Kate's love for her father was deep, but she could not move a single step merely to pacify him. She could have yielded herself entirely to him in worldly matters; she would have doubted many of her strongest beliefs if he had contested them; she would have given up all her happiness for him; she would have died for him; but she could not let go the faintest of her religious dreams, although it was impossible to put them into words.

She wrote her letter to the priest. She found him living in a cottage and was somewhat taken aback when she entered.

There were hardly any books to be seen, but a crucifix hung on the wall.

'Miss Radcliffe—an old and honoured name! What can be the object of your visit?'

'Father, I am in distress. I want something which perhaps you can give.'

'Ah, my child, I understand. You would like to confess, but you are Protestant; I cannot absolve you. Return to the true fold and you can be released.'

'O Father, I have committed no crime; I come to you because I doubt and I MUST believe.'

The holy father was unused to such a penitent, and was perplexed and agitated.

'Doubt, my child—yes, even the faithful are sometimes troubled with doubt, a temptation from the Enemy of souls. Were you one of the flock I could prescribe for you. But perhaps you mean doubt of the heresies of your communion. In that case I can recommend a little manual. Take it away with you, study it, and see me again.'

'Father,' said Kate, pointing to the crucifix, 'did He, the Son of God, Son of the Virgin, really live on this earth? did He break His heart for me? If He did, I am saved.'

'Surely your own minister has instructed you on this point; it is the foundation even of Protestantism.'

'I prefer to seek instruction and guidance from you; answer me this one question.'

'Satan has never thus assaulted me, and I have never heard of any such suggestion to one of my people. I am a poor parish priest. Take the manual. It has been compiled by learned men: read it carefully with prayer: I also will pray for you that you may be gathered into the eternal Church.'

Kate took the manual and went home. There was but little history in it, but there was much about the person of Christ. He was man and God 'without confusion and without change.' As man he had to learn as other men learn, and, as God, he knew everything. He was sinless, and the lusts of the flesh had no power over him, but he had a human body, and was necessarily subject to its infirmities. His human nature was derived from his mother. God was not born from her, and yet she was the mother of God. Kate was able to see that some part of what looked like sheer contradiction was the conjunction of opposites from which it is impossible to escape in the attempt to express the Infinite, but in the manual this contradiction was presented with repulsive hardness. The compiler desired to subjugate and depose the reason. This was not the Christ she wanted. She hungered for the God, the Man, at whose feet she could have fallen: she would have washed them with tears, she would have wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed them and anointed them with ointment. She could have followed Him to the court of the High Priest and have gloried in discipleship: she could have taken the thief's place beside Him on the cross, and she would not have exchanged those moments of torture in companionship with Him for a life of earthly bliss. But—that fatal BUT—did He ever live, did He still live, did He love her, did He know how much she loved Him? Thus it has always been. There is an impulse in man which drives him to faith; the commonplace world does not satisfy him; he is forced to assume a divine object for his homage and love, and when he goes out into the fields it has vanished.

Kate did not call again upon the priest. Her father came to the conclusion that there was nothing in his suspicions, and that she had been suffering from one of her not uncommon fits of nervous restlessness and depression. This was a mercy, for his bodily health had begun to fail. The winter was very severe, and in the dark days just before Christmas he took to his bed and presently died, having suffered no pain and with no obscuration of his mind until the last ten minutes. Kate had nursed him with pious care: she was alone with him and closed his eyes about four o'clock in the morning. At first she was overcome with hysterical passion, and this was succeeded by shapeless thoughts which streamed up in her incessantly as the mists stream up from a valley at sunrise. Not until day broke did she leave the room and waken the household.

An epoch is created rather by the person than by the event. The experience which changes one man is nothing to another. Some will pass through life without a mark from anything that happens to them; others are transformed by a smile or a cloud. So also the same experience will turn different men into totally different paths. Kate had never seen death before. It smote her with such force that for months and months her father was before her eyes and she could not convince herself that he was not with her. But she went no further towards Roman Catholicism. She let the facts stand. Once when she was walking on the moors she stretched out her arms again and was urged to pray, but she felt that her prayer would be loss of strength and she stood erect. For nearly a twelvemonth she simply endured. She remembered a story in an old Amulet, one of a series of annuals, bound in crimson cloth and fashionable at that time, of a sailor stranded on a rock in the sea. The waves rose to his lips, but he threw back his head, and at that moment there was a pause and the tide turned. It might turn for her or it might not; she must not move. She read scarcely any books and lived much in the open air. The autumn was one of extraordinary splendour. September rains after a dry summer washed the air and filled the tarns and becks. Wherever she went she was accompanied by that most delicious sound of falling waters. The clouds, which through July and August had been nothing but undefined, barren vapour, gathered themselves together and the interspaces of sky were once more brilliantly blue. Day after day earth and heaven were almost too beautiful, for it was painful that her finite apprehension should be unequal to such infinite loveliness. She received no such answer as that for which she hoped when she knelt by the grey rock, but that is the way with the celestial powers; they reply to our passionate demands by putting them aside and giving us that for which we did not ask. WE KNOW NOT HOW TO PRAY AS WE OUGHT.



MR. WHITTAKER'S RETIREMENT



I had been a partner in the house of Whittaker, Johnson, and Marsh, in the wholesale drug trade, for twenty-five years, and, for the last ten years, senior partner. For the first nine years of my seniority I was not only nominally, but practically, the head of the firm. I had ceased to occupy myself with details, but nothing of importance was concluded without consulting me: I was the pivot on which the management turned. In the tenth year, after a long illness, my wife died: I was very ill myself, and for months not a paper was sent to me. When I returned to work I found that the junior partners, who were pushing men, had distributed between them what I was accustomed to do, and that some changes which they thought to be indispensable had been made. I resumed my duties as well as I could, but it was difficult to pick up the dropped threads, and I was dependent for explanation upon my subordinates.

Many transactions too, from a desire to avoid worrying me, were carried through without my knowledge, although formerly, as a matter of course, they would have been submitted to me. Strangers, when they called, asked to see Johnson or Marsh. I directed the messenger that they were to be shown into my room if I was disengaged. This was a failure, for, when they came, I was obliged to ask for help, which was not given very generously. Sometimes I sent for the papers, but it took a long time to read them, and my visitors became impatient. During one of these interviews, I remember that I was sorely perplexed, but I had managed to say something loosely with no particular meaning. Johnson came in and at once took up the case, argued for ten minutes while I sat silent and helpless, and an arrangement was concluded in which I really had no voice whatever. Now and then I strove to assert myself by disapproval of suggestions offered to me, but in the end was generally forced to admit I was wrong. We had a very large order for which we were obliged to make special arrangements with manufacturers. Both Johnson and Marsh were of opinion that a particular firm which had often supplied us was not to be trusted, as our dealings with them during my absence had been unsatisfactory. I was inclined foolishly but naturally, to attach little importance to anything which had been done entirely without me, ridiculed their objections, and forced my decision upon them. The firm broke down; our contract with them was cancelled; another had to be made under pressure, and we lost about five hundred pounds. Although I was not reminded of my responsibility in so many words, I knew that I was solely to blame; I became more than ever convinced I was useless, and I was much dejected. At last I made up my mind to retire. I was urged to remain, but not, as I imagined, with any great earnestness, and on the 31st December 1856 I left the office in Eastcheap never to enter it again.

For the first two or three weeks I enjoyed my freedom, but when they had passed I had had enough of it. I HAD NOTHING TO DO! Every day at the hours when business was at its height, I thought of the hurry, of the inquiries, of the people waiting in the anteroom, of the ringing of bells, of the rapid instructions to clerks, of the consultations after the letters were opened, of our anxious deliberations, of the journeys to Scotland at an hour's notice, and of the interviews with customers. I pictured to myself that all this still went on, but went on without me, while I had no better occupation than to unpack a parcel, pick the knots out of the string, and put it in a string-box. I saw my happy neighbours drive off in the morning and return in the evening. I envied them the haste, which I had so often cursed, over breakfast. I envied them, while I took an hour over lunch, the chop devoured in ten minutes; I envied them the weariness with which they dragged themselves along their gravel-paths, half an hour late for dinner. I was thrown almost entirely amongst women. I had no children, but a niece thirty-five years old, devoted to evangelical church affairs, kept house for me, and she had a multitude of female acquaintances, two or three of whom called every afternoon. Sometimes, to relieve my loneliness, I took afternoon tea, and almost invariably saw the curate. I was the only man present. It was just as if, being strong, healthy, and blessed with a good set of teeth, I were being fed on water-gruel. The bird-wittedness, the absence of resistance and of difficulty, were intolerable. The curate, and occasionally the rector, tried to engage me, as I was a good subscriber, in discussion on church affairs, but there seemed to me to be nothing in these which required the force which was necessary for the commonest day in the City. Mrs. Coleman and the rector were once talking together most earnestly when I entered the room, and I instinctively sat down beside them, but I found that the subject of their eager debate was the allotment of stalls at a bazaar. They were really excited—stirred I fully admit to their depths. I believe they were more absorbed and anxious than I was on that never-to-be-forgotten morning when Mortons and Nicholsons both failed, and for two hours it was just a toss-up whether we should not go too.

I went with my niece one day to St. Paul's Churchyard to choose a gown, but it was too much for me to be in a draper's shop when the brokers' drug sales were just beginning. I left my niece, walked round the Churchyard as fast as I could, trying to make people believe I was busy, and just as I came to Doctors Commons I stumbled against Larkins, who used to travel for Jackman and Larkins.

'Hullo, Whittaker!' said he, 'haven't seen you since you left. Lucky dog! Wish I could do the same. Ta-ta; can't stop.'

A year ago Mr. Larkins, with the most pressing engagement in front of him, would have spared me just as much time as I liked to give him.

Formerly I woke up (sometimes, it is true, after a restless night) with the feeling that before me lay a day of adventure. I did not know what was in my letters, nor what might happen. Now, when I rose I had nothing to anticipate but fifteen hours of monotony varied only by my meals. My niece proposed that I should belong to a club, but the members of clubs were not of my caste. I had taken a pride in my garden and determined I would attend to it more myself. I bought gardening books, but the gardener knew far more than I could ever hope to know, and I could not displace him. I had been in the habit of looking through a microscope in the evening, although I did not understand any science in which the microscope is useful, and my slides were bought ready-made. I brought it out now in the daytime, but I was soon weary of it and sold it. We went to Worthing for a month. We had what were called comfortable lodgings and the weather was fine, but if I had been left to myself I should have gone back to Stockwell directly my boxes were unpacked. We drove eastwards as far as we could and then westward, and after that there was nothing more to be done except to do the same thing over again. At the end of the first week I could stand it no longer, and we returned. I fancied my liver was out of order and consulted a physician. He gave me some medicine and urged me to 'cultivate cheerful society,' and to take more exercise. I therefore tried long walks, and often extended them beyond Croydon, and once as far as Reigate, but I had never been accustomed to walking by myself, and as I knew the names of scarcely half-a-dozen birds or trees, my excursions gave me no pleasure. I have stood on Banstead Downs in the blaze of sunlight on a still October morning, and when I saw the smoke-cloud black as night hang over the horizon northwards, I have longed with the yearning of an imprisoned convict to be the meanest of the blessed souls enveloped in it.

I determined at last to break up my household at Stockwell, to move far away into the country; to breed fowls—an occupation which I was assured was very profitable and very entertaining; dismiss my niece and marry again. I began to consider which lady of those whom I knew would suit me best, and I found one who was exactly the person I wanted. She was about thirty-five years old, was cheerful, fond of going out (I never was), a good housekeeper, played the piano fairly well, and, as the daughter of a retired major in the Army, had a certain air and manner which distinguished her from the wives and daughters of our set and would secure for me an acquaintance with the country gentlefolk, from which, without her, I should probably be debarred. She had also told me when I mentioned my project to her, but saying nothing about marriage, that she doted on fowls—they had such pretty ways. As it was obviously prudent not to engage myself until I knew more of her, I instigated my niece in a careless way to invite her to stay a fortnight with us. She came, and once or twice I was on the verge of saying something decisive to her, but I could not. A strange terror of change in my way of life took hold upon me. I should now have to be more at home, and although I might occupy myself with the fowls during the morning and afternoon, the evening must be spent in company, and I could not endure for more than half an hour a drawing-room after dinner. There was another reason for hesitation. I could see the lady would accept me if I proposed to her, but I was not quite sure why. She would in all probability survive me, and I fancied that her hope of survival might be her main reason for consenting. I gave her up, but no sooner had she left us than I found myself impelled to make an offer to a handsome girl of eight-and-twenty who I was ass enough to dream might love me. I was happily saved by an accident not worth relating, and although I afterwards dwelt much upon the charms of two or three other ladies and settled with myself I would take one of them, nothing came of my resolution. I was greatly distressed by this growing indecision. It began to haunt me. If I made up my mind to-day that I would do this or that, I always had on the morrow twenty reasons for not doing it. I was never troubled with this malady in Eastcheap. I was told that decay in the power of willing was one of the symptoms of softening of the brain, and this then was what was really the matter with me! It might last for years! Wretched creature! my life was to be nothing better than that of the horse in Bewick's terrible picture. I was 'waiting for death.'

Part of my income was derived from interest on money lent to a cousin. Without any warning I had a letter to say that he was bankrupt, and that his estate would probably not pay eighteenpence in the pound. It was quite clear that I must economise, and what to do and whither to go was an insoluble problem to me. By chance I met an old City acquaintance who told me of a 'good thing' in Spanish bonds which, when information was disclosed which he possessed, were certain to rise twenty per cent. If what he said was true—and I had no reason to doubt him—I could easily get back without much risk about two-thirds of the money I had lost. Had I been in full work, I do not believe I should have wasted a shilling on the speculation, but the excitement attracted me, and I ventured a considerable sum. In about a fortnight there was a sudden jump of two per cent. in my securities, and I was so much elated that I determined to go farther. I doubled my stake; in three weeks another rise was announced; I again increased the investment, and now I watched the market with feverish eagerness. One day I was downstairs a quarter of an hour earlier than usual waiting for the boy who brought the paper.

I tore it open and to my horror saw that there was a panic on the Stock Exchange; my bonds were worthless, and I was ruined.

I had always secretly feared that this would happen, and that I should be so distracted as to lose my reason. To my surprise, I was never more self-possessed, and I was not so miserable as might have been expected. I at once gave notice of discharge to my servants, sold nearly all my furniture and let my house. I was offered help, but declined it. I moved into a little villa in one of the new roads then being made at Brixton, and found that I possessed a capital which, placed in Consols—for I would not trust anything but the public funds—brought me one hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. This was not enough for my niece, myself and a maid, and I was forced to consider whether I could not obtain some employment. To return to Eastcheap was clearly out of the question, but there was a possibility, although I was fifty-six, that my experience might make me useful elsewhere. I therefore called on Jackman and Larkins at twelve o'clock, the hour at which I knew there was a chance of finding them able to see me. During my prosperity I always walked straight into their room marked 'private,' but now I went into the clerks' office, took off my hat and modestly inquired if either Mr. Jackman or Mr. Larkins could spare me a minute. I was not asked to sit down—I, to whom these very clerks a little over a twelvemonth ago would have risen when I entered; but my message was taken, and I was told in reply that both Mr. Jackman and Mr. Larkins were engaged. I was bold enough to send in another message and was informed I might call in two hours' time. I went out, crossed London Bridge, and seeing the doors of St. Saviour's, Southwark, open, rested there awhile. When I returned at the end of two hours, I had to wait another ten minutes until a luncheon tray came out. A bell then rang, which a clerk answered, and in about five minutes, with a 'come this way' I was ushered into the presence of Jackman, who was reading the newspaper with a decanter and a glass of sherry by his side.

'Well, Whittaker, what brings you here? Ought to be looking after your grapes at Stockwell—but I forgot; heard you'd given up grape- growing. Ah! odd thing, a man never retires, but he gets into some mess; marries or dabbles on the Stock Exchange. I've known lots of cases like yours. What can we do for you? Times are horribly bad.' Jackman evidently thought I was going to borrow some money of him, and his tone altered when he found I did not come on that errand.

'I was very sorry—really I was, my dear fellow—to hear of your loss, but it was a damned foolish thing to do, excuse me.'

'Mr. Jackman,' said I, 'I have not lost all my property, but I cannot quite live on what is left. Can you give me some work? My connection and knowledge of your business may be of some service.' I had put hundreds of pounds in this man's pocket, but forbore to urge this claim upon him.

'Delighted, I am sure, if it were possible, but we have no vacancy, and, to be quite plain with you, you are much too old. We could get more out of a boy at ten shillings a week than we could out of you.'

Mr. Jackman drank another glass of sherry.

'But, sir'—(sir! that I should ever call Tom Jackman 'sir,' but I did)—'as I just said, my experience and connection might be valuable.'

'Oh, as to experience, me and Larkins supply all that, and the clerks do as they are told. Never keep a clerk more than two years: he then begins to think he knows too much and wants more pay. As to connection, pardon me—mean nothing, of course—but your recommendation now wouldn't bring much.'

At this moment the door opened and Larkins entered in haste. 'I say, Jackman—' then turning and seeing me,—'Hullo, Whittaker, what the devil are you doing here? Jackman, I've just heard—'

'Good-bye, Whittaker,' said Jackman, 'sorry can't help you.'

Neither of them offered to shake hands, and I passed out into the street. The chop-houses were crammed; waiters were rushing hither and thither; I looked up at the first floor of that very superior house, used solely by principals, where I often had my lunch, and again crossed London Bridge on my way back. London Bridge at half- past one! I do not suppose I had ever been there at half-past one in my life. I saw a crowd still passing both southwards and northwards. At half-past nine it all went one way and at half-past six another. It was the morning and evening crowd which was the people to me. These half-past one o'clock creatures were strange to me, loafers, nondescripts. I was faint and sick when I reached home, for I walked all the way, and after vainly trying to eat something went straight to bed. But the next post brought me a note saying that Jackman and Larkins were willing to engage me at a salary of 100 pounds a year—much more, it was added, than they would have paid for more efficient service, but conceded as a recognition of the past. The truth was, as I afterwards found out, that Larkins persuaded Jackman that it would increase their reputation to take old Whittaker. Larkins too had become a little tired of soliciting orders, and I could act as his substitute. I was known to nearly all the houses with which they did business and very likely should gain admittance where a stranger would be denied. My hours would be long, from nine till seven, and must be observed rigidly. Instead of my three-and-sixpenny lunch I should now have to take in my pocket whatever I wanted in the middle of the day. For dinner I must substitute a supper—a meal which did not suit me. I should have to associate with clerks, to meet as a humble subordinate those with whom I was formerly intimate as an equal; but all this was overlooked, and I was happy, happy as I had not been for months.

It was on a Wednesday when I received my appointment, and on Monday I was to begin. I said my prayers more fervently that night than I had said them for years, and determined that, please God, I would always go to church every Sunday morning no matter how fine it might be. There were only three clear week-days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, to be got through. I imagined them to be holidays, although I had never before taken three consecutive holidays, save in those wretched Augusts or Septembers, when pride annually forced me away to the seaside. At last Monday came: our breakfast hour was henceforth fixed at half-past seven, and at eight o'clock I started to walk to Kennington, and thence to ride by an omnibus to King William's statue. Oh! with what joy did I shut the little garden gate and march down the road, once more somebody! I looked round, saw other little front gates open, each by-street contributed, so that in the Kennington Road there was almost a procession moving steadily and uniformly City-wards, and I was in it. I was still a part of the great world; something depended on me. Fifty-six? yes, but what was that? Many men are at their best at fifty-six. So exhilarated was I, that just before I mounted the omnibus—it was a cold morning, but I would not ride inside—I treated myself to a twopenny cigar. My excitement soon wore off. I could not so far forget myself as not to make suggestions now and then, and Jackman took a delight in snubbing me. It was a trial to me also to sit with the clerks. We had never set ourselves up as grand people at Stockwell, but I had all my life been accustomed to delicate food properly cooked, and now that my appetite was declining with my years, I would almost at any time have gone without a meal rather than eat anything that was coarse or dirtily served. My colleagues ridiculed my 'Stockwell manners,' as they called them, and were very witty, so they thought, in their inquiries when I produced my sandwich wrapped up in a clean napkin, how much it cost me for my washing. They were a very cheap set, had black finger-nails, and stuck their pens behind their ears. One of them always brought a black-varnished canvas bag with him, not respectably stiff like leather—a puckered, dejected-looking bag. It was deposited in the washing place to be out of the way of the sun. At one o'clock it was brought out and emptied of its contents, which were usually a cold chop and a piece of bread. A plate, knife and fork, and some pepper and salt were produced from the desk, and after the meat, which could be cut off from the chop, was devoured, the bone was gnawed, wrapped up in paper, and put back in the bag. The plate, knife, and fork were washed in the wash-hand basin and wiped with the office jack-towel. It was hard when old business friends called and I had to knock at the inner door and say, 'Mr. — - wants to see you, sir,' the object of the visit not being entrusted to me. A few of them behaved politely to me, but to others it seemed to be a pleasure to humble me. On that very first Monday, Bullock, the junior in Wiggens, Moggs, and Bullock, burst into the room. He knew me very well, but took no notice of me, although I was alone, except to ask -

'Is Mr. Jackman in?'

'No, sir, can I do anything for you?'

He did not deign to say a word, but went out, slamming the door behind him.

Nevertheless I kept up my spirits, or rather they kept themselves up. At five o'clock, when the scramble to get the letters signed began, I thought of our street at home, so dull at that hour, of the milkman, and the muffin-boy, of the curate, and of my niece's companions, and reflected, thank God, that I was in the City, a man amongst men. When seven o'clock came and the gas was put out, there was the anticipation also of the fight for a place in the omnibus, especially if it was a wet night, and the certainty that I should meet with one or two neighbours who would recognise me. No more putting up window-blinds, pulling up weeds in the back garden, sticking in seeds which never grew, or errands to suburban shops at midday. How I used in my retirement to detest the sight of those little shopkeepers when the doors of Glyn's Bank were swinging to and fro! I came home dead-beaten now, it is true, but it was a luxury to be dead-beaten, and I slept more soundly than I had ever slept in my life. In about six months my position improved a little. Jackman's love for sherry grew upon him, and once or twice, to Larkins's disgust, his partner was not quite as fit to appear in public as he ought to have been. Very often he was absent, sick. Two of the cheap clerks also left in order to better themselves. I never shall forget the afternoon—I felt as if I could have danced for joy—when Larkins said to me, 'Whittaker, Mr. Jackman hasn't very good health, and if he's not here when I am out, you must answer anybody who calls, but don't commit yourself—and—let me see—I was going to tell you you'll have ten pounds a year more, beginning next quarter—and there was something else—Oh! I recollect, if anybody should want to see Mr. Jackman when he happens to be unwell here, and I am not with him, send for me if you know where I am. If you don't know, you must do the best you can.' My office coat had hitherto been an old shiny, ragged thing, and I had always taken off my shirt-cuffs when I began work, because they so soon became dirty. I rammed the old coat that night into the fire; brought my second-best coat in a brown paper parcel the next morning, and wore my shirt-cuffs all day long. Continually I had to think—only fancy, to think—once more; in a very small way, it is true, but still to think and to act upon my thought, and when Larkins came in and inquired if anybody had called, he now and then said 'all right' when I told him what I had done. A clerk from my old office swaggered in and did not remove his hat. I descended from my stool and put on my own hat. The next time he came he was more polite. I have now had two years of it, and have not been absent for a day. I hope I may go on till I drop. My father died in a fit; his father died in a fit; and I myself often feel giddy, and things go round for a few seconds. I should not care to have a fit here, because there would be a fuss and a muddle, but I should like, just when everything was QUITE straight, to be able to get home safely and then go off. To lie in bed for weeks and worry about my work is what I could not endure.



CONFESSIONS OF A SELF-TORMENTOR



My father was a doctor in a country town. Strictly speaking it was not a town, and yet it was something more than a village. His practice extended over a district with a radius of five or six miles from his house; he drove a gig and dispensed his own medicines. My mother was the youngest daughter of a poor squire who owned two or three hundred acres and lived at what was called the Park, which was really nothing more than two or three fields generally laid for hay, a small enclosure being reserved for a garden. We were not admitted into county society, and my mother would not associate with farmers and tradesfolk. She was a good woman, affectionate to her children and husband, but never forgot that—so she thought—she had married below her station. She had an uncle who had been in the Indian Army, and his portrait in full regimentals hung in the dining-room. How her heart warmed to the person who inquired who that officer was! When she went home, it was never to her 'home,' but to the 'Park.'

My father's income was not more than eight or nine hundred a year, and his expenses were heavy, but nevertheless my mother determined that I should go to the university, and I was accordingly sent to a grammar school. I had not been there more than three years, and was barely fourteen years old, when my father was pitched out of his gig and killed. He had insured his life for two thousand pounds, which was as much as he could afford, and my mother had another two thousand pounds of her own. Her income therefore was less than two hundred a year. She could not teach, she would not let lodgings, nor was she wanted at the Park. She therefore took a cottage, small but genteel, at a rental of ten pounds a year, and managed as best she could. The furniture was partly sold, but the regimental portrait was saved. Unhappily, as the cottage ceilings were very low, it was not an easy task to hang it. The only place to be found for it, out of the way of the chairs, was opposite the window, in a parlour about twelve feet square, called the drawing-room; but it was too long even there, and my great-uncle's legs descended behind the sofa, and could not be seen unless it was moved. 'The cottage is a shocking come-down,' said my mother to the rector, 'but it is not vulgar; it is at least a place in which a lady can live.' Of course the university was now out of the question, and at fifteen I left school. I had read a little Virgil, a little Horace, and a book or two of Homer. I had also got through the first six books of Euclid after a fashion, and had advanced as far as quadratic equations in algebra, but had no mathematical talent whatever. My mother would not hear of trade as an occupation for me, and she could not afford to make me a soldier, sailor, doctor, lawyer, or parson. At last the county member, at the request of her father, obtained for me a clerkship in the Stamps and Taxes Department. These were the days before competitive examinations. She was now able to say that her son was in H. M. Civil Service. I had eighty pounds a year, and lodged at Clapton with an aunt, my father's sister.

Although I had been only half-educated, I was fond of reading, and I had plenty of time for it. I read good books, and read them with enthusiasm. I was much taken with the Greek dramatists, especially with Euripides, but my only means of access to them was through translations. My aunt had another nephew who came to see her now and then. He had obtained an open exhibition at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a translation again for some time.

The men at my office were a curious set. The father of one was a leader of the lowest blackguards in a small borough, who had much to do with determining elections there; another bore the strongest resemblance to a well-known peer; and another was the legitimate and perfectly scoundrel offspring of a newspaper editor. I formed no friendships with any of my colleagues, but one of them I greatly envied. He was deaf and dumb, the son of a poor clergyman, and had an extraordinary passion for botany. Every holiday was devoted to rambling about the country near London. He cared little for anything but his favourite science, but that he understood, and he never grew tired of it. I took no account of his deafness and dumbness; the one thing I saw was his mastership over a single subject. Gradually my incompleteness came to weigh on me like a nightmare. I imagined that if I had learned any craft which required skill, I should have been content. I was depressed when I looked at the watchmaker examining my watch. I should have walked the streets erect if there had been one thing which I could do better than anybody I met. There was nothing: I stood for nothing: no purpose was intended by God through me. I was also constitutionally inaccurate—this was another of my troubles—and nothing short of the daily use of a fact made me sure of it. No matter how zealously I went over and over again a particular historical period, I always broke down the moment my supposed acquisitions were tested by questions or conversation. I have read a book with the greatest attention I could muster, and have found, when I have seen a simple examination paper on it, that I could not have got a dozen marks. Of what value, then, were my notions on matters demanding far greater concentration of thought? Accuracy I fancied might be acquired, but I was mistaken. It is a gift as much as the art of writing sublime poetry. I struggled and struggled with pencil and precis, but I did not improve. My cousin's before- mentioned friend took delight in checking, like an accountant, what was said to him, especially by me, and although I saw that this for the most part was a mere trick, I could not deny that it proved continually that my so-called opinions were not worth a straw. The related virtues of accuracy, strength of memory, and clear definition, are of great importance, but I over-estimated them. I see now that human affairs are so complicated, that had I possessed the advantages bestowed on my cousin and his companion, they would not have prevented delusions, all the more perilous, perhaps, because I should have been more confident. However, at the time of which I am speaking, I was wretched, and believed that my wretchedness was entirely due to deficiencies and weaknesses, from which my friends were free. No sorrow of genius is greater than the daily misery of the man with no gifts, who is not properly equipped, and has desires out of all proportion to his capacity.

I had no real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts, but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that which was melodious. The long passages with no striking theme in them conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The Marseillaise on a barrel-organ was intelligible, but gymnastics on strings—what did they represent? With pictures the case was somewhat different. I often left Clapton early in order that I might have half an hour at Christie's in quiet, and I have spent many pleasant moments in those rooms on sunny mornings in May and June before De Wint's and Turner's landscapes. But I knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could not fix my attention on them long. A water-colour by Turner, on which all his power had been expended, an abstract of years and years of toil and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really distinguishing qualities. As to the early religious pictures of the Italian school, I cared nothing either for subject or treatment, and would have given a cartload of them for a drawing by Hunt of a bird's nest. Wanting an ear for music and an eye for pictorial merit, I believed, or affected to believe, that the raptures of people who possessed the ear and eye were a sham. It irritated me to hear my aunt play, although she had been well taught in her youth and was a skilful performer. I know she would have liked to feel that she gave me some pleasure, and that her playing was admired, but I was so openly indifferent to it that at last she always shut the piano if I happened to come into the room while she was practising. I remember saying to her when she was talking to me about one of Mozart's quartets she had just heard, that music was immoral, inasmuch as it provoked such enormous insincerity. It is strange that, although spite was painful to me, especially towards her, I could not help indulging in it.

My failings gradually wrought in me confirmed bitterness. I persuaded myself that the interest which people appeared to take in me was mere polite pretence. There may be enough selfishness in the world to explain misanthropy, but there is never enough to justify it, and what we imagine to be indifference to us is often merely the reserve caused by our own refusal to surrender ourselves to legitimate and generous emotions. Oddly enough, I frequently made hasty and spasmodic offers of intimate friendship to people who were not prepared for them, and the natural absence of immediate response was a further reason for scepticism. A man to whom I was suddenly impelled was in want of money, and I pressed ten pounds upon him. He could not pay me at the appointed time, whereupon I set him down as an ungrateful brute, and moralised like Timon.

There was at that time living in London a lady whom I must call Mrs. A. She was the widow of a professor at Cambridge who had died young, and she might have been about five-and-thirty or forty years old. My cousin, who had known her husband, introduced me to her. She was not handsome; the cheek-bones were a little too prominent, and her face was weather-worn, but not by wind and sun. Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face. Her ways were simple and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as Athens, and was complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice struck me—it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural modulation which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if it is so expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say, between the inspirations and expirations of a short pipe!

Mrs. A. took much notice of me, and her attitude towards me was singular. She was not quite old enough to be motherly to me, but she was too old for restrictions on her intercourse with me, and her wide experience and wisdom well qualified her to be my directress. Often when I went to her house nobody was there, and she would talk to me with freedom on all sorts of subjects. I did not fall in love with her, but she was still attractive as a woman, and difference of sex, delightful manners, subtle intellect, expressive grey eyes, and lovely black hair streaked with white, might have taught me much which I could have learned from no ordinary friend. My cousin often went with me to Mrs. A.'s, but I was never at rest when he was there. I fancied then that if I could have rendered a dozen lines of Gray's Elegy into correct Greek, life would have nothing more to give me. Mrs. A. was too well-behaved to encourage conversation in my cousin's presence which disclosed my inferiority to him, but without premeditation it sometimes turned where I could not follow. As I have said, she had travelled in Greece. She understood something of modern Greek, and she and my cousin one evening fell to comparing it with ancient Greek. I sat sulky and dumb. At last she turned to me, and asked me smilingly why I was so quiet. I replied that I did not understand a word of what they were saying (which was untrue), and that if they would talk about Stamps and Taxes I could join. She divined in an instant what was the matter with me, and diverted the discussion so that it might be within my reach. 'I must confess,' she said, 'that my knowledge of philology is no better than yours. Philology demands the labour of a life. I often wonder what the teacher, student, and school history of England will be at the end of another thousand years. Perhaps, however, in another thousand years books will no longer be written except on physics. Men will say, "What have we to do with the Wars of the Roses?" and as to general literature, they will become weary of tossing over and over again the same old ideas and endeavouring to imagine new variations of passion. The literary man will cease from the land. Something of this sort must come to pass, unless the human race is to be smothered.' My cousin said he prayed that her prophecy might come true, but I remained hard and stockish. Her sweet temper, however, could not be disturbed, and she announced that she was going to see Rachel, the great actress, and invited us both to accompany her. I refused, on the ground that I knew nothing of French (also untrue). She assured me that if I would read the play beforehand I should be in no difficulty. I was really touched by her kindness, but the devil in me would not let me yield. I missed the opportunity of seeing Rachel, just as I missed many other opportunities of more importance. Oh! when I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break. The curse for me has not been plucking forbidden fruit, but the refusal of divine fruit offered me by heavenly angels.

Mrs. A.'s circle of acquaintances widened during the two or three years of my friendship with her. She often pressed me to meet them, but I nearly always held back. I told her that I did not care for mere acquaintances, and that certainly not more than one or two of her visitors would shed a tear if they heard she was dead. 'To possess one or two friends,' she said, 'who would weep at my departure would be quite enough. It is as much as anybody ought to demand, but you are mistaken in supposing that those who would not break their hearts for us may not be of value, and even precious. We are so made that the attraction which unites us to our fellow- creatures is, and ought to be, of varying intensity, and there is something to be obtained from a weaker bond which is not to be had from a stronger. I like the society of Mrs. Arnold and Madame Sorel. I enjoy the courtesy which is not slipper-and-dressing-gown familiarity, and their way of looking at things, especially Madame Sorel's, is different from mine and instructs me. Forgive me for reminding you that in our Father's house are many mansions, and if we wish to be admitted to some of them we must wear our best clothes, and when we are inside we must put on our company manners.' She was quite right; Mrs. Arnold and Madame Sorel could have given me just what I needed.

My visits to Mrs. A. became less and less frequent, and at last altogether ceased. It was actually painful to me to neglect her, but I forced myself to it, or to put it more correctly the Demon of pure Malignity, for there is such a demon in Hell, drove me to it.

Some years afterwards I wrote to her asking her if she could get work for a starving man whom she had known in other days, and she helped him to obtain it. Two years after she had done this kind office, and had shown she had not forgotten me, she died, and I went to her funeral in Brompton Cemetery. It was a cold day, and black fog hung over London. When the coffin was lowered into the grave I wept many tears. I had been guilty of a neglect which was wicked injustice, and I could never hear her say she had forgiven me. I understood the meaning of atonement, and why it has been felt in all ages that, by itself, reformation is insufficient. I attempted an expiation, which I need not describe. It is painful, but the sacrifice which I trust I shall offer to the end of my days brings me a measure of relief.

About a twelvemonth after Mrs. A.'s death I fell sick with inflammation of the lungs. Once before, when I was ill, I declined my aunt's attendance. I said that I did not believe it was possible for mere friendship or affection to hold out against long watching, and that there must come a time when the watcher would be relieved by the death of the patient. I declared that nothing was more intolerable to me than to know that anybody sacrificed the least trifle on my behalf, and that if my aunt really wished me to get better she would at once send for a paid nurse. I had a paid nurse, but Alice, our servant, told me afterwards that my poor aunt cried a good deal when she saw her place taken by a stranger. She was now nearly seventy, but she offered herself again, and I thankfully accepted her, stipulating of course that she should be helped. I wondered how she could retain her love for me, how she could kiss me so tenderly morning and night, and apparently not remember my unkindness to her. But therein lies the difference between a man and a woman. Woman is Christian. A woman's love will sweep like a river in flood over a wrong which has been done to it and bury it for ever.

I am not regenerate, but who is ever regenerate? My insignificance and defects do not worry me as they did: I do not kick at them, and I am no longer covetous of other people's talents and virtues. I am grateful for affection, for kindness, and even for politeness. What a tremendous price do we have to pay for what we so slowly learn, and learn so late!



A LETTER TO THE 'RAMBLER'



Sent to the Rambler March 1752, but, alas, in that month the Rambler came to an end. I am not sorry it was not printed. On re-reading it I find passages here and there which are unconscious and unavoidable imitations of Dr. Johnson. No use in re-writing them now.

J. R. June 1760.

Sir,—I venture to send you a part of the history of my life, trusting that my example may be a warning against confidence in our own strength to resist even the meanest temptation.

My father was a prosperous haberdasher in Cheapside, and I was his eldest son. My mother was the daughter of the clerk to the Fellmongers' Company. She had reached the mature age of nine-and- twenty when she received an offer of matrimony from my father, and after much anxious consideration and much consultation with her parents, prudently decided to accept it, although to the end of her days she did not scruple openly to declare that she had lowered herself by marrying a man who was compelled to bow behind a counter to the wife of a grocer, and stand bareheaded at the carriage door of an alderman's lady. My mother, I am sorry to say, abetted my natural aversion from trade and sent me to Saint Paul's School to learn Latin, Greek, and the mathematicks that I might be qualified to separate myself from the class to which unhappily she was degraded and that she might recover in her child the pride she had lost in her husband. My abilities were not despicable, my ambition was restless, and my progress in my studies was therefore respectable. I conceived a genuine admiration for the classick authors; I was genuinely moved by the majesty of Homer and the felicity of expression in Horace. In due time I went to Oxford, and after the usual course there, in which I was not unsuccessful, I took Holy Orders and became a curate. When I was about eight-and- twenty I was presented with a College living in the village of A. about four miles from the county town of B. in the West of England. My parishioners were the squire, a half-pay captain in the army, a retired custom-house surveyor who was supposed to be the illegitimate son of a member of parliament, and the surrounding farmers and labourers. All were grossly illiterate, but I soon observed that a common ignorance does not prevent, but rather tends to establish artificial distinctions. Inferiority by a single degree in the social scale becomes not only a barrier to intercourse, but a sufficient reason for contempt. The squire and his lady spent their days in vain attempts to secure invitations to my Lord's at the Abbey and revenged themselves by patronising the captain, who in his turn nodded to the surveyor but would on no account permit intimacy. The surveyor could not for his life have condescended to enter a farmhouse, and yet was never weary of denouncing as intolerably stuck-up the behaviour of those above him. He consoled himself by the reflection that they were the losers, and that, poor creatures, their neglect of him was due to a lamentable misapprehension of the dignity of H. M. Custom-house Service. I can assure you I thought the comedy played at A. very ridiculous, and often laughed at it.

It was soon quite clear to me that if I was to live in peace I must take to myself a wife. The squire and the surveyor had daughters. The squire's would each have a hundred a-year apiece, a welcome addition to my small income. They were good-looking, and by repute were virtuous and easy of temper, but when I became acquainted with them I found that I must not expect from them any entertainment save the description of visits to the milliner, or schemes for parties, or the gossip of the country-side. I did not demand, Mr. Rambler, the critical acumen of Mrs. Montagu, or the erudition of Mrs. Carter, but I believe you will agree with me that a wife, and especially the wife of a clergyman and a scholar, should be able to read a page of Dr. Barrow's sermons without yawning, and should not drop Mr. Pope's Iliad or Odyssey in five minutes unless she happened to light upon some particularly exciting adventure. I therefore dismissed the thought of these young ladies, and the daughters of the surveyor were for the same reasons ineligible, with the added objection that if I chose one of them the squire and his family would never enter the church again.

One day I went over to B. to leave my watch for repairs. I noticed a fishing-rod in the shop, and as I was fond of the sport I asked the watchmaker if it was his. He said that he generally went fishing when he could spare himself a holiday, and that he had just spent two days on the Avon. I was thinking of the Stratford river and foolishly inquired which Avon, forgetting the one near us.

'Our Avon,' he replied; 'our Avon, of course, sir; THE Avon.

'"Proud of his adamants with which he shines And glisters wide, as als of wondrous Bath."'

I did not recollect the lines, but discovered on inquiry that they were Spenser's, an author, I regret to say, whom I had not read. I was astonished that a person with a mechanical occupation who sat in a window from morning to night dissecting time-pieces should be acquainted with poetry, and I begged him to tell me something of his life. He was the son of a bookseller in Bristol who had been apprenticed to the celebrated Mr. Bernard Lintot. The father failed in business, and soon afterwards died leaving a widow and six children. My friend was then about fourteen years old. He had been well educated, but his mother was compelled to accept the offer of a neighbour who took compassion on her, and he was brought up to the watchmaking trade in Bath. He had to work long hours and endure many hardships which it might be supposed would tend to repress the sallies of the most lively imagination, but some men are so constituted that adverse circumstances do but stimulate a search for compensation. So it was with him. In his leisure hours he studied not only horological science but the works of our great English authors.

I was so much attracted to the watchmaker that I often called on him, when I had no business with him. He had a wife and daughter, both of whom were his companions. Melissa, the daughter, was about nineteen. She was not beautiful according to the Grecian model, but her figure was elegant, there was depth in her eyes, and she was always dressed with simplicity and taste. She spoke correctly, and surprised me by the justness of her observations, not merely on local and personal matters, but upon subjects with which women of more exalted rank are not usually familiar. Admission had been refused to her by every school in Bath, but she had been taken in charge by two elderly gentlewomen, distant relations of her grandfather, who had instructed her in the usual branches of polite learning, including French. I will content myself, Mr. Rambler, with informing you that I fell in love with Melissa, and that she did not discourage my attentions. I had not altogether overlooked the possibility of embarrassment at A., but my passion prevented the clear foresight of consequences. I have often found that evils which are imaginary will press upon me with singular vivacity, while those which may with certainty be deduced from any action are but obscurely apprehended, so that in fact intensity of colour is an indication of unreality. I must add that if the future had presented itself to me with prophetic distinctness, my love for Melissa was so great that I should not have hesitated. My frequent visits to B. had not passed unnoticed at A., and the reason was suspected. Hints were not wanting, and the custom-house surveyor told me a harrowing tale of a fellow-surveyor who had alienated all his friends and had been obliged to leave his house near Tower Hill because he had chosen to marry the daughter of a poor author who lived in Whitefriars. One day early in the morning I was in B. and met the squire's young ladies with their mother. She was a very proud dame. Her maiden name was Bone, and her father had been a sugar-baker in Bristol, but this was not a retail trade, and she had often told me that she was descended from Geoffrey de Bohun, who was in the retinue of William the Conqueror and killed five Saxons with his own hand at the battle of Hastings. Her children, she bade me observe, had inherited the true Bohun ears as shown in an engraving she possessed of a Bohun tomb in Normandy. I walked with the party up the High Street, and had not gone far when I saw Melissa coining towards us. O, Mr. Rambler, can I utter it! She approached us, she knew that I must have recognised her, but I turned my head towards a shop-window and called my companions' attention to the display of silks and satins. After Melissa had passed, my lady asked me if that was not the watchmaker's daughter and whether I knew anything about her. I replied that I believed it was, and that I had heard she was a respectable young woman. My lady remarked that she had understood that she was virtuous, but that she had been unbecomingly brought up, and considered herself superior to her position. Her ladyship confessed that she would not be surprised any day to hear that Miss ——-had been obliged to leave B., for she had noticed that when a female belonging to the lower orders strove to acquire knowledge unsuitable to her station, the consequence was often ruin. It is almost incredible—I was silent!—but when I reached home I was overcome with shame and despair. This then was all that my love was worth; this was my esteem for intelligence and learning; and I was the man who had thanked God I was not as my neighbours at A.! If in the beginning I had deliberately resolved that it would be a mistake to ally myself with Melissa's family because my usefulness might be diminished, something might have been pleaded on my behalf, but I was without excuse. I had sacrificed Melissa to no principle, but to detestable vulgar cowardice. It was about two hours after noon when I returned, and in my confusion a note from Melissa which lay upon my table was not at once noticed. It had been written the day before, and it tenderly upbraided me because I had been absent for a whole week. Enclosed was a copy of verses by Sir Philip Sidney beginning, 'My true love hath my heart.' I mounted my horse again, and in less than half an hour was in B. I flew to Melissa. She received me in silence, but without rebuke. Indeed, before she had time for a word, I had knelt at her feet and had covered my face with her hands. On my way through the town I had seen my lady with her children, and one or two fashionably-dressed women, friends who lived in B. My lady was completing her purchases. I implored Melissa immediately to come out with me. She was astonished and hesitated, but my impetuosity was so urgent that she feared to refuse, and without any explanation I almost dragged her into the street. On the opposite side I descried my lady and her party. I crossed over, took Melissa's arm in mine, came close to them face to face, bowed, and then passed on. We then recrossed the road and turned into Melissa's house. I looked back and saw that they were standing still, stricken with astonishment. We went into the little parlour: nobody was there. Melissa threw her arms round my neck, and happier tears were never shed. In all the long years which have now gone by since that memorable day I have never had to endure from that divine creature a word or a hint which even the suspicion of wounded self-respect could interpret as a reproach.

We were married at B. The custom-house surveyor never entered his parish church again, but went over to B. once every Sunday. He wrote me a letter to say that it was with much regret that he left the church of his own village, but that it was no longer possible to derive any edification from the services there. The captain remained, but discontinued his civilities. The squire informed me that as I was still a priest and possessed authority to administer the holy sacraments he should continue his attendance, but that of course all personal intercourse must cease. I expected that the common people would have been confirmed in their attachment to me, but the opinion of the little village butcher was that I had disgraced myself, and the farmers and labourers would not even touch their hats to my wife when they met her. However, we did not care, and in time it was impossible even to the squire not to recognise her tact, manners, and sense. Her father had constructed an ingenious sun-dial which he had placed on the front of his shop. The great Mr. Halley was staying with Mr. M., who lives about five miles from B., and seeing the dial when he was in the town, called on my father-in-law, and was so much struck with him that he obtained permission to invite him to dinner. There the squire met him and was obliged to sit opposite him, amazed to hear him converse on equal terms with Mr. Halley and his host, and to discover that he knew how to behave with decency. Hostility continued to wear away. Few people are endowed with sufficient perseverance to continue a quarrel unless the cause is constantly renewed.

My betrayal of Melissa has not been altogether without profit. I had imagined myself morally superior to my parishioners, and if I had put the question to myself I should have said with confidence that it was impossible that there should exist in me a weakness I had never suspected, one which every day moved me to laughter or to scorn. But, sir, I now feel how true it is that in our immortal poet's words, 'Man, proud man, is most ignorant of what he's most assured, his glassy essence.' I hope you will pardon a reference to sacred history: I understand how the Apostle Peter came to deny his Lord. A few minutes before the dreadful crime was committed he would have considered himself as incapable of it as he was of the sale of his Master for money or of that damning kiss, and a few minutes afterwards he would have suffered death for His sake. This, Mr. Rambler, is the lesson which induced me to write to you. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; and indeed he may take all heed and yet will fall, unless Divine Providence mercifully catches him and holds him up.



A LETTER FROM THE AUTHORESS OF 'JUDITH CROWHURST'



You have asked me to tell you all about Judith Crowhurst. I will tell you something more and begin at the beginning. You will remember that Miss Hardman said to Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Hardman's governess: 'WE need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be under-bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring, who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES.' I was one of those unhappy women who, mercifully for the upper classes, inherit manners and misery in order that the children of these superior creatures may not put an 'r' at the end of 'idea' and may learn how to sit down in a chair with propriety. My father was a clergyman holding a small country living. He died when I was five-and-twenty, and I had to teach in order to earn my bread. I obtained a tolerably good situation, but at the end of two years I was informed that, although a clergyman's daughter would 'do very well' so long as her pupils were quite young, it was now time that they should be handed over to a lady who had been accustomed to Society. I had become thoroughly weary of my work. I was not enthusiastic to instruct girls for whom I did not care. I suppose that if I had been a born teacher, I should have been as happy with the little Hardmans as I was in the nursery with my youngest sister now dead. I should not have said to myself, as I did every morning, 'What does it matter?' In my leisure moments and holidays during those two years I had written a novel. I could supply conversation and description, but it was very difficult to invent a plot, and still more difficult to invent one which of itself would speak. I had collected a quantity of matter of all kinds before I began, and then I cast about for a frame in which to fit it. At last I settled that my hero, if hero he could be called, should fall in love with a poor but intelligent and educated girl. He had a fortune of about two thousand pounds a year, nearly the whole of which he lost through the defalcations of a brother, whose creditors received about five shillings in the pound. He felt that the fair name of his family was stained, and he was consumed with a passion to repay his brother's debts and to recover possession of the old house and land which had been sold. He went abroad, worked hard, and met with a lady who was rich whom he really admired. His love for his betrothed had been weakened by absence, the engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England, discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his resolution to take upon himself his brother's debts, and she thought the price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, in her presence, one spring morning that he had been wakened by the clamour of the rooks with which he had been familiar ever since he was a boy, and her reply was that an estate equal in value to his own and possessing a bigger rookery had been offered him for less money by one-third than he had thrown away. Unfortunately it is not in management or morality that we crave companionship. It is in religion and in the deepest emotions that we thirst for it. Gradually he became wretched, and life was almost unbearable. She took no pleasure in the ancient place and its beautiful garden, he never asked her to admire them, and there was neither son nor daughter to inherit his pious regard. At this point I was obliged to introduce the Deus ex machina, and the wife died. The widower sought out his first love; she had never wavered in her affection to him; they were married, had children, and were happy.

My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories— aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical.

One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality has any meaning she is personal,

'The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul.'

Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning, but at five o'clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky, and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was hushed and reassured. When I got home I transferred my emotion to my deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.

I sent my manuscript to a publisher and need hardly say that it was returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success. The third enclosed a copy of his reader's opinion. Here it is:-

' . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in passages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine. It is singular that Miss C.'s Mariana, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to purchase Mariana, although the plot is crude.' I could not take the publisher's hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again. I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I did not love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein portrait of her seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic secret. I cannot, however, give a complete explanation of her fascination for me. It is impossible to account for the resistless magnetism with which one human being draws another. The elements are too various and are compounded with too much subtlety. Bitter Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I could have been one of the ladies of her court, that I might have offered my heart to her and might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my intense feeling for a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint the original, and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly became myself. I was altogether stopped when I happened to meet with Aubrey de Vere's Mary Tudor and Tennyson's Queen Mary.

Soon afterwards I read Jane Eyre again, and was more than ever astonished at it. It is not to be classed; it is written not by a limited human personality but by Nature herself. The love in it is too great for creatures who are 'even as the generations of leaves'; the existence of two mortals does not account for it. There is an irresistible sweep in it like that of the Atlantic Ocean in a winter's storm hurling itself over the western rocks of Scilly. I do not wonder that people were afraid of the book and that it was cursed. The orthodox daughter of a country parson broke conventional withes as if they were cobwebs. Jane Eyre is not gross in a single word, but its freedom is more complete than that of a licentious modern novel. Do you recollect St. John Rivers says to Jane: 'Try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite, transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?'

She replies—'Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I WILL be happy. Good-bye!'

Therein speaks the worshipper of the Sun. Do you also recollect that voice in the night from Rochester? She breaks from St. John, goes up to her bedroom and prays. 'In my way—a different way to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight.' The Mighty Spirit, who was Jane Eyre's God, had directed her not to go to India as St. John's bride to save souls from damnation by conversion to Jehovah, but to set off that very day to Rochester at Thornfield Hall.

Consider also how inseparably the important incidents in Jane Eyre are linked with one another and with character. Jane refused Rochester at first and St. John finally. She could not possibly do otherwise. But I must stop. You did not ask for an essay on Charlotte Bronte. Suffice it to say that when I had finished Jane Eyre I said to myself that I would not write any more. Nor did I ever attempt fiction again. Judith Crowhurst is a plain, true story, altered a little in order to prevent recognition. I knew her well. There is no suffering in any stage tragedy equal to that of the unmarried woman who is well brought up, with natural gifts above those of women generally, living on a small income, past middle-age, and unable to work. It is not the suffering which is acute torture ending in death, but worse, the black, moveless gloom of the second floor in Hackney or Islington. Almost certainly she has but few friends, and those she has will be occupied with household or wage- earning duties. She is afraid of taking up their time; she never calls without an excuse. What is she to do? She cannot read all day, and, if she could, what is the use of reading? Poets and philosophers do not touch her case; descriptions of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct. Her eyes wander down page after page of her book, but she is only half-conscious. Religion, such as it is now, gives no help. It is based on the necessity of forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of future salvation. She needs no forgiveness unless she takes upon herself a burden of artificial guilt. She rather feels she has to forgive— whom or what she does not know. The heaven of the churches and chapels is remote, unprovable, and cannot affect her in the smallest degree. There is no religion for her and such as she, excepting that Catholic Faith of one article only—The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him. As I have said, I knew Judith Crowhurst well, and after she was dead I wrote her biography, because I believed there are thousands like her in London alone. I hoped that here and there I might excite sympathy with them. We sympathise when we sit in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a truer sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common, dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is not provided with metre and scenery.

You were kind enough to get Judith Crowhurst published for me, and it has had what is called a 'success,' but I doubt if it will do any good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a narcotic. Judith may be admired, but it is by those who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves because she is not entertaining.

I was asked the other day if I was not proud of some of the reviews. Good God! I would rather have been Alice Ayres, {148} and have died as she died, than have been famous as the author of the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, or Hamlet. She is now forgotten and sleeps in an obscure grave in some London cemetery. No! there will be nothing more. I have said all I had to say.



CLEARING-UP AFTER A STORM IN JANUARY



A westerly storm of great strength had been blowing all day, shaking the walls of the house and making us fear for the chimneys. About four o'clock, although the wind continued very high, the clouds broke, and moved in a slow, majestic procession obliquely from the north-west to the south-east. Here and there small apertures revealed the undimmed heaven behind. Immense, rounded projections reared themselves from the main body, and flying, ragged fragments, apparently at a lower level, fled beside and before them. These fragments of lesser density showed innumerable tints of bluish grey from the darkest up to one which differed but little from the pure sky-blue surrounding them. Just after the sun set a rosy flush of light spread almost instantaneously up to the zenith and in an instant had gone. Low down in the west was a long, broadish bar of orange light, crossed by the black pines on the hill half a mile away. Their stems and the outline of each piece of foliage were as distinct as if they were but a hundred yards distant. Half the length of the field in front of me lay a small pool full to its grassy margin. It reflected with such singular fidelity the light and colour above it that it seemed itself to be an original source of light and colour. Of all the sights to be seen in this part of the world none are more strangely and suggestively beautiful than the little patches of rain or spring water in the twilight on the moorland or meadows. Presently the wind rose again, and a rain- squall followed. It passed, and the stars began to come out, and Orion showed himself above the eastern woods. He seemed as if he were marching through the moonlit scud which drove against him. How urgent all the business of this afternoon and evening has been, and yet what it meant who could say? I was like a poor man's child who, looking out from the cottage window, beholds with amazement a great army traversing the plain before him with banners and music and knows nothing of its errand.



THE END OF THE NORTH WIND



For about six weeks from the middle of February we had bitter northerly winds. The frost was not very severe, but the wind penetrated the thickest clothing and searched the house through and through. The shrubs, even the hardiest, were blackened by its virulence. There was scarcely any sunshine, and every now and then a gloomy haze, like the smoke in London suburbs, invaded us. The rise and fall of the barometer meant nothing more than a variation in the strength of the polar current. Growth was nearly arrested, although one morning I found three primroses in a sheltered hollow. Never had the weather seemed more hopeless than towards the close of March. On the last evening of the month the sky was curiously perplexed and agitated notwithstanding there was little movement in the air above or below. Next morning the change had come. The wind had backed to the south, and a storm from the Channel was raging with torrents of warm rain. O the day that followed! Massive April clouds hung in the air. How much the want of visible support adds to their charm! One enormous cloud, with its base nearly on the horizon, rose up forty-five degrees or so towards the zenith. Its weight looked tremendous, but it floated lightly in the blue which encompassed it. Towards the centre it was swollen and dark, but its edges were dazzling white. While I was watching it, it went away to the east and partly broke up. A new cloud, like and not like, succeeded it . . . I followed the lane, stopped for a few minutes at a corner where the grassy road-margin widens out near the tumble- down barn, looked over the gate westward across the valley to the hills beyond, and then went down to the brook that winds along the bottom. It runs in a course which it has cut for itself, and is flanked on either side by delicately-carved miniature cliffs of yellow sandstone overhung with broom and furze. It was full of pure glittering moor-water, which seemed to add light to the stones in its bed, so brilliant was their colour. It fell with incessant, rippling murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between each, and so it went on to the mill-pond a mile away. Close to me a blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy in its rays. A scramble of half a mile up a rough track brought me to the common, and there, thirty miles distant, lay the chalk downs, unsubstantial, a light-blue mist.

Youth with its heat in the blood may be more capable of exultation at this season, but to the old man it brings the sounder hope and deeper joy.



ROMNEY MARSH



'Proceeding from a source of untaught things' (Prelude xiii. 310)

Here is Appledore; over there is Romney Marsh. The sky has partly cleared after heavy, south-westerly rain. On the horizon where the sea lies the clouds are in a line, and the air is so clear that their edges are sharp against the blue. Nearer to me they are slowly dissolving, re-forming, and moving eastwards, and their shadows are crossing the wide grassy plain on which in the distance Lydd Church is just discernible. I can report something of those greys and that azure, but the best part of what is before me will not outline itself to me. Still less can I shape it in speech. Necessity, majestic inevitable movement, the folly of heat and hurry, all this emerges and again is blended in the simple unity of transcendent loveliness. But beyond there is something so close, so precious! and yet elusive of every effort to grasp it.

She came to meet me from the line Where lies the ocean miles away; And now she's close; she must be mine: I wait the word that she must say.

The magic word is not for me: The vision fades, and far and near The west wind stirs the grassy sea In whispers to the watching ear.



AXMOUTH



A true Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The cottages are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door. The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has looked unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years. Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep high banks are covered with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet twitters down by its side. At the top of the down is a line of old hawthorns blown slantingly by south-west storms into a close, solid mass of shoots and prickles. They are dwarfed in their struggle, but have thick trunks, many of them covered with brilliant yellow lichen.

For miles and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself, reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide. Flocks of seagulls wade or float in it. It passes quietly under its last bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping alongside it, it suddenly turns at right angles, cuts its way through with an exulting rush, holds back for a few yards the sea waves that ripple against it, and is then lost.



THE PREACHER AND THE SEA



This morning as I walked by the sea, a man was preaching on the sands to about a dozen people, and I stopped for a few minutes to listen. He told us that we were lying under the wrath of God, that we might die at any moment, and that if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus we should be damned everlastingly. 'Believe in the Lord,' he shouted, 'believe or you will be lost; you can do nothing of yourselves; you must be saved by grace alone, by blood, without blood is no remission of sins. Some of you think, no doubt, you are good people, and you may be, as the world goes, but your righteousness is as filthy rags, you are all wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; the devil will have you if you don't turn to the Lord, and you will go down to the bottomless, brimstone pit, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth for ever and ever. Believe,' he roared, 'now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.'