Butler the Rebel.

It has been written of Butler that his whole habit of mind could have been expressed in the words, “Let the truth be published though the heavens fall.” It was partly this spirit of eager, fierce desire to speak the truth that was in him that brought him to New Zealand in the first place. The young man rebelled against the smug conventions and hypocrisies of the English life which surrounded him and half-smothered him. We are given his opinions of English clerical life, and the oppressive atmosphere of his father's home in his great novel—an even greater than “Erewhon”—“The Way of All Flesh,” which was not published until after his death.