"Of all Time's words, this is the noblest one That ever spoke to souls and left them blest; Gladly we would have rested had we won Freedom. We have lost, and very gladly rest."



XVIII.

"VANITY OF VANITIES."

Those who have leisure to explore the history of the past, to peer into the dark backward and abysm of Time, must of necessity become smitten with a kind of sad and kindly cynicism. When one has travelled over a wide tract of history, and when, above all, he has mused much on the minor matters which dignified historians neglect, he feels much inclined to say to those whom he sees struggling vainly after what they call fame, "Why are you striving thus to make your voice heard amid the derisive silence of eternity? You are fretting and frowning, with your eyes fixed on your own petty fortunes, while all the gigantic ages mock you. Day by day you give pain to your own mind and body; you hope against hope; you trust to be remembered, and you fancy that you may perchance hear what men will say of you when you are gone. All in vain. Be satisfied with the love of those about you; if you can get but a dog to love you during your little life, cherish that portion of affection. Work in your own petty sphere strenuously, bravely, but without thought of what men may say of you. Perhaps you are agonised by the thought of powers that are hidden in you—powers that may never be known while you live. What matters it? So long as you have the love of a faithful few among those dear to you, all the fame that the earth can give counts for nothing. Take that which is near to you, and value as naught the praises of a vague monstrous world through which you pass as a shadow. Look at that squirrel who twirls and twirls in his cage. He wears his heart out in his ceaseless efforts at progression, and all the while his mocking prison whirls under him without letting him progress one inch. How much happier he would be if he stayed in his hutch and enjoyed his nuts! You are like the restless squirrel; you make a great show of movement and some noise, but you do not get forward at all. Rest quietly when your necessary labour is done, and be sure that more than half the things men struggle for and fail to attain would not be worth the having even if the strugglers succeeded. Do not waste one moment; do not neglect one duty, for a duty lost is the deadliest loss of all; snatch every rational pleasure that comes within your reach; earn all the love you can, for that is the most precious of all possessions, and leave the search for fame to those who are petty and vain."

Such a cold and chilling speech would be a very good medicine for uneasy vanity, but the best medicine of all is the contemplation of the history of men who have flourished and loomed large before their fellows, and who now have sunk into the night. How many mighty warriors have made the earth tremble, filling the mouths of men with words of fear or praise! They have passed away, and the only record of their lives is a chance carving on a stone, a brief line written by some curt historian. The glass of the years was brittle wherein they gazed for a span; the glass is broken and all is gone. In the wastes of Asia we find mighty ruins that even now are like symbols of power—vast walls that impose on the imagination by their bulk, enormous statues, temples that seem to mock at time and destruction. The men who built those structures must have had supreme confidence in themselves, they must have possessed incalculable resources, they must have been masters of their world. Where are they now? What were their names? They have sunk like a spent flame, and we have not even the mark on a stone to tell us how they lived or loved or struggled. Far in that moaning desert lie the remains of a city so great that even the men who know the greatest of modern cities can hardly conceive the original appearance and dimensions of the tremendous pile. Travellers from Europe and America go there and stand speechless before works that dwarf all the efforts of modern men. The woman who ruled in that strong city was an imposing figure in her time, but she died in a petty Roman villa as an exile, and Palmyra, after her departure, soon perished from off the face of the earth. One pathetic little record enables us to guess what became of the population over whom the queen Zenobia ruled. A stone was dug up on the northern border of England, and the inscription puzzled all the antiquarians until an Oriental scholar found that the words were Syriac. "Barates of Palmyra erects this stone to the memory of his wife, the Catavallaunian woman who died aged thirty-three." That is a rude translation. Poor Barates was brought to Britain, married a Norfolk woman of the British race, and spent his life on the wild frontier. So the powerful queen passed away as a prisoner, her subjects were scattered over the earth, and her city, which was once renowned, is now haunted by lizard and antelope. Alas for fame! Alas for the stability of earthly things! The conquerors of Zenobia fared but little better. How strong must those emperors have been whose very name kept the world in awe! If a man were proscribed by Rome, he was as good as dead; no fastness could hide him, no place in the known world could give him refuge, and his fate was regarded as so inevitable that no one was foolhardy enough to try at staving off the evil day. How coolly and contemptuously the lordly proconsuls and magistrates regarded the early Christians. Pliny did not so much as deign to notice their existence, and Pontius Pilate, who had to deal with the first twelve, seems to have looked upon them as mere pestilent malefactors who created a disturbance. For many years those scornful Roman lords mocked the new sectarians and refused to take them seriously. One scoffing magistrate asked the Christians who came before him why they gave him the trouble to punish them. Were there no ropes and precipices handy, he asked, for those who wished to commit suicide? Those Romans had great names in their day—names as great as the names of Ellenborough and Wellesley and Gordon and Dalhousie and Bartle Frere, yet one would be puzzled to write down a list of six of the omnipotent sub-emperors. They fought, they made laws, they ruled empires, they fancied themselves only a little less than the gods, and now not a man outside the circle of a dozen scholars knows or cares anything about them. The wise lawgivers, the dread administrators, the unconquerable soldiers have gone with the snows, and their very names seem to have been writ in water.

If we come nearer our own time, we find it partly droll, partly pathetic to see how the bubble reputations have been pricked one by one. "Who now reads Bolingbroke?" asked Burke. Yes—who? The brilliant many-sided man who once held the fortunes of the empire in his hand, the specious philosopher, the unequalled orator is forgotten. How large he loomed while his career lasted! He was one of the men who ruled great England, and now he is away in the dark, and his books rot in the recesses of dusty libraries. Where is the great Mr. Hayley? He was arbiter of taste in literature; he thought himself a very much greater man than Blake, and an admiring public bowed down to him. Probably few living men have ever read a poem of Hayley's, and certainly we cannot advise anybody to try unless his nerve is good. Go a little farther back, and consider the fate of the distinguished literary persons who were famous during the period which affected writers call the Augustan era of our literature. The great poet who wrote—

"Behold three thousand gentlemen at least, Each safely mounted on his capering beast"—

what has become of that bard's inspired productions? They have gone the way of Donne and Cowley and Waller and Denham, and nobody cares very much. Take even the great Cham of literature, the good Johnson. His fame is undying, but his works would not have saved his reputation in vigour during so many generations. To all intents and purposes his books are dead; the laboured writings which he turned out during his years of starvation are not looked into, and our most eminent modern novelist declares that, if he were snowed up in a remote inn with "Bradshaw's Railway Guide" and the "Rambler" as the only books within reach, he would assuredly not read the "Rambler." Perhaps hardly one hundred students know how admirably good Johnson's preface to Shakspere really is, and the "Lives of the Poets" are read only in fragmentary fashion. Strange, is it not, that the man who made his reputation by literature, the man who dominated the literary world of his time with absolute sovereignty, should be saved from sinking out of human memory only by means of the record of his lighter talk which was kept by his faithful henchman? But for the wise pertinacity of poor Boswell, the giant would have been forgotten even by the generation which immediately followed him. His gallant and strenuous efforts to gain fame really failed; his chance gossip and the amusing tale of his eccentricities kept his name alive. Surely the irony of fate was never better shown. Even this Titan would have had only a bubble reputation but for the lucky accident which brought that obscure Scotch laird to London.

Most piteous is the story of the poor souls who have sought to achieve their share of immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the ceiling of the immense dome. Tons upon tons—Pelion on Ossa—of literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish, despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the reputations of the authors are entombed.

As for the fighters who sought the bubble reputation even at the cannon's mouth, who recks of their fierce struggles, their bitter wounds, their brief success? Who knows the leaders of the superb host that poured like a torrent from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees, and smote Napoleon to the earth? Who can name the leaders of the doomed host that crossed the Beresina, and left their bones under the Russian snows? High of heart the soldiers were when they set out on their wild pilgrimage under their terrible leader, but soon they were lying by thousands on the red field of Borodino, and the sound of their moaning filled the night like the calling of some mighty ocean. And now they are utterly gone, and the reputation for which they strove avails nothing; they are mixed in the dim twilight story of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago.

Critics say that our modern poetry is all sad; and so it is, save when the dainty muse of Mr. Austin Dobson smiles upon us. The reason is not far to seek—we know so much, and the sense of the vanity of human effort is more keenly impressed upon us than ever it was on men of more careless and more ignorant ages. We see what toys men set store by, we see what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue, so there is no wonder that we are mournful. The sweetest of our poets, the most humorous of our many writers cannot keep the thought of death and futility away. His loveliest lyric begins—

"Oh, fair maids Maying In gardens green, Through deep dells straying, What end hath been.

Two Mays between Of the flow'rs that shone And your own sweet queen? They are dead and gone."

There is the burden—"dead and gone." Another singer chants to us thus—

"Merely a round of shadow shows Shadow shapes that are born to die Like a light that sinks, like a wind that goes, Vanishing on to the By-and-by.

Life, sweet life, as she flutters nigh, 'Minishing, failing night and day, Cries with a loud and bitter cry, 'Ev'rything passes, passes away.'

* * * * *

Who has lived as long as he chose? Who so confident as to defy Time, the fellest of mortals' foes? Joints in his armour who can spy? Where's the foot will nor flinch nor fly? Where's the heart that aspires the fray? His battle wager 'tis vain to try— Ev'rything passes, passes away."

The age is diseased. Why should men be mournful because what they call their aspirations—precious aspirations—are frustrated? They seek the bubble reputation, and they whimper when the bubble is burst; but how much better would it be to cleave to lowly duties, to do the thing that lies next to hand, to accept cheerfully the bounteous harvest of joys vouchsafed to the humble? Since we all end alike—since the warrior, the statesman, the poet alike leave no name on earth save in the case of the few Titans—what use is there in fretting ourselves into green-sickness simply because we cannot quite get our own way? To the wise man every moment of life may be made fruitful of rich pleasure, and the pleasure can be bought without heartache, without struggling painfully, without risking envy and uncharitableness. Better the immediate love of children and of friends than the hazy respect of generations that must assuredly forget us soon, no matter how prominent we may seem to be for a time. I have read a sermon to my readers, but the sermon is not doleful; it is merely hard truth. Life may be a supreme ironic procession, with laughter of gods in the background, but at any rate much may be made of it by those who refuse to seek the bubble reputation.



XIX.

GAMBLERS.

The great English carnival of gamblers is over for a month or two; the bookmakers have retired to winter quarters after having waxed fat during the year on the money risked by arrant simpletons. The bookmaker's habits are peculiar; he cannot do without gambling, and he contrives to indulge himself all the year round in some way or other. When the Newmarket Houghton meeting is over, Mr. Bookmaker bethinks him of billiards, and he goes daily and nightly among interesting gatherings of his brotherhood. Handicaps are arranged day by day and week by week, and the luxurious, loud, vulgar crew contrive to pass away the time pleasantly until the spring race meetings begin. But hundreds of the sporting gentry have souls above the British billiard-room, and for them a veritable paradise is ready. The Mediterranean laps the beautiful shore at Monte Carlo and all along the exquisite Eiviera—the palms and ferns are lovely—the air is soft and exhilarating, and the gambler pursues his pleasing pastime amid the sweetest spots on earth. From every country in the world the flights of restless gamblers come like strange flocks of migrant birds. The Russian gentleman escapes from the desolate plains of his native land and luxuriates in the beautiful garden of Europe; the queer inflections of the American's quiet drawl are heard everywhere as he strolls round the tables; Roumanian boyards, Parisian swindlers, Austrian soldiers, Hungarian plutocrats, flashy and foolish young Englishmen—all gather in a motley crowd; and the British bookmaker's interesting presence is obtrusive. His very accent—strident, coarse, impudent, unspeakably low—gives a kind of ground-note to the hum of talk that rises in all places of public resort, and he recruits his delicate health in anticipation of the time when he will be able to howl once more in English betting-rings.

But I am not so much concerned with the personality of the various sorts of gamblers, and I assuredly have no pity to spare for the gentry who lose their money. A great deal of good useful compassion is wasted on the victims who are fleeced in the gambling places. Victims! What do they go to the rooms for? Is it not to amuse themselves and to pass away time amid false exhilaration? Is it not to gain money without working for it? The dupe has in him all the raw material of a scoundrel; and even when he blows his stupid brains out I cannot pity him so much as I pity the dogged labourer who toils on and starves until his time comes for going to the workhouse. I am rather more inclined to study the general manifestations of the gambling spirit. I have in my mind's eye vivid images of the faces, the figures, the gestures of hundreds of gamblers, and I might make an appalling picture-gallery if I chose; but such a nightmare in prose would not do much good to any one, and I prefer to proceed in a less exciting but more profitable manner. We please ourselves by calling to mind the days when "society" gambled openly and constantly; and we like to fancy that we are all very good and spotless now-a-days and free from the desire for unnatural excitement. Well, I grant that most European societies in the last century were sufficiently hideous in many respects. The English aristocrat, male or female, cared only for cards, and no noble lady dreamed of remaining long in an assembly where piquet and ecarte were not going on. The French seigneur gambled away an estate in an evening; the Russian landowner staked a hundred serfs and their lives and fortunes on the turn of a card; little German princelings would play quite cheerfully for regiments of soldiers. The pictures which we are gradually getting from memoirs and letters are almost too grotesque for belief, and there is some little excuse for the hearty optimists who look back with complacency on the past, and thank their stars that they have escaped from the domain of evil. For my own part, when I see the mode of life now generally followed by most of our European aristocracies, I am quite ready to be grateful for a beneficent change, and I have again and again made light of the wailings of persons who persist in chattering about the good old times. But I am talking now about the spirit of the gambler; and I cannot say that the human propensity to gamble has in any way died out. Its manifestations may in some respects be more decorous than they used to be; but the deep, masterful, subtle tendency is there, and its force is by no means diminished by the advance of a complicated civilisation. Often and often I have mused quietly amid scenes where gamblers of various sorts were disporting themselves—in village inns where solemn yokels played shove-halfpenny with statesmanlike gravity; in sunny Italian streets where lazy loungers played their queer guessing game with beans; in noisy racing-clubs where the tape clicks all day long; on crowded steamboats when Tynesiders and Cockneys yelled and cursed and shouted their offers as the slim skiffs stole over the water and the straining athletes bent to their work; on Atlantic liners when hundreds of pounds depended on the result of the day's run; on the breezy heath where half a million gazers watched as the sleek Derby horses thundered round. As I have gazed on these spectacles, I have been forced to let the mind wander into regions far away from the chatter of the gamesters. Again and again I have been compelled to think with a kind of melancholy over the fact that man is not content until he is taken out of himself. Our wondrous bodies, our miraculous power of looking before and after, our infinite capacities for enjoyment, are not enough for us, and the poor feeble human creature spends a great part of his life in trying to forget that he is himself. At the best, our days pass as in the dim swiftness of a dream. The young man suddenly thinks, "It is but yesterday that I was a child;" the middle-aged man finds the gray hairs streaking his head before he has realised that his youth is gone; the old man lives so completely in the past that he is taken only by a gentle shock of surprise when he finds that the end is upon him. Swiftly, like some wild hunt of shadows, the generations fleet away—nothing stays their frantic speed; and to the true observer no fictitious flight of spirits on the Brocken could be half so weird as the passage of one generation of the children of men. As we grow old, the appalling brevity of time impresses itself more and more on the consciousness of calm and thoughtful men; yet nine-tenths of our race spend the best part of their days in trying to make their ghostly sweeping flight from eternity to eternity seem more rapid than it really is. That hot and fevered youth who stands in the betting-ring and nervously pencils his race-card never thinks that the time of weakness and sadness and weariness is coming on; that gray and tremulous old man who bends over the roulette-table never thinks that he will speedily drop into a profundity deeper than ever plummet sounded. The gliding ball does not swing round in its groove faster than the old man's soul fares towards the darkness; and yet he clenches his jaw and engages in the most trivial of pursuits as if he had an eternity before him. The youth and the dotard have alike succeeded in passing out of themselves, and their very souls will not return to the body until the delirious spell has ceased to act. All men alike seem to have, more or less, this craving for oblivion. Long ago I remember seeing a company of farmers who had come to market in the prosperous times; they were among the wildest of their set, and they settled down to cards when business was done. Day after day those bucolic gentlemen sat on; when one of them lay down on a settle to snatch a nap, his place was taken by another, and at the end of the week some of the original company were still in the parlour, having gambled furiously all the while without ever washing or undressing. Time was non-existent for them, and their consciousness was exercised only in watching the faces of the cards and counting up points. But the dull-witted farmers were quite equalled by the polished scholar, the great orator, the brilliant wit, Charles Fox. It was nothing to Fox if he sat for three days and three nights at a stretch over the board of green cloth. His fortune went; he might lose at the rate of ten thousand pounds in the twenty-four hours; but he had succeeded in forgetting himself, and his loss of time and fortune counted as nothing. The light, careless gipsy shares the disposition of the matchless orator and the dull farmer. You may see a gipsy enter the tossing-ring at a fair; he loses all his money, but he goes on staking everything he possesses, and, if the luck remains adverse, he will continue tossing until his pony, his cart, his lurcher-dog, his very clothes are all gone. The Chinaman will play for his life; the Red Indian recklessly piles all he owns in the world upon the rough heap of goods which his tribe wager on the result of a pony race. Look high, look low, and we see that the gamblers actually form the majority of the world's inhabitants; and we must go among the men of abstractions—the men who can achieve oblivion by dint of their own thinking power—before we find any class untouched by the strange taint. Observe that venerable looking man who slowly paces about in one of the luxurious dwelling-places which are sacred to leisure; you may see his type at Bath, Buxton, Leamington, Scarborough, Brighton, Torquay, all places, indeed, whither flock the men whose life-work is done. That venerable gentleman has fulfilled his task in the world, his desires have been gratified so far as fortune would allow, and one would think that most pursuits of the competitive sort must have lost interest for him. Yet he—even he—cannot get rid of the tendency to gamble; and he studies the financial news with the eagerness of a boy who follows the fortunes of Quentin Durward or D'Artagnan or Rebecca. If English railway shares fall, he is exultant or depressed, according to the operations of his broker; he may be roused into almost hysterical delight by a rise in "Nitrates" or "Chilians," or any of the thousands of securities in which stockbrokers deal. What is it to the old man if Death smiles gently on him, and will soon touch his heart with ice? There is no past for him; he has forgotten the raptures of youth, the strength of manhood, the depression of failure, the gladness of success, and he drugs his soul into forgetfulness by dwelling on a gambler's chances. So long as the one doubtful boon of forgetfulness is secured, it seems to matter very little what may be the stake at disposal. The English racing-man picks out a promising colt or filly; he finds that he has a swift and good animal, and he resolves to bring off some vast gambling coup. Patiently, cunningly, month after month, the steps in the plan are matured; the horse runs badly until the official handicappers think it is worthless, and the gambler at last finds that he has some great prize almost at his mercy. Then with slow dexterity the horse is backed to win. If the owner shows any eagerness, his purpose is balked once and for all; he may have to employ half-a-dozen agents to bet for him, until at last he succeeds in wagering so much money that he will gain, say, one hundred thousand pounds by winning his race. The fluttering jackets come nearer and nearer to the judge's box; some of the jockeys are using their whips and riding desperately; the horse on which so much depends draws to the front; but the owner never moves a muscle. Of course we have seen men shrieking themselves almost into apoplexy at the close of a race; but the hardened gambler is deadly cool. In the last stride the animal so carefully—and fraudulently—prepared is beaten by a matter of a few inches, and the chance of picking up a hundred thousand pounds is gone; but the owner remains impassive, and as soon as settling-day is over, he endeavours to forget the matter. I have seen an old man watching a race on which he had planned to win sixty thousand pounds; his horse was beaten in the last two strides, and the old gentleman never so much as stirred or spoke. No doubt he was really transported out of himself; but nothing in the world seemed capable of altering the composure of his wizened features. On the other hand, there is one man who is known to possess some four millions in cash, besides an immense property; this man never bets more than two pounds at a time, yet from his wild fits of excitement it might be supposed that his colossal wealth was at stake.

So the whole army of the gamblers pass in their mad whirlwind march toward the region of night; they are delirious, they are creatures of contradictions—they are fiercely greedy, lavishly generous, wary in many things, reckless of life, ready to take any advantage, yet possessed by a diseased sense of honour. Some of them think that a man is better and happier when he feels all his faculties working rather than when he goes off into blind transports of excitement or fear or doubt. I think that the man who is conscious to his very finger-tips is better than the wild creature whose senses are all blurred. I hold that the student or thinker who faces life with a calm and calculated desire for true knowledge is better off than the insensate being whose hours are passed in a sordid nightmare. But I see little chance of ever making men care little for the gambler's pleasure, and I humbly own to the existence of an ugly mystery which only adds yet another to the number of dark puzzles whereby we are surrounded. I observe that desperate efforts are made to put down gambling by law rather than by culture, religion, true and gentle morality. As well try to put down the passions of love and fear—as well try to interdict the beat of the pulses! We may deplore the gambler's existence as much as we like; but it is a fact, and we must accept it.



XX.

SCOUNDRELS.

Byron very often flung out profound truths in his easy, careless way, but the theatrical vein in his composition sometimes prompted him to say dashing things, not because he regarded them as true, but because he wanted to make people stare. Speaking of one interesting and homicidal gentleman, the poet observes—

"He knew himself a villain, and he deemed The rest no better than the thing he seemed."

Now I take leave to say that the rawest of fifth-form lads never uttered a more school-boyish sentiment than that; and I wonder how a man of the world came to make such a blunder. Byron had lived in the degraded London of the Regency, when Europe's rascality flocked towards St. James's as belated birds flock towards a light; and he should have known some villains if any one did. Ephraim Bond, the abominable moneylender and sportsman, was swaggering round town in Byron's later days; Crockford, that incarnate fiend, had his nets open; and ruined men—men ruined body and soul—left the gambling palace where the satanic spider sat spinning his webs. Byron must have known Crockford, and he had there a chance of studying a being who was indeed a villain, but who fancied himself to be a highly respectable person. From the time when "Crocky" started money-lending in the back parlour of his little fish-shop up to his last ghastly appearance on earth, he was a cheat and a consummate rascal; and even after death his hideous corpse was made to serve a deception. He was engaged in a Turf swindle, and it was necessary that he should be regarded as alive on the evening of the Derby day; but he died in the morning, and, to deceive the betting-men, the lifeless carcass of the old robber was put upright in a club window, and a daring sharper caused the dead hand to wave as if in greeting to the shouting crowd—a fit end to a bad life. Crockford's delusion was that his character was marked by honesty and general benevolence; and those who wished to please him pretended to accept his own comfortable theory. He regarded himself as a really good fellow, and in his own person he was a living confutation of Byron's dashing paradox. Then there was Renton Nicholson, a specimen of social vermin if ever there was one. This fellow earned a sordid livelihood by presiding over a club where men met nightly in orgies that stagger the power of belief. His huge figure and his raffish face were seen wherever rogues most did congregate; he showed young men "life"—and sometimes his work as cicerone led them to death; his style of conversation would nowadays lead to a speedy prosecution; he was always seen by the ringside when unhappy brutes met to pound each other, and his stock of evil stories entertained the interesting noblemen and gentlemen who patronised the manly British sport. I could not describe this man's baseness in adequate terms, nor could I so much as give an idea of his ordinary round of roguery without arousing some incredulity. This unspeakable creature was fond of describing himself as "Jolly old Renton," or "Good old John Bull Nicholson"; he really fancied himself to be a good, genial fellow, and he appeared to fancy that the crowds who usually collected to hear his abominations were attracted by his bonhomie and his estimable intellectual qualities. Byron must have known this striking example of the scoundrel species, but he appears to have forgotten him when he propounded his theory of villainy. Then there was Pea-green Haynes, who was also a fine sample of folly and rascality mingled. Haynes regarded himself as the most injured man on earth; he never performed an unselfish action, it is true, and he flung away a fine patrimony on his own pleasures, yet he whined and held himself up as an example of suffering virtue. Then there was the precious Regent. What a creature! Good men and bad men unite in saying that he was absolutely without a virtue; the shrewd, calculating Greville described him in words that burn; the great Duke, his chief subject, uses language of dry scorn—"The king could only act the part of a gentleman for ten minutes at a time"; and we find that the commonest satellites of the Court despised the wicked fribble who wore the crown of England. Faithless to women, faithless to men, a coward, a liar, a mean and grovelling cheat, George IV. nevertheless clung to a belief in his own virtues; and, if we study the account of his farcical progress through Scotland, we find that he imagined himself to be a useful and genuinely kingly personage. No man, except, perhaps, Philippe Egalite, was ever so contemned and hated; and until his death he imagined himself to be a good man. In all that wild set who disgraced England and disgraced human nature in those gay days of Byron's youth, I can discover only one thoroughly manly and estimable individual, and that was Gentleman Jackson, the boxer; yet, with such a marvellously wide range of villainy to study, Byron never seems to have observed one ethical fact of the deepest importance—a villain never knows that he is villainous; if he did, he would cease to be a villain.

Perhaps Byron's own peculiar disposition—his constitution—prevented him from understanding the undoubted truth which I have stated. Like all other men, he possessed a dual nature; there was bad in him and good, and his force was such that the bad was very bad indeed, and the good was as powerful in its way as the evil. During the brief time that Byron employed in behaving as a bad man, his conduct reached almost epic heights—or depths—of misdoing; but he never in his heart seemed to recognise the fact that he had been a bad man. At any rate, he was wrong; and the commonest knowledge of our wild world suffices to show any reasoning man the gravity of the error propounded in my quotation. As we study the history of the frivolous race of men, it sometimes seems hard to disbelieve the theory of Descartes. The great Frenchman held that man and other animals are automata; and, were it not that such a theory strikes at the root of morals, we might almost be tempted to accept it in moments of weakness, when the riddle of the unintelligible earth weighs heavily on the tired spirit. I find that every prominent scoundrel known to us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal and most moving picture of a wicked man. Observe the masterpiece. Lyndon goes on with his narrative from one horror to another; he exposes his inmost soul with cool deliberation; and the author's art is so consummate that we never for a moment sympathise with the fiend who talks so mellifluously—the narrative of ill-doing unfolds itself with all the inevitable precision of an operation of nature, and we see the human soul at its worst. But Thackeray did not make Byron's mistake; and throughout the book the Chevalier harps with deadly persistence on his own virtues. He does not exactly whine, but he lets you know that he regards himself as being very much wronged by the envious caprices of his fellow-men. His tongue is the tongue of a saint, and, even when he owns to any doubtful transaction, he takes care to let you know that he was actuated by the sweetest and purest motives. Many people cannot read "Barry Lyndon" a second time; but those who are nervous should screw their courage to the sticking-place, and give grave attention to that awful moral lesson, for all of us have a little of Barry in our composition. Thackeray's sudden inspiration enabled him to plumb the deeps of the scoundrel nature, and he saw with the eye of genius that the very quality which makes a bad man dangerous is his belief in his own goodness. If you look at the appalling narrative of Lyndon's life in this country, you see, with a shudder, that the man regards his cruelty to his wife, his villainy towards his step-son, as the inevitable outcome of stern virtue; he tells you things that make you long to stamp on the inanimate pages; for he rouses such a passion of wild scorn and wrath as we feel against no other artistic creation. Yet all the while, like a low under-song, goes on his monotonous assertion of his own goodness and his own injuries. No sermon could teach more than that hateful book; if it is read aright, it will supply men or women with an armoury of warnings, and enable them to start away from the semblance of self-deception as they would from a rearing cobra when the hood is up, and the murderous head flattened ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs—well, Stubbs beggars the English vocabulary; he is too low, too mean for adjectives to describe him, and I could almost find it in my heart to wish that his portraiture had never been placed before the horrified eyes of men. Yet this Stubbs—a being who was drawn from life—has a profound belief in the rectitude of everything that he does. Even when he tells us how he invited his gang of unspeakables home, to drink away his mother's substance, he takes credit to himself for his fine display of British hospitality. How Thackeray contrived to live through the ordeal of composing those two books I cannot tell; he must have had a nerve of steel, with all his softness of heart and benevolence. At all events, he did live to complete his gruesome feat; and he has given us, in a vivid pictorial way, such a picture of scoundreldom as should serve as a beacon to all men. It may seem like a paradox; but I am inclined to think that our non-success in putting down actual crime and wickedness which do not come within range of the law arises from the fact that our jurists have not made a proper study of the criminal nature. Grod made the cobra, the cruel wolverine, and the thrice-cruel tiger; we study the animals and deal with them adequately; but some of us do not study our human cobras and wolverines and tigers. I scarcely ever knew of a case of a convict who would not moan about his own injuries and his own innocence. Even when these men, whose criminality is ingrained, are willing to own their guilt, they will always contrive to blame the world in general and society in particular. It is almost amusing to hear a desperate thief, who seems no more able to prevent himself from rushing on plunder than a greyhound can prevent itself from rushing on a hare, complaining that employers will not trust him. It is useless to say, "What can you expect?" The scoundrel persists in crying out against a hard world which drove him to be what he is.

Some ten years ago the arch-rascal among English thieves was living quietly in a London suburb; he used to solace himself with high-class music, and he was very fond of poetry. This dreadful creature was a curious compound of wild beast and artist. During the day he went about with an innocent air; and the very police who were destined to take him and hang him learned to greet him cordially as he passed them in his walks. They thought he was "a sort of high-class tradesman." Now, when this cheery little man with the decent frock-coat and the clean respectable air was sauntering on the margin of the breezy heath or walking up by-streets with measured sobriety, he was really marking down the places which he intended to plunder. Here his trained pony should stand; here he would make his entrance; that bedroom door should be fastened inside; this lock should be picked. The wild predatory beast drove the police to despair, for it seemed as if no human being could have performed the feats which came easy to the robber. The hard earning of good men went to the rascal's store; the cherished household gods, the valued keepsakes of innocent women were transferred callously to the melting-pot. He went coolly into bedrooms where the inmates were asleep; had any one awaked, there would have been murder, and the murderer would have decamped long before the door could be broken open. Now my point is this—the wretch whom I have described never ceased to inveigh against the wrongs of society. Two unhappy women served him faithfully and followed him like dogs; but he did not apply his theories in his treatment of them, for they were never without the marks of his brutality. In the very presence of his bruised and beaten slaves he talked of his own virtues, of social inequality, of the tyranny of the rich, and he held to his belief in his own innate goodness after he had committed depredations to the extent of thousands of pounds, and even after he was answerable for two murders. That man never knew himself a villain, and it was only when the rope was gradually closing round his neck that the keen sleuth-hound remorse found him out, and he had the grace to save an innocent man from a living death. This monstrous hypocrite was another typical scoundrel, and his like people every prison in the country.

The scoundrels who are called great do not usually come under the gallows-tree, and their last dying speeches are somewhat rare; but we may be pretty certain, from the little we know, that each one of them fancies himself an estimable person. Ivan of Russia, the ferocious ruler, who had men torn to pieces before his eyes, the being who had forty thousand men, women, and children massacred in cold blood, regarded himself as the deputy of the Supreme Being. The mad Capet, who fired the signal which started tho massacre of St. Bartholomew, believed that he was fulfilling the demands of goodness and orthodoxy. The deadly inquisitors who roasted unhappy fellow mortals wholesale believed—or pretended to believe—that they were putting their victims through a benign ordeal. The heretic was a naughty child; roast him, and his sin was purged; while the frosty-blooded old men who murdered him looked to heaven and returned thanks for their own special allowance of virtue. Conqueror and inquisitor, burglar and murderer, forger and wife-beater, brutal sea-captain and prowling thief—all the scoundrels go about their business with a full faith in their own blamelessness. I do not like to class them as automata, though the wise and genial Mr. Huxley would undoubtedly do so. What shall we do with them? Is it fair that a wearied world and a toil-worn society should maintain them? My own idea is that sentiment, softness, regrets for severity should be banished, and we should say to the scoundrel, "Attend, rascal! You say that you are wronged, and that you are driven to harm your fellow-creatures by the force of external circumstances; that may be so, but we have nothing to do with the matter. Take notice that you shall eat bitter bread on earth, no matter how you may whine, when our just grip is on you; if you persist in practising scoundrelism, we shall make your lot harder and harder for you; and, if in the end we find that you will go on working evil, we shall treat you as a dangerous wild beast, and put you out of the world altogether."



XXI.

QUIET OLD TOWNS.

A rather popular writer, who first came into notice by dint of naming a book of essays, "Is Life worth Living?" gave us not long ago a very sweet description of an English country town; and he worked himself up to quite a moving pitch of rapture as he described the admirable social arrangements which may be perceived on a market-day. This enthusiast tells us how the members of the great county families drive in to do their shopping. The stately great horses paw and champ at their bits, the neat servants bustle about in deft attendance, and the shopkeeper, who has a feudal sort of feeling towards his betters, comes out to do proper homage. The great landowner brings his wealth into the High Street or the market place, and the tradesmen raise their voices to bless him. We have all heard of institutions called "stores"; but still it is a pity to carp at a pretty picture drawn by a literary artist. I know that rebellious tradesmen in many of the shires use violent language as they describe the huge packing-cases which are deposited at various mansions by the railway vans. I know also that the regulation saddler who airs his apron at the door of his shop on market-days will inform the stranger that the gentry get saddles, harness, and everything else nowadays from the abominable "stores"; but I must not leave my artist, and shall let the saddler growl to himself for the present. The polished writer goes on to speak of the ruddy farmer who strolls round in elephantine fashion and hooks out sample-bags from his plethoric and prosperous pockets; the dealers drive a brisk trade, the small shopkeepers are encouraged by their neighbours from the country, and everything is extremely idyllic and pure and pretty and representative of England at her best. The old church rears its quaint height above the quainter houses that cluster near. In the churchyard the generations of natives sleep sound; one may trace some families back for hundreds of years, and thus perceive how firmly the love of the true townsman clings to his native place. Perhaps a castle looms over the modest streets and squares—it is converted into a prison in all probability; but the sight of it brings memories of haughty nobles, or of untitled personages whose pride of race would put monarchs to the blush. The river flows sweetly past the sleepy lovely town, and sober citizens walk solemnly beside the rippling watery highway when the day's toil is over. On Sunday, when the bells chime their invitation, all sorts and conditions of men meet in the dim romantic precincts of the ancient church, and there is much pleasant gossiping when morning and evening worship are ended. Good old solid England is put before us in miniature when we glance at such of the community as choose to show themselves before the artistic observer, and, as we drive away along the sound level roads, we say—if we are very literary and enthusiastic—"Happy little town! Happy little nation!" Now that is all very pretty; and yet the conscientious philosopher is bound to admit that there is another side—nay, several other sides—to the charming picture. I do not want any students of the modern French school to prove that rural life in small towns may be as base and horrible as the life of crowded cities—I do not want any minute analysis of degradation; but I may prick a windbag of conceit and do some little service if I try to show that the state of things in some scores of these delightful old places is base and corrupt enough to warm the heart of the most exacting cynic that ever thought evil of his fellow-creatures.

Let us go behind the scenes and see what the idyllic prospect looks like from the rear. We must proceed with great deliberation, and we must take our rustic society stratum by stratum. First, then, there are the idle men who have inherited or earned fortunes, and who like to settle in luxurious houses away from great centres of population. Such men are always in great force on the skirts of quiet old towns, and they are much revered by the tradesmen. I cannot help thinking that the fate of the average "retired" man must be not a little dolorous, for I find that the typical member of that class conducts himself in much the same way no matter where he pitches his habitation in broad England. He is saved if he has a hobby; but, without a hobby, he is a very poor creature, and his ways of living on from day to day are the reverse of admirable. If such a revolutionary institution as a club has been established in the town, he may begin his morning's round there; or, in default of a club, there is the "select" room in the principal hotel. If he is catholic in his tastes and hungry for conversation, he may wander from one house of call to another, and he meets a large and well-chosen assortment of hucksters who come to bind bargains with the inevitable "drink"; he meets the gossip who knows all the secrets of the township, he meets flashy persons who have a manly thirst which requires perpetual assuagement. Then he converses to his heart's content; and, alas, what conversation it is—what intellectual exertion is expended by these forlorn gossips in the morning round that takes up the time of many men in a quiet town! There is a little slander, a good deal of peeping out of windows, a little discussion of the financial prospects ascribed to various men in the neighbourhood, and an impartial examination of everybody's private affairs. The regular crew of gossips hold it as a duty to know and talk about the most minute details of each other's lives, and, when a man leaves any given room where the piquant chatter is going on, he is quite aware that he leaves his character behind him. The state of his banking account is guessed at, the disposition of his will is courageously foretold, the amounts which he paid to various shopkeepers are added up with reverence or scorn according to the amount—and the company revel in their mean babble until it is time to go to another place and pull the character and the financial accounts of somebody else to pieces. By luncheon time most of these useful beings are a little affected in complexion and speech by the trifling potations which wash down the scandal; but no one is intoxicated. To be seen mastered by "drink" in the morning would cause a man to lose caste; and, besides, if he said too much while his tongue was loose, he would not be believed when next he set down a savoury mess for the benefit of the company. Through all the talk of these wretched entities, be it observed that money, money runs as a species of key-note; the men may be coarse and servile, but a shrewd eye can detect every sign of purse-pride. Let a gentleman of some standing walk past a window where the grievous crew are wine-bibbing and blabbing, and some one will say, "Carries hisself high enough, don't he? He ain't got a thousand to fly with. I bet a bottle on it! Why, me, or Jimmy there, or even old Billy Spinks, leaving out Harry, and let alone the Doctor—any one on us could buy him out twelve times over, and then have a bit of roast or biled for Sunday's dinner!" This remark is received as a wise and trenchant tribute to the power of the assembly, and they have more "drink" by way of self-gratulation. Those poor "retired" men, and "independent" men, often go deeper and deeper down the incline towards mental and moral degradation until they become surprisingly repulsive specimens of humanity. In all their dreary perambulations they rarely speak or hear an intelligent word; they are amazingly ignorant concerning their country's affairs, and their conceptions of politics are mostly limited to a broad general belief that some particular statesman ought to be hanged.

As to the government of these quiet old places, there is much to be said that is depressing. While men prate about the decay of trade and the advance of poverty, how few people reflect on the snug fortunes which are amassed in out-of-the-way corners! We hear of jobbery in the metropolis, and jobbery in Government departments, but I take it that the corporations of some little towns could give lessons in jobbery to any corrupt official that ever plundered his countrymen. Some town councils may be very briefly and accurately described as nests of thieves. The thieves wear good clothes, go to church, and do not go to prison—at least, the cases of detection are rare—but they are thieves all the same. As a rule, no matter what a man's trade or profession may be, he contrives to gather profit pretty freely when once he joins the happy band who handle the community's purse. In some cases the robbery is so barefaced and open that the particulars might as well be painted on a monster board and hung up at the town cross; but tradesmen, workmen, and others who have their living to make in the town are terrorised, and they preserve a discreet silence in public however much they may speak evil of dignities in private. As a general rule, a show of decorum is kept up; yet I should think it hardly possible for the average vestry or council to meet without an interchange of winks among the members. John favours Tommy's tender when Tommy contracts to horse all the corporation's water-carts, dust-carts, and so forth; then Tommy is friendly when John wants to sell his row of cottages to the municipality. If Tommy employs two horses on a certain work and charges for twenty, then John and some other backers support the transaction. Billy buys land to a heavy extent, and refuses to build on it; houses are risky property, and Billy can wait. An astute company meet at William's house and take supper in luxurious Roman style; then James casually suggests that the east end of the town is a disgrace to the council. Until the block of houses in Blank Street is pulled down and a broad road is run straight to join the main street, the place will be the laughingstock of strangers. James is eloquent. How curious it is that the new road which is to redeem the town from shame must run right over Billy's building plots, and how very remarkable it is to think that the corporation pays a swinging price for the precious land! Billy looks more prosperous than ever; he sets up another horse, reduces rivals to silence by driving forth in a new victoria, and becomes more and more the familiar bosom friend of the bank manager. I might go on to give a score of examples showing how innocent rate-payers are fleeced by barefaced robbers, but the catalogue would be only wearisome. Let any man of probity venture to force his way into one of these dens of thieves and see how he will fare! It is a comic thing that the gangs of jobbers consider that they have a prescriptive right to plunder at large, and their air of aggrieved virtue when they are challenged by a person whom they call an "interloper" is among the most droll and humiliating farces that may be seen in life. The whole crew will make a ferocious dead set at the intruder who threatens to pull their quarry away from them; he will be coughed down or interrupted by insulting noises, and he may esteem himself highly fortunate if he is not asked to step outside and engage in single combat. Everything that mean malignity can do to balk him will be done, and, unless he is a very strong man physically and morally, the opposition will tire him out. There is usually one dominant family in such towns—for the possibility of making a heavy fortune by a brewery or tannery or factory in these quiet places is far greater than any outsider might fancy. The members of the ruling family and their henchmen arise in their might to crush the insolent upstart who wants to see accounts and vouchers: the chairman will rise and say, "Let me tell Mr. X. that me and my family were old established inhabitants in this ancient borough long before he came, and we'll be here long after he has gone bankrupt. We don't require no strangers: the people in this borough has always managed their own affairs, and by the help of Providence they'll go on in the good old way in spite of any swell that comes a-sniffin' and a-smellin' and a-pryin' and a-askin' for accounts about this and that and the other; and I tell the gentleman plain, the sooner this council sees his back the better they'll be pleased; so, if he's not too thick in the skin, let him take a friendly hint and take himself off." A withering onslaught like this is received with tumultuous applause, and other speakers follow suit. It is seldom that a man has nerve enough to stand such brutality from his hoggish assailants, and the ring of jobbers are too often left to work their will unchecked. Are such people fit for political power? Ask the wretched rich man who indirectly buys the seat, and hear his record of dull misery if he is inclined to be confidential. He does not like to leave Parliament, and yet he knows he is merely a mark for the licensed pickpocket; he is not regarded as a politician—he is a donor of sundry subscriptions, and nothing more. The men in manufacturing centres will return a poor politician and pay his expenses; but the people in some quiet towns have about as much sentiment or loyalty as they have knowledge; and they treat their member of Parliament as a gentleman whose function it is to be bled, and bled copiously. A sorry sight it is!

One very remarkable thing in these homes of quietness is the marvellous power possessed by drink-sellers. These gentry form the main links in a very tough chain, and they hang together with touching fidelity; their houses are turned into scandal-shops, and they prosper so long as they are ready to cringe with due self-abasement before the magistrates. No refined gentleman who keeps himself to his own class and refrains from meddling with politics could ever by any chance imagine the airs of broad-blown impudence which are sometimes assumed by ignorant and stupid boors who have been endowed with a license; and assuredly no one would guess the extent of their political power unless he had something to do with election business. The landlord of fiction hardly exists in the quiet towns; there is seldom a smiling, suave, and fawning Boniface to be seen; the influential drink-seller is often an insolent familiar harpy who will speak of his own member of Parliament as "Old Tom," and who airily ventures to call gentlemen by their surnames. The man is probably so benighted in mind that he knows nothing positive about the world he lives in; his manners are hideous, his familiarity is loathsome, his assumptions of manly independence are almost comic in their impudence; but he has his uses, and he can influence votes of several descriptions. Thus he asserts himself in detestable fashion; and people who should know better submit to him. One electioneering campaign in a quiet town would give a salutary lesson to any politician who resolutely set himself to penetrate into the secret life of the society whose suffrages he sought; he would learn why it is that the agents of all the factions treat the drink-seller with deference.

So the queer existence of the tranquil place moves on; petty scandal, petty thieving, petty jobbery, petty jealousy employ the energies of the beings who inhabit the "good old town"—the borough is always good and old—and a man with a soul who really tried to dwell in the moral atmosphere of the community would infallibly be asphyxiated. Nowhere are appearances so deceptive; nowhere do the glamour of antiquity and the beauty of natural scenery draw the attention away from so vile a centre. I could excuse any man who became a pessimist after a long course of conversations in a sleepy old borough, for he would see that a mildew may attack the human intelligence, and that the manners of a puffy well-clad citizen may be worse than those of a Zulu Kaffir. The indescribable coarseness and rudeness of the social intercourse, the detestable forms of humour which obtain applause, the low distrust and trickery are quite sufficient to make a sensitive man want to hide himself away. If any one thinks I am too hard, he should try spending six whole weeks in any town which is called good and old; if he does not begin to agree with me about the end of the fifth week I am much in error.



XXII.

THE SEA.

Is there anything new to say about it? Alas, have not all the poets done their uttermost; and how should a poor prose-writer fare when he enters a region where the monarchs of rhythm have proudly trodden? It is audacious; and yet I must say that our beloved poets seem somehow to fail in strict accuracy. Tennyson wanders and gazes and thinks; he strikes out some immortal word of love or despair when the awful influence of the ocean touches his soul; and yet he is not the poet that we want. One or two of his phrases are pictorial and decisive—no one can better them—and the only fault which we find with them is that they are perhaps a little too exquisite. When he says, "And white sails flying on the yellow sea," he startles us; but his picture done in seven words is absolutely accurate. When he writes of "the scream of the maddened beach," he uses the pathetic fallacy; but his science is quite correct, for the swift whirling of myriads of pebbles does produce a clear shrill note as the backdraught streams from the shore. But, when he writes the glorious passion beginning, "Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll-in yonder bay?" we feel the note of falsity at once—the swell does not moan, and the poet only wanted to lead up to the expression of a mysterious ecstasy of love. Again, the most magnificent piece of word-weaving in English is an attempted description of the sea by a man whose command of a certain kind of verse is marvellous. Here is the passage—

"The sea shone And shivered like spread wings of angels blown By the sun's breath before him, and a low Sweet gale shook all the foam-flowers of thin snow As into rainfall of sea-roses, shed Leaf by wild leaf in the green garden bed That tempests still and sea-winds turn and plough; For rosy and fiery round the running prow Fluttered the flakes and feathers of the spray And bloomed like blossoms cast by God away To waste on the ardent water; the wan moon Withered to westward as a face in swoon Death-stricken by glad tidings; and the height Throbbed and the centre quivered with delight And the deep quailed with passion as of love, Till, like the heart of a new-mated dove, Air, light, and wave seemed full of burning rest"—

and so on. Superb, is it not? And yet that noble strain of music gives us no true picture of our dear, commonplace, terrible sea; it reminds us rather of some gaudy canvas painted for the theatre. The lines are glorious, the sense of movement and swing is conveyed, and yet—and yet it is not the sea. We fancy that only the prose-poets truly succeed; and the chief of them all—the matchless Mr. Clark Russell—gets his most moving effects by portraying the commonplace aspects of the water in a way that reminds people of things which they noticed but failed to admire promptly. Mr. Russell's gospel is plain enough; he watches minutely, and there is not a flaw of wind or a cross-drift of spray that does not offer some new emotion to his quick and sensitive soul.

I want all those who are now dwelling amid the shrewd sweetness of the sea-air to learn how to gain simple pleasure from gazing on the incessant changes that mark the face of the sea. The entertainment is so cheap, so fruitful of lovely thought, so exhilarating, that I can hardly keep my patience when I see those wretched men who carry a newspaper to the beach on a glad summer morning, and yawn in the face of the Divine spectacle of wave and cloud and limpid sky. Let no one think that I picture the sea as always gladsome. Ah, no! I have seen too much of storm and stress for that. On one awful night long ago, I waited for hours watching waves that reared and thundered as if they would charge headlong through the streets of the town. The white crests nickered like flame, and below the crests the dreadful inky bulge of each monster rolled on like doom—like death. Throughout the mad night of tempest the guns from many distressed vessels rang out, and I could see the violent sweep of the ships' lights as they were hurled in wild arcs from crest to crest. Many and many a corpse lay out on those sands in the morning; the bold, bronzed men stared with awful glassy stare at the lowering sky; the little cabin-boy clasped his fragment of wreckage as though it had been a toy, and smiled—oh, so sweetly!—in spite of the cruel sand that filled his dead eyes. There was turmoil enough out at sea, for the steadily northerly drift was crossed by a violent roll from the east, and these two currents were complicated in their movement by a rush of water that came like a mill-race from the southward. Imagine a great city tossed about by a monstrous earthquake that first dashes the streets against each other, and then flings up the ruins in vast rolls; that may give some idea of that memorable storm. One poor, pretty girl saw her husband gallantly trying to make the harbour. Long, long had she waited for him, and day by day had she tried to track the vessel's course; the smart barque had gone round the Horn, and escaped from the perils of the Western Ocean in dead winter, and now she was heaving convulsively as she strove to run into harbour at home. Right and left the grey billows hit her, and we could see her keel sometimes when the wan light of the morning broke. The girl stared steadily, and her face was like that of a corpse. The barque swung southward, and with the speed of a railway engine rushed on to the stones; the pretty girl moaned, "Oh me!—oh me!" She never saw her lad again until his battered body was in the dead-house of the pier. A commonplace red-haired woman was in a dreadful state of mind when she saw a large fishing-boat trying to run for the harbour. Her husband and two sons were aboard, she said, so she had reasons for anxiety. The boat was pitched about like a cork; and presently one fearful sea fairly smashed her. The red-haired woman fell down upon the sand, and lay there moaning.

Assuredly I am not inclined to imitate the Cockney frivolity of Barry Cornwall, who never went to sea in his life, but who nevertheless carolled the most absurdly joyous lays regarding the ocean, which made him ill even when he merely looked at it. No; the true sea-lover knows that there are terror and mystery and horror as well as joyousness in the varied moods of the treacherous, remorseless, magnificent ocean. Those who read this may see the unspeakable beauty of the opaline and ruby tints that flame on the water when the sunset sinks behind the Isle of Thanet. The bay at Westgate will shine like mother-of-pearl, and the glassy rollers at the horizon will be incarnardined. That is a splendid sight! Then those who are in Devon may pass sleepy days in gazing on a vivid piercing blue that is pure and brilliant as the blue of the Bay of Naples. In the lochs to the West of Scotland the swarming tourists watch that riot of colour that marks the times of sunrise and sunset. All these spectacles of suave magnificence are imposing; but, for my own part, I love the grey water on the East Coast, and I like the low level dunes where the bent grass gleams and the sea-wind comes whispering "Forget!" All the gay days of the holiday-places, all the gorgeous sunsets, the imperial noondays, the solemn, glittering midnights are imposing, but the wise traveller learns to see the beauty of all the moods of the wild changing sea. Observe the commonplace man's attitude on a grey cheerless day, when the sky hangs low and the rollers are leaden. "A beast of a day!" he remarks in his elegant fashion; and he goes and grumbles in the vile parlour of his lodging-house, where the stuffy odour of aged chairs and the acrid smell of clumsy cookery contend for mastery. Yet outside on the moaning levels of the dim sea there are mysterious and ghostly sights that might move the heart of the veriest stockbroker if he would but force his mind to consider them. Look at that dark tremulous stream that seems to flow over the sullen sea. It is but a cat's-paw of wind, and yet it looks like a river flowing in silence from some fairy region. The boats start out of the haze and glide away into dimness after having shown their phantom shadows for a few seconds; the cry of the gull rings weirdly; the simulated agony of the staunch bird's scream makes one somehow think of tortured souls; you think of dim strange years, you feel the dim strange weather, you remember the still strange land unvexed of sun or stars, "where Lancelot rides clanking through the haze." Ah, who dares talk of a commonplace or disagreeable sea? I used the phrase once, but I well know that the "commonplace" day offers sights of sober grandeur to the eyes of the wise man. Happy those who have royal, serene days, lovely sunsets, quiet gloamings full of stars; happy also those who see but the enormous hurly-burly of mixed grey waves, and hear the harsh song of the wild wind that blows from the fields at night!

Autumn is a great time for the wild Sea Rovers who gather at Cowes and Southampton. The Rover may always be recognised on shore—and, by-the-way, he stays ashore a good deal—for his nautical clothing is spick and span new, the rake of his glossy cap is unspeakably jaunty, and the dignity of his gesture when he scans the offing with a trusty telescope is without parallel in history. When the Rover walks, you observe a slight roll which no doubt is acquired during long experience of tempestuous weather. The tailors and bootmakers gaze on the gallant Rover with joy and admiration, for does he not carry the triumphs of their art on his person? He roughs it, does this bold sea-dog—none of your fine living for him! His saucy barque lies at her moorings amid the wild breakers of Cowes or "the Water," and he sleeps rocked in the cradle of the deep, when he is not tempted to sojourn in his frugal hotel. The hard life on the briny ocean suits him, and he leaves all luxuries to the swabs who stay on shore. If the water is not in a violent humour, the Rover enjoys his humble breakfast about nine. He tries kidneys, bloaters, brawn, and other rude fare; he never uses a gold coffee-pot—humble silver suffices; and even the urn is made of cheap metal. At eleven the hardy fellow recruits his strength with a simple draught of champagne, for which he never pays more than twelve pounds a dozen, and then four stalwart seamen row him to the landing-place. He criticises the mighty ocean from the balcony of the club until the middle of the afternoon, and then he prepares for a desperate deed of daring. The Rover goes to the landing-place and scans the gulf that yawns between him and his vessel. Two hundred yards at least must be covered before the Rover can bound on to the deck of his taut craft. Two hundred yards! And there is a current that might almost sweep a tea-chest out to sea! But the Rover's steady eye takes in the whole view, and his very nautical mind enables him to lay plans with wisdom. He looks sternly at his gig with the four stout oarsmen; his simple carpets are all right; his cushions, his pillows, his cigar-box, his silken rudder-lines are all as they should be. The Rover takes his determination, and a dark look settles on his manly countenance. For one brief instant he thinks of all he leaves behind him; his dear home rises before his eyes, the voices of his loved ones thrill in his ear, and his bronzed hand is raised to dash away the tear that starts unbidden. But there must be no weakness. Rovers have their feelings, but they must subdue them when two hundred yards have to be traversed over waves that are nearly two inches high. The Rover steps into his boat, resolved to do or die. Now or never! He puts one cushion behind his athletic back, he lights a Regalia—so cool are genuine heroes in peril—and shoots away over the yeasty billows. For forty seconds the fierce struggle lasts; the bow of the boat is wetted to a height of four inches; but dauntlessness and skill conquer all difficulties, and in forty seconds and a half the unscathed Rover stands on his quarter-deck.

Sometimes when the captain is in a good humour, the Rover goes for a sail, and he takes as many as three ladies with him. This statement may be doubted, but only by those who do not know what British courage is really like. Yes, the Rover sometimes sails as much as ten miles in the course of one trip, and he may be as much as three hours away from his moorings. Moreover, I have known a good-natured skipper who allowed the roving proprietor of a yacht to take as many as six trips in the course of a single season. Observe the cheapness of this amusement, and reflect thankfully on the simplicity of taste which now distinguishes the wealthy Rovers of the South Coast. The yacht costs about two thousand pounds to begin with, and one thousand pounds per year is paid to keep her up. Thus it seems that a Rover may have six sails at the rate of one hundred and sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence per sail! So long as the breed of Cowes Rovers exists we need have no fears concerning our naval supremacy. Indeed competent nautical men think that, if any band of enemies, no matter how ferocious they might be, happened to see a thorough-bred Cowes Rover equipped for his perilous afternoon voyage of two hundred yards, they would instantly lose heart and flee in terror. Such is the majesty of a true seaman. I hope that all my readers may respect the Rover when they see him. Remember that his dinner rarely numbers more than six courses, and he cannot always ice his champagne owing to the commotion of the elements. If such privations do not win pity from judicious readers, then, alas, I have written in vain! Those who read this will often be surrounded by strolling Rovers. Treat the reckless daring salts with respect, for they live hard and risk much.



XXIII.

SORROW.

I have never been disposed to be niggard of cheerfulness; for it has always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to go wrong. But, while I would fain banish cankered melancholy, sour ill-humour, cynicism, and petty complaining, I have never sought to disturb those who are mastered for a time by the sacred sorrow which takes possession of the greatest and purest and gentlest souls at times. There have been great men who were joyous—and they bore their part very bravely on earth; but the greatest of all have gained their strength in Sorrow's service. It matters not which of the kings amongst men we choose, we find that his kingship was only gained and kept after he had passed through the school of grief. It is a glad world for most of us—else indeed we might wish that one cataclysm would overwhelm us all; but our masters, those who teach us and guide us, have all been under the dominion of a nameless something which we can hardly call Melancholy, but which is a kind of divine sad sister to Melancholy. There is no discontent in the sorrow of the great ones; they are not querulous, and none of them ever sought to avenge their subdued grief on the persons of their fellow-creatures. The kings bear their burden with dignity; they love to see their human kindred light of heart; but they cannot be light-hearted in turn; for the burden and mystery of the world are ever with them, and their energy is all needed to help them in conquering pettiness of soul, so that by no weak example may they dishearten those who are weak. I am almost convinced that the man who composed the inscription on the emerald which is said to have reached Tiberius must have seen the Founder of our religion—or, at least, must have known some one who had seen Him. "None hath seen Him smile; but many have seen Him weep." It is so like what we should have expected! The days of the joyous pagan gods were passing away, the shadows of tedium and of life-weariness were drooping over a world that was once filled with thoughtless merriment—and then came One who preached the Gospel of Sorrow. He preached that gospel, and a faithless world at first refused to hear Him; but the Divine depth of sorrow drew the highest of souls; and soon the world left the religion of pride and vainglory and pleasure to embrace the religion of Pity.

The sorrow of the weary King Ecclesiast has never seemed to me altogether noble; it is piercing in its insight—and I understand how youths who are coming to manhood find in the awful chapters a savage contrast to the joys of existence. Young men who have reached the strange time of discontent through which all of us pass are always profoundly affected by the Preacher; and they are too apt to pervert the most poignant of his words; but men who have really thought and suffered can never help feeling that there is a species of ingratitude in all his splendid lamentations. Why should the mighty king have bidden the youth to rejoice after so many awful words had been penned to show the end of all rejoicing? Every pleasure on earth the king had enjoyed, and he had drained life's chalice so far down that he tasted the bitterness of the lees. But had he not savoured joy to the full? Was there one gift showered by the lavish bounty of God which had not fallen on the chosen of fortune? We revere the intellect of the man who chastens our souls with his sombre discourse; but I could wish he had veiled his despair, and had told us of the ravishing delights which he had known. No; the Preacher is great, but his sorrow is not the highest. I give my chief reverence to the men who let their sorrow pass into central fire that blazes into deeds; I revere the men and women who bear their yoke and utter never a word of complaint; on them sorrow falls like a pure soft snow that leaves no stain.

Of late, the nations of the world have been thrilled by the deeds of one humble man who embraced Sorrow and let her claim him for the best part of his life. I cannot bear to think much of the tragedy of Damien's life—and I shall not dream of endeavouring to find excuses, or of declaring that life an essentially happy one. The good Father chose Grief and clave to her as a bride; he chose the sights and sounds of grief as his surroundings and he wrought on silently under his fearful burden of holy sorrow until the release was given. He spoke no boastful words of contentment save when he thought of the rest that was coming for him; he gallantly accepted the crudest and foulest conditions of his dreadful environment, and he uttered no craving for sympathy, no wish for personal aid. If we think of that immortal priest's choice, we understand, perhaps for the first time, what the religion of Sorrow truly means. On the lonely rock the meek, strong soul spent its forces; joy, friendly faces, laughter of sweet children, healthy and kindly companions—there were none of these. The sea moaned round with many voices, and the sky bent over the lonely disciple; the melancholy of the sea, the melancholy of the changeless sky, the monotony of silence, must all have weighed on his heart. In the daytime there were only sights whereat strong men might swoon away—pain, pain, pain all round, and every complication of horror; but the Child of Sorrow bore all. Then came the sentence of death. For ten weary years the hero had to wait in loneliness while the Destroyer slowly enfolded him in its arms. We pity the monster who dies a swift death after his life of wickedness has been forfeited; we are vexed if a criminal endures one minute of suffering; but the noble one on that sad isle watched his doom coming for ten years, and never flinched from his task during that harrowing time. It makes the heart grow chill, despite the pride we feel in our lost brother. The religion of Sorrow has indeed conquered; and Father Damien has set the seal to its triumph.

But around us there are others who have composedly accepted sorrow as their portion. We have, it may be, felt so much joy in living, we have been so pierced through and through in every nerve and every faculty of the mind with pure rapture during our pilgrimage, that we would fain let all dwellers on earth share the blessedness that we have known. It is not to be; the gospel of pity must needs claim some of its disciples wholly—and sorrow is their portion. Perhaps under all their sadness there lurks a joy that passes all known to slighter souls—I hope so; I hope that they cannot be permitted to endure what Dante endured. In the purlieus of our cities these resigned, resolute spirits expend their forces, and their unostentatious figures, passing from home to home where poor men lie, offer a lesson to the petty souls of some whose riches and worldly powers are by no means petty. Ah, it is lovely to see those merciful sisters of the fallen or falling—good to see the men who help them! Need we pity them? They would say "No"; but we must, for they live hard. A delicate lady quietly sets to work in a filthy tenement; her white hands raise up and cleanse the foulest of the poor little infants who swarm in the slums; she calmly performs menial offices for the basest and most ungrateful of the poor—and no one who has not lived among those degraded folk can tell what ingratitude is really like. Day after day that lady toils; and the only word of thanks she receives is perhaps a whine from some woman who wishes to cajole her into bestowing some gift. These sisters of Sorrow do not need thanks any more than they need pity; they frankly recognise the baseness of ill-reared human nature, and they go on trustfully in the hope that maybe things may grow slowly better. They meet death calmly; they hide their own sorrow, and even their pity is disciplined into usefulness. The men of the good company are the same. They have resigned all the lighter joys of earth, they are calm, and they let the unutterable sadness of the world spur them on only to quiet efforts after righteousness. Think what it must be for a man to leave the warm encompassment of the cheerful day and pass composedly to a gloom which is relieved only by the inner light that shines from the soul! Were not the hearts of the heroes pure, they must grow cynical as they looked on the evil mass of roguery, idleness, foulness, and cunning that seethes around them. But they have passed the portal beyond which peace is found; and the sorrow wherewith they gaze on their hapless fellow-men is tinctured neither by scorn nor weariness. If there is no reward for them, then we all of us have cause for bitter disappointment. But the forlorn hope of goodness never trouble themselves about rewards; they face the shadows of doom only as they face the squalor of their daily martyrdom. A certain philosopher said that he could not endure so sombre an existence because his nerves and sinews were frail and the pain would have mastered him; but he gladly owned that the enthusiasts had conquered his admiration and taken it for their permanent possession. The cool keen eye of the scoffer divined the strength of sorrow, and he admired the men whom he durst not imitate.

There are others who pass through life enwrapped by the veil of a noble sorrow; and, when I see them, I am minded to wonder whether any one was ever the worse for encountering the touch of the chilly Mistress whom most children of earth dread. When I think the matter over I become convinced that no one who has once felt a noble and gentle sorrow can ever become wholly bad; and I fancy that even the bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is passed from sight for ever, it is bitter—ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and the mother whose babe seemed to take her very heart away when it went into the Darkness can pity the other bereaved ones; so that her soul is exalted through its grief. The poet is thought by some to have uttered a mere aimless whim in words when he said—

"To Sorrow I bade good-morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly— She is so constant to me and so kind. I would deceive her, And so leave her; But, ah, she is so constant and so kind!"

It sounds like a whim; but it is more than that to those who have been in the depths of grief; for they know that out of their affliction grew either a solemn scorn of worldly ills or a keen wish to be helpful to others.

I have no desire to utter a paradox when I say that all the world holds of best has sprung from sorrow. Shakspere smiles and is still. I love the smiles of his wiser years; but they would never have been so calmly content, so cheering with all their inscrutable depth, had not the man been weighed down with some dark sorrow before his soul was rescued and purified. I do not care for him when he is grinning and merry. He could play the buffoon when he willed—and a very unpleasant buffoon he was in his day; but Sorrow claimed him, and he came forth purified to speak to us by Prospero's lips. He had his struggle to compass resignation, he even seems to have felt himself degraded, and there is almost a weak complaint in that terrible sonnet, "No longer mourn for me when I am dead;" but his heart-strings held; he kept his dignity at the last, and he gave us the splendours of "The Tempest." I have no manner of superstition about the great poet—indeed I feel sure that at one time of his life he was what we call a bad man, his self-reproaches hinting all too plainly at forms of wickedness, moral wickedness, which pass far beyond the ordinary vice which society condemns—but I am sure that he became as good as he was serene; and I like to trace the phases of his sorrow up to the time of his triumph.

Of late it has been the fashion to talk about Byron's theatrical sorrow. One much-advertised critic went so far as to speak of "Byron's vulgar selfishness." It might have been supposed that incontestable evidence had come before him; but a careful perusal of the documents will prove that, though Byron was as selfish as most other men during his mad misguided youth, yet, after sorrow had blanched his noble head, he cast off all that was vile in him and emerged from the fire-discipline as the most helpful and utterly unselfish of men. His last calm gentle letter to the woman who drove him out of England is simply perfect in its dignified humility; and the poorest creature that ever snarled may see from that letter that grief had turned the wayward fierce poet into a gentle and forbearing man who had suffered so much that he could not find it in his heart to inflict suffering on his worst enemy. I call the Byron of the Abbey a bad man; the Byron whose home became the home of pure charity—charity done in secret—was a good man.

Sorrow may appear repulsive and men bid her "Avaunt!" Yet out of sorrow all that is noblest and highest in poesy and art has arisen; and all that is noblest in life has been achieved by the sorrow-stricken. Joy has given us much; and those who have once known what real earthly joy means should be content to pass unrepining to the Shades; but Sorrow's gifts are priceless, and no man can appraise their worth. Even poor Carlyle's sorrow, which was oftentimes aught but noble, if all tales be true, was sufficient to endow us with the most splendid of modern books. It is strange to see how that crabbed man with the passionately-loving heart keeps harping on the beneficence of sorrow. Once he spoke of "Sorrow's fire-whips"; but usually his strain is far, far different. He cleaves to the noble and sorrowful figures that crowd his sombre galleries; and I do not know that he ever gives more than a light and careless word of praise to any but his melancholy heroes. Cromwell, Abbot Sampson, the bold Ziethen, Danton, Mirabeau, Mahomet, Burns, "the great, melancholy Johnson," and even Napoleon and Luther—all are sorrowful, all are beautiful. Peace to them, and peace to the strong soul that made them all live again for the world!



XXIV.

DEATH.

The air of mystery which most of us assume when we speak about the great change that marks the bound of our mortal progress has engendered a kind of paralysing terror which makes ordinary people shudder at the notion of bodily extinction. We are glad enough to enjoy the beautiful things of life, we welcome the rapture of love, the delight of the sun, the promise of spring, the glory of strength; and yet forsooth we must needs tremble at the grand beneficent close which rounds off our earthly strivings and completes one stage in our everlasting progress. Why should we not speak as frankly of Death as we do of love and life? If men would only be content to let their minds play freely around all the facts that concern our entrance, our progress, our exit, then existence would be relieved from the presence of terror. The Greeks were more rational than we are; they took the joys of life with serenity and gladness, and they accepted the mighty transformation with the same serenity. On their memorial-stones there is no note of mourning. A young man calmly bids adieu to his friends and prepares to pass with dignity from their presence; a gallant horseman exults in the knowledge that he once rejoiced in life—"Great joy had I on earth, and now I that came from the earth return to the earth." Such are the carvings and inscriptions that show the wise, brave spirit of the ancients. But we, with our civilisation, behave somewhat like those Indian tribes who keep one mysterious word in their minds, and try to avoid mentioning it throughout their lives. Even in familiar conversation it is amusing to hear the desperate attempts made to paraphrase the word which should come naturally to the lips of all steadfast mortals. "If anything should happen to me," says the timid citizen, when he means, "If I should die"; and it would be possible to collect a score more of roundabout phrases with which men try to cheat themselves. It is right that we should be in love with life, for that is the supreme gift; but it is wrong to think with abhorrence of the close of life, for the same Being who gave us the thrilling rapture of consciousness bestows the boon of rest upon the temple of the soul. "He giveth His beloved sleep," and therein He proves His mighty tenderness.

Strange it is to see how inevitably men and women are drawn to think and speak of the great Terror when they are forced to muse in solitude. We flirt with melancholy; we try all kinds of dismal coquetries to avoid dwelling on our inexorable and beneficent doom; yet, if we look over the written thoughts of men, we find that more has been said about Death than even about love. The stone-cold comforter attracts the poets, and most of them, like Keats, are half in love with easeful death. The word that causes a shudder when it is spoken in a drawing-room gives a sombre and satisfying pleasure when we dwell upon it in our hours of solitude. Sometimes the poets are palpably guilty of hypocrisy, for they pretend to crave for the passage into the shades. That is unreal and unhealthy; the wise man neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put the thoughts of humanity into musical words are sometimes insincere, they are more often grave and consoling. I know of two supreme expressions of dread, and one of these was written by the wisest and calmest man that ever dwelt beneath the sun. Marvellous it is to think that our most sane and contented poet should have condensed all the terror of our race into one long and awful sentence. Perhaps Shakspere was stricken with momentary pity for the cowardice of his fellows, and, out of pure compassion, gave their agony a voice. That may be; at any rate, the fragment of "Measure for Measure" in which the cry of loathing and fear is uttered stands as the most striking and unforgettable saying that ever was conceived in the brain of man. Everybody knows the lines, yet we may once more touch our souls with solemnity by quoting them:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death."

There is no more to be said in that particular line of reflection; the speech is flawless in its gruesome power, and every piercing word seems to leap from a shuddering soul. The other utterance which is fit to be matched with Shakspere's was written by Charles Lamb. "Whatsoever thwarts or puts me out of my way brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital plague-sore. I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge, and speak of the grave as of some soft arms in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death—but 'Out upon thee,' I say, 'thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate thee, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper, to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy Privation. Those antidotes prescribed against the fear of thee are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself.'"

Poor Charles's wild humour flickers over this page like lambent flame; yet he was serious at heart without a doubt, and his whirling words rouse an echo in many a breast to this day. But both Shakspere and Lamb had their higher moments. Turn to "Cymbeline," and observe the glorious triumph of the dirge which rings like the magnificent exultation of Beethoven's Funeral March—

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great— Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat— To thee the reed is as the oak; The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust."

Here in rhythmic form we have the thought of the mighty apostle—"O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" Shakspere was too intensely human to be absolved from mortal weakness; but, in the main, he took the one view which I should be glad to see cherished by all. His words sometimes make us pause, as we pause when the violet flashes of summer lightning fleet across the lowering dome of the sky; but, in the end, he always has his words of cheer, and we gather heart from reading the strongest and most perfect writer the earth has known. Turn where we will, we find that all of our race—emperor, warrior, poet, clown, fair lady, innocent child—are given to dwelling on the same thought. It is our business to seek out those who have spoken with resignation and dauntlessness, and to leave aside all those who have only affectations of bravery or affectations of horror to give us. Here is a beautiful word:—

"The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet; Approaching ever, soft of hands and feet, She beckons us, and strife and song have been. A summer night, descending cool and green And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat, The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien And hopeful fancies look upon and greet This last of all your lovers, and to meet Her kiss mysterious all your spirit lean! The ways of Death are soothing and serene!"

Even Shakspere hardly bettered that!

I should not like to see men begin to encourage the recklessness of the desperado, nor should I like to see women affect the brazen abandonment of the Amazon. I only care to see our fellow-creatures rise above pettiness, so that they may accept all God's ordinances with unvarying gratitude. Is it not pitiful to see a grown man trembling and waving his hand with angry disgust when the holy course of Nature is spoken of with gravity and composed resolution? I have seen a stout, strong man who had amassed enormous wealth fly into pettish rage like a spoiled child when a friend spoke to him about the final disposal of his riches. Like a silly girl, this powerful millionaire went into tremors when the inevitable was named in his ear, for he had imbibed all the cowardly conventions that tend to poison our existence. He died a hundred deaths in his time, and much of his life was passed in such misery as only cultivated poltroonery can breed. Wicked wags knew that they could frighten him at any moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly assume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits asserted itself. What a life! How much better would it have been for this rich man had he trained himself to preserve General Gordon's composure, even if he had bought that composure at the price of his whole colossal fortune! Riches were useless to him, the sun failed to cheer him, and his end was in truth a release from one incessant torture.