"I need hardly say that this talk is for you, and not even for father,
nor for Casswell.

"Your devoted friend and brother,

"CHARLES."

"What a prig he was!" is scrawled across the page, as Charles Dilke's
judgment on himself, when later the letter fell into his hands.

But, happily, in all the ordinary intercourse of life, ease and geniality
were native to him; he got on readily with all manner of men; and nothing
could have been better for him than the plunge into a society where all
was in the rough. He shed his priggishness once and for all somewhere on
the "Great Divide." What makes the permanent charm of _Greater Britain_ is
its sense of enjoyment, its delighted acceptance of new and unconventional
ways. In crossing the plains, he first made the experience of actual
physical privations, and for the first time saw and fell in love with "the
bright eyes of danger."

Through all the seriousness and solid concentration of _Greater Britain_
there runs a vein of high spirits. Facts are there, but with them is a
ferment of ideas and of feeling. Part of that feeling is just a contagious
delight in the joyous business of living. But the strong current which
lifted him so buoyantly was an emotion which no shyness or stiffness
hampered in the expression--in its essence an exultant patriotism of race.
Democracy meant to him in this stage of his development, not any abstract
theory of government, but the triumph of English ideas.