If God is omnipotent and all-loving, we are bound to believe that suffering and death are sent by him deliberately, and not cruelly. One single instance, however minute, that established the reverse, would vitiate the whole theory; and if so, then we are the sport of a power that is sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An insupportable thought!

Is it possible to conceive that the law of sin works in the lower creation, and that they, too, are punished, or even wisely corrected, for sinning against such light as they have? Had the little beetle that sailed across my path acted in such a way that he had deserved his fate? Or was his death meant to make him a better, a larger-minded beetle? I cannot bring myself to believe that. Perhaps a philosophical theologian would say that creation was all one, and that suffering at one point was remedial at some other point. I am not in a position to deny the possibility of that, but I am equally unable to affirm that it is so. There is no evidence which would lead me to think it. It only seems to me necessary to affirm it, in order to confirm the axiom that God is omnipotent and all-loving. Much in nature and in human life would seem to be at variance with that.

It may be said that one is making too much of a minute incident; but such incidents are of hourly occurrence all the world over; and the only possible method for arriving at truth is the scientific method of cumulative evidence. The beetle was small, indeed, and infinitely unimportant in the scheme of things. But he was all in all to himself. The world only existed so far as he was concerned, through his tiny consciousness.

The old-fashioned religious philosophers held that man was the crown and centre of creation, and that God was mainly preoccupied with man's destiny. They maintained that all creatures were given us for our use and enjoyment. The enjoyment that I derived from the beetle, in this case, was not conspicuous. But I suppose that such cheerful optimists would say that the beetle was sent to give me a little lesson in patience, to teach me not to think so much about myself. But, as a matter of fact, the little pain I suffered made me think more of myself than I had previously been doing; it turned me for the time from a bland and hedonistic philosopher into a petulant pessimist, because it seemed that no one was the better for the incident; certainly, if life is worth having at all, the beetle was no better off, and in my own case I could trace no moral improvement. I had been harmlessly enough employed in getting air and exercise in the middle of hard work. It was no vicious enjoyment that was temporarily suspended.

Again, there are people who would say that to indulge in such reveries is morbid; that one must take the rough with the smooth, and not trouble about beetles or inflamed eyes. But if one is haunted by the hopeless desire to search out the causes of things, such arguments do not assist one. Such people would say, "Oh, you must take a larger or wider view of it all, and not strain at gnats!" But the essence of God's omnipotence is, that while he can take the infinitely wide view of all created things, he can also take, I would fain believe, the infinitely just and minute point of view, and see the case from the standpoint of the smallest of his creatures!

What, then, is my solution? That is the melancholy part of it; I am not prepared to offer one. I am met on every side by hopeless difficulties. I am tempted to think that God is not at all what we imagine him to be; that our conceptions of benevolence and justice and love are not necessarily true of him at all. That he is not in the least like our conceptions of him; that he has no particular tenderness about suffering, no particular care for animal life. Nature would seem to prove that at every turn; and yet, if it be true, it leaves me struggling in a sad abyss of thought; it substitutes for our grave, beautiful, and hopeful conceptions of God a kind of black mystery which, I confess, lies very heavy on the heart, and seems to make effort vain.

And thus I fall back again upon faith and hope. I know that I wish all things well, that I desire with all my heart that everything that breathes and moves should be happy and joyful; and I cannot believe in my heart that it is different with God. And thus I rest in the trust that there is somewhere, far-off, a beauty and a joy in suffering; and that, perhaps, death itself is a fair and a desirable thing.

As I rode to-day in the summer sun, far off, through the haze, I could see the huge Cathedral towers and portals looming up over the trees. Even so might be the gate of death! As we fare upon our pilgrimage, that shadowy doorway waits, silent and sombre, to receive us. That gate, the gate of death, seems to me, as in strength and health I sweep along the pleasant road of life, a terrible, an appalling place. But shall I feel so, when indeed I tread the threshold, and see the dark arches, the mysterious windows to left and right? It may prove a cool and secure haven of beauty and refreshment, rich in memory, echoing with melodious song. The poor beetle knows about it now, whatever it is; he is wise with the eternal wisdom of all that have entered in, leaving behind them the frail and delicate tabernacle, in which the spirit dwelt, and which is so soon to moulder into dust.



XII

The Farm-yard

There is a big farm-yard close to the house where I am staying just now; it is a constant pleasure, as I pass that way, to stop and watch the manners and customs of the beasts and birds that inhabit it; I am ashamed to think how much time I spend in hanging over a gate, to watch the little dramas of the byre. I am not sure that pigs are an altogether satisfactory subject of contemplation. They always seem to me like a fallen race that has seen better days. They are able, intellectual, inquisitive creatures. When they are driven from place to place, they are not gentle or meek, like cows and sheep, who follow the line of least resistance. The pig is suspicious and cautious; he is sure that there is some uncomfortable plot on foot, not wholly for his good, which he must try to thwart if he can. Then, too, he never seems quite at home in his deplorably filthy surroundings; he looks at you, up to the knees in ooze, out of his little eyes, as if he would live in a more cleanly way, if he were permitted. Pigs always remind me of the mariners of Homer, who were transformed by Circe; there is a dreadful humanity about them, as if they were trying to endure their base conditions philosophically, waiting for their release.

But cows bring a deep tranquillity into the spirit; their glossy skins, their fragrant breath, their contented ease, their mild gaze, their Epicurean rumination tend to restore the balance of the mind, and make one feel that vegetarianism must be a desirable thing. There is the dignity of innocence about the cow, and I often wish that she did not bear so poor a name, a word so unsuitable for poetry; it is lamentable that one has to take refuge in the archaism of kine, when the thing itself is so gentle and pleasant.

But the true joy of the farm-yard is, undoubtedly, in the domestic fowls. It is long since I was frightened of turkeys; but I confess that there is still something awe-inspiring about an old turkey-cock, with a proud and angry eye, holding his breath till his wattles are blue and swollen, with his fan extended, like a galleon in full sail, his wings held stiffly down, strutting a few rapid steps, and then slowly revolving, like a king in royal robes. There is something tremendous about his supremacy, his almost intolerable pride and glory.

And then we come to cocks and hens. The farm-yard cock is an incredibly grotesque creature. His furious eye, his blood-red crest, make him look as if he were seeking whom he might devour. But he is the most craven of creatures. In spite of his air of just anger, he has no dignity whatever. To hear him raise his voice, you would think that he was challenging the whole world to combat. He screams defiance, and when he has done, he looks round with an air of satisfaction. "There! that is what you have to expect if you interfere with me!" he seems to say. But an alarm is given; the poultry seek refuge in a hurried flight. Where is the champion? You would expect to see him guarding the rear, menacing his pursuer; but no, he has headed the flight, he is far away, leading the van with a desperate intentness.

This morning I was watching the behaviour of a party of fowls, who were sitting together on a dusty ledge above the road, sheltering from the wind. I do not know whether they meant to be as humorous as they were, but I can hardly think they were not amused at each other. They stood and lay very close together, with fierce glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked round with angry self-consciousness, as though to say: "I will ask any one to think me absurd at his peril." Now and then one of them kicked diligently at the soil, and then, turning round, scrutinised the place intently, and picked delicately at some minute object. One examined the neck of her neighbour with a fixed stare, and then pecked the spot sharply. One settled down on the dust, and gave a few vigorous strokes with her legs to make herself more comfortable. Occasionally they all crooned and wailed together, and at the passing of a cart all stood up defiantly, as if intending to hold their fort at all hazards. Presently a woman came out of a house-door opposite, at which the whole party ran furiously and breathlessly across the road, as if their lives depended upon arriving in time. There was not a gesture or a motion that was not admirably conceived, intensely dramatic.

Again, what is more delightfully absurd than to see a hen find a large morsel which she cannot deal with at one gulp? She has no sense of diplomacy or cunning; her friends, attracted by her motions, close in about her; she picks up the treasured provender, she runs, bewildered with anxiety, till she has distanced her pursuers; she puts the object down and takes a couple of desperate pecks; but her kin are at her heels; another flight follows, another wild attempt; for half an hour the same tactics are pursued. At last she is at bay; she makes one prodigious effort, and gets the treasure down with a convulsive swallow; you see her neck bulge with the moving object; while she looks at her baffled companions with an air of meek triumph.

Ducks, too, afford many simple joys to the contemplative mind. A slow procession of white ducks, walking delicately, with heads lifted high and timid eyes, in a long line, has the air of an ecclesiastical procession. The singers go before, the minstrels follow after. There is something liturgical, too, in the way in which, as if by a preconcerted signal, they all cry out together, standing in a group, with a burst of hoarse cheering, cut off suddenly by an intolerable silence. The arrival of ducks upon the scene, when the fowls are fed, is an impressive sight. They stamp wildly over the pasture, falling, stumbling, rising again, arrive on the scene with a desperate intentness, and eat as though they had not seen food for months.

The pleasure of these farm-yard sights is two-fold. It is partly the sense of grave, unconscious importance about the whole business, serious lives lived with such whole-hearted zeal. There is no sense of divided endeavour; the discovery of food is the one thing in the world, and the sense of repletion is also the sense of virtue. But there is something pathetic, too, about the taming to our own ends of these forest beasts, these woodland birds; they are so unconscious of the sad reasons for which we desire their company, so unsuspicious, so serene! Instead of learning by the sorrowful experience of generations what our dark purposes are, they become more and more fraternal, more and more dependent. And yet how little we really know what their thoughts are. They are so unintelligent in some regions, so subtly wise in others. We cannot share our thoughts with them; we cannot explain anything to them. We can sympathise with them in their troubles, but cannot convey our sympathy to them. There is a little bantam hen here, a great pet, who comes up to the front door with the other bantams to be fed. She has been suffering for some time from an obscure illness. She arrives with the others, full of excitement, and begins to pick at the grain thrown them; but the effort soon exhausts her; she goes sadly apart, and sits with dim eye and ruffled plumage, in silent suffering, wondering, perhaps, why she is not as brisk and joyful as ever, what is the sad thing that has befallen her. And one can do nothing, express nothing of the pathetic sorrow that fills one's mind. But, none the less, one tries to believe, to feel, that this suffering is not fortuitous, is not wasted—how could one endure the thought otherwise, if one did not hope that "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God!"



XIII

The Artist

I have been reading with much emotion the life of a great artist. It is a tender, devoted record; and there is an atmosphere of delicate beauty about the style. It is as though his wife, who wrote the book, had gained through the years of companionship, a pale, pure reflection of her husband's simple and impassioned style, just as the moon's clear, cold light is drawn from the hot fountains of the sun. And yet, there is an individuality about the style, and the reflection is rather of the same nature as the patient likeness of expression which is to be seen in the faces of an aged pair, who have travelled in love and unity down the vale of years together.

In this artist's own writing, which has a pure and almost childlike naivete of phrasing, there is a glow, not of rhetoric or language, but of emotion, an almost lover-like attitude towards his friends, which is yet saved from sentimentality by an obvious sincerity of feeling. In this he seems to me to be different from the majority of artistic natures and temperaments. It is impossible not to feel, as a rule, when one is brought into contact with an artistic temperament, that the basis of it is a kind of hardness, a fanaticism of spirit. There is, of course, in the artistic temperament, an abundance of sensitiveness which is often mistaken for feeling. But it is not generally an unselfish devotion, which desires to give, to lavish, to make sacrifices for the sake of the beloved. It is, after all, impossible to serve two masters; and in the highly developed artist, the central passion is the devotion to art, and sins against art are the cardinal and unpardonable sins. The artist has an eager thirst for beautiful impressions, and his deepest concern is how to translate these impressions into the medium in which he works. Many an artist has desired and craved for love. But even love in the artist is not the end; love only ministers to the sacred fire of art, and is treated by him as a costly and precious fuel, which he is bound to use to feed the central flame. If one examines the records of great artistic careers, this will, I think, be found to be a true principle; and it is, after all, inevitable that it should be so, in the case of a nature which has the absorbing desire for self-expression. Perhaps, it is not always consciously recognised by the artist, but the fact is there; he tends to regard the deepest and highest experiences of life as ministering to the fulness of his nature. I remember hearing a great master of musical art discussing the music of a young man of extraordinary promise; he said: "Yes, it is very beautiful, very pure; he is perfect in technique and expression, as far as it goes; but it is incomplete and undeveloped. What he wants is to fall in love."

A man who is not bound by the noble thraldom of art, who is full of vitality and emotion, but yet without the imperative desire for self-expression, regards life in a different mood. He may be fully as eager to absorb beautiful impressions, he may love the face of the earth, the glories of hill and plain, the sweet dreams of art, the lingering cadences of music; but he takes them as a child takes food, with a direct and eager appetite, without any impulse to dip them in his own personality, or to find an expression for them. The point for him is not how they strike him and affect him, but that they are there. Such a man will perhaps find his deepest experience in the mysteries of human relationship; and he will so desire the happiness of those he loves, that he will lose himself in efforts to remove obstacles, to lighten burdens, to give rather than to receive joy. And this, I think, is probably the reason why so few women, even those possessed of the most sensitive perception and apprehension, achieve the highest triumphs of art; because they cannot so subordinate life to art, because they have a passionate desire for the happiness of others, and find their deepest satisfaction in helping to further it. Who does not know instances of women of high possibilities, who have quietly sacrificed the pursuit of their own accomplishments to the tendance of some brilliant self-absorbed artist? With such love is often mingled a tender compassionateness, as of a mother for a high-spirited and eager child, who throws herself with perfect sympathy into his aims and tastes, while all the time there sits a gentle knowledge in the background of her heart, of the essential unimportance of the things that the child desires so eagerly, and which she yet desires so whole-heartedly for him. Women who have made such a sacrifice do it with no feeling that they are resigning the best for the second best, but because they have a knowledge of mysteries that are even higher than the mysteries of art; and they have their reward, not in the contemplation of the sacrifice that they have made, but in having desired and attained something that is more beautiful still than any dream that the artist cherishes and follows.

Yet the fact remains that it is useless to preach to the artist the mystery that there is a higher region than the region of art. A man must aim at the best 'that he can conceive; and it is not possible to give men higher motives, by removing the lower motives that they can comprehend. Such an attempt is like building without foundations; and those who have relations with artists should do all they can to encourage them to aim at what they feel to be the highest.

But, on the other hand, it is a duty for the artist to keep his heart open, if he can, to the higher influences. He must remember, that though the eye can see certain colours, and hear certain vibrations of sound, yet there is an infinite scale of colour, and an infinite gradation of sound, both above and below what the eye and the ear can apprehend, and that mortal apprehension can only appropriate to itself but a tiny fragment of the huge gamut. He ought to believe that if he is faithful to the best that he can apprehend, a door may be opened to him which may lead him into regions which are at present closed to him. To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, a wilful deafness to more remote voices; and it is thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above all things, be open and transparent, should be loth to commit. He should rather keep his inner eye—for the artist is like the great creatures that, in the prophet's vision, stood nearest to the presence, who were full of eyes, without and within—open to the unwonted apparition which may, suddenly, like a meteor of the night, sail across the silent heaven. It may be that, in some moment of fuller perception, he may even have to divorce the sweeter and more subtle mistress in exchange for one who comes in a homelier guise, and take the beggar girl for his queen. But the abnegation will be no sacrifice; rather a richer and livelier hope.



XIV

Young Love

We had a charming idyll here to-day. A young husband and wife came to stay with us in all the first flush of married happiness. One realised all day long that other people merely made a pleasant background for their love, and that for each there was but one real figure on the scene. This was borne witness to by a whole armoury of gentle looks, swift glances, silent gestures. They were both full to the brim of a delicate laughter, of over-brimming wonder, of tranquil desire. And we all took part in their gracious happiness. In the evening they sang and played to us, the wife being an accomplished pianist, the husband a fine singer. But though the glory of their art fell in rainbow showers on the audience, it was for each other that they sang and played. We sat in the dim light of a little panelled room, the lamps making a circle of light about the happy pair; seldom have I felt the revelation of personality more. The wife played to us a handful of beautiful things; but I noticed that she could not interpret the sadder and darker strains, into which the shadow and malady of a suffering spirit had passed; but into little tripping minuets full of laughter and light, and into melodies that spoke of a pure passion of sweetness and human delight, her soul passed, till the room felt as though flooded with the warmth of the sun. And he, too, sang with all his might some joyful and brave utterances, with the lusty pride of manhood; and in a gentler love-song too, that seemed to linger in a dream of delight by crystal streams, the sweet passion of the heart rose clear and true. But when he too essayed a song of sorrow and reluctant sadness, there was no spirit in it; it seemed to him, I suppose, so unlike life, and the joy of life,—so fantastic and unreal an outpouring of the heart.

We sat long in the panelled room, till it seemed all alive with soft dreams and radiant shapes, that floated in a golden air. All that was dark and difficult seemed cast out and exercised. But it was all so sincere and contented a peace that the darker and more sombre shadows had no jealous awakening; for the two were living to each other, not in a selfish seclusion, but as though they gave of their joy in handfuls to the whole world. The raptures of lovers sometimes take them back so far into a kind of unashamed childishness that the spectacle rouses the contempt and even the indignation of world-worn and cynical people. But here it never deviated from dignity and seemliness; it only seemed new and true, and the best gift of God. These two spirits seemed, with hands intertwined, to have ascended gladly into the mountain, and to have seen a transfiguration of life: which left them not in a blissful eminence of isolation, but rather, as it were, beckoning others upwards, and saying that the road was indeed easy and plain. And so the sweet hour passed, and left a fragrance behind it; whatever might befall, they had tasted of the holy wine of joy; they had blessed the cup, and bidden us too to set our lips to it.



XV

A Strange Gathering

I was walking one summer day in the pleasant hilly country near my home. There is a road which I often traverse, partly because it is a very lonely one, partly because it leads out on a high brow or shoulder of the uplands, and commands a wide view of the plain. Moreover, the road is so deeply sunken between steep banks, overgrown with hazels, that one is hardly aware how much one climbs, and the wide clear view at the top always breaks upon the eye with a certain shock of agreeable surprise. A little before the top of the hill a road turns off, leading into a long disused quarry, surrounded by miniature cliffs, full of grassy mounds and broken ground, overgrown with thickets and floored with rough turf. It is a very enchanting place in spring, and indeed at all times of the year; many flowers grow there, and the birds sing securely among the bushes. I have always imagined that the Red Deeps, in The Mill on the Floss, was just such a place, and the scenes described as taking place there have always enacted themselves for me in the quarry. I have always had a fancy too that if there are any fairies hereabouts, which I very much doubt, for I fear that the new villas which begin to be sprinkled about the countryside have scared them all away, they would be found here. I visited the place one moonlight night, and I am sure that the whole dingle was full of a bright alert life which mocked my clumsy eyes and ears. If I could have stolen upon the place unawares, I felt that I might have seen strange businesses go forward, and tiny revels held.

That afternoon, as I drew near, I was displeased to see that my little retreat was being profaned by company. Some brakes were drawn up in the road, and I heard loud voices raised in untuneful mirth. As I came nearer I was much bewildered to divine who the visitors were. They seemed on the point of departing; two of the brakes were full, and into another some men were clambering. As I came close to them I was still more puzzled. The majority of the party were dressed all alike, in rough brown clothes, with soft black felt hats; but in each of the brakes that were tenanted sat a man as well, with a braided cap, in a sort of uniform. Most of the other men were old or elderly; some had white beards or whiskers, almost all were grizzled. They were talking, too, in an odd, inconsequent, chirping kind of way, not listening to each other; and moreover they were strangely adorned. Some had their hats stuck full of flowers, others were wreathed with leaves. A few had chains of daisies round their necks. They seemed as merry and as obedient as children. Inside the gate, in the centre of the quarry, was a still stranger scene. Here was a ring of elderly and aged men, their hats wreathed with garlands, hand-in-hand, executing a slow and solemn dance in a circle. One, who seemed the moving spirit, a small wiry man with a fresh-coloured face and a long chin-beard, was leaping high in the air, singing some rustic song, and dragging his less active companions round and round. The others all entered into the spirit of the dance. One very old and feeble man, with a smile on his face, was executing little clumsy hops, deeply intent on the performance. A few others stood round admiring the sport; a little apart was a tall grave man, talking loudly to himself, with flowers stuck all over him, who was spinning round and round in an ecstasy of delight. Becoming giddy, he took a few rapid steps to the left, but fell to the ground, where he lay laughing softly, and moving his hands in the air. Presently one of the officials said a word to the leader of the dance; the ring broke up, and the performers scattered, gathering up little bundles of leaves and flowers that lay all about in some confusion, and then trooping out to the brakes. The quarry was deserted. Several of the group waved their hands to me, uttering unintelligible words, and holding out flowers.

I was so much surprised at the odd scene that I asked one of the officials what it all meant. He said politely that it was a picnic party from the Pauper Lunatic Asylum at H——. The mystery was explained. I said: "They seem to be enjoying themselves." "Yes, indeed, sir," he said, "they are like children; they look forward to this all the year; there is no greater punishment than to deprive a man of his outing." He entered the last brake as he said these words, and the carriages moved off, a shrill and aged cheer rising from thin and piping voices on the air.

The whole thing did not strike me as grotesque, but as infinitely pathetic and even beautiful. Here were these old pitiful creatures, so deeply afflicted, condemned most of them to a lifelong seclusion, who were recalling and living over again their childish sports and delights. What dim memories of old spring days, before their sad disabilities had settled upon them, were working in those aged and feeble brains! What pleased me best was the obvious and light-hearted happiness of the whole party, a compensation for days of starved monotony. No party of school-children on a holiday could have been more thoughtlessly, more intently gay. Here was a desolate company, one would have thought, of life's failures, facing one of the saddest and least hopeful prospects that the world can afford; yet on this day at least they were full to the brim of irresponsible and complete happiness and delight, tasting an enjoyment, it seemed, more vivid than often falls to my own lot. In the presence of such happiness it seemed so useless, so unnecessary to ask why so heavy a burden was bound on their backs, because here at all events was a scene of the purest and most innocent rapture. I went on my way full of wonder and even of hope. I could not fathom the deep mystery of the failure, the suffering, the weakness that runs across the world like an ugly crack across the face of a fair building. But then how tenderly and wisely does the great Artificer lend consolation and healing, repairing and filling so far as he may, the sad fracture; he seems to know better than we can divine the things that belong to our peace; so that as I looked across the purple rolling plain, with all its wooded ridges, its rich pastures, the smoke going up from a hundred hamlets, a confidence, a quiet trust seemed to rise in my mind, filling me with a strange yearning to know what were the thoughts of the vast Mind that makes us and sustains us, mingled with a faith in some large and far-off issue that shall receive and enfold our little fretful spirits, as the sea receives the troubled leaping streams, to move in slow unison with the wide and secret tides.



XVI

The Cripple

I went to-day to see an old friend whom I had not met for ten years. Some time ago he had a bad fall which for a time crippled him, but from which it was hoped he would recover; but he must have received some obscure and deep-seated injury, because after improving for a time, he began to go backwards, and has now to a great extent lost the use of his limbs. He was formerly a very active man, both intellectually and physically. He had a prosperous business in the country town on the outskirts of which he lives. He was one of those tall spare men, black-haired and black-eyed, capable of bearing great fatigue, full to the brim of vitality. He was a great reader, fond of music and art; married to a no less cultivated and active wife, but childless. There never was a man who had a keener enjoyment of existence in all its aspects. It used to be a marvel to me to see at how many points a man could touch life, and the almost child-like zest which he threw into everything which he did.

On arriving at the house, a pleasant old-fashioned place with a big shady garden, I was shown into a large book-lined study, and there presently crept and tottered into the room, leaning on two sticks, a figure which I can only say in no respect recalled to me the recollection of my friend. He was bent and wasted, his hair was white; and there was that sunken look about the temples, that tracery of lines about the eyes that tells of constant suffering. But the voice was unaltered, full, resonant, and distinct as ever. He sat down and was silent for a moment. I think that the motion even from one room into another caused him great pain. Then he began to talk; first he told me of the accident, and his journeys in search of health. "But the comfort is," he added, "that the doctors have now decided that they can do no more for me, and I need leave home no more." He told me that he still went to his business every day—and I found that it was prospering greatly—and that though he could not drive, he could get out in a wheeled chair; he said nothing of his sufferings, and presently began to talk of books and politics. Gradually I realised that I was in the company of a thoroughly cheerful man. It was not the cheerfulness that comes of effort, of a determined attempt to be interested in old pursuits, but the abundant and overflowing cheerfulness of a man who has still a firm grasp on life. He argued, he discussed with the same eager liveliness; and his laugh had the careless and good-humoured ring of a man whose mind was entirely content.

His wife soon entered; and we sat for a long time talking. I was keenly moved by the relations between them; she displayed none of that minute attention to his needs, none of that watchful anxiety which I have often thought, tenderly lavished as it is upon invalids, must bring home to them a painful sense of their dependence and helplessness; and he too showed no trace of that fretful exigence which is too often the characteristic of those who cannot assist themselves, and which almost invariably arises in the case of eager and active temperaments thus afflicted, those whose minds range quickly from subject to subject, and who feel their disabilities at every turn. At one moment he wanted his glasses to read something from a book that lay beside him. He asked his wife with a gentle courtesy to find them. They were discovered in his own breast-pocket, into which he could not even put his feeble hand, and he apologised for his stupidity with an affectionate humility which made me feel inclined to tears, especially when I saw the pleasure which the performance of this trifling service obviously caused her. It was just the same, I afterwards noticed, with a young attendant who waited on him at luncheon, an occasion which revealed to me the full extent of his helplessness.

I gathered from his wife in the course of the afternoon that though his life was not threatened, yet that there was no doubt that his helplessness was increasing. He could still hold a book and turn the pages; but it was improbable that he could do so for long, and he was amusing himself by inventing a mechanical device for doing this. But she too talked of the prospect with a quiet tranquillity. She said that he was making arrangements to direct his business from his house, as it was becoming difficult for him to enter the office.

He himself showed the same unabated cheerfulness during the whole of my visit, and spoke of the enjoyment it had brought him. There was not the slightest touch of self-pity about his talk.

I should have admired and wondered at the fortitude of this gallant pair, if I had seen signs of repression and self-conquest about them; if they had relapsed even momentarily into repining, if they had shown signs of a faithful determination to make the best of a bad business. But I could discern no trace of such a mood about either of them. Whether this kindly and sweet patience has been acquired, after hard and miserable wrestlings with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say, but I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems to me rather to be the display of perfect manliness and womanliness in the presence of an irreparable calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, sent quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to these simple and generous natures, who live in each other's lives. I tried to picture to myself what my own thoughts would be if condemned to this sad condition; I could only foresee a fretful irritability, a wild anguish, alternating with a torpid stupefaction. "I seem to love the old books better than ever," my friend had said, smiling softly, in the course of the afternoon; "I used to read them hurriedly and greedily in the old days, but now I have time to think over them—to reflect—I never knew what a pleasure reflection was." I could not help feeling as he said the words that with me such a stroke as he had suffered would have dashed the life, the colour, out of books, and left them faded and withered husks. Half the charm of books, I have always thought, is the inter-play of the commentary of life and experience. I ventured to ask him if this was not the case. "No," he said, "I don't think it is—I seem more interested in people, in events, in thoughts than ever; and one gets them from a purer spring—I don't know if I can explain," he added, "but I think that one sees it all from a different perspective, in a truer light, when one's own desires and possibilities are so much more limited." When I said good-bye to him, he smiled at me and hoped that I should repeat my visit. "Don't think of me as unhappy," he added, and his wife, who was standing by him, said, "Indeed you need not;" and the two smiled at each other in a way which made me feel that they were speaking the simple truth, and that they had found an interpretation of life, a serene region to abide in, which I, with all my activities, hopes, fears, businesses, had somehow missed. The pity of it! and yet the beauty of it! as I went away I felt that I had indeed trodden on holy ground, and seen the transfiguration of humanity and pain into something august, tranquil, and divine.



XVII

Oxford

There are certain things in the world that are so praiseworthy that it seems a needless, indeed an almost laughable thing to praise them; such things are love and friendship, food and sleep, spring and summer; such things, too, are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the noblest cities. But for all that I mean to try and make a little hymn in prose in honour of Oxford, a city I have seen but seldom, and which yet appears to me one of the most beautiful things in the world.

I do not wish to single out particular buildings, but to praise the whole effect of the place, such as it seemed to me on a day of bright sun and cool air, when I wandered hour after hour among the streets, bewildered and almost intoxicated with beauty, feeling as a poor man might who has pinched all his life, and made the most of single coins, and who is brought into the presence of a heap of piled-up gold, and told that it is all his own.

I have seen it said in foolish books that it is a misfortune to Oxford that so many of the buildings have been built out of so perishable a vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one respect, that it tempts men of dull and precise minds to restore and replace buildings of incomparable grace, because their outline is so exquisitely blurred by time and decay. I remember myself, as a child, visiting Oxford, and thinking that some of the buildings were almost shamefully ruinous of aspect; now that I am wiser I know that we have in these battered and fretted palace-fronts a kind of beauty that fills the mind with an almost despairing sense of loveliness, till the heart aches with gratitude, and thrills with the desire to proclaim the glory of the sight aloud.

These black-fronted blistered facades, so threatening, so sombre, yet screening so bright and clear a current of life; with the tender green of budding spring trees, chestnuts full of silvery spires, glossy-leaved creepers clinging, with tiny hands, to cornice and parapet, give surely the sharpest and most delicate sense that it is possible to conceive of the contrast on which the essence of so much beauty depends. To pass through one of these dark and smoke-stained courts, with every line mellowed and harmonised, as if it had grown up so out of the earth; to find oneself in a sunny pleasaunce, carpeted with velvet turf, and set thick with flowers, makes the spirit sigh with delight. Nowhere in the world can one see such a thing as those great gate-piers, with a cognisance a-top, with a grille of iron-work between them, all sweetly entwined with some slim vagrant creeper, that give a glimpse and a hint—no more—of a fairy-land of shelter and fountains within. I have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned as the buildings of Oxford; but the very blackness of the city air, and the drifting smoke of the town, gives that added touch of grimness and mystery that the country airs cannot communicate. And even fairer sights are contained within; those panelled, dark-roofed halls, with their array of portraits gravely and intently regarding the stranger; the chapels, with their splendid classical screens and stalls, rich and dim with ancient glass. The towers, domes, and steeples; and all set not in a mere paradise of lawns and glades, but in the very heart of a city, itself full of quaint and ancient houses, but busy with all the activity of a brisk and prosperous town; thereby again giving the strong and satisfying sense of contrast, the sense of eager and every-day cares and pleasures, side by side with these secluded havens of peace, the courts and cloister, where men may yet live a life of gentle thought and quiet contemplation, untroubled, nay, even stimulated, by the presence of a bustling life so near at hand, which yet may not intrude upon the older dream.

I do not know whether my taste is entirely trustworthy, but I confess that I find the Italianate and classical buildings of Oxford finer than the Gothic buildings. The Gothic buildings are quainter, perhaps, more picturesque, but there is an air of solemn pomp and sober dignity about the classical buildings that harmonises better with the sense of wealth and grave security that is so characteristic of the place. The Gothic buildings seem a survival, and have thus a more romantic interest, a more poetical kind of association. But the classical porticos and facades seem to possess a nobler dignity, and to provide a more appropriate setting for modern Oxford; because the spirit of Oxford is more the spirit of the Renaissance than the spirit of the Schoolmen; and personally I prefer that ecclesiasticism should be more of a flavour than a temper; I mean that though I rejoice to think that sober ecclesiastical influences contribute a serious grace to the life of Oxford, yet I am glad to feel that the spirit of the place is liberal rather than ecclesiastical. Such traces as one sees in the chapels of the Oxford Movement, in the shape of paltry stained glass, starved reredoses, modern Gothic woodwork, would be purely deplorable from the artistic point of view, if they did not possess a historical interest. They speak of interrupted development, an attempt to put back the shadow on the dial, to return to a narrower and more rigid tone, to put old wine into new bottles, which betrays a want of confidence in the expansive power of God. I hate with a deep-seated hatred all such attempts to bind and confine the rising tide of thought. I want to see religion vital and not formal, elastic and not cramped by precedent and tradition. And thus I love to see worship enshrined in noble classical buildings, which seem to me to speak of a desire to infuse the intellectual spirit of Greece, the dignified imperialism of Rome into the more timid and secluded ecclesiastical life, making it fuller, larger, more free, more deliberate.

But even apart from the buildings, which are after all but the body of the place, the soul of Oxford, its inner spirit, is what lends it its satisfying charm. On the one hand, it gives the sense of the dignity of the intellect; one reflects that here can be lived lives of stately simplicity, of high enthusiasm, apart from personal wealth, and yet surrounded by enough of seemly dignity to give life the charm of grave order and quiet solemnity. Here are opportunities for peaceful and congenial work, to the sound of mellodious bells; uninterrupted hours, as much society of a simple kind as a man can desire, and the whole with a background of exquisite buildings and rich gardens. And then, too, there is the tide of youthful life that floods every corner of the place. It is an endless pleasure to see the troops of slim and alert young figures, full of enjoyment and life, with all the best gifts of life, health, work, amusement, society, friendship, lying ready to their hand. The sense of this beating and thrilling pulse of life circulating through these sombre and splendid buildings is what gives the place its inner glow; this life full of hope, of sensation, of emotion, not yet shadowed or disillusioned or weary, seems to be as the fire on the altar, throwing up its sharp darting tongues of flame, its clouds of fragrant smoke, giving warmth and significance and a fiery heart to a sombre shrine.

And so it is that Oxford is in a sort a magnetic pole for England; a pole not, perhaps, of intellectual energy, or strenuous liberalism, or clamorous aims, or political ideas; few, perhaps, of the sturdy forces that make England potently great, centre there. The greatness of England is, I suppose, made up by her breezy, loud-voiced sailors, her lively, plucky soldiers, her ardent, undefeated merchants, her tranquil administrators; by the stubborn adventurous spirit that makes itself at home everywhere, and finds it natural to assume responsibilities. But to Oxford set the currents of what may be called intellectual emotion, the ideals that may not make for immediate national greatness, but which, if delicately and faithfully nurtured, hold out at least a hope of affecting the intellectual and spiritual life of the world. There is something about Oxford which is not in the least typical of England, but typical of the larger brotherhood that is independent of nationalities; that is akin to the spirit which in any land and in every age has produced imperishable monuments of the ardent human soul. The tribe of Oxford is the tribe from whose heart sprang the Psalms of David; Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Virgil, Dante and Goethe are all of the same divine company. It may be said that John Bull, the sturdy angel of England, turns his back slightingly upon such influences; that he regards Oxford as an incidental ornament of his person, like a seal that jingles at his fob. But all generous and delicate spirits do her a secret homage, as a place where the seeds of beauty and emotion, of wisdom and understanding, are sown, as in a secret garden. Hearts such as these, even whirling past that celestial city, among her poor suburbs, feel an inexpressible thrill at the sight of her towers and domes, her walls and groves. Quam dilecta sunt tabernacula, they will say; and they will breathe a reverent prayer that there may be no leading into captivity and no complaining in her streets.



XVIII

Authorship

I found myself at dinner the other day next to an old friend, whom I see but seldom; a quiet, laborious, able man, with the charm of perfect modesty and candour, who, moreover, writes a very beautiful and lucid style. I said to him that I conceived it to be my mission, whenever I met him, to enquire what he was writing, and to beg him to write more. He said smilingly that he was very much occupied in his work, which is teaching, and found little time to write; "besides," he said, "I think that one writes too much." He went on to say that though he loved writing well enough when he was in the mood for it, yet that the labour of shaping sentences, and lifting them to their places, was very severe.

I felt myself a little rebuked by this, for I will here confess that writing is the one pleasure and preoccupation of my own life, though I do not publish a half of what I write. It set me wondering whether I did indeed write too much; and so I said to him: "You mean, I suppose, that one gets into the habit of serving up the same ideas over and over again, with a different sauce, perhaps; but still the same ideas?" "Yes," he said, "that is what I mean. When I have written anything that I care about, I feel that I must wait a long time before the cistern fills again."

We went on to talk of other things; but I have since been reflecting whether there is truth in what my friend said. If his view is true of writing, then it is surely the only art that is so hampered. We should never think that an artist worked too much; we might feel that he did not perhaps finish his big pictures sufficiently; but if he did not spare labour in finishing his pictures, we should never find fault with him for doing, say, as Turner did, and making endless studies and sketches, day after day, of all that struck him as being beautiful. We should feel indeed that some of these unconsidered and rapid sketches had a charm and a grace that the more elaborate pictures might miss; and in any case we should feel that the more that he worked, the firmer and easier would become his sweep of hand, the more deft his power of indicating a large effect by an economy of resource. The musician, too: no one would think of finding fault with him for working every day at his art; and it is the same with all craftsmen; the more they worked, the surer would their touch be.

Now I am inclined to believe that what makes writing good is not so much the pains taken with a particular piece of work, the retouching, the corrections, the dear delays. Still more fruitful than this labour is the labour spent on work that is never used, that never sees the light. Writing is to me the simplest and best pleasure in the world; the mere shaping of an idea in words is the occupation of all others I most love; indeed, to speak frankly, I plan and arrange all my days that I may secure a space for writing, not from a sense of duty, but merely from a sense of delight. The whole world teems with subjects and thoughts, sights of beauty and images of joy and sorrow, that I desire to put into words; and to forbid myself to write would be to exercise the strongest self-denial of which I am capable. Of course I do not mean that I can always please myself. I have piles of manuscripts laid aside which fail either in conception or expression, or in both. But there are a dozen books I would like to write if I had the time.

To be honest, I do not believe in fretting too much over a piece of writing. Writing, laboriously constructed, painfully ornamented, is often, I think, both laborious and painful to read; there is a sense of strain about it. It is like those uneasy figures that one sees in the carved gargoyles of old churches, crushed and writhing for ever under a sense of weight painfully sustained, or holding a gaping mouth open, for the water-pipe to discharge its contents therethrough. However ingenious these carvings are, they always give a sense of tension and oppression to the mind; and it is the same with laboured writers; my theory of writing rather is that the conception should be as clear as possible, and then that the words should flow like a transparent stream, following as simply as possible the shape and outline of the thought within, like a waterbreak over a boulder in a stream's bed. This, I think, is best attained by infinite practice. If a piece of work seems to be heavy and muddy, let it be thrown aside ungrudgingly; but the attempt, even though it be a failure, makes the next attempt easier.

I do not think that one can write for very long at a time to much purpose; I take the two or three hours when the mind is clearest and freshest, and write as rapidly as I can; this secures, it seems to me, a clearness and a unity which cannot be attained by fretful labour, by poking and pinching at one's work. One avoids by rapidity and ardour the dangerous defect of repetition; a big task must be divided into small sharp episodes to be thus swiftly treated. The thought of such a writer as Flaubert lying on his couch or pacing his room, the racked and tortured medium of his art, spending hours in selecting the one perfect word for his purpose, is a noble and inspiring picture; but such a process does not, I fear, always end in producing the effect at which it aims; it improves the texture at a minute point; it sacrifices width and freedom.

Together with clearness of conception and resource of vocabulary must come a certain eagerness of mood. When all three qualities are present, the result is good work, however rapidly it may be produced. If one of the three is lacking, the work sticks, hangs, and grates; and thus what I feel that the word-artist ought to do is to aim at working on these lines, but to be very strict and severe about the ultimate selection of his work. If, for instance, in a big task, a section has been dully and impotently written, let him put the manuscript aside, and think no more of it for a while; let him not spend labour in attempting to mend bad work; then, on some later occasion, let him again get his conception clear, and write the whole section again; if he loves writing for itself he will not care how often this process is repeated.

I am speaking here very frankly; and I will own that for myself, when the day has rolled past and when the sacred hour comes, I sit down to write with an appetite, a keen rapture, such as a hungry man may feel when he sits down to a savoury meal. There is a real physical emotion that accompanies the process; and it is a deep and lively distress that I feel when I am living under conditions that do not allow me to exercise my craft, at being compelled to waste the appropriate hours in other occupations.

It may be fairly urged that with this intense impulse to write, I ought to have contrived to make myself into a better writer; and it might be thought that there is something either grotesque or pathetic in so much emotional enjoyment issuing in so slender a performance. But the essence of the happiness is that the joy resides in the doing of the work and not in the giving it to the world; and though I do not pretend not to be fully alive to the delight of having my work praised and appreciated, that is altogether a secondary pleasure which in no way competes with the luxury of expression.

I am not ungrateful for this delight; it may, I know, be withdrawn from me; but meanwhile the world seems to be full to the brim of expressive and significant things. There is a beautiful old story of a saint who saw in a vision a shining figure approaching him, holding in his hand a dark and cloudy globe. He held it out, and the saint looking attentively upon it, saw that it appeared to represent the earth in miniature; there were the continents and seas, with clouds sweeping over them; and, for all that it was so minute, he could see cities and plains, and little figures moving to and fro. The angel laid his finger on a part of the globe, and detached from it a small cluster of islands, drawing them out of the sea; and the saint saw that they were peopled by a folk, whom he knew, in some way that he could not wholly understand, to be dreary and uncomforted. He heard a voice saying, "He taketh up the isles as a very small thing"; and it darted into his mind that his work lay with the people of those sad islands; that he was to go thither, and speak to them a message of hope.

It is a beautiful story; and it has always seemed to me that the work of the artist is like that. He is to detach from the great peopled globe what little portion seems to appeal to him most; and he must then say what he can to encourage and sustain men, whatever thoughts of joy and hope come most home to him in his long and eager pilgrimage.



XIX

Hamlet

We were talking yesterday about the stage, a subject in which I am ashamed to confess I take but a feeble interest, though I fully recognise the appeal of the drama to certain minds, and its possibilities. One of the party, who had all his life been a great frequenter of theatres, turned to me and said: "After all, there is one play which seems to be always popular, and to affect all audiences, the poor, the middle-class, the cultivated, alike—Hamlet." "Yes," I said, "and I wonder why that is?" "Well," he said, "it is this, I think: that beneath all its subtleties, all its intellectual force, it has an emotional appeal to every one who has lived in the world; every one sees himself more or less in Hamlet; every one has been in a situation in which he felt that circumstances were too strong for him; and then, too," he added, "there is always a deep and romantic interest about the case of a man who has every possible external advantage, youth, health, wealth, rank, love, ardour, and zest, who is yet utterly miserable, and moves to a dark end under a shadow of doom."

I thought, and think this a profound and delicate criticism. There is, of course, a great deal more in Hamlet; there is its high poetry, its mournful dwelling upon deep mysteries, its supernatural terrors, its worldly wisdom, its penetrating insight; but these are all accessories to the central thought; the conception is absolutely firm throughout. The hunted soul of Hamlet, after a pleasant and easy drifting upon the stream of happy events, finds a sombre curtain suddenly twitched aside, and is confronted with a tragedy so dark, a choice so desperate, that the reeling brain staggers, and can hardly keep its hold upon the events and habits of life. Day by day the shadow flits beside him; morning after morning he uncloses his sad eyes upon a world, which he had found so sweet, and which he now sees to be so terrible; the insistent horror breeds a whole troop of spectres, so that all the quiet experiences of life, friendship, love, nature, art, become big with uneasy speculations and surmises; from the rampart-platform by the sea until the peal of ordnance is shot off, as the poor bodies are carried out, every moment brings with it some shocking or brooding experience. Hamlet is not strong enough to close his eyes to these things; if for a moment he attempts this, some tragic thought plucks at his shoulder, and bids the awakened sleeper look out into the struggling light. Neither is he strong enough to face the situation with resolution and courage. He turns and doubles before the pursuing Fury; he hopes against hope that a door of escape may be opened. He poisons the air with gloom and suspicion; he feeds with wilful sadness upon the most melancholy images of death and despair. And though the great creator of this mournful labyrinth, this atrocious dilemma, can involve the sad spirit with an art that thrills all the most delicate fibres of the human spirit, he cannot stammer out even the most faltering solution, the smallest word of comfort or hope. He leaves the problem, where he took it up, in the mighty hands of God.

And thus the play stands as the supreme memorial of the tortured spirit. The sad soul of the prince seems like an orange-banded bee, buzzing against the glass of some closed chamber-window, wondering heavily what is the clear yet palpable medium that keeps it, in spite of all its efforts, from re-entering the sunny paradise of tree and flower, that lies so close at hand, and that is yet unattainable; until one wonders why the supreme Lord of the place cannot put forth a finger, and release the ineffectual spirit from its fruitless pain. As the play gathers and thickens to its crisis, one experiences—and this is surely a test of the highest art—the poignant desire to explain, to reason, to comfort, to relieve; even if one cannot help, one longs at least to utter the yearning of the heart, the intense sympathy that one feels for the multitude of sorrows that oppress this laden spirit; to assuage if only for a moment, by an answering glance of love, the fire that burns in those stricken eyes. And one must bear away from the story not only the intellectual satisfaction, the emotional excitement, but a deep desire to help, as far as a man can, the woes of spirits who, all the world over, are in the grip of these dreary agonies.

And that, after all, is the secret of the art that deals with the presentment of sorrow; with the art that deals with pure beauty the end is plain enough; we may stay our hearts upon it, plunge with gratitude into the pure stream, and recognise it for a sweet and wholesome gift of God; but the art that makes sorrow beautiful, what are we to do with that? We may learn to bear, we may learn to hope that there is, in the mind of God, if we could but read it, a region where both beauty and sadness are one; and meanwhile it may teach us to let our heart go out, in love and pity, to all who are bound upon their pilgrimage in heaviness, and passing uncomforted through the dark valley.



XX

A Sealed Spirit

A few weeks ago I was staying with a friend of mine, a clergyman in the country. He told me one evening a very sad story about one of his parishioners. This was a man who had been a clerk in a London Bank, whose eyesight had failed, and who had at last become totally blind. He was, at the time when this calamity fell upon him, about forty years of age. The Directors of the Bank gave him a small pension, and he had a very small income of his own; he was married, with one son, who was shortly after taken into the Bank as a clerk. The man and his wife came into the parish, and took a tiny cottage, where they lived very simply and frugally. But within a year or two his hearing had also failed, and he had since become totally deaf. It is almost appalling to reflect upon the condition of helplessness to which this double calamity can reduce a man. To be cut off from the sights and sounds of the world, with these two avenues of perception closed, so as to be able to take cognisance of external things only through scent and touch! It would seem to be well-nigh unendurable! He had learnt to read raised type with his fingers, and had been presented by some friends with two or three books of this kind. His speech was, as is always the case, affected, but still intelligible. Only the simplest facts could be communicated to him, by means of a set of cards, with words in raised type, out of which a few sentences could be arranged. But he and his wife had invented a code of touch, by means of which she was able to a certain extent, though of course very inadequately, to communicate with him. I asked how he employed himself, and I was told that he wrote a good deal,—curious, rhapsodical compositions, dwelling much on his own thoughts and fancies. "He sits," said the Vicar, "for hours together on a bench in his garden, and walks about, guided by his wife. His sense of both smell and touch have become extraordinarily acute; and, afflicted as he is, I am sure he is not at all an unhappy man." He produced some of the writings of which he had spoken. They were written in a big, clear hand. I read them with intense interest. Some of them were recollections of his childish days, set in a somewhat antique and biblical phraseology. Some of them were curious reveries, dwelling much upon the perception of natural things through scent. He complained, I remember, that life was so much less interesting in winter because scents were so much less sweet and less complex than in summer. But the whole of the writings showed a serene exaltation of mind. There was not a touch of repining or resignation about them. He spoke much of the aesthetic pleasure that he received from an increased power of disentangling the component elements of a scent, such as came from his garden on a warm summer day. Some of the writings that were shown me were religious in character, in which the man spoke of a constant sense of the nearness of God's presence, and of a strange joy that filled his heart.

On the following day the Vicar suggested that we should go to see him; we turned out of a lane, and found a little cottage with a thatched roof, standing in a small orchard, bright with flowers. On a bench we saw the man sitting, entirely unconscious of our presence. He was a tall, strongly-built fellow with a beard, bronzed and healthy in appearance. His eyes were wide open, and, but for a curious fixity of gaze, I should not have suspected that he was blind. His hands were folded on his knee, and he was smiling; once or twice I saw his lips move as if he was talking to himself. "We won't go up to him," said the Vicar, "as it might startle him; we will find his wife." So we went up to the cottage door, and knocked. It was opened to us by a small elderly woman, with a grave, simple look, and a very pleasant smile. The little place was wonderfully clean and neat. The Vicar introduced me, saying that I had been much interested in her husband's writings, and had come to call on him. She smiled briskly, and said that he would be much pleased. We walked down the path; when we were within a few feet of him, he became aware of our presence, and turned his head with a quiet, expectant air. His wife went up to him, took his hand, and seemed to beat on it softly with her fingers; he smiled, and presently raised his hat, as if to greet us, and then took up a little writing-pad which lay beside him, and began to write. A little conversation followed, his wife reading out what he had written, and then interpreting our remarks to him. What struck me most was the absence of egotism in what he wrote. He asked the Vicar one or two questions, and desired to know who I was. I went and sate down beside him; he wrote in his book that it was a pleasure to him to meet a stranger. Might he take the liberty of seeing him in his own way? "He means," said the wife, smiling, "might he put his hand on your face—some people do not like it," she added apologetically, "and he will quite understand if you do not." I said that I was delighted; and the blind man thereupon laid his hand upon my sleeve, and with an incredible deftness and lightness of touch, so that I hardly felt it, passed his finger-tips over my coat and waistcoat, lingered for a moment over my watch-chain, then over my tie and collar, and then very gently over my face and hair; it did not last half a minute, and there was something curiously magnetic in the touch of the slim firm fingers. "Now I see him," he wrote; "please thank him." "It will please him," said the Vicar, "if we ask him to describe you." In a moment, after a few touches of his wife's hand, he smiled, and wrote down a really remarkably accurate picture of my appearance. We then asked him a few questions about himself. "Very well and very happy," he wrote, "full of the love of God;" and then added, "You will perhaps think that I get tired of doing nothing, but the time is too short for all I want to do." "It is quite true," said his wife, smiling as she read it. "He is as pleased as a child with everything, and every one is so good to him." Presently she asked him to read aloud to us; and in a voice of great distinctness, he read a few verses of the Book of Job from a big volume. The voice was high and resonant, but varied strangely in pitch. He asked at the end whether we had heard every word, and being told that we had, smiled very sweetly and frankly, like a boy who has performed a task well. The Vicar suggested that he should come for a turn with us, at which he visibly brightened, and said he would like to walk through the village. He took our arms, walking between us; and with a delicate courtesy, knowing that we could not communicate with him, talked himself, very quietly and simply, almost all the way, partly of what he was convinced we were passing,—guessing, I imagine, mainly by a sense of smell, and interpreting it all with astonishing accuracy, though I confess I was often unable even to detect the scents which guided him. We walked thus for half an hour, listening to his quiet talk. Two or three people came up to us. Each time the Vicar checked him, and he held out his hand to be shaken; in each case he recognised the person by the mere touch of the hand. "Mrs Purvis, isn't it? Well, you see me in very good company this morning, don't you? It is so kind of the Vicar and his friend to take me out, and it is pleasant to meet friends in the village." He seemed to know all about the affairs of the place, and made enquiries after various people.

It was a very strange experience to walk thus with a fellow-creature suffering from these sad limitations, and yet to be conscious of being in the presence of so perfectly contented and cheerful a spirit. Before we parted, he wrote on his pad that he was working hard. "I am trying to write a little book; of course I know that I can never see it, but I should like to tell people that it is possible to live a life like mine, and to be full of happiness; that God sends me abundance of joy, so that I can say with truth that I am happier now than ever I was in the old days. Such peace and joy, with so many to love me; so little that I can do for others, except to speak of the marvellous goodness of God, and of the beautiful thoughts he gives me." "Yes, he has written some chapters," said the faithful wife; "but he does not want any one to see them till they are done."

I shall never forget the sight of the two as we went away: he stood, smiling and waving his hand, under an apple-tree in full bloom, with the sun shining on the flowers. It gave me the sense of a pure and simple content such as I have rarely experienced. The beauty and strength of the picture have dwelt with me ever since, showing me that a soul can be thus shut up in what would seem to be so dark a prison, with the windows, through which most of us look upon the world, closed and shuttered; and yet not only not losing the joy of life, but seeming to taste it in fullest measure. If one could but accept thus one's own limitations, viewing them not as sources of pleasure closed, but as opening the door more wide to what remains; the very simplicity and rarity of the perceptions that are left, gaining in depth and quality from their isolation. But beyond all this lies that well-spring of inner joy, which seems to be withheld from so many of us. Is it indeed withheld? Is it conferred upon this poor soul simply as a tender compensation? Can we not by quiet passivity, rather than by resolute effort, learn the secret of it? I believe myself that the source is there in many hearts, but that we visit it too rarely, and forget it in the multitude of little cares and businesses, which seem so important, so absorbing. It is like a hidden treasure, which we go so far abroad to seek, and for which we endure much weariness of wandering; while all the while it is buried in our own garden-ground; we have paced to and fro above it many times, never dreaming that the bright thing lay beneath our feet, and within reach of our forgetful hand.



XXI

Leisure

It was a bright day in early spring; large, fleecy clouds floated in a blue sky; the wind was cool, but the sun lay hot in sheltered places.

I was spending a few days with an old friend, at a little house he calls his Hermitage, in a Western valley; we had walked out, had passed the bridge, and had stood awhile to see the clear stream flowing, a vein of reflected sapphire, among the green water-meadows; we had climbed up among the beech-woods, through copses full of primroses, to a large heathery hill, where a clump of old pines stood inside an ancient earth-work. The forest lay at our feet, and the doves cooed lazily among the tree-tops; beyond lay the plain, with a long range of smooth downs behind, where the river broadened to the sea-pool, which narrowed again to the little harbour; and, across the clustered house-roofs and the lonely church tower of the port, we could see a glint of the sea.

We sat awhile in silence; then "Come," I said, "I am going to be impertinent! I am in a mood to ask questions, and to have full answers."

"And I," said my host placidly, "am always in the mood to answer questions."

I would call my friend a poet, because he is sealed of the tribe, if ever man was; yet he has never written verses to my knowledge. He is a big, burly, quiet man, gentle and meditative of aspect; shy before company, voluble in private. Half-humorous, half melancholy. He has been a man of affairs, prosperous, too, and shrewd. But nothing in his life was ever so poetical as the way in which, to the surprise and even consternation of all his friends, he announced one day, when he was turned of forty, that he had had enough of work, and that he would do no more. Well, he had no one to say him nay; he has but few relations, none in any way dependent on him; he has a modest competence; and, being fond of all leisurely things—books, music, the open air, the country, flowers, and the like—he has no need to fear that his time will be unoccupied.

He looked lazily at me, biting a straw. "Come," said I again, "here is the time for a catechism. I have reason to think you are over forty?"

"Yes," said he, "the more's the pity!"

"And you have given up regular work," I said, "for over a year; and how do you like that?"

"Like it?" he said. "Well, so much that I can never work again; and what is stranger still is that I never knew what it was to be really busy till I gave up work. Before, I was often bored; now, the day is never long enough for all I have to do."

"But that is a dreadful confession," I said; "and how do you justify yourself for this miserable indifference to all that is held to be of importance?"

"Listen!" he said, smiling and holding up his hand. There floated up out of the wood the soft crooning of a dove, like the over-brimming of a tide of content. "There's the answer," he added. "How does that dove justify his existence? and yet he has not much on his mind."

"I have no answer ready," I said, "though there is one, I am sure, if you will only give me time; but let that come later: more questions first, and then I will deliver judgment. Now, attend to this seriously," I said. "How do you justify it that you are alone in the world, not mated, not a good husband and father? The dove has not got that on his conscience."

"Ah!" said my friend, "I have often asked myself that. But for many years I had not the time to fall in love; if I had been an idle man it would have been different, and now that I am free—well, I regard it as, on the whole, a wise dispensation. I have no domestic virtues; I am a pretty commonplace person, and I think there is no reason why I should perpetuate my own feeble qualities, bind my dull qualities up closer with the life of the world. Besides, I have a theory that the world is made now very much as it was in the Middle Ages. There was but one choice then—a soldier or a monk. Now, I have no combative blood in me; I hate a row; I am a monk to the marrow of my bones, and the monks are the failures from the point of view of race. No monk should breed monks; there are enough of his kind in the hive already."

"You a monk?" said I, laughing. "Why, you are nothing of the kind; you are just the sort of man for an adoring wife and a handful of big children. I must have a better answer."

"Well, then," said he, rather seriously, "I will give you a better answer. There are some people whose affections are made to run, strong and straight, in a narrow channel. The world holds but one woman for a man of that type, and it is his business to find her; but there are others, and I am one, who dribble away their love in a hundred channels—in art, in nature, among friends. To speak frankly, I have had a hundred such passions. I made friends as a boy, quickly and romantically, with all kinds of people—some old, some young. Then I have loved books, and music, and, above all, the earth and the things of the earth. To the wholesome, normal man these things are but an agreeable background, and the real business of life lies with wife and child and work. But to me the real things have been the beautiful things—sunrise and sunset, streams and woods, old houses, talk, poetry, pictures, ideas. And I always liked my work, too."

"And you did it well?" I said.

"Oh, yes, well enough," he replied. "I have a clear head, and I am conscientious; and then there was some fun to be got out of it at times. But it was never a part of myself for all that. And the reason why I gave it up was not because I was tired of it, but because I was getting to depend too much upon it. I should very soon have been unable to do without it."

"But what is your programme?" I said, rather urgently. "Don't you want to be of some use in the world? To make other people better and happier, for instance."

"My dear boy," said my companion, with a smile, "do you know that you are talking in a very conventional way? Of course, I desire that people should be better and happier, myself among the number; but how am I to set about it? Most people's idea of being better and happier is to make other people subscribe to make them richer. They want more things to eat and drink and wear; they want success and respectability, to be sidesmen and town councillors, and even Members of Parliament. Nothing is more hopelessly unimaginative than ordinary people's aims and ideas, and the aims and ideas, too, that are propounded from pulpits. I don't want people to be richer and more prosperous; I want them to be poorer and simpler. Which is the better man, the shepherd there on the down, out all day in the air, seeing a thousand pretty things, or the grocer behind his counter, living in an odour of lard and cheese, bowing and fussing, and drinking spirits in the evening? Of course, a wholesome-minded man may be wholesome-minded everywhere and anywhere; but prosperity, which is the Englishman's idea of righteousness, is a very dangerous thing, and has very little of what is divine about it. If I had stuck to my work, as all my friends advised me, what would have been the result? I should have had more money than I want, and nothing in the world to live for but my work. Of course, I know that I run the risk of being thought indolent and unpractical. If I were a prophet, I should find it easy enough to scold everybody, and find fault with the poor, peaceful world. But as I am not, I can only follow my own line of life, and try to see and love as many as I can of the beautiful things that God flings down all round us. I am not a philanthropist, I suppose; but most of the philanthropists I have known have seemed to me tiresome, self-seeking people, with a taste for trying to take everything out of God's hands. I am an individualist, I imagine. I think that most of us have to find our way, and to find it alone. I do try to help a few quiet people at the right moment; but I believe that every one has his own circle—some larger, some smaller—and that one does little good outside it. If every one would be content with that, the world would be mended in a trice."

"I am glad that you, at least, admit that there is something to be mended," I said.

"Oh, yes," said he, "the general conditions seem to me to want mending; but that, I humbly think, is God's matter, and not mine. The world is slowly broadening and improving, I believe. In these days, when we shoot our enemies and then nurse them, we are coming, I believe, to see even the gigantic absurdity of war; but all that side of it is too big for me. I am no philosopher! What I believe we ought to do is to be patient, kind, and courageous in a corner. Now, I will give you an instance. I had a friend who was a good, hard-working clergyman; a brave, genial, courageous creature; he had a town parish not far from here; he liked his work, and he did it well. He was the friend of all the boys and girls in the parish; he worked a hundred useful, humble institutions. He was nothing of a preacher, and a poor speaker; but something generous, honest, happy seemed to radiate from the man. Of course, they could not let him alone. They offered him a Bishopric. All his friends said he was bound to take it; the poor fellow wrote to me, and said that he dared not refuse a sphere of wider influence, and all that. I wrote and told him my mind—namely, that he was doing a splendid piece of quiet, sober work, and that he had better stick to it. But, of course, he didn't. Well, what is the result? He is worried to death. He has a big house and a big household; he is a welcome guest in country-houses and vicarages; he opens churches, he confirms; he makes endless poor speeches, and preaches weak sermons. His time is all frittered away in directing the elaborate machinery of a diocese; and all his personal work is gone. I don't say he doesn't impress people. But his strength lay in his personal work, his work as a neighbour and a friend. He is not a clever man; he never says a suggestive thing—he is not a sower of thoughts, but a simple pastor. Well, I regard it as a huge and lamentable mistake that he should ever have changed his course; and the motive that made him do it was a bad one, only disguised as an angel of light. Instead of being the stoker of the train, he is now a distinguished passenger in a first-class carriage."

"Well," I said, "I admit that there is a good deal in what you say. But if such a summons comes to a man, is it not more simple-minded to follow it dutifully? Is it not, after all, part of the guiding of God?"

"Ah!" said my host, "that is a hard question, I admit. But a man must look deep into his heart, and face a situation of the kind bravely and simply. He must be quite sure that it is a summons from God, and not a temptation from the world. I admit that it may be the former. But in the case of which I have just spoken, my friend ought to have seen that it was the latter. He was made for the work he was doing; he was obviously not made for the other. And to sum it up, I think that God puts us into the world to live, not necessarily to get influence over other people. If a man is worth anything, the influence comes; and I don't call it living to attend public luncheons, and to write unnecessary letters, because public luncheons are things which need not exist, and are only amusements invented by fussy and idle people. I am not at all against people amusing themselves. But they ought to do it quietly and inexpensively, and not elaborately and noisily. The only thing that is certain is that men must work and eat and sleep and die. Well, I want them to enjoy their work, their food, their rest; and then I should like them to enjoy their leisure hours peacefully and quietly. I have done as much in my twenty years of business as a man in a well-regulated state ought to do in the whole of his life; and the rest I shall give, God willing, to leisure—not eating my cake in a corner, but in quiet good fellowship, with an eye and an ear for this wonderful and beautiful world." And my companion smiled upon me a large, gentle, engaging smile.

"Yes," I said, "you have answered well, and you have given me plenty to think about. And at all events you have a point of view, and that is a great thing."

"Yes," said he, "a great thing, as long as one is not sure one is right, but ready to learn, and not desirous to teach. That is the mistake. We are children at school—we ought not to forget that; but many of us want to sit in the master's chair, and rap the desk, and cane the other children."

And so our talk wandered to other things; then we were silent for a little, while the birds came home to their roosts, and the trees shivered in the breeze of sunset; till at last the golden glow gathered in the west, and the sun went down in state behind the crimson line of sea.



XXII

The Pleasures of Work

I desire to do a very sacred thing to-day: to enunciate a couple of platitudes and attest them. It is always a solemn moment in life when one can sincerely subscribe to a platitude. Platitudes are the things which people of plain minds shout from the steps of the staircase of life as they ascend; and to discover the truth of a platitude by experience means that you have climbed a step higher.

The first enunciation is, that in this world we most of us do what we like. And the corollary to that is, that we most of us like what we do.

Of course, we must begin by taking for granted that we most of us are obliged to do something. But that granted, it seems to me that it is very rare to find people who do not take a certain pleasure in their work, and even secretly congratulate themselves on doing it with a certain style and efficiency. To find a person who has not some species of pride of this nature is very rare. Other people may not share our opinion of our own work. But even in the case of those whose work is most open to criticism, it is almost invariable to find that they resent criticism, and are very ready to appropriate praise. I had a curiously complete instance of this the other day. In a parish which I often visit, the organ in the church is what is called presided over by the most infamous executant I have ever heard—an elderly man, who seldom plays a single chord correctly, and whose attempts to use the pedals are of the nature of tentative and unsuccessful experiments. His performance has lately caused a considerable amount of indignation in the parish, for a new organ has been placed in the church, of far louder tone than the old instrument, and my friend the organist is hopelessly adrift upon it. The residents in the place have almost made up their minds to send a round-robin to the Vicar to ask that the pulsator organorum, the beater of the organ, as old Cathedral statutes term him, may be deposed. The last time I attended service, one of those strangely appropriate verses came up in the course of the Psalms, which make troubled spirits feel that the Psalter does indeed utter a message to faithful individual hearts. "I have desired that they, even my enemies," ran the verse, "should not triumph over me; for when my foot slipped, they rejoiced greatly against me." In the course of the verse the unhappy performer executed a perfect fandango on the pedals. I looked guiltily at the senior churchwarden, and saw his mouth twitch.

In the same afternoon I fell in with the organist, in the course of a stroll, and discoursed to him in a tone of gentle condolence about the difficulties of a new instrument. He looked blankly at me, and then said that he supposed that some people might find a change of instrument bewildering, but that for himself he felt equally at home on any instrument. He went on to relate a series of compliments that well-known musicians had paid him, which I felt must either have been imperfectly recollected, or else must have been of a consolatory or even ironical nature. In five minutes, I discovered that my friend was the victim of an abundant vanity, and that he believed that his vocation in life was organ-playing.