The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

354

Lzfe of Benjamzn Jowelt

[CHAP. XI

talker, one of the very few persons who satisfies you in conversation. He is also a deposed minister, and what the poor
call a very fine man, of handsome presence and full of thoughts
and words. My third acquaintance was Dr. John Brown,
a physician at Edinburgh, best known to the world as the
author of Rab and his Friends, and also of a most admirable
memoir of his own father. He is certainly a writer of real
genius and feeling, and a most excellent man. He had
a charming wife, I am told; but his life has been utterly
spoiled and darkened by her going hopelessly out of her mind.
Do you agree with Mr. Mill in the last number of Fraser, that
if persons manage properly they can be sure of getting considerable portions of happiness out of life?
Dr. Williams's cause has as yet made no progress. He has
got Mr. Stephen, brother of Miss Stephen at Clifton, for one
of his counsel. A law court is better for justice than Convocation, but a law court easily gets inspired in these questions
by public opinion. None of the ordinary rules of law are
applicable: the judge does what he likes and the world calls
this common sense. Still, I hope that a Protestant judge will
pause before he determines that the evidences, prophecies,
&c., are a fiction (for that is what the decision would involve)
to be maintained not by weapons of reason and argument, but
by the authority of the Court.
Do you ever hear anything of Mazzini? He seems to be
more abused than any other man in this world. I think
he must be a great man, though a visionary and perhaps
dangerous. The present state of Italy is greatly due to him.
His defence of Rome raised the Italian character. I don't
suppose that you hear the truth about hint in the North of
Italy. Some friends of mine, who know him, assure me
that he has the greatest fascination of manner they have
ever met with.
I am sorry to see Mr. - resigning his living. No
doubt one ought to say, 'God bless him,' to every man who
makes a sacrifice for what he believes to be the truth. But
1 Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen. The Miss Stephen referred to was
really his cousin.