quiescent. His domestic circumstances, however, made it natural enough that he should soon think of marrying again; and then the philosopher reappears in all his force. He applied to Miss Lee of the 'Canterbury Tales' used in Byron's Werner. She hesitated on account of his free-thinking. He retorted by applying the omnipotent force of reason. If you ought to argue even with a burglar, you clearly should be able to persuade the object of your affections. Accordingly he explained clearly that his theory of ethics was quite consistent with her theological orthodoxy; he pointed out that her creed was 'the quintessence of bigotry,' and that in refuting him she was acting in the spirit of the eleventh and twelfth century. The argument may have been perfectly sound, but seems to require some further steps before justifying the inference that she ought to marry him. She did not draw it. Next year he heard of the death of Mrs. Reveley's husband, and now applied a closer bit of logic. She, he declares, had admitted that she loved him, even when she had a husband and he a wife. As these obstacles were removed, the obvious inference followed that she should become the sole 'happiness of one of the most known men of the age,
