loving acknowledgment with which he opens his meditations. I know he
regarded it as miserably inefficient; but as it does actually indicate
some of the more individual side of his experience, and is, moreover,
characteristic in its style, I shall copy a few passages from it here:--

'To some person or persons unknown exceeding gratitude for the
suggestion, in some dim talk, antenatal it would almost seem, that Roman
Catholics might, after all, be "saved." Blessed fecundating suggestion,
that was the earliest loophole!

'To my father I owe a mind that, once set on a clue, must follow it, if
need be, to the nethermost darkness, though he has chosen to restrict
the operation of his own within certain limits; and to my mother a
natural leaning to the transcendental side of an alternative, which has
saved me so many a time when reason had thrown me into the abyss. But
one's greatest debt to a good mother must be simply--herself.

'To the Rev. Father Ignatius for his earnest preaching, which might
almost have made me a monk, had not Thomas Carlyle and his _Heroes_,
especially the lecture on Mahomet, given me to understand the true
significance of a Messiah.

'To Bulwer for his _Zanoni_, which first gave me a hint of the possible
natural "supernatural," and thus for ever saved me from dogmatising in
negatives against the transcendental.

'To Sir Edwin Arnold for his _Light of Asia,_ also to Mr. Sinnett for
his _Esoteric Buddhism,_ books which, coming to me about the same time,
together with some others like them, first gave some occupation to an
"unchartered freedom," gained in many forgotten steps, in the form of a