well as past? If on so abtruse a matter I might be allowed a graphic illustration, I should define doubt as "a hesitation produced by collision." A child possessed with the notion that all its fancies are true, finds that acting on one of them brings its head against the table. This gives it pain, and makes it hesitate as to the expediency of doing it again. Early childhood is an incessant education in scepticism, and early youth is so too. All boys are always knocking their heads against the physical world, and all young men are constantly knocking their heads against the social world. And both of them from the same cause, that they are subject to an eruption of emotion which engenders a strong belief, but which is as likely to cause a belief in falsehood as in truth. Gradually under the tuition of a painful experience we come to learn that our strongest convictions may be quite false, that many of our most cherished ones are and have been false; and this causes us to seek a "criterion which beliefs are to be trusted and which are not; and so we are beaten back to the laws of evidence for our guide, though, as Bishop Butler said, in a similar case, we object to be bound by anything so "poor." That it is really this contention with the world which destroys conviction and which causes doubt is shown by examining the cases where the mind is secluded from the world. In "dreams," where we are out of collision with fact, we accept everything as it comes, believe everything and doubt nothing. And in violent cases of mania, where the mind is shut up within itself, and cannot, from impotence, perceive what is without, it is as sure of the most chance fancy, as in health it would be of the best proved truths. Again, it has been said much more plausibly that we want an intuitive tendency to account for our belief in memory. But I question whether it can be shown that a little child does believe in its memories more confidently than in its imaginations. A child of my acquaintance corrected its mother,, who said that "they should never see" two of its dead brothers again, and maintained, "Oh yes, mamma, And upon this theory we perceive why we shall; we shall see them in heaven, and the four tendencies to irrational conviction they will be so glad to see us." And then which I have set down survive, and remain the child cried with disappointment be- in our adult hesitating state as vestiges of cause its mother, though a most religious our primitive all-believing state. They lady, did not seem exactly to feel that see- are all from various causes "adhesive ing her children in that manner was as states-states which it is very difficult to good as seeing them on earth. Now I get rid of, and which, in consequence, have doubt if that child did not believe this ex- retained their power of creating belief in pectation quite as confidently as it believed the mind, when other states, which once any past fact, or as it could believe any- possessed it too, have quite lost it. Clear thing at all, and though the conclusion ideas are certainly more difficult to get rid may be true, plainly the child believed not of than obscure ones. Indeed, some obfrom the efficacy of the external evidence, scure ones we cannot recover, if we once but from a strong rush of inward confi- lose them. Everybody, perhaps, has felt dence. Why, then, should we want a spe- all manner of doubts and difficulties in cial intuition to make children believe mastering a mathematical problem; at the past facts when, in truth, they go farther time, the difficulties seemed as real as the er conviction than the evidence justifies. problem, but a day or two after he has mastered it, he will be wholly unable to imagine or remember where the difficulties were. The demonstration will be perfectly clear to him, and he will be unable to comprehend how any one should fail to perceive it. For life he will recall the clear ideas, but the obscure ones he will never recall, though for some hours, perhaps, they were painful, confused, and oppressive obstructions. Intense ideas are, as every one will admit, recalled more easily than slight and weak ideas. Constantly impressed ideas are brought back by the world around us, and if they are so often, get so tied to our other ideas that we can hardly wrench them away. Interesting ideas stick in the mind by the associations which give them interest. All the minor laws of conviction resolve themselves into this great one: "That at first we Similarly, we are all in our various believe all which occurs to us—that after- departments of life in the habit of assumwards we have a tendency to believe that ing various probabilities as if they were which we cannot help often occurring to certainties. In Lombard Street the dealus, and that this tendency is stronger or ers assume that "Messrs. Baring's acweaker in some sort of proportion to our inability to prevent their recurrence." When the inability to prevent the recurrence of the idea is very great, so that the reason be powerless on the mind, the consequent "conviction" is an eager, irritable, and ungovernable passion. If this analysis be true, it suggests some lessons which are not now accepted. 1. They prove that we should be very careful how we let ourselves believe that which may turn out to be error. Milton says that "error is but opinion," meaning true opinion," in the making." But when the conviction of any error is a strong passion, it leaves, like all other passions, a permanent mark on the mind. We can never be as if we had never felt it. "Once a heretic, always a heretic," is thus far true, that a mind once given over to a passionate conviction is never as fit as it would otherwise have been to receive the truth on the same subject. Years after the passion may return upon him, and inevitably small recurrences of it will irritate his intelligence and disturb its calm. We cannot at once expel a familiar idea, and so long as the idea remains its effect will remain too. 2. That we must always keep an account in our minds of the degree of evidence on which we hold our convictions, and be most careful that we do not permanently permit ourselves to feel a strong ceptance at three months' date is sure to be paid," and that "Peel's Act will always be suspended at a panic." And the familiarity of such ideas makes it nearly impossible for any one who spends his day in Lombard Street to doubt of them. But, nevertheless, a person who takes care of his mind will keep up the perception that they are not certainties. Lastly, we should utilize this intense emotion of conviction as far as we can. Dry minds, which give an intellectual "assent to conclusions which feel no strong glow of faith in them, often do not know what their opinions are. They have every day to go over the arguments again, or to refer to a note-book to know what they believe. But intense convictions make a memory for themselves, and if they can be kept to the truths of which there is good evidence, they give a readiness of intellect, a confidence in action, a consistency in character, which are not to be had without them. For a time, indeed, they give these benefits when the propositions believed are false, but then they spoil the mind for seeing the truth, and they are very dangerous, because the believer may discover his error, and a perplexity of intellect, a hesitation in action, and an inconsistency in character are the sure consequences of an entire collapse in pervading and passionate conviction." From The Cornhill Magazine. LADY ISABELLA. PART II. CHAPTER III. As I drove home, strangely enough, I met the ladies on their afternoon walk. Mrs. Spencer was in advance as usual, talking rapidly and with animation, while Lady Isabella lagged a step behind, pausing to look at the ripe brambles and the beautiful ruddy autumn leaves. "Just look what a bit of colour," she was saying when I came up; but Mrs. Spencer's mind, it was evident, was full of other things. "I wonder how you can care for such nonsense," she said; "I never saw any one so unexcitable. After me fussing myself into a fever, to preserve you from this annoyance! and I knew it would be too much for you stood that this had something to do with the commission she had given me. And I was so foolish as to think she had divined my thoughts, and had fixed upon Edith, by instinct, as an obstacle in her way. "Never mind the daughter," I said hastily, "but do come on Saturday afternoon, and see if I am not justified in liking the mother. I daresay they are not very rich, but they are not unpleasantly poor, or, if they are, they don't make a show of it; and a little society, I am sure, would do her all the good in the world." This time Lady Isabella looked so intently at me, that I ventured to give the smallest little nod just to show her that I meant her to come. She took it up in a moment. Her face brightened all over. She made me a little gesture of thanks and satisfaction. And she put on instantly her old laughing, lively, satirical air. These qualities are great temptations to us, you are aware; but even if she were just like other people, we should come." "Of course we shall come," she said, "Hush!" said Lady Isabella, emphati-"even if this lady were not sick and poor. cally, and then Mrs. Spencer perceived the pony carriage for the first. time, and restrained herself. She changed her tone in a moment, and came up to me with her alert step when I drew the pony up. "What a nice afternoon for a drive," she said; "have you been at Royalboroughis there anything going on? I have dragged Isabella out for a walk, as usual much against her will." "I have been to make a call," I said, "on a poor invalid, the wife of Major Bellinger." "Oh, yes! I know, I know," said Mrs. Spencer; "he is to be the barrackmaster. He rose from the ranks I think, or something, very poor, and a large family. I know quite what sort of person she would be. The kind of woman that has been pretty, and has quite broken down with children and trouble-I know. It was very good of you; quite like yourself." "If it was very good of me, I have met with a speedy reward," said I, "for I have quite fallen in love with her and her daughter. They are coming to me on Saturday—if Mrs. Bellinger is able for afternoon tea." "I know exactly the kind of person," said Mrs. Spencer, nodding her head. "Ah, my dear Mrs. Musgrave, you are always so good, and so 66 "Well, Isabella!" said Mrs. Spencer, "you who are so unwilling to go anywhere!" but of course she could not help adding a civil acceptance of my invitation; and so that matter was settled more easily than I could have hoped. I saw them the next day -once more by accident. We were both calling at the same house, and Lady Isabella seized the opportunity to speak to me. She drew me apart into a corner, on pretence of showing me something. Look here," she said, with a flush on her face, "tell me, do you think me a fool - or worse? That is about my own opinion of myself." 66 66 No," I said, "indeed I don't. I think you are doing what is quite right. This is not a matter which concerns other people, that you should be guided by them, but yourself." "Oh, it does not concern any one very much," she said, with a forced laugh. "I am not so foolish as to think that. It is a mere piece of curiosity-folly. The fact is, one does not grow wise as one grows old, though of course we ought. And he is really to be there on Saturday? Despise me, laugh at me, make fun of me! -I deserve it, I know." Easily taken in," she was going to say, "He is really to come I hope," I said but I suppose I looked very grave, for she it faltering, with a sense of fright at my stopped. own temerity; and Lady Isabella gave me "Is the daughter pretty, too?" said a doubtful half-suspicious look as she left Lady Isabella: a flush had come upon her me. Now that it had come so near I grew face, and she looked at me intently, wait- alarmed, and doubted much whether I ing, I could see, for a sign. She under-should have meddled. It is very trouble some, having to do with other people's | Major himself; and quite as old as the affairs. It spoiled my rest that night, and Major's wife; but then he had the unmarmy comfort all day. I almost prayed that ried look which of itself seems a kind of Saturday might be wet, that Mrs. Bellin- guarantee of youth, and his face was quite ger might not be able to come. But, alas, free of that cloud of care which was more Saturday morning was the brightest, love- or less upon both their faces. He was liest autumn morning, all wrapped in a standing outside the open window with lovely golden haze, warm and soft as sum- Edith when Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isamer, yet subdued and chastened and sweet, bella came in. He did not see them. He as summer in its heyday never is; and was getting some of the monthly roses for the first post brought me a note from her, which were high up upon the veranEdith, saying that her mamma felt so well, dah. It was so high that it was very seland was so anxious to come. Accordingly, dom we were able to get the flowers; but I had to make up my mind to it. I sent he was a tall man, and he managed it. the pony carriage off by twelve o'clock, Lady Isabella perceived him at once, and I that the pony might have a rest before he saw a little shiver run over her. She gave came back, and I got out my best china, Mrs. Bellinger, poor soul, but a very stiff and had my little lawn carefully swept salutation, and sat down on a chair near clean of faded leaves, and my flower-beds the window. She did not notice the girl. trimmed a little. They were rather un- She had not thought of Edith, and no sort tidy with the mignonette, which had be- of suspicion as yet had been roused in her. gun to grow bushy, but then it was very She sat down quietly, and waited until he sweet; and the asters and red geraniums should come in. looked quite gay and bright. My monthly How strange it was!-all bright full rose, too, was covered with flowers. I am sunshine, no shadow or mystery to favery fond of monthly roses; they are so vour the romance; the Bellingers and sweet and so pathetic in autumn, remon- Mrs. Spencer talking in the most ordistrating always, and wondering why sum-nary way; the Colonel outside, pulling mer should be past; or at least that is the down the branch of pale roses; and Edith impression they convey to me. I know smiling, shaking off some dewdrops that some women who are just like them, wo- had fallen from them upon her pretty hair. men who have a great deal to bear, and All so ordinary, so calm, so peaceable cannot help feeling surprised that so much but Lady Isabella seated there, silent, should be laid upon them; yet who keep waiting and I looking on with a chill at on flowering and blossoming in spite of my very heart. He was a long time beall, brightening the world and keeping the fore he came in-talking to Edith waз air sweet, not for any reason, but because pleasant out in that verandah, with all the they can't help it. My visitor who was brilliant sunshine about, and the russet coming was, I think, something of that trees so sweet in the afternoon haze. kind. The first of the party who arrived were Major Bellinger and Colonel Brentford; they had walked over, and the Major was very eloquent about my kindness to his wife. "Nothing could possibly do her so much good," he said. "I don't know how to thank you, Mrs. Musgrave. Brentford says he made up his mind she must go the very first minute, whether she could or not-he said he was so sure you would do her good." "I am very glad Colonel Brentford had such a favourable opinion of me," I said. Then I stopped short, feeling very much embarrassed. If Lady Isabella had only come in then, before the ladies arrived but, of course, she did not. She came only after Mrs. Bellinger was established on the sofa, and Edith had taken off her hat. They looked quite a family party, I could not but feel. Colonel Brentford, probably, was very nearly as old as the "You shall have some," he said; "but we must give some to your mother first.” And then he came in with the branch in his hand. I don't know whether some sense of suppressed excitement in the air struck him as he paused in the window, but he did stand still there, and looked round him with an inquiring look. He had not left so many people in the room as were in it now, and he was surprised. He looked at me, and then I suppose my agitated glance directed him, in spite of myself, to Lady Isabella. He gave a perceptible start when he saw her, and smothered an exclamation. He recognized her instantly. His face flushed, and the branch of roses in his hand trembled. All this took place quite unobserved by anybody but me, and, perhaps, Edith, outside the window, who was coming in after him, and now stood on tiptoe, trying to see what was going on and wondering. Lady Isabella looked up at him with a face so un |