If destiny were invariably just in her dealings with the wise, then doubtless would the existence of such a law furnish sufficient proof of its excellence; but as it is wholly indifferent, it is better so, and perhaps even greater; for what the actions of the soul may lose in importance thereby does but go to swell the dignity of the universe. And loss of grandeur to the sage there is none; for he is as profoundly sensitive to the greatness of nature as to the greatness that lurks within man. Why harass our soul with endeavour to locate the infinite? As much of it as can be given to man will go to him who has learned to wonder.

78. Do you know a novel of Balzac, belonging to the "Celibataires" series, called Pierrette? It is not one of Balzac's masterpieces, but it has points of much interest for us. It is the story of an orphaned Breton girl, a sweet, innocent child, who is suddenly snatched away, by her evil star, from the grandparents who adore her, and transferred to the care of an aunt and uncle. Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A hard, gloomy couple, these two; retired shopkeepers, who live in a dreary house in the back streets of a dreary country town. Their celibacy weighs heavily upon them; they are miserly, and absurdly vain; morose, and instinctively full of hatred.

The poor inoffensive girl has hardly set foot in the house before her martyrdom begins. There are terrible questions of money and economy, ambitions to be gratified, marriages to be prevented, inheritances to be turned aside: complications of every kind. The neighbours and friends of the Rogrons behold the long and painful sufferings of the victim with unruffled tranquillity, for their every natural instinct leads them to applaud the success of the stronger. And at last Pierrette dies, as unhappily as she has lived; while the others all triumph—the Rogrons, the detestable lawyer Vinet, and all those who had helped them; and the subsequent happiness of these wretches remains wholly untroubled. Fate would even seem to smile upon them; and Balzac, carried away in spite of himself by the reality of it all, ends his story, almost regretfully, with these words: "How the social villainies of this world would thrive under our laws if there were no God!"

We need not go to fiction for tragedies of this kind; there are many houses in which they are matters of daily occurrence. I have borrowed this instance from Balzac's pages because the story lay there ready to hand; the chronicle, day by day, of the triumph of injustice. The very highest morality is served by such instances, and a great lesson is taught; and perhaps the moralists are wrong who try to weaken this lesson by finding excuses for the iniquities of fate. Some are satisfied that God will give innocence its due reward. Others tell us that in this case it is not the victim who has the greatest claim upon our sympathy. And these are doubtless right, from many points of view; for little Pierrette, miserable though she was, and cruelly tormented, did yet experience joys that her tyrants never would know. In the midst of her sorrow, she remained gentle, and tender, and loving; and therein lies greater happiness than in hiding cruelty, hatred, and selfishness beneath a smile. It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love. And how great is the difference between the petty, sordid desires, the grotesque delights, of the Rogrons, and the mighty longing that filled the child's soul as she looked forward to the time when injustice at last should cease! Little wistful Pierrette was perhaps no wiser than those about her; but before such as must bear unmerited suffering there stretches a wide horizon, which here and again takes in the joys that only the loftiest know; even as the horizon of the earth, though not seen from the mountain peak, would appear at times to be one with the corner-stone of heaven. The injustice we commit speedily reduces us to petty, material pleasures; but, as we revel in these, we envy our victim; for our tyranny has thrown open the door to joys whereof we cannot deprive him—joys that are wholly beyond our reach, joys that are purely spiritual. And the door that opens wide to the victim is sealed in the tyrant's soul; and the sufferer breathes a purer air than he who has made him suffer. In the hearts of the persecuted there is radiance, where those who persecute have only gloom; and is it not on the light within us that the wellbeing of happiness depends? He who brings sorrow with him stifles more happiness within himself than in the man he overwhelms. Which of us, had he to choose, but would rather be Pierrette than Rogron? The instinct of happiness within us needs no telling that he who is morally right must be happier than he who is wrong, though the wrong be done from the height of a throne. And, even though the Rogrons be unaware of their Injustice, it alters nothing; for, be we aware or unaware of the evil we commit, the air we breathe will still be heavily charged. Nay, more—to him who knows he does wrong there may come, perhaps, the desire to escape from his prison; but the other will die in his cell, without even his thoughts having travelled beyond the gloomy walls that conceal from him the true destiny of man.

79. Why seek justice where it cannot be? and where can it be, save in our soul? Its language is the natural language of the spirit of man; but this spirit must learn new words ere it can travel in the universe. Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be. The body may revel in ill—gotten pleasure, but virtue alone can bring contentment to the soul. Our inner happiness is measured out to us by an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall into the shining scale. It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had procured for Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius. Some slight intellectual satisfaction there may be in the doing of evil; but none the less does each wrongful deed clip the wings of our thoughts, till at length they can only crawl amidst all that is fleeting and personal. To commit an act of injustice is to prove we have not yet attained the happiness within our grasp. And in evil—reduce things to their primal elements, and you shall find that even the wicked are seeking some measure of peace, a certain up-lifting of soul. They may think themselves happy, and rejoice for such dole as may come to them; but would it have satisfied Marcus Aurelius, who knew the lofty tranquillity, the great quickening of the soul? Show a vast lake to the child who has never beheld the sea, it will clap its hands and be glad, and think the sea is before it; but therefore none the less does the veritable sea exist.

It may be that a man will find happiness in the puny little victories that his vanity, envy, or indifference win for him day after day. Shall we begrudge him such happiness, we, whose eyes can see further? Shall we strive for his consciousness of life, for the religion that pleases his soul, for the conception of the universe that justifies his cares? Yet out of these things are the banks made between which happiness flows; and as they are, so shall the river be, in shallowness or in depth. He may believe that there is a God, or that there is no God; that all ends in this world, or that it is prolonged into the next; that all is matter, or that all is spirit. He will believe these things much as wise men believe them; but do you think his manner of belief can be the same? To look fearlessly upon life; to accept the laws of nature, not with meek resignation, but as her sons, who dare to search and question; to have peace and confidence within our soul—these are the beliefs that make for happiness. But to believe is not enough; all depends on how we believe. I may believe that there is no God, that I am self-contained, that my brief sojourn here serves no purpose; that in the economy of this world without limit my existence counts for as little as the evanescent hue of a flower—I may believe all this, in a deeply religious spirit, with the infinite throbbing within me; you may believe in one all-powerful God, who cherishes and protects you, yet your belief may be mean, and petty, and small. I shall be happier than you, and calmer, if my doubt is greater, and nobler, and more earnest than is your faith; if it has probed more deeply into my soul, traversed wider horizons, if there are more things it has loved. And if the thoughts and feelings on which my doubt reposes have become vaster and purer than those that support your faith, then shall the God of my disbelief become mightier and of supremer comfort than the God to whom you cling. For, indeed, belief and unbelief are mere empty words; not so the loyalty, the greatness and profoundness of the reasons wherefore we believe or do not believe.

80. We do not choose these reasons; they are rewards that have to be earned. Those we have chosen are only slaves we have happened to buy; and their life is but feeble; they hold themselves shyly aloof, ever watching for a chance to escape. But the reasons we have deserved stand faithfully by us; they are so many pensive Antigones, on whose help we may ever rely. Nor can such reasons as these be forcibly lodged in the soul; for indeed they must have dwelt there from earliest days, have spent their childhood there, nourished on our every thought and action; and tokens recalling a life of devotion and love must surround them on every side. And as they throw deeper root—as the mists clear away from our soul and reveal a still wider horizon, so does the horizon of happiness widen also; for it is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom. It demands no material space, but finds ever too narrow the spiritual fields we throw open; wherefore we must unceasingly endeavour to enlarge its territory, until such time as, soaring up on high, it finds sufficient aliment in the space which it does of itself fling open. Then it is, and then only, that happiness truly illumines the most eternal, most human part of man; and indeed all other forms of happiness are merely unconscious fragments of this great happiness, which, as it reflects and looks before it, is conscious of no limit within itself or in all that surrounds it.

81. This space must dwindle daily in those who follow evil, seeing that their thoughts and feelings must of necessity dwindle also. But the man who has risen somewhat will soon forsake the ways of evil; for look deep down enough and you shall ever find its origin in straitened feeling and stunted thought. He does evil no longer, because his thoughts are purer and higher; and now that he is incapable of evil, his thoughts will become purer still. And thus do our thoughts and actions, having won their way into the placid heaven where no barrier restrains the soul, become as inseparable as the wings of a bird; and what to the bird was only a law of equilibrium is here transformed into a law of justice.

82. Who can tell whether the satisfaction derived from evil can ever penetrate to the soul, unless there mingle with it a vague desire, a promise, a distant hope, of goodness or of pity?

The joy of the wretch whose victim lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed in its gloom and futility, save by the thought of mercy that flashes across him. Evil at times would seem compelled to beg a ray of light from virtue, to shed lustre on its triumph. Is it possible for a man to smile in his hatred and not borrow the smile of love? But the smile will be short-lived, for here, as everywhere, there is no inner injustice. Within the soul the high-water mark of happiness is always level with that of justice or charity—which words I use here indifferently, for indeed what is charity or love but justice with naught to do but count its jewels? The man who goes forth to seek his happiness in evil does merely prove thereby that he is less happy than the other who watches, and disapproves. And yet his object is identical with that of the upright man. He too is in search of happiness, of some sort of peace and certainty. Of what avail to punish him? We do not blame the poor because their home is not a palace; it is sad enough to be compelled to live in a hovel. He whose eyes can see the invisible, knows that in the soul of the most unjust man there is justice still: justice, with all her attributes, her stainless garments and holy activity. He knows that the soul of the sinner is ever balancing peace and love, and the consciousness of life, no less scrupulously than the soul of philosopher, saint, or hero; that it watches the smiles of earth—and sky, and is no less aware of all whereby those smiles are destroyed, degraded, and poisoned. We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

83. It may be urged that virtue is subject to defeat and disappointment, no less than vice; but the defeats and disappointments of virtue bring with them no gloom or distress, for they do but tend to soothe and enlighten our thoughts. An act of virtue may sink into the void, but it is then, most of all, that we learn to gauge the depths of life and of soul; and often will it fall into these depths like a radiant stone, beside which our thoughts loom pale. With every vicious scheme that fails before the innocence of Pierrette, Madame Rogron's soul shrivels anew; whereas the clemency of Titus, falling on thankless soil, docs but induce him to lift his eyes on high, far beyond love or pardon. There is no gain in shutting out the world, though it be with walls of righteousness. The last gesture of virtue should be that of an angel flinging open the door. We should welcome our disillusions; for were it the will of destiny that our pardon should always transform an enemy into a brother, then should we go to our grave still unaware of all that springs to light within us beneath the act of unwise clemency, whose unwisdom we never regret. We should die without once having matched all that is best in our soul against the forces that hedge life around. The kindly deed that is wasted, the lofty or only loyal thought that falls on barren ground—these too have their value, for the light they throw differs far from the radiance triumphant virtue suffuses; and thus may we see many things in their differing aspect. There were surely much joy in the thought that love must invariably triumph; but greater joy is there still in tearing aside this illusion, am marching straight on to the truth. "Man has been but too prone," said a philosopher, whom death carried off too soon—"man has been but too prone, through all the course of his history, to lodge his dignity within his errors, and to look upon truth as a thing that depreciated himself. It may sometimes seem less glorious than illusion, but it has the advantage of being true. In the whole domain of thought there is nothing loftier than truth." And there is no bitterness herein, for indeed to the sage truth can never be bitter. He, too, has had his longings in the past, has conceived that truth might move mountains, that a loving act might for ever soften the hearts of men; but to-day he has learned to prefer that this should not be so. Nor is it overweening pride that thus has changed him; he does not think himself more virtuous than the universe; it is his insignificance in the universe that has been made clear to him. It is no longer for the spiritual fruit it bears that he tends the love of justice he has found implanted in his soul, but for the living flowers that spring up within him, and because of his deep respect for all created things. He has no curses for the ungrateful friend, nor even for ingratitude itself. He does not say, "I am better than that man," or "I shall not fall into that vice." But he is taught by ingratitude that benevolence contains joys that are greater than those that gratitude can bestow; joys that are less personal, but more in harmony with life as a whole. He finds more pleasure in the attempt to understand that which is, than in the struggle to believe that which he desires. For a long time he has been like the beggar who was suddenly borne away from his hut and lodged in a magnificent palace. He awoke and threw uneasy glances about him, seeking, in that immense hall, for the squalid things he remembered to have had in his tiny room. Where were the hearth, the bed, the table, stool, and basin? The humble torch of his vigils still trembled by his side, but its light could not reach the lofty ceiling. The little wings of flame threw their feeble flicker on to a pillar close by, which was all that stood out from the darkness. But little by little his eyes grew accustomed to his new abode. He wandered through room after room, and rejoiced as profoundly at all that his torch left in darkness as at all that it threw into light. At first he could have wished in his heart that the doors had been somewhat less lofty, the staircases not quite so ample, the galleries less lost in gloom; but as he went straight before him, he felt all the beauty and grandeur of that which was yet so unlike the home of his dream. He rejoiced to discover that here bed and table were not the centre round which all revolved, as it had been with him in his hut. He was glad that the palace had not been built to conform with the humble habits his misery had forced upon him. He even learned to admire the things that defeated his hopes, for they enabled his eyes to see deeper. The sage is consoled and fortified by everything that exists, for indeed it is of the essence of wisdom to seek out all that exists, and to admit it within its circle.

84. Wisdom even admits the Rogrons; for she holds life of profounder interest than even justice or virtue; and where her attention is disputed by a virtue lost in abstraction, and by a humble, walled-in life, she will incline to the humble life, and not to the magnificent virtue that holds itself proudly aloof. It is of the nature of wisdom to despise nothing; indeed, in this world there is perhaps only one thing truly contemptible, and that thing is contempt itself. Thinkers too often are apt to despise those who go through life without thinking. Thought is doubtless of high value; our first endeavour should be to think as often and as well as we can; but, for all that, it is somewhat beside the mark to believe that the possession, or lack, of a certain faculty for handling general ideas can interpose an actual barrier between men. After all, the difference between the greatest thinker and the smallest provincial burgher is often only the difference between a truth that can sometimes express itself and a truth that can never crystallise into form. The difference is considerable—a gap, but not a chasm. The higher our thoughts ascend, the vainer and the more arbitrary seems the distinction between him who is thinking always and him who thinks not yet. The little burgher is full of prejudice and of passions at which we smile; his ideas are small and petty, and sometimes contemptible enough; and yet, place him side by side with the sage, before essential circumstance of life, before love, grief, death, before something that calls for true heroism, and it shall happen more than once that the sage will turn to his humble companion as to the guardian of a truth no less profound, no less deeply human, than his own. There are moments when the sage realises, that his spiritual treasures are naught; that it is only a few words, or habits, that divide him from other men; there are moments when he even doubts the value of those words. Those are the moments when wisdom flowers and sends forth blossom. Thought may sometimes deceive; and the thinker who goes astray must often retrace his footsteps to the spot whence those who think not have never moved away, where they still remain faithfully seated round the silent, essential truth. They are the guardians of the watch-fires of the tribe; the others take lighted torches and go wandering abroad; but when the air grows heavy and threatens the feeble flame, then is it well to turn back and draw close to the watch-fires once more. These fires seem never to stir from the spot where they always have been; but in truth they ever are moving, keeping time with the worlds; and their flame marks the hour of humanity on the dial of the universe. We know exactly how much the inert forces owe to the thinker; we forget the deep indebtedness of the thinker to inert force. In a world where all were thinkers, more than one indispensable truth might perhaps for ever be lost. For indeed the thinker must never lose touch with those who do not think, as his thoughts would then quickly cease to be just or profound. To disdain is only too easy, not so to understand; but in him who is truly wise there passes no thought of disdain, but it will, sooner or later, evolve into full comprehension. The thought that can travel scornfully over the heads of that great silent throng without recognising its myriad brothers and sisters that are slumbering there in its midst, is only too often merely a sterile, vicious dream. We do well to remind ourselves at times that the spiritual, no less than the physical, atmosphere demands more nitrogen than oxygen for the air to be breathed by man.

85. It need not surprise us that thinkers like Balzac should have loved to dwell on these humble lives. Eternal sameness runs through them, and yet does each century mark profoundest change in the atmosphere that enwraps them. The sky above has altered, but these simple lives have ever the self-same gestures; and it is these unchanging gestures that tell of the altered sky. A great deed of heroism fascinates us; our eye cannot travel beyond the act itself; but insignificant thoughts and deeds lead us on to the horizon beyond them; and is not the shining star of human wisdom always situate on the horizon? If we could see these things as nature sees them, with her thoughts and feelings, we should realise that the uniform mediocrity that runs through these lives cannot truly be mediocre, from the mere fact of its uniformity. And indeed this matters but little; we can never judge another soul above the high-water mark of our own; and however insignificant a creature may seem to us at first, as our own soul emerges from shadow, so does the shadow lift from him. There is nothing our eyes behold that is too small to deserve our love; and there where we cannot love, we have only to raise our lamp till it reaches the level of love, and then throw its light around. Let only one ray of this light go forth every day from our soul, we may then be content. It matters not where the light falls. There is not a thing in this world whereupon your glance or your thought can rest but contains within it more treasure than either of these can fathom; nor is there a thing so small but it has a vastness within that the light that a soul can spare can, at best, but faintly illumine.

86. Is not the very essence of human destiny, stripped of the details that bewilder us, to be found in the most ordinary lives? The mighty struggle of morality on the heights is glorious to witness; but so will a keen observer profoundly admire a magnificent tree that stands alone in a desert, and, his contemplation over, once more go back to the forest, where there are no marvellous trees, but trees in countless abundance. The immense forest is doubtless made up of ordinary branches and stems; but is it not vast, is it not as it should be, seeing that it is the forest? Not by the exceptional shall the last word ever be spoken; and indeed what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal. It is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below, who fight not at all. As we see all that happens to these whose life knows no struggle; as we realise how much must be conquered in us before we can rightly distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are striving on high, then perhaps does the struggle itself appear to become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more. And the reward is the sweeter to us for the silence that enwraps its coming; nor is this from a desire to keep our happiness secret—such as a crafty courtier might feel who hugs fortune's favours to him—but, perhaps, because it is only when happiness thus whispers low in our ear, and no other men know, that it is not according us joys that are filched from our brother's share. Then do we no longer say to ourselves, as we look on those brothers: "How great is the distance between such as these and myself," but in all simplicity do we murmur at last to ourselves: "The loftier my thoughts become, the less is there to divide me from the humblest of my fellow-creatures, from those who are most plentiful on earth; and every step that I take towards an uncertain ideal, is a step that brings me the nearer to those whom I once despised, in the vanity and ignorance of my earliest days."

After all, what is a humble life? It is thus we choose to term the life that ignores itself, that drains itself dry in the place of its birth—a life whose feelings and thoughts, whose desires and passions, entwine themselves around the most insignificant things. But it suffices to look at a life for that life to seem great. A life in itself can be neither great nor small; the largeness is all in the eye that surveys it; and an existence that all men hold to be lofty and vast, is one that has long been accustomed to look loftily on itself from within. If you have never done this, your life must be narrow; but the man who watches you live will discern, in the very obscurity of the corner you fill, an element of horizon, a foothold to cling to, whence his thoughts will rise with surer and more human strength. There is not an existence about us but at first seems colourless, dreary, lethargic: what can our soul have in common with that of an elderly spinster, a slow-witted ploughman, a miser who worships his gold? Can any connection exist between such as these and a deep-rooted feeling, a boundless love for humanity, an interest time cannot stale? But let a Balzac step forward and stand in the midst of them, with his eyes and ears on the watch; and the emotion that lived and died in an old-fashioned country parlour shall as mightily stir our heart, shall as unerringly find its way to the deepest sources of life, as the majestic passion that ruled the life of a king and shed its triumphant lustre from the dazzling height of a throne. "There are certain little agitations," says Balzac in the Cure de Tours, the most admirable of all his studies of humble life—"there are certain little agitations that are capable of generating as much passion within the soul as would suffice to direct the most important social interests. Is it not a mistake to imagine that time only flies swiftly with those whose hearts are devoured by mighty schemes, which fret and fever their life? Not an hour sped past the Abbe Troubert but was as animated, as laden with its burden of anxious thought, as lined with pleading hope and deep despair, as could be the most desperate hour of gambler, plotter, or lover. God alone can tell how much energy is consumed in the triumphs we achieve over men, and things, and ourselves. We may not be always aware whither our steps are leading, but are only too fully conscious of the wearisomeness of the Journey. And yet—if the historian may be permitted to lay aside, for one moment, the story he is telling, and to assume the role of the critic—as you cast your eyes on the lives of these old maids and these two priests, seeking to learn the cause of the sorrow which twisted their heartstrings, it will be revealed to you, perhaps, that certain passions must be experienced by man for there to develop within him the qualities that make a life noble, that widen its area, and stifle the egoism natural to all."

He speaks truly. Not for its own sake, always, should we love the light, but for the sake of what it illumines. The fire on the mountain shines brightly, but there are few men on the mountain; and more service may often be rendered by the torchlight, there where the crowd is. It is in the humble lives that is found the substance of great lives; and by watching the narrowest feelings does enlargement come to our own. Nor is this from any repugnance these feelings inspire, but because they no longer accord with the majestic truth that controls us. It is well to have visions of a better life than that of every day, but it is the life of every day from which elements of a better life must come. We are told we should fix our eyes on high, far above life; but perhaps it is better still that our soul should look straight before it, and that the heights whereupon it should yearn to lay all its hopes and its dreams should be the mountain peaks that stand clearly out from the clouds that gild the horizon.

87. This brings us back once again to external destiny; but the tears that external suffering wrings from us are not the only tears known to man. The sage whom we love must dwell in the midst of all human passions, for only on the passions known to the heart can his wisdom safely be nourished. They are nature's artisans, sent by her to help us construct the palace of our consciousness—of our happiness, in other words; and he who rejects these workers, deeming that he is able, unaided, to raise all the stones of life, will be compelled for ever to lodge his soul in a bare and gloomy cell. The wise man learns to purify his passions; to stifle them can never be proof of wisdom. And, indeed, these things are all governed by the position we take as we stand on the stairs of time. To some of us moral infirmities are so many stairs tending downwards; to others they represent steps that lead us on high. The wise man perchance may do things that are done by the unwise man also; but the latter is forced by his passions to become the abject slave of his instincts, whereas the sage's passions will end by illumining much that was vague in his consciousness. To love madly, perhaps, is not wise; still, should he love madly, more wisdom will doubtless come to him than if he had always loved wisely. It is not wisdom, but the most useless form of pride that can flourish in vacancy and inertia. It is not enough to know what should be done, not though we can unerringly declare what saint or hero would do. Such things a book can teach in a day. It is not enough to intend to live a noble life and then retire to a cell, there to brood over this intention. No wisdom thus acquired can truly guide or beautify the soul; it is of as little avail as the counsels that others can offer. "It is in the silence that follows the storm," says a Hindu proverb, "and not in the silence before it, that we should search for the budding flower."

88. The earnest wayfarer along the paths of life does but become the more deeply convinced, as his travels extend, of the beauty, the wisdom, and truth of the simplest and humblest laws of existence. Their uniformity, the mere fact of their being so general, such matter of every day, are in themselves enough to compel his admiration. And little by little he holds the abnormal ever less highly, and neither seeks nor desires it; for it is soon borne home to him, as he reflects on the vastness of nature, with her slow, monotonous movement, that the ridiculous pretensions our ignorance and vanity put forth are the most truly abnormal of all. He no longer vexes the hours as they pass with prayer for strange or marvellous adventure; for these come only to such as have not yet learned to have faith in life and themselves. He no longer awaits, with folded arms, the chance for superhuman effort; for he feels that he exists in every act that is human. He no longer requires that death, or friendship, or love should come to him decked out with garlands illusion has woven, or escorted by omen, coincidence, presage; but they come in their bareness and simpleness, and are always sure of his welcome. He believes that all that the weak, and the idle, and thoughtless consider sublime and exceptional, that the fall equivalent for the most heroic deed, can be found in the simple life that is bravely and wholly faced. He no longer considers himself the chosen son of the universe; but his happiness, consciousness, peace of mind, have gained all that his pride has lost. And, this point once attained, then will the miraculous adventures of a St. Theresa or Jean-de-la-Croix, the ecstasy of the mystics, the supernatural incidents of legendary loves, the star of an Alexander or a Napoleon—then will all these seem the merest childish illusions compared with the healthy wisdom of a loyal, earnest man, who has no craving to soar above his fellows so as to feel what they cannot feel, but whose heart and brain find the light that they need in the unchanging feelings of all. The truest man will never be he who desires to be other than man. How many there are that thus waste their lives, scouring the heavens for sight of the comet that never will come; but disdaining to look at the stars, because these can be seen by all, and, moreover, are countless in number! This craving for the extraordinary is often the special weakness of ordinary men, who fail to perceive that the more normal, and ordinary, and uniform events may appear to us, the more are we able to appreciate the profound happiness that this uniformity enfolds, and the nearer are we drawn to the truth and tranquillity of the great force by which we have being. What can be less abnormal than the ocean, which covers two-thirds of the globe; and yet, what is there more vast? There is not a thought or a feeling, not an act of beauty or nobility, whereof man is capable, but can find complete expression in the simplest, most ordinary life; and all that cannot be expressed therein must of necessity belong to the falsehoods of vanity, ignorance, or sloth.

89. Does this mean that the wise man should expect no more from life than other men; that he should love mediocrity and limit his desires; content himself with little and restrict the horizon of his happiness, because of the fear lest happiness escape him? By no means; for the wisdom is halting and sickly that can too freely renounce a legitimate human hope. Many desires in man may be legitimate still, notwithstanding the disapproval of reason, sometimes unduly severe. But the fact that our happiness does not seem extraordinary to those about us by no means warrants our thinking that we are not happy. The wiser we are, the more readily do we perceive that happiness lies in our grasp; that it has no more enviable gift than the uneventful moments it brings. The sage has learnt to quicken and love the silent substance of life. In this silent substance only can faithful joys be found, for abnormal happiness never ventures to go with us to the tomb. The day that comes and goes without special whisper of hope or happiness should be as dear to us, and as welcome, as any one of its brothers. On its way to us it has traversed the same worlds and the self-same space as the day that finds us on a throne or enthralled by a mighty love. The hours are less dazzling, perhaps, that its mantle conceals; but at least we may rely more fully on their humble devotion. There are as many eternal minutes in the week that goes by in silence, as in the one that tomes boldly towards us with mighty shout and clamour. And indeed it is we who tell ourselves all that the hour would seem to say; for the hour that abides with us is ever a timid and nervous guest, that will smile if its host be smiling, or weep if his eyes be wet. It has been charged with no mission to bring happiness to us; it is we who should comfort the hour that has sought refuge within our soul. And he is wise who always finds words of peace that he can whisper low to his guest on the threshold. We should let no opportunity for happiness escape us, and the simplest causes of happiness should be ever stored in our soul. It is well, at first, to know happiness as men conceive it, so that, later, we may have good reason for preferring the happiness of our choice. For, herein, it is not unlike what we are told of love. To know what real love should be we must have loved profoundly, and that first love must have fled. It is well to know moments of material happiness, since they teach us where to look for loftier joys; and all that we gain, perhaps, from listening to the hours that babble aloud in their wantonness is that we are slowly learning the language of the hours whose voice is hushed. And of these there are many; they come in battalions, so close on the heels of each other that treachery and flight cannot be; wherefore it is on them alone that the sage should depend. For he will be happy whose eyes have learned to detect the hidden smile and mysterious jewels of the myriad, nameless hours; and where are these jewels to be found, if not in ourselves?

90. But there is a kind of ignoble discretion that has least in common, of all things, with the wisdom we speak of here; for we had far better spend our energy round even fruitless happiness, than slumber by the fireside awaiting joys that never may come. Only the joys that have been offered to all, and none have accepted, will knock at his door who refuses himself to stir forth. Nor is the other man wise who holds the reins too tight on his feelings, and halts them when reason commands, or experience whispers. The friend is not wise who will not confide in his friend, remembering always that friendships may come to an end; nor the lover, who draws back for fear lest he may find shipwreck in love. For here, were we twenty times unfortunate, it is still only the perishable portion of our energy for happiness that suffers; and what is wisdom after all but this same energy for happiness cleansed of all that is impure? To be wise we must first learn to be happy, that we may attach ever smaller importance to what happiness may be in itself. We should be as happy as possible, and our happiness should last as long as is possible; for those who can finally issue forth from self by the portal of happiness, know infinitely wider freedom than those who pass through the gate of sadness. The joy of the sage illumines his heart and his soul alike, whereas sadness most often throws light on the heart alone. One might almost compare the man who had never been happy with a traveller whose every journey had been taken by night. Moreover, there is in happiness a humility deeper and nobler, purer and wider, than sorrow can ever procure. There is a certain humility that ranks with parasitic virtues, such as sterile self-sacrifice, arbitrary chastity, blind submission, fanatic renouncement, penitence, false shame, and many others, which have from time immemorial turned aside from their course the waters of human morality, and forced them into a stagnant pool, around which our memory still lingers. Nor do I speak of a cunning humility that is often mere calculation, or, taken at its best, a timidity that has its root in pride—a loan at usury that our vanity of to-day extends to our vanity of to-morrow. And even the sage at times conceives it well to lower himself in his own self-esteem, and to deny superior merits that are his when comparing himself with other men. Humility of this kind may throw a charm around our ways of life, but yet, sincere as it doubtless may be, it nevertheless attacks the loyalty due to ourselves, which we should value high above all. And it surely implies a certain timidity of conscience; whereas the conscience of the sage should harbour neither timidity nor shame. But by the side of this too personal humility there exists another humility that extends to all things, that is lofty and strong, that has fed on all that is best in our brain and our heart and our soul. It is a humility that defines the limit of the hopes and adventures of men; that lessens us only to add to the grandeur of all we behold; that teaches us where we should look for the true importance of man, which lies not in that which he is, but in that which his eyes can take in, which he strives to accept and to grasp. It is true that sorrow will also bring us to the realm of this humility; but it hastens us through, branching off on the road to a mysterious gate of hope, on whose threshold we lose many days; whereas happiness, that after the first few hours has nothing else left to do, will lead us in silence through path after path till we reach the most unforeseen, inaccessible places of all. It is when the sage knows he possesses at last all man is allowed to possess, that he begins to perceive that it is his manner of regarding what man may never possess, that determines the value of such things as he truly may call his own. And therefore must we long have sunned ourselves in the rays of happiness before we can truly conceive an independent view of life. We must be happy, not for happiness' sake, but so that we may learn to see distinctly that which vain expectation of happiness would for ever hide from our gaze.

91. Economy avails us nothing in the region of the heart, for it is there that men gather the harvest of life's very substance, it were better that nothing were done there than that things should be done by halves; and that which we have not dared to risk is most surely lost of all. To limit our passions is only to limit ourselves, and we are the losers by just so much as we hoped to gain. There are certain fastnesses within our soul that lie buried so deep that love alone dare venture down; and it returns laden with undreamed-of jewels, whose lustre can only be seen as they pass from our open hand to the hand of one we love. And indeed it would seem that so clear a light springs from our hands as they open thus to give, that it penetrates substance too opaque to yield to the mysterious rays just discovered.

92. It avails us nothing unduly to bemoan our errors or losses. For happen what may to the man of simple faith, still, at the last minute of the sorrow-laden hour, at the end of the week or year, still will he find some cause for gladness as he turns his eyes within. Little by little he has learned to regret without tears. He is as a father might be who returns to his home in the evening, his day's work done. He may find his children in tears perhaps, or playing dangerous, forbidden games; the furniture scattered, glasses broken, a lamp overturned; but shall he therefore despair? It would certainly have been better had the children been more obedient, had they quietly learned their lessons—-this would have been more in keeping with every moral theory; but how unreasonable the father who, in the midst of his harsh rebuke, could withhold a smile as he turned his head away! The children have acted unwisely, perhaps, in their exuberance of life; but why should this distress him? All is well, so long as he return home at night, so long as he ever keep about him the key of the guardian dwelling. As we look into ourselves, and pass in review what our heart, and brain, and soul have attempted and carried through while we were away, the benefit lies far more in the searching glance itself than in the actual inspection. And if the hours have not once let fall their mysterious girdle on their way past our threshold; if the rooms be as empty as on the day of departure, and those within have but sat with folded arms and worked not at all—-still, as we enter, shall something be learned from our echoing footsteps, of the extent, and the clearness, and the fidelity, of our home.

93. No day can be uneventful, save in ourselves alone; but in the day that seems most uneventful of all, there is still room for the loftiest destiny; for there is far more scope for such destiny within ourselves than on the whole continent of Europe. Not by the extent of empire is the range of destiny governed, but, indeed, by the depth of our soul. It is in our conception of life that real destiny is found; when at last there is delicate balance between the insoluble questions of heaven and the wavering response of our soul. And these questions become the more tranquil as they seem to comprise more and more; and to the sage, whatever may happen will still widen the scope of the questions, still give deeper confidence to the reply. Speak not of destiny when the event that has brought you joy or sadness has still altered nothing in your manner of regarding the universe. All that remains to us when love and glory are over, when adventures and passions have faded into the past, is but a deeper and ever-deepening sense of the infinite; and if we have not that within us, then are we destitute indeed. And this sense of the infinite is more than a mere assemblage of thoughts, which, indeed, are but the innumerable steps that thither lead. There is no happiness in happiness itself, unless it help our comprehension of the rest, unless it help us in some measure to conceive that the very universe itself must rejoice in existence. The sage who has attained a certain height will find peace in all things that happen; and the event that saddens him, as other men, tarries but an instant ere it goes to strengthen his deep perception of life. He who has learned to see in all things only matter for unselfish wonder, can be deprived of no satisfaction whatever without there spring to sudden life within him, from the mere feeling that this joy can be dispensed with, a high protecting thought that enfolds him in its light. That destiny is beautiful wherein each event, though charged with joy or sadness, has brought reflection to us, has added something to our range of soul, has given us greater peace wherewith to cling to life. And, indeed, the accident that robs us of our love, that leads us along in triumph, or even that seats us on a throne, reveals but little of the workings of destiny; which, indeed, lie far more in the thoughts that arise in our mind as we look at the men around us, at the woman we love; as we dwell on the feelings within us; as we fix our eyes on the evening sky with its crown of indifferent stars.

94. A woman of extraordinary beauty and talent, possessed of the rarest qualities of mind and soul, was one day asked by a friend, to whom she seemed the most perfect creature on earth: "What are your plans? Can any man be worthy of your love? Your future puzzles me. I cannot conceive a destiny that shall be lofty enough for a soul such as yours." He knew but little of destiny. To him, as to most men, it meant thrones, triumphs, dazzling adventures: these things seemed to him the sum of a human destiny; whereby he did but prove that he knew not what destiny was. And, in the first place, why this disdain of to-day? To disdain to-day is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood. To disdain to-day is to declare oneself a stranger, and what can you hope to do in a world where you shall ever pass as a stranger? To-day has this advantage over yesterday, that it exists and was made for us. Be to-day what it will, it has wider knowledge than yesterday; and by that alone does it become more beautiful, and vaster. Why should we think that the woman I speak of would have known a more brilliant destiny in Venice, Florence, or Rome? Her presence might have been sought at magnificent festival, and her beauty have found a fitting surrounding in exquisite landscape. She might have had princes and kings, the elect of the world, at her feet; and perhaps it had needed but one of her smiles to add to a great nation's gladness, to ennoble or chasten the thought of an epoch. Whereas here all her life will be spent among four or five people—four or five souls that know of her soul, and love her. It may be that she never shall stir from her dwelling; that of her life, of her thoughts, and the strength that is in her, there will remain not a trace among men. It may be that her beauty, her force and her instinct for good, will be buried within her: in her heart and the hearts of the few who are near. And even then, and if this be so, the soul of this woman doubtless shall find its own thing to do. The mighty gates through which we must pass to a helpful and noteworthy life no longer grate on their hinges with the deafening clamour of old. They are smaller, perhaps, than they were; less vast and imposing; but their number is greater to-day, and they admit us, in silence, to paths that extend very far. And even though the home of this woman be not brightened by one single gleam from without, will she have failed to fulfil her destiny because her life is lived in the shade? Cannot destiny be beautiful and complete in itself, without help from without? As the soul that has truly conquered surveys the triumphs of the past, it is glad of those only that brought with them a deeper knowledge of life and a nobler humility; of those that lent sweeter charm to the moments when love, glory, and enthusiasm having faded away, the fruit that a few hours of boiling passion had ripened was gathered in meditation and silence. When the feasting is over: when charity, kindness and valorous deed all lie far behind us: what is there left to the soul but some stray recollections, a gain of some consciousness, and a feeling that helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and less apprehension—a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the numberless things it has learned? When the hour for rest has sounded—as it must sound every night and at every moment of solitude—when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the thoughts and the confidence it has helped us to acquire? Is our true destiny to be found in the things which take place about us, or in that which abides in our soul? "Be a man's power or glory never so great," said a philosopher, "his soul soon learns how to value the feelings that spring from external events; and as he perceives that no increase has come to his physical faculties, that these remain wholly unchanged, neither altered nor added to, then does the sense of his nothingness burst full upon him. The king who should govern the world must still, like the rest of his brothers, revolve in a limited circle, whose every law must be obeyed; and on his impressions and thoughts must his happiness wholly depend." The impressions his memory retains, we might add, because they have chastened his mind; for the souls that we deal with here will retain such impressions only as have quickened their sense of goodness, as have made them a little more noble. Is it impossible to find—it matters not where, nor how great be the silence—the same undlssolvable matter that lurks in the cup of the noblest external existence? and seeing that nothing is truly our own till it faithfully follow us into the darkness and silence, why should the thing that has sprung to life there be less faithful in silence and darkness? But we will pursue this no farther, for it leads to a wisdom of over-much theory. For all that a brilliant exterior destiny is not indispensable, still should we always regard it as wholly desirable, and pursue it as keenly as though we valued it highly. It behoves the sage to knock at the door of every temple of glory, of every dwelling where happiness, love, and activity are to be found. And if his strenuous effort and long expectation remain unrewarded, if no door fly open, still may he find, perhaps, in the mere expectation and effort an equivalent for all the emotions and light that he sought. "To act," says Barres, "is to annex to our thoughts vaster fields of experience." It is also, perhaps, to think more quickly than thought, as more completely; for we no longer think with the brain alone, but with every atom of life. It is to wrap round with dream the profoundest sources of thought, and then to confront them with fact. But to act is not always to conquer. To attempt, to be patient, and wait—these, too, may be action; as also, to hear, to watch, and be silent.

If the lot of the woman we speak of had been cast in Athens, or Florence, or Rome, there had been, in her life, certain motives of grandeur, occasions for beauty and happiness, that she may well never meet with to-day. And she is the poorer for lacking the efforts she might have put forth, the memory of what might have been done; for in these lies a force that is precious and vital, that often indeed will transform many more things within us, than a thought which is morally, mentally worth many thousand such efforts and memories. And indeed it is therefore alone that we should desire a brilliant, feverish destiny; because it summons to life certain forces and feelings that would otherwise never emerge from the slumberous peace of an over-tranquil existence. But from the moment we know, or even suspect, that these feelings lie dormant within us, we are already giving life to all that is best in those feelings; and it is as though we were, for one brief moment, looking down upon a glorious external destiny from heights such destiny shall only attain at the end of its days; as though we were prematurely gathering the fruit of the tree, which it shall itself still find barren until many a storm has passed.

95. Last night, re-reading Saint-Simon—with whom we seem to ascend a lofty tower, whence our gaze rests on hundreds of human destinies, astir in the valley below—I understood what a beautiful destiny meant to the instinct of man. It would doubtless have puzzled Saint-Simon himself to have told what it was that he loved and admired in some of his heroes, whom he enwraps in a sort of resigned, and almost unconscious, respect. Thousands of virtues that he esteemed highly have ceased to exist to-day, and many a quality now seems petty indeed that he commended in some of his great ones. And yet are there, unperceived as it were by him, four or five men in the midst of the glittering crowd hard by the monarch's throne, four or five earnest benevolent faces on whom our eye still rests gladly; though Saint-Simon gives them no special attention or thought, for in his heart he looks with disfavour on the ideas that govern their life. Fenelon is there; the Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers; there is Monsieur le Dauphin. Their happiness is no greater than that of the rest of mankind. They achieve no marked success, they gain no resplendent victory, They live as the others live—in the fret and expectation of the thing that we choose to call happiness, because it has yet to come. Fenelon incurs the displeasure of the crafty, bigoted king, who, for all his pride, would resent the most trivial offence with the humbleness of humblest vanity; who was great in small things, and petty in all that was great—for such was Louis XIV. Fenelon is condemned, persecuted, exiled. The Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers continue to hold important office at Court, but none the less deem it prudent to live in a kind of voluntary retirement. The Dauphin is not in favour with the King; a powerful, envious clique are for ever intriguing against him, and they finally succeed in crushing his youthful military glory. He lives in the midst of disgrace, misadventure, disaster, that seem irreparable in the eyes of that vain and servile Court; for disgrace and disaster assume the proportions the manners of the day accord. Finally he dies, a few days after the death of the wife he had loved so tenderly. He dies—poisoned, perhaps, as she too; the thunderbolt falling just as the very first rays of kingly favour, whereon he had almost ceased to count, were stealing over his threshold. Such were the troubles and misfortunes, the sorrows and disappointments, that wrapped these lives round; and yet, as we look on this little group, standing firm and silent in the midst of the feverish, intermittent glitter of the rest, then do these four destinies seem truly beautiful to us, and enviable. Through all their vicissitudes one common light shines through them. The great soul of Fenelon illumines them all. Fenelon is faithful to his loftiest thoughts of piety, meekness, wonder, justice, and love; and the other three are faithful to him, who was their master and friend. And what though the mystic ideas of Fenelon be no longer shared by us: what though the ideas that we cling to ourselves, and deem the profoundest and noblest—the ideas that live at the root of our every conviction of life, that have served as the basis of all our moral happiness—what though these should one day fall in ruins behind us, and only arouse a smile among such as believe that they have found other thoughts still, which to them seem more human, and final? Thought, of itself, is possessed of no vital importance; it is the feelings awakened within us by thought that ennoble and brighten our life. Thought is our aim, perhaps; but it may be with this as with many a journey we take—the place we are bound for may interest us less than the journey itself, the people we meet on the road, the unforeseen that may happen. Here, as everywhere, it is only the sincerity of human feeling that abides. As for a thought, we know not, it may be deceptive; but the love, wherewith we have loved it, will surely return to our soul; nor can a single drop of its clearness or strength be abstracted by error. Of that perfect ideal that each of us strives to build up in himself, the sum total of all our thoughts will help only to model the outline; but the elements that go to construct it, and keep it alive, are the purified passion, unselfishness, loyalty, wherein these thoughts have had being. The extent of our love for the thing which we hold to be true is of greater importance than even the truth itself. Does not love bring more goodness to us than thought can ever convey? Loyally to love a great error may well be more helpful than meanly to serve a great truth; for in doubt, no less than in faith, are passion and love to be found. Some doubts are as generous and passionate as the very noblest convictions. Be a thought of the loftiest, surest, or of the most profoundly uncertain, the best that it has to offer is still the chance that it gives us of loving some one thing wholly, without reserve. Whether it be to man, or a God; to country, to world or to error, that I truly do yield myself up, the precious ore that shall some day be found buried deep in the ashes of love will have sprung from the love itself, and not from the thing that I loved. The sincerity of an attachment, its simplicity, firmness, and zeal—these leave a track behind them that time can never efface. All passes away and changes; it may be that all is lost, save only the glow of this ardour, fertility, and strength of our heart.

96. "Never did man possess his soul in such peace as he," says Saint-Simon of one of them, who was surrounded on all sides by malice, and scheming, and snares. And further on he speaks of the "wise tranquillity" of another, and this "wise tranquillity" pervades every one of those whom he terms the "little flock." The "little flock," truly, of fidelity to all that was noblest in thought; the "little flock" of friendship, loyalty, self-respect, and inner contentment, that pass along, radiant with peace and simplicity, in the midst of the lies and ambitions, the follies and treacheries, of Versailles. They are not saints, in the vulgar sense of the word. They have not fled to the depths of forest or desert, or sought egotistic shelter in narrow cells. They are sages, who remain within life and the things that are real. It is not their piety that saves them; it is not in God alone that their soul has found strength. To love God, and to serve Him with all one's might, will not suffice to bring peace and strength to the soul of man. It is only by means of the knowledge and thought we have gained and developed by contact with men that we can learn how God should be loved; for, notwithstanding all things, the human soul remains profoundly human still. It may be taught to cherish the invisible, but it will ever find far more actual nourishment in the virtue or feeling that is simply and wholly human, than in the virtue or passion divine. If there come towards us a man whose soul is truly tranquil and calm, we may be certain that human virtues have given him his tranquillity and his calmness. Were we permitted to peer into the secret recesses of hearts that are now no more, we might discover, perhaps, that the fountain of peace whereat Fenelon slaked his thirst every night of his exile lay rather in his loyalty to Madame Guyon in her misfortune, in his love for the slandered, persecuted Dauphin, than in his expectation of eternal reward; rather in the irreproachable human conscience within him, overflowing with fidelity and tenderness, than in the hopes he cherished as a Christian.

97. Admirable indeed is the serenity of this "little flock!" No virtue, here, to kindle dazzling fires on the mountain, but heart and soul that are alive with flame. No heroism but that of love, of confidence and sincerity, that remember and are content to wait. Some men there are whose virtue issues from them with a noise of clanging gates; in others it dwells as silent as the maid who never stirs from home, who sits thoughtfully by the fireside, always ready to welcome those who enter from the cold without. There is less need of heroic hours, perhaps, in a beautiful life, than of weeks that are grave, and uniform, and pure. It may be that the soul that is loyal and perfectly just is more precious than the one that is tender or full of devotion It will enter less wholly perhaps, and with less exaltation, into the more exuberant adventures of life; but in the events that occur every day we can trust it more fully, rely more completely upon it; and is there a man, after all, no matter how strange and delirious and brilliant his life may have been, who has not spent the great bulk of his time in the midst of most ordinary incident? In our very sublimest hour, as we stand in the midst of the dazzling circles it throws, are we not startled to find that the habits and thoughts of our soberest hour are whirling around with the rest? We must always come back to our normal life, that is built on the solid earth and primitive rock. We are not called upon to contest each day with dishonour, despair, or death; but it is imperative, perhaps, that I should be able to tell myself, at every hour of sadness, that there exists, somewhere, an unchangeable, unconquerable soul that has drawn near to my soul—a soul that is faithful and silent, blind to all that it deems not conformable with the truth. We can only have praise for heroism, and for surpassingly generous deeds; but more praise still—as it demands a more vigilant strength—for the man who never allows an inferior thought to seduce him; who leads a less glorious life, perhaps, but one of more uniform worth. Let us sometimes, in our meditations, bring our desire for moral perfection to the level of daily truth, and be taught how far easier it is to confer occasional benefit than never to do any harm; to bring occasional happiness than never be cause of tears.

98. Their refuge, their "firm rock," as Saint-Simon calls it, lay in each other, and, above all, in themselves; and all that was blameless within their soul became steadfastness in the rock. A thousand substances go to form the foundations of this "firm rock," but all that we hold to be blameless within us will sink to its centre and base. It is true that our standard of conduct may often be sadly at fault; and the vilest of men has a moment each night when he proudly surveys some detestable thought, that seems wholly blameless to him. But I speak of a virtue, here, that is higher than everyday virtue; and the most ordinary man is aware what a virtue becomes, when it is ordinary virtue no longer. Moral beauty, indeed, though it be of the rarest kind, never passes the comprehension of the most narrow-minded of men; and no act is so readily understood as the act that is truly sublime. We may admire a deed profoundly, perhaps, and yet not rise to its height; but it is imperative that we should not abide in the darkness that covers the thing we blame. Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, is due to chance alone; but the peace within us can never be governed by chance. Some souls, I know, for ever are building; others have preference for ruins; and others, still, will wander, their whole life through, seeking shelter beneath strange roofs. And difficult as it may be to transform the instincts that dwell in the soul, it is well that those who build not should be made aware of the joy that the others experience as they incessantly pile stone upon stone. Their thoughts, and attachments, and love; their convictions, deceptions, and even their doubts—all stand in good service; and when the passing storm has demolished their mansion, they build once again with the ruins, a little distance away, something less stately perhaps, but better adapted to all the requirements of life. What regret, disillusion, or sadness can shatter the homestead of him who, in choosing the stones for his dwelling, Was careful to keep all the wisdom and strength that regret, disillusion, and sadness contain? Or might we not say that it is with the roots of the happiness we cherish within as with roots of great trees? The oaks that are subject the most to the stress of the storm thrust their roots the most staunchly and firmly, deep down in eternal soil; and the fate that unjustly pursues us is no more aware of what comes to pass in our soul, than the wind is aware of what happens below in the earth.

99. Here let us note how great is the power, how mysterious the attraction, of veritable happiness. Something of a hush comes over Saint-Simon's stirring narrative as one of the members of the "little flock" passes through the careless, triumphant crowd, unceasingly busy with intrigue and salutation, petty love and petty triumph, amidst the marble staircases and magnificent halls of Versailles. Saint-Simon goes calmly on with his story; but for one second we seem to have compared all this jubilant vanity and ephemeral rejoicing, this brazen-tongued falsehood that secretly trembles, with the serene, unvarying loftiness of those strenuous, tranquil souls. It is as though there should suddenly appear in the midst of a band of children—who are plucking flowers, it may be, stealing fruit, or playing forbidden games—a priest or an aged man, who should go on his way, letting fall not one word of rebuke. The games are suddenly stopped; startled conscience awakens; and unbidden thoughts of duty, reality, truth, rush in on the mind; but with men no more than with children are impressions of long duration, though they spring from the priest, or the sage, or only the thought that has passed and gone on its way. But it matters not, they have seen; and the human soul, for all that the eyes are only too willing to close or turn away, is nobler than most men would wish it to be, for it often troubles their peace; and the soul is quick to declare its preference for that it has seen, and fain would abandon its enforced and wearisome idleness. And although we may smile and make merry as the sage disappears in the distance, he has, though he know it not, left a clear track in the midst of our error and folly, where, haply, it still will abide for a long time to come. And when the sudden hour of tears bursts upon us, then most of all shall we see it enwrapped in light. We find again and again, in Saint-Simon's story, that sorrow no sooner invades a soul somewhat loftier than others, somewhat nearer to life perhaps, than it speedily flies for comfort to one it has thus seen pass by in the midst of the uneasy silence and almost malevolent wonder, that in this world too often attend the footsteps of a blameless life. It is not our wont to question happiness closely in the days when we deem ourselves happy; but when sorrow draws nigh, our memory flies to the peace that somewhere lies hidden: the peace that depends not on the rays of the sun, or the kiss that has been withheld, or the disapproval of kings. At such moments we go not to those who are happy, as we once were happy; for we know that this happiness melts away before the first fretful gesture of fate. Would you learn where true happiness dwells, you have only to watch the movements of those who are wretched, and seek consolation. Sorrow is like the divining-rod that used to avail the seekers of treasure or of clear running water; for he who may have it about him unerringly makes for the house where profoundest peace has its home. And this is so true that we should be wise, perhaps, not to dwell with too much satisfaction on our own peace of mind and tranquillity, on the sincerity of our own acquiescence in the great laws of life, or rely too complacently on the duration of our own happiness, until such time as the instinct of those who suffer impels them to knock at our door, and their eyes can behold, shining bright on the threshold, the steady, unwavering flame of the lamp that burns on for ever. Yes; only they, it may be, have the right to deem themselves safe to whose arms there come to weep those whose eyes are heavy with tears. And indeed there are not a few in this world whose inner smile we can only behold when our eyes have been cleansed by the tears that lay bare the mysterious sources of vision; and then only do we begin to detect the presence of happiness that springs not from the favour or gleam of an hour, but from widest acceptance of life. Here, as in much beside, desire and necessity quicken our senses. The hungry bee will discover the honey, be it hid never so deep in the cavern; and the soul that mourns will spy out the joy that lies hidden in its retreat, or in most impenetrable silence.

100. Destiny begins when consciousness wakes, and bestirs itself within man; not the passive, impoverished consciousness of most souls, but the active consciousness that will accept the event, whatever it may be, as an imprisoned queen will accept a gift that is offered to her in her cell. If nothing should happen, your consciousness yet may create important event from the manner in which it regards the mere dearth of event; but perhaps to each man there occurs vastly more than is needed to satisfy the thirstiest, most indefatigable consciousness. I have at this moment before me the history of a mighty and passionate soul, whom every adventure that makes for the sorrow or gladness of man would seem to have passed by with averted head. It is of Emily Bronte I speak, than whom the first fifty years of this century produced no woman of greater or more incontestable genius. She has left but one book behind her, a novel, called "Wuthering Heights," a curious title, which seems to suggest a storm on a mountain peak. She was the daughter of an English clergyman, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who was the most insignificant, selfish, lethargic, pretentious creature the mind can conceive. There were only two things in life that seemed of importance to him—the purity of his Greek profile, and solicitude for his digestion. As for Emily's unfortunate mother, her whole life would seem to have been spent in admiring this Greek profile and in studying this digestion. But there is scarcely need to dwell upon her existence, for she died only two years after Emily's birth. It is of interest to note, however—if only to prove once again that, in ordinary life, the woman is usually superior to the man she has had to accept—that long after the death of the patient wife a bundle of letters was found, wherein it was clearly revealed that she who had always been silent was fully alive to the indifference and fatuous self-love of her vain and indolent husband. We may, it is true, be conscious of faults in others from which we are ourselves not exempt; although to discover a virtue, perhaps, we must needs have a germ of it in us. Such were Emily's parents. Around her, four sisters and one brother gravely watched the monotonous flight of the hours. The family dwelling, where Emily's whole life was spent, was in the heart of the Yorkshire Moors, at a place called Haworth, a gloomy, desolate village; barren, forsaken, and lonely.

There can never have been a childhood and youth so friendless, monotonous, and dreary as that of Emily and her sisters. There came to them none of those happy little adventures, bright gleams from the unexpected, which we broider and magnify as the years go by, and store at last in our soul as the one inexhaustible treasure acquired by the smiling memory of life. Each day was the same, from first to last—lessons, meals, household duties, work beside an old aunt, and long solitary walks that these grave little girls would take hand in hand, speaking but seldom, across the heather now gay with blossom, now white beneath the snow. At home the father they scarcely saw, who was wholly indifferent, who took his meals in his room, and would come down at night to the rectory parlour and read aloud the appallingly dreary debates of the House of Commons: without, the silence of the adjoining graveyard, the great treeless desert, and the moors that from autumn to summer were swept by the pitiless wind from the north.

The hazard of life—for in every life some effort is put forth by fate—the hazard of life removed Emily three or four times from the desert she had grown to love, and to consider—as will happen to those who remain too long in one spot—the only place in the world where the plants, and the earth, and the sky were truly real and delightful. But after a few weeks' absence the light would fade from her ardent, beautiful eyes; she pined for home; and one or another of the sisters must hasten to bring her back to the lonely vicarage.

In 1843—she was then twenty-five—she returned once again, never more to go forth until summoned by death. Not an event, or a smile, or a whisper of love in the whole of her life to the day of this final return. Nor was her memory charged with one of those griefs or deceptions, which enable the weaklings, or those who demand too little of life, to imagine that passive fidelity to something that has of itself collapsed is an act of virtue; that inactivity is justified by the tears wherein it is bathed; and that the duty of life is accomplished when suffering has been made to yield up all its resignation and sorrow.

Here, in this virgin soul, whose past was a blank, there was nothing for memory or resignation to cling to; nothing before that last journey, as nothing after; unless it be mournful vigils by the side of the brother she nursed—the almost demented brother, whose life was wrecked by his idleness and a great unfortunate passion; who became an incurable opium-eater and drunkard. Then, shortly before her twenty-ninth birthday, on a December afternoon, as she sat in the little whitewashed parlour combing her long black hair, the comb slipped from the fingers that were too weak to retain it, and fell into the fire; and death came to her, more silent even than life, and bore her away from the pale embraces of the two sisters whom fortune had left her.

101. "No touch of love, no hint of fame, no hours of ease lie for you across the knees of fate," exclaims Miss Mary Robinson, who has chronicled this existence, in a fine outburst of sorrow. And truly, viewed from without, what life could be more dreary and colourless, more futile and icily cold, than that of Emily Bronte? But where shall we take our stand, when we pass such a life in review, so as best to discover its truth, to judge it, approve it, and love it? How different it all appears as we leave the little parsonage, hidden away on the moors, and let our eyes rest on the soul of our heroine! It is rare indeed that we thus can follow the life of a soul in a body that knew no adventure; but it is less rare than might be imagined that a soul should have life of its own, which hardly depends, if at all, on incident of week or of year. In "Wuthering Heights"—wherein this soul gives to the world its passions, desires, reflections, realisations, ideals, which is, in a word, its real history—in "Wuthering Heights" there is more adventure, more passion, more energy, more ardour, more love, than is needed to give life or fulfilment to twenty heroic existences, twenty destinies of gladness or sorrow. Not a single event ever paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she could claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and beauty, with matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever happened; but did not all things really happen to her much more directly and tangibly than unto most of us, seeing that everything that took place about her, everything that she saw or heard, was transformed within her into thoughts and feelings, into indulgent love, admiration, adoration of life? What matter whether the event fall on our neighbour's roof or our own? The rain-drops the cloud brings with it are for him who will hold out his vessel; and the gladness, the beauty, the peace, or the helpful disquiet that is found in the gesture of fate, belongs only to him who has learned to reflect. Love never came to her: there fell never once on her ear the lover's magical footfall; and, for all that, this virgin, who died in her twenty-ninth year, has known love, has spoken of love, has penetrated its most impenetrable secrets to such a degree, that those who have loved the most deeply must sometimes uneasily wonder what name they should give to the passion they feel, when she pours forth the words, exaltation and mystery of a love beside which all else seems pallid and casual. Where, if not in her heart, has she heard the matchless words of the girl, who speaks to her nurse of the man who is hated and harassed by all, but whom she wholly adores? "My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. ... I do not love him because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." ...

She has but little acquaintance with the external realities of love, and these she handles so innocently at times as almost to provoke a smile; but where can she have acquired her knowledge of those inner realities, that are interwoven with all that is profoundest and most illogical in passion, with all that is most unexpected, most impossible, and most eternally true? We feel that one must have lived for thirty years beneath burning chains of burning kisses to learn what she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such minuteness, such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two predestined lovers of "Wuthering Heights"; to mark the self-conflicting movements of the tenderness that would make suffer and the cruelty that would make glad, the felicity that prayed for death and the despair that clung to life; the repulsion that desired, the desire drunk with repulsion—love surcharged with hatred, hatred staggering beneath its load of love. ...

And yet it is known to us—for in this poor life of hers all lies open—that she neither loved nor was loved. May it be true then that the last word of an existence is only a word that destiny whispers low to what lies most hidden in our heart? Have we indeed an inner life that yields not in reality to the outer life; that is no less susceptible of experience and impression? Can we live, it matters not where, and love, and hate, listening for no footfall, spurning no creature? Is the soul self-sufficient; and is it always the soul that decides, a certain height once gained? Is it only to those whose conscience still slumbers that events can seem sad or sterile? Did not love and beauty, happiness and adventure—did not all that we go in search of along the ways of life congregate in Emily Bronte's heart? Day after day passed by, with never a joy or emotion; never a smile that the eye could see or the hand could touch; wherefore none the less did her destiny find its fulfilment, for the confidence within her, the eagerness, hope, animation, all were astir; and her heart was flooded with light, and radiant with silent gladness. Of her happiness none can doubt. Not in the soul of the best of all those whose happiness has lasted the longest, been the most active, diversified, perfect, could more imperishable harvest be found than in the soul Emily Bronte lays bare. If to her there came nothing of all that passes in joy and in love, in sorrow, passion, and anguish, still did she possess all that abides when emotion has faded away. Which of the two will know more of the marvellous palace—the blind man who lives there, or the other, with wide-open eyes, who perhaps only enters it once? "To live, not to live"—we must not let mere words mislead us. It is surely possible to live without thought, but not to think, without active life. The essence of the joy or sorrow the event contains lies in the idea the event gives birth to: our own idea, if we are strong; that of others, if we are weak. On your way to the grave there may come a thousand external events towards you, whereof not one, it may be, shall find within you the force that it needs to turn to moral event. Then may you truthfully say, and then only, "I have perhaps not lived." The intimate happiness of our heroine, as of every human being, was in exact proportion to her morality and her sense of the universe; and these indeed are the clearings in the forest of accidents whose area it is well we should know when we seek to measure the happiness a life has experienced. Who that had gained the altitude of peace and comprehension whereon her soul reposed would still be wrought to feeble, bitter, unrefreshing tears by the cares and troubles and deceptions of ordinary life? Who would not then understand why it was that she shed no tears, unlike so many of her sisters, who spend their lives in plaintive wanderings from one broken joy to another? The joy that is dead weighs heavy, and bids fair to crush us, if we cause it to be with us for ever; which is as though a wood-cutter should refuse to lay down his load of dead wood. For dead wood was not made to be eternally borne on the shoulder, but indeed to be burned, and give forth brilliant flame. And as we behold the names that soar aloft in Emily's soul, then are we as heedless as she was of the sorrows of the dead wood. No misfortune but has its horizon, no sadness but shall know comfort, for the man who in the midst of his suffering, in the midst of the grief that must come to him as to all, has learned to espy Nature's ample gesture beneath all sorrow and suffering, and has become aware that this gesture alone is real. "The sage, who is lord of his life, can never truly be said to suffer." wrote an admirable woman, who had known much sorrow herself. "It is from the heights above that he looks down on his life, and if to-day he should seem to suffer, it is only because he has allowed his thoughts to incline towards the less perfect part of his soul." Emily Bronte not only breathes life into tenderness, loyalty, and love, but into hatred and wickedness also; nay, into the very fiercest revengeful ness, the most deliberate perfidy; nor does she deem it incumbent upon her to pardon, for pardon implies only incomplete comprehension. She sees, she admits, and she loves. She admits the evil as well as the good, she gives life to both; well knowing that evil, when all is said, is only righteousness strayed from the path. She reveals to us—not with the moralist's arbitrary formula, but as men and years reveal the truths we have wit to grasp—the final helplessness of evil, brought face to face with life; the final appeasement of all things in nature as well as in death, "which is only the triumph of life over one of its specialised forms." She shows how the dexterous lie, begotten of genius and strength, is forced to bow down before the most ignorant, puniest truth; she shows the self-deception of hatred that sows, all unwilling, the seeds of gladness and love in the life that it anxiously schemes to destroy. She is, perhaps, the first to base a plea for indulgence on the great law of heredity; and when, at the end of her book, she goes to the village churchyard and visits the eternal resting-place of her heroes, the grass grows green alike over grave of tyrant and martyr; and she wonders how "any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

102. I am well aware that here we are dealing with a woman of genius; but genius only throws into bolder relief all that can, and actually does, take place in the lives of all men; otherwise were it genius no longer, but incoherence or madness. It becomes clear to us, after a time, that genius is by no means confined to the extraordinary; and that veritable superiority is composed of elements that every day offers to every man. But we are not considering literature now; and indeed, not by her literary gifts, but by her inner life, was Emily Bronte comforted; for it by no means follows that moral activity waits on brilliant literary powers. Had she remained silent, nor ever grasped a pen, still had there been no diminution of the power within her, of the smile and the fulness of love; still had she worn the air of one who knew whither her steps were tending; and the profound certainty that dwelt within her still had proclaimed that she had known how to make her peace, far up on the heights, with the great disquiet and misery of the world. We should never have known of her—that is all.

There is much to be learned from this humble life, and yet were it perhaps not well to hold it forth as an example to such as already incline overmuch to resignation, for these it might mislead. It is a life that would seem to have been wholly passive—and to be passive is not good for all. She died a virgin in her twenty-ninth year: and it is sad to die a virgin. Is it not the paramount duty of every human being to offer to his destiny all that can be offered to the destiny of man? And indeed we had far better leave behind us work unfinished than life itself incomplete. It is good to be indifferent to vain or idle pleasures; but we have no right almost voluntarily to neglect the most important chances of indispensable happiness. The soul that is unhappy may have within it cause for noble regret. To look largely on the sadness of one's life is to make essay, in the darkness, of the wings that shall one day enable us to soar high above this sadness. Effort was lacking, perhaps, in Emily Bronte's life. (In her soul there was wealth of passion and freedom and daring, but in her life timidity, silence, inertness, conventions, and prejudice; the very things that in thought she despised.) This is the history often of the too-meditative soul. But it is difficult to pass judgment on an entire existence; and here there were much to be said of the devotion wherewith she sacrificed the best years of her youth to an undeserving, though unfortunate, brother. Our remarks then, in a case such as this, must be understood generally only; but still, how long and how narrow is the path that leads from the soul to life! Our thoughts of love, of justice and loyalty, our thoughts of bold ambition—what are all these but acorns that fall from the oak in the forest? and must not thousands and tens of thousands be lost and rot in the lichen ere a single tree spring to life? "She had a beautiful soul," said, speaking of another woman, the woman whose words I quoted above, "a wide intellect, and tender heart, but ere these qualities could issue forth into life they had perforce to traverse a straitened character. Again and again have I wondered at this want of self-knowledge, of return to self. The man who would wish us to see the deepest recess of his life will begin by telling us all that he thinks and he feels, will lead as to his point of view; we are conscious, perhaps, of much elevation of soul; then, as we enter with him still further into his life, he tells of his conduct, his joys and his sorrows; and in these we detect not a gleam of the soul that had shone through his thoughts and desires. When the trumpet is sounded for action, the instincts rush in, the character hastens between; but the soul stands aloof: the soul, which is man's very highest, being like the princess who elects to live on in arrogant penury rather than soil her hands with ordinary labour." Yes, alas, all is useless till such time as we have learned to harden our hands; to transform the gold and silver of thought into a key that shall open, not the ivory gate of our dreams, but the very door of this our dwelling—into a cup that shall hold, not only the wondrous water of dreams, but the living water that falls, drop by drop, on our roof—into scales, not content vaguely to balance schemes for the future, but that record, with unerring accuracy, what we have done to-day. The very loftiest ideal has taken no root within us, so long as it penetrate not every limb, so long as it palpitate not at our finger-tip. Some there are whose intellect profits by this return to self; with others, the character gains. The first have clearest vision for all that concerns not themselves, that calls them not to action; but it is above all when stern reality confronts them, and time for action has come, that the eyes of the others glow bright. One might almost believe in there being an intellectual consciousness, languidly resting for ever upon an immovable throne, whence she issues commands to the will through faithless or indolent envoys, and a moral consciousness, incessantly stirring, afoot, at all times ready to march. It may be that this latter consciousness depends on the former—indeed who shall say that she is not the former, wearied from long repose, wherein she has learned all that was to be learned; that has at last determined to rise, to descend the steps of inactivity and sally forth into life? And all will be well, if only she have not tarried so long that her limbs refuse their office. Is it not preferable sometimes to act in opposition to our thoughts than never dare to act in accord with them? Rarely indeed is the active error irremediable; men and things are quickly on the spot, eager to set it right; but they are helpless before the passive error that has shunned contact with the real. Let all this, however, by no means be construed into meaning that the intellectual consciousness must be starved, or its growth arrested, for fear lest it outpace the moral consciousness. We need have no fear; no ideal conceived by man can be too admirable for life to conform with it. To float the smallest act of justice or love requires a very torrent of desire for good. For our conduct only to be honest we must have thoughts within us ten times loftier than our conduct. Even to keep somewhat clear of evil bespeaks enormous craving for good. Of all the forces in the world there is none melts so quickly away as the thought that has to descend into everyday life; wherefore we must needs be heroic in thought for our deeds to pass muster, or at the least be harmless.

103. Let us once again, and for the last time, return to obscure destinies. They teach us that, physical misfortune apart, there is remedy for all; and that to complain of destiny is only to expose our own feebleness of soul. We are told in the history of Rome how a certain Julius Sabinus, a senator from Gaul, headed a revolt against the Emperor Vespasian, and was duly defeated. He might have sought refuge among the Germans, but only by leaving his young wife, Eponina, behind him, and he had not the heart to forsake her. At moments of disaster and sorrow we learn the true value of life; nor did Julius Sabinus welcome the idea of death. He possessed a villa, beneath which there stretched vast subterranean caverns, known only to him and two freedmen. This villa he caused to be burned, and the rumour was spread that he had sought death by poison, and that his body was consumed by the flames. Eponina herself was deceived, says Plutarch, whose story I follow, with the additions made thereto by the Comte de Champagny, the historian of Antoninus; and when Martialis the freedman told her of her husband's self-slaughter, she lay for three days and three nights on the ground, refusing all nourishment. When Sabinus heard of her grief, he took pity and caused her to know that he lived. She none the less mourned and shed floods of tears, in the daytime, when people were near, but when night fell she sought him below in his cavern. For seven long months did she thus confront the shades, every night, to be with her husband; she even attempted to help him escape; she shaved off his hair and his beard, wrapped his head round with fillets, disguised him, and then had him sent, in a bundle of clothes, to her own native city. But his stay there becoming unsafe, she soon brought him back to his cavern; and herself divided her stay between town and the country, spending her nights with him, and from time to time going to town to be seen by her friends. She became big with child, and, by means of an unguent wherewith she anointed her body, her condition remained unsuspected by even the women at the baths, which at that time were taken in common. And when her confinement drew nigh she went down to her cavern, and there, with no midwife, alone, she gave birth to two sons, as a lioness throws off her cubs. She nourished her twins with her milk, she nursed them through childhood; and for nine years she stood by her husband in the gloom and the darkness. But Sabinus at last was discovered and taken to Rome. He surely would seem to have merited Vespasian's pardon. Eponina led forth the two sons she had reared in the depths of the earth, and said to the Emperor, "These have I brought into the world and fed on my milk, that we might one day be more to implore thy forgiveness." Tears filled the eyes of all who were there; but Caesar stood firm, and the brave Gaul at last was reduced to demand permission to die with her husband. "I have known more happiness with him in the darkness," she cried, "than thou ever shalt know, O Caesar, in the full glare of the sunshine, or in all the splendour of thy mighty empire."