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THE THREAD OF GOLD


BY ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON


FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF QUIET"



  _Quem locum nôsti mihi destinatum?_
  _Quo meos gressus regis?_



LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W

1912




  FIRST EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . November 1905
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1905
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1906
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1906
  SECOND EDITION,  . . . . . . . . . December 1906
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1907
  THIRD EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . October 1907
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1907
  FOURTH EDITION (1/- net) . . . . . May 1910
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1910
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1911
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . May 1911
  Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . July 1912




[Transcriber's note: The source book had no Table of Contents and its
chapters were numbered only, not titled.  However, its pages had
running headers which changed with each chapter.  Those headers have
been converted to chapter titles, and collected here as the Table of
Contents.]


CONTENTS

           Preface
           Introduction (1906)
           Introduction
       I.  The Red Spring
      II.  The Deserted Shrine, The Manor House
     III.  Leucocholy
      IV.  The Flower
       V.  The Fens
      VI.  The Well and the Chapel
     VII.  The Cuckoo
    VIII.  Spring-time
      IX.  The Hare
       X.  The Diplodocus
      XI.  The Beetle
     XII.  The Farm-yard
    XIII.  The Artist
     XIV.  Young Love
      XV.  A Strange Gathering
     XVI.  The Cripple
    XVII.  Oxford
   XVIII.  Authorship
     XIX.  Hamlet
      XX.  A Sealed Spirit
     XXI.  Leisure
    XXII.  The Pleasures of Work
   XXIII.  The Abbey
    XXIV.  Wordsworth
     XXV.  Dorsetshire
    XXVI.  Portland
   XXVII.  Canterbury Tower
  XXVIII.  Prayer
    XXIX.  The Death-bed of Jacob
     XXX.  By the Sea of Galilee
    XXXI.  The Apocalypse
   XXXII.  The Statue
  XXXIII.  The Mystery of Suffering
   XXXIV.  Music
    XXXV.  The Faith of Christ
   XXXVI.  The Mystery of Evil
  XXXVII.  Renewal
 XXXVIII.  The Secret
   XXXIX.  The Message
      XL.  After Death
     XLI.  The Eternal Will
    XLII.  Until the Time
           Conclusion




PREFACE

I sate to-day, in a pleasant hour, at a place called _The Seven
Springs_, high up in a green valley of the _Cotswold_ hills.  Close
beside the road, seven clear rills ripple out into a small pool, and
the air is musical with the sound of running water.  Above me, in a
little thicket, a full-fed thrush sent out one long-drawn cadence after
another, in the joy of his heart, while the lengthening shadows of bush
and tree crept softly over the pale sward of the old pasture-lands, in
the westering light of the calm afternoon.

These springs are the highest head-waters of the _Thames_, and that
fact is stated in a somewhat stilted Latin hexameter carved on a stone
of the wall beside the pool.  The so-called _Thames-head_ is in a
meadow down below _Cirencester_, where a deliberate engine pumps up,
from a hidden well, thousands of gallons a day of the purest water,
which begins the service of man at once by helping to swell the scanty
flow of the _Thames_ and _Severn Canal_.  But _The Seven Springs_ are
the highest hill-fount of Father _Thames_ for all that, streaming as
they do from the eastward ridge of the great oolite crest of the downs
that overhang _Cheltenham_.  As soon as those rills are big enough to
form a stream, the gathering of waters is known as the _Churn_, which,
speeding down by _Rendcomb_ with its ancient oaks, and _Cerney_, in a
green elbow of the valley, join the _Thames_ at _Cricklade_.

It was of the essence of poetry to feel that the water-drops which thus
babbled out at my feet in the spring sunshine would be moving, how many
days hence, beside the green playing-fields at _Eton_, scattered,
diminished, travel-worn, polluted; but still, under night and stars,
through the sunny river-reaches, through hamlet and city, by
water-meadow or wharf, the same and no other.  And half in fancy, half
in earnest, I bound upon the heedless waters a little message of love
for the fields and trees so dear to me.

What a strange parable it all made! the sparkling drops so soon lost to
sight and thought alike, each with its own definite place in the
limitless mind of God, all numbered, none forgotten; each
drop,--bright, new-born, and fresh as it appeared, racing out so
light-heartedly into the sun,--yet as old, and older, than the rocks
from which it sprang!  How often had those water-drops been woven into
cloud-wreaths, through what centuries they had leapt and plunged among
sea-billows, or lain cold and dark in the ocean depths, since the day
when this mass of matter that we call the earth had been cut off and
sent whirling into space, a molten drop from the fierce vortex of its
central sun!  And, what is the strangest thought of all, I can sit here
myself, a tiny atom spun from drift of storms, and concourse of frail
dust, and, however dimly and faintly, depict the course of things,
trace, through some subtle faculty, the movement of the mind of God
through the aeons; and yet, though I can send my mind into the past and
the future, though I can see the things that are not and the things
that are, I am denied the least inkling of what it all signifies, what
the slow movement of the ages is all aimed at, and even what the swift
interchange of light and darkness, pain and pleasure, sickness and
health, love and hate, is meant to mean to me--whether there _is_ a
purpose and an end at all, or whether I am just allowed, for my short
space of days, to sit, a bewildered spectator, at some vast and
unintelligible drama.

Yet to-day the soft sunshine, the babbling springs, the valley brimmed
with haze, the bird's sweet song, all seem framed to assure me that God
means us well, urgently, intensely well.  "My Gospel," wrote one to me
the other day, whose feet move lightly on the threshold of life, "is
the Gospel of contentment.  I do not see the necessity of asking myself
uneasy and metaphysical questions about the Why and the Wherefore and
the What."  The necessity?  Ah, no!  But if one is forced, against
one's will and hope, to go astray in the wilderness out of the way, to
find oneself lonely and hungry, one must needs pluck the bitter berries
of the place for such sustenance as one can.  I doubt, indeed, whether
one is able to compel oneself into and out of certain trains of
thought.  If one dislikes and dreads introspection, one will doubtless
be happier for finding something definite to do instead.  But even so,
the thoughts buzz in one's ears; and then, too, the very wonder about
such things has produced some of the most beautiful things in the
world, such as _Hamlet_, or Keats' _Ode to the Nightingale_, things we
could not well do without.  Who is to decide which is the nobler,
wiser, righter course?  To lose oneself in a deep wonder, with an
anxious hope that one may discern the light; or, on the other hand, to
mingle with the world, to work, to plan, to strive, to talk, to do the
conventional things?  We choose (so we call it) the path that suits us
best, though we disguise our motives in many ways, because we hardly
dare to confess to ourselves how frail is our faculty of choice at all.
But, to speak frankly, what we all do is to follow the path where we
feel most at home, most natural; and the longer I live the more I feel
that we do the things we are impelled to do, the works prepared for us
to walk in, as the old collect says.  How often, in real life, do we
see any one making a clean sweep of all his conditions and
surroundings, to follow the path of the soul?  How often do we see a
man abjure wealth, or resist ambition, or disregard temperament,
_unexpectedly_?  Not once, I think, to speak for myself, in the whole
of my experience.

This, then, is the _motif_ of the following book: that whether we are
conquerors or conquered, triumphant or despairing, prosperous or
pitiful, well or ailing, we are all these things through Him that loves
us.  We are here, I believe, to learn rather than to teach, to endure
rather than to act, to be slain rather than to slay; we are tolerated
in our errors and our hardness, in our conceit and our security, by the
great, kindly, smiling Heart that bade us be.  We can make things a
little easier for ourselves and each other; but the end is not there:
what we are meant to become is joyful, serene, patient, waiting
momently upon God; we are to become, if we can, content not to be
content, full of tenderness and loving-kindness for all the frail
beings that, like ourselves, suffer and rejoice.  But though we are
bound to ameliorate, to improve, to lessen, so far as we can, the
brutal promptings of the animal self that cause the greatest part of
our unhappiness, we have yet to learn to hope that when things seem at
their worst, they are perhaps at their best, for then we are, indeed,
at work upon our hard lesson; and perhaps the day may come when,
looking back upon the strange tangle of our lives, we may see that the
time was most wasted when we were serene, easy, prosperous, and
unthinking, and most profitable when we were anxious, overshadowed, and
suffering.  _The Thread of Gold_ is the fibre of limitless hope that
runs through our darkest dreams; and just as the water-drop which I saw
break to-day from the darkness of the hill, and leap downwards in its
channel, will see and feel, in its seaward course, many sweet and
gentle things, as well as many hard and evil matters, so I, in a year
of my pilgrimage, have set down in this book, a frank picture of many
little experiences and thoughts, both good and evil.  Sometimes the
water-drop glides in the sun among mossy ledges, or lingers by the edge
of the copse, where the hazels lean together; but sometimes it is
darkened and polluted, so that it would seem that the foul oozings that
infect it could never be purged away.  But the turbid elements, the
scum, the mud, the slime--each of which, after all, have their place in
the vast economy of things--float and sink to their destined abode; and
the crystal drop, released and purified, runs joyfully onwards in its
appointed way.

A. C. B.

CIRENCESTER, 8_th April_ 1907.




INTRODUCTION (1906)

I am glad to have the opportunity of saying a few words in my own name
about this book, because the original introduction seems to have misled
some of my readers; and as I have had many kind, encouraging, and
sacred messages about the book from very unexpected quarters, I should
like to add a few further words of explanation.

One of the difficulties under which literary art seems to me to labour
is that it feels bound to run in certain channels, to adopt stereotyped
and conventional media of expression.  What can be more conventional
than the average play, or the average novel?  People in real life do
not behave or talk--at least, this is my experience--in the smallest
degree as they behave or talk in novels or plays; life as a rule has no
plot, and very few dramatic situations.  In real life the adventures
are scanty, and for most of us existence moves on in a commonplace and
inconsequent way.  Misunderstandings are not cleared up, complexities
are not unravelled.  I think it is time that more unconventional forms
of expression should be discovered and used; and at least, we can try
experiments; the experiment that I have here tried, is to present a
sort of _liber studiorum_, a portfolio of sketches and impressions.
The only coherence they possess is that, at the time when they were
written, I was much preoccupied with the wonder as to whether an
optimistic view of life was justified.  The world is a very mysterious
place, and at first sight it presents a sad scene of confusion.  The
wrong people often seem to be punished; blessings, such as those heaped
upon the head of the patriarch Job, do not seem to be accumulated upon
the righteous.  In fact, the old epigram that prosperity is the
blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New, seems
frequently justified.  But, after all, the only soul-history that one
knows well enough to say whether or not the experience of life is
adapted to the qualities of the particular soul, is one's own history;
and, speaking for myself, I can but say, looking back upon my life,
that it does seem to have been regulated hitherto by a very tender and
intimate kind of guidance, though I did not always see how delicate the
adaptation of it was at the time.  The idea of this book, that there is
a certain golden thread of hope and love interwoven with all our lives,
running consistently through the coarsest and darkest fabric, was what
I set out to illustrate rather than to prove.  Everything that bore
upon this fact, while the book was being written, I tried to express as
simply and as lucidly as I could.  The people who have thought the book
formless or lacking in structure, are perfectly right.  It is not, and
it did not set out to be, a finished picture, with a due subordination
of groups and backgrounds.  To me personally, though a finished picture
is a beautiful and an admirable thing, the loose, unconsidered sketches
and studies of an artist have a special charm.  Of an artist, I say;
have I then a claim to be considered an artist?  I cannot answer that
question, but I will go further and say that the sketches of the
humblest amateur have an interest for me, which their finished pictures
often lack.  One sees a revelation of personality, one sees what sort
of things strike an individual mind as beautiful, one sees the method
with which it deals with artistic difficulties.  The most interesting
things of the kind I have ever seen are the portfolios of sketches by
Leonardo da Vinci in the Royal library at Windsor; outlines of heads,
features, flowers, backgrounds, strange engines of war, wings of
birds--the _débris_, almost, of the studio--are there piled up in
confusion.  And in a lesser degree the same is true of all such
collections, though perhaps this shows that one is more interested in
personality than in artistic performance.

A good many people, too, have a gift for presenting a simple impression
of a beautiful thing, who have not the patience or the power of
combination necessary for working out a finished design; and surely it
is foolish to let the convention of art overrule a man's capacities?
To allow that, to acquiesce in silence, to say that because one cannot
express a thing in a certain way, one will not express it at all, seems
to me to be making an instinct into a moral sanction.  One must express
whatever one desires to express, as clearly and as beautifully as
possible, and one must take one's chance as to whether it is a work of
art.  To hold one's tongue, if anything appears to be worth saying,
because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as
foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that
he would never go to any social gathering except those of his precise
social equals, because he was afraid of making mistakes of etiquette.
Etiquette is not a matter of principle; it was not one of the things of
which Moses saw the pattern in the Mount!  The only rule is not to be
pretentious or assuming, not to claim that one's efforts are
necessarily worthy of admiration and attention.

There is a better reason too.  Orthodoxy in art is merely compliance
with the instinctive methods of great artists, and no one ever
succeeded in art who did not make a method of his own.  Originality is
like a fountain-head of fresh water; orthodoxy is too often only the
unimpeachable fluid of the water company.  The best hope for the art
and literature of a nation is that men should try to represent and
express things that they have thought beautiful in an individual way.
They do not always succeed, it is true; sometimes they fail for lack of
force, sometimes for lack of a sympathetic audience.  I have found, in
the case of this book, a good deal of sincere sympathy; and where it
fails, it fails through lack of force to express thoughts that I have
felt with a profound intensity.  I have had critics who have frankly
disliked the book, and I do not in the least quarrel with them for
expressing their opinion; but one does not write solely for the
critics; and on the other hand, I can humbly and gratefully say that I
have received many messages, of pleasure in, and even gratitude for,
the book which leave me in no sort of doubt that it was worth writing;
though I wish with all my heart that it had been worthier of its
motive, and had been better able to communicate the delight of my
visions and dreams.

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.

  MAGDALENE COLLEGE,
  CAMBRIDGE, 24_th November_ 1906.




THE THREAD OF GOLD


INTRODUCTION

I have for a great part of my life desired, perhaps more than I have
desired anything else, to make a beautiful book; and I have tried,
perhaps too hard and too often, to do this, without ever quite
succeeding; by that I mean that my little books, when finished, were
not worthy to be compared with the hope that I had had of them.  I
think now that I tried to do too many things in my books, to amuse, to
interest, to please persons who might read them; and I fear, too, that
in the back of my mind there lay a thought, like a snake in its
hole--the desire to show others how fine I could be.  I tried honestly
not to let this thought rule me; whenever it put its head out, I drove
it back; but of course I ought to have waited till it came out, and
then killed it, if I had only known how to do that; but I suppose I had
a secret tenderness for the little creature as being indeed a part of
myself.

But now I have hit upon a plan which I hope may succeed.  I do not
intend to try to be interesting and amusing, or even fine.  I mean to
put into my book only the things that appear to me deep and strange and
beautiful; and I can happily say that things seem to me to be more and
more beautiful every day.  As when a man goes on a journey, and sees,
in far-off lands, things that please him, things curious and rare, and
buys them, not for himself or for his own delight, but for the delight
of one that sits at home, whom he loves and thinks of, and wishes every
day that he could see;--well, I will try to be like that.  I will keep
the thought of those whom I love best in my mind--and God has been very
good in sending me many, both old and young, whom I love--and I will
try to put down in the best words that I can find the things that
delight me, not for my sake but for theirs.  For one of the strangest
things of all about beauty is, that it is often more clearly perceived
when expressed by another, than when we see it for ourselves.  The only
difficulty that I see ahead is that many of the things that I love best
and that give me the best joy, are things that cannot be told, cannot
be translated into words: deep and gracious mysteries, rays of light,
delicate sounds.

But I will keep out of my book all the things, so far as I can, which
bring me mere trouble and heaviness; cares and anxieties and bodily
pains and dreariness and unkind thoughts and anger, and all
uncleanness.  I cannot tell why our life should be so sadly bound up
with these matters; the only comfort is that even out of this dark and
heavy soil beautiful flowers sometimes spring.  For instance, the
pressure of a care, an anxiety, a bodily pain, has sometimes brought
with it a perception which I have lacked when I have been bold and
joyful and robust.  A fit of anger too, by clearing away little clouds
of mistrust and suspicion, has more than once given me a friendship
that endures and blesses me.

But beauty, innocent beauty of thought, of sound, of sight, seems to me
to be perhaps the most precious thing in the world, and to hold within
it a hope which stretches away even beyond the grave.  Out of silence
and nothingness we arise; we have our short space of sight and hearing;
and then into the silence we depart.  But in that interval we are
surrounded by much joy.  Sometimes the path is hard and lonely, and we
stumble in miry ways; but sometimes our way is through fields and
thickets, and the valley is full of sunset light.  If we could be more
calm and quiet, less anxious about the impression we produce, more
quick to welcome what is glad and sweet, more simple, more contented,
what a gain would be there!  I wonder more and more every day that I
live that we do not value better the thought of these calmer things,
because the least effort to reach them seems to pull down about us a
whole cluster of wholesome fruits, grapes of Eschol, apples of
Paradise.  We are kept back, it seems to me, by a kind of silly fear of
ridicule, from speaking more sincerely and instantly of these delights.

I read the _Life_ of a great artist the other day who received a title
of honour from the State.  I do not think he cared much for the title
itself, but he did care very much for the generous praise of his
friends that the little piece of honour called forth.  I will not quote
his exact words, but he said in effect that he wondered why friends
should think it necessary to wait for such an occasion to indulge in
the noble pleasure of praising, and why they should not rather have a
day in the year when they could dare to write to the friends whom they
admired and loved, and praise them for being what they were.  Of course
if such a custom were to become general, it would be clumsily spoilt by
foolish persons, as all things are spoilt which become conventional.
But the fact remains that the sweet pleasure of praising, of
encouraging, of admiring and telling our admiration, is one that we
English people are sparing of, to our own loss and hurt.  It is just as
false to refrain from saying a generous thing for fear of being thought
insincere and what is horribly called gushing, as it is to say a hard
thing for the sake of being thought straightforward.  If a hard thing
must be said, let us say it with pain and tenderness, but faithfully.
And if a pleasant thing can be said, let us say it with joy, and with
no less faithfulness.

Now I must return to my earlier purpose, and say that I mean that this
little book shall go about with me, and that I will write in it only
strange and beautiful things.  I have many businesses in the world, and
take delight in many of them; but we cannot always be busy.  So when I
have seen or heard something that gives me joy, whether it be a new
place, or, what is better still, an old familiar place transfigured by
some happy accident of sun or moon into a mystery; or if I have been
told of a generous and beautiful deed, or heard even a sad story that
has some seed of hope within it; or if I have met a gracious and kindly
person; or if I have read a noble book, or seen a rare picture or a
curious flower; or if I have heard a delightful music; or if I have
been visited by one of those joyful and tender thoughts that set my
feet the right way, I will try to put it down, God prospering me.  For
thus I think that I shall be truly interpreting his loving care for the
little souls of men.  And I call my book _The Thread of Gold_, because
this beauty of which I have spoken seems to me a thing which runs like
a fine and precious clue through the dark and sunless labyrinths of the
world.

And, lastly, I pray God with all my heart, that he may, in this matter,
let me help and not hinder his will.  I often cannot divine what his
will is, but I have seen and heard enough to be sure that it is high
and holy, even when it seems to me hard to discern, and harder still to
follow.  Nothing shall here be set down that does not seem to me to be
perfectly pure and honest; nothing that is not wise and true.  It may
be a vain hope that I nourish, but I think that God has put it into my
heart to write this book, and I hope that he will allow me to
persevere.  And yet indeed I know that I am not fit for so holy a task,
but perhaps he will give me fitness, and cleanse my tongue with a coal
from his altar fire.




I

The Red Spring

Very deep in this enchanted land of green hills in which I live, lies a
still and quiet valley.  No road runs along it; but a stream with many
curves and loops, deep-set in hazels and alders, moves brimming down.
There is no house to be seen; nothing but pastures and little woods
which clothe the hill-sides on either hand.  In one of these fields,
not far from the stream, lies a secluded spot that I visit duly from
time to time.  It is hard enough to find the place; and I have
sometimes directed strangers to it, who have returned without
discovering it.  Some twenty yards away from the stream, with a ring of
low alders growing round it, there is a pool; not like any other pool I
know.  The basin in which it lies is roughly circular, some ten feet
across.  I suppose it is four or five feet deep.  From the centre of
the pool rises an even gush of very pure water, with a certain hue of
green, like a faintly-tinted gem.  The water in its flow makes a
perpetual dimpling on the surface; I have never known it to fail even
in the longest droughts; and in sharp frosty days there hangs a little
smoke above it, for the water is of a noticeable warmth.

This spring is strongly impregnated with iron, so strongly that it has
a sharp and medical taste; from what secret bed of metal it comes I do
not know, but it must be a bed of great extent, for, though the spring
runs thus, day by day and year by year, feeding its waters with the
bitter mineral over which it passes, it never loses its tinge; and the
oldest tradition of the place is that it was even so centuries ago.

All the rest of the pool is full of strange billowy cloudlike growths,
like cotton-wool or clotted honey, all reddened with the iron of the
spring; for it rusts on thus coming to the air.  But the orifice you
can always see, and that is of a dark blueness; out of which the pure
green water rises among the vaporous and filmy folds, runs away briskly
out of the pool in a little channel among alders, all stained with the
same orange tints, and falls into the greater stream at a loop, tinging
its waters for a mile.

It is said to have strange health-giving qualities; and the water is
drunk beneath the moon by old country folk for wasting and weakening
complaints.  Its strength and potency have no enmity to animal life,
for the water-voles burrow in the banks and plunge with a splash in the
stream; but it seems that no vegetable thing can grow within it, for
the pool and channel are always free of weeds.

I like to stand upon the bank and watch the green water rise and dimple
to the top of the pool, and to hear it bickering away in its rusty
channel.  But the beauty of the place is not a simple beauty; there is
something strange and almost fierce about the red-stained water-course;
something uncanny and terrifying about the filmy orange clouds that
stir and sway in the pool; and there sleeps, too, round the edges of
the basin a bright and viscous scum, with a certain ugly radiance, shot
with colours that are almost too sharp and fervid for nature.  It seems
as though some diligent alchemy was at work, pouring out from moment to
moment this strangely tempered potion.  In summer it is more bearable
to look upon, when the grass is bright and soft, when the tapestry of
leaves and climbing plants is woven over the skirts of the thicket,
when the trees are in joyful leaf.  But in the winter, when all tints
are low and spare, when the pastures are yellowed with age, and the
hillside wrinkled with cold, when the alder-rods stand up stiff and
black, and the leafless tangled boughs are smooth like wire; then the
pool has a certain horror, as it pours out its rich juice, all overhung
with thin steam.

But I doubt not that I read into it some thoughts of my own; for it was
on such a day of winter, when the sky was full of inky clouds, and the
wood murmured like a falling sea in the buffeting wind, that I made a
grave and sad decision beside the red pool, that has since tinged my
life, as the orange waters tinge the pale stream into which they fall.
The shadow of that severe resolve still broods about the place for me.
How often since in thought have I threaded the meadows, and looked with
the inward eye upon the green water rising, rising, and the crowded
orange fleeces of the pool!  But stern though the resolve was, it was
not an unhappy one; and it has brought into my life a firm and tonic
quality, which seems to me to hold within it something of the
astringent savour of the medicated waters, and perhaps something of
their health-giving powers as well.




II

The Deserted Shrine, The Manor House

I was making a vague pilgrimage to-day in a distant and unfamiliar part
of the country, a region that few people ever visit, and saw two things
that moved me strangely.  I left the high-road to explore a hamlet that
lay down in a broad valley to the left; and again diverged from the
beaten track to survey an old grange that lay at a little distance
among the fields.  Turning a corner by some cottages, I saw a small
ancient chapel, of brown weathered stone, covered with orange lichen,
the roof of rough stone tiles.  In the narrow graveyard round it, the
grass grew long and rank; the gateway was choked by briars.  I could
see that the windows of the tiny building were broken.  I have never
before in England seen a derelict church, and I clambered over the wall
to examine it more closely.  It stood very beautifully; from the low
wall of the graveyard, on the further side, you could look over a wide
extent of rich water-meadows, fed by full streams; there was much
ranunculus in flower on the edges of the water-courses, and a few
cattle moved leisurely about with a peaceful air.  Far over the
meadows, out of a small grove of trees, a manor-house held up its
enquiring chimneys.  The door of the chapel was open, and I have seldom
seen a more pitiful sight than it revealed.  The roof within was of a
plain and beautiful design, with carved bosses, and beams of some dark
wood.  The chapel was fitted with oak Jacobean woodwork, pews, a
reading-desk, and a little screen.  At the west was a tiny balustraded
gallery.  But the whole was a scene of wretched confusion.  The
woodwork was mouldering, the red cloth of the pulpit hung raggedly
down, the leaves of the great prayer-book fluttered about the pavement,
in the draught from the door.  The whole place was gnawed by rats and
shockingly befouled by birds; there was a litter of rotting nests upon
the altar itself.  Yet in the walls were old memorial tablets, and the
passage of the nave was paved with lettered graves.  It brought back to
me the beautiful lines--

  "En ara, ramis ilicis obsita,
  Quae sacra Chryses nomina fert deae,
    Neglecta; jamdudum sepultus
    Aedituus jacet et sacerdos."

Outside the sun fell peacefully on the mellow walls, and the starlings
twittered in the roof; but inside the deserted shrine there was a sense
of broken trust, of old memories despised, of the altar of God shamed
and dishonoured.  It was a pious design to build the little chapel
there for the secluded hamlet; and loving thought and care had gone to
making the place seemly and beautiful.  The very stone of the wall, and
the beam of the roof cried out against the hard and untender usage that
had laid the sanctuary low.  Here children had been baptized, tender
marriage vows plighted, and the dead laid to rest; and this was the
end.  I turned away with a sense of deep sadness; the very sunshine
seemed blurred with a shadow of dreariness and shame.

Then I made my way, by a stony road, towards the manor-house; and
presently could see its gables at the end of a pleasant avenue of
limes; but no track led thither.  The gate was wired up, and the drive
overgrown with grass.  Soon, however, I found a farm-road which led up
to the house from the village.  On the left of the manor lay prosperous
barns and byres, full of sleek pigs and busy crested fowls.  The teams
came clanking home across the water-meadows.  The house itself became
more and more beautiful as I approached.  It was surrounded by a moat,
and here, close at hand, stood another ancient chapel, in seemly
repair.  All round the house grew dense thickets of sprawling laurels,
which rose in luxuriance from the edge of the water.  Then I crossed a
little bridge with a broken parapet; and in front of me stood the house
itself.  I have seldom seen a more perfectly proportioned or
exquisitely coloured building.  There were three gables in the front,
the central one holding a beautiful oriel window, with a fine oak door
below.  The whole was built of a pale red brick, covered with a grey
lichen that cast a shimmering light over the front.  Tall chimneys of
solid grace rose from a stone-shingled roof.  The coigns, parapets and
mullions were all of a delicately-tinted orange stone.  To the right
lay a big walled garden, full of flowers growing with careless
richness, the whole bounded by the moat, and looking out across the
broad green water-meadows, beyond which the low hills rose softly in
gentle curves and dingles.

A whole company of amiable dogs, spaniels and terriers, came out with
an effusive welcome; a big black yard-dog, after a loud protesting
bark, joined in the civilities.  And there I sat down in the warm sun,
to drink in the beauty of the scene, while the moor-hens cried
plaintively in the moat, and the dogs disposed themselves at my feet.
The man who designed this old place must have had a wonderful sense of
the beauty of proportion, the charm of austere simplicity.  Generation
after generation must have loved the gentle dignified house, with its
narrow casements, its high rooms.  Though the name of the house, though
the tale of its dwellers was unknown to me, I felt the appeal of the
old associations that must have centred about it.  The whole air, that
quiet afternoon, seemed full of the calling of forgotten voices, and
dead faces looked out from the closed lattices.  So near to my heart
came the spirit of the ancient house, that, as I mused, I felt as
though even I myself had made a part of its past, and as though I were
returning from battling with the far-off world to the home of
childhood.  The house seemed to regard me with a mournful and tender
gaze, as though it knew that I loved it, and would fain utter its
secrets in a friendly ear.  Is it strange that a thing of man's
construction should have so wistful yet so direct a message for the
spirit?  Well, I hardly know what it was that it spoke of; but I felt
the care and love that had gone to the making of it, and the dignity
that it had won from rain and sun and the kindly hand of Nature; it
spoke of hope and brightness, of youth and joy; and told me, too, that
all things were passing away, that even the house itself, though it
could outlive a few restless generations, was indeed _debita morti_,
and bowed itself to its fall.

And then I too, like a bird of passage that has alighted for a moment
in some sheltered garden-ground, must needs go on my way.  But the old
house had spoken with me, had left its mark upon my spirit.  And I know
that in weary hours, far hence, I shall remember how it stood, peering
out of its tangled groves, gazing at the sunrise and the sunset over
the green flats, waiting for what may be, and dreaming of the days that
are no more.




III

Leucocholy

I have had to taste, during the last few days, I know not why, of the
cup of what Gray called Leucocholy; it is not Melancholy, only the pale
shadow of it.  That dark giant is, doubtless, stalking somewhere in the
background, and the shadow cast by his misshapen head passes over my
little garden ground.

I do not readily submit to this mood, and I would wish it away.  I
would rather feel joyful and free from blame; but Gray called it a good
easy state, and it certainly has its compensations.  It does not, like
Melancholy, lay a dark hand on duties and pleasures alike; it is
possible to work, to read, to talk, to laugh when it is by.  But it
sends flowing through the mind a gentle current of sad and weary images
and thoughts, which still have a beauty of their own; it tinges one's
life with a sober greyness of hue; it heightens perception, though it
prevents enjoyment.  In such a mood one can sit silent a long time,
with one's eyes cast upon the grass; one sees the delicate forms of the
tender things that spring softly out of the dark ground; one hears with
a poignant delight the clear notes of birds; something of the spring
languors move within the soul.  There is a sense, too, of reaching out
to light and joy, a stirring of the vague desires of the heart, a
tender hope, an upward-climbing faith; the heart sighs for a peace that
it cannot attain.

To-day I walked slowly and pensively by little woods and pastures,
taking delight in all the quiet life I saw, the bush pricked with
points of green, the boughs thickened with small reddening buds, the
slow stream moving through the pasture; all the tints faint, airy, and
delicate; the life of the world seemed to hang suspended, waiting for
the forward leap.  In a little village I stood awhile to watch the
gables of an ancient house, the wing of a ruined grange, peer solemnly
over the mellow brick wall that guarded a close of orchard trees.  A
little way behind, the blunt pinnacles of the old church-tower stood
up, blue and dim, over the branching elms; beyond all ran the long,
pure line of the rising wold.  Everything seemed so still, so serene,
as a long, pale ray of the falling sun, which laboured among flying
clouds, touched the westward gables with gold--and mine the only
troubled, unquiet spirit.  Hard by there was an old man tottering about
in a little garden, fumbling with some plants, like Laertes on the
upland farm.  His worn face, his ragged beard, his pitifully-patched
and creased garments made him a very type of an ineffectual sadness.
Perhaps his thoughts ran as sadly as my own, but I do not think it was
so, because the minds of many country-people, and of almost all the
old, of whatever degree, seem to me free from what is the curse of
delicately-trained and highly-strung temperaments--namely, the
temptation to be always reverting to the past, or forecasting the
future.  Simple people and aged people put that aside, and live quite
serenely in the moment; and that is what I believe we ought all to
attempt, for most moments are bearable, if one only does not import
into them the weight of the future and the regret of the past.  To
seize the moment with all its conditions, to press the quality out of
it, that is the best victory.  But, alas! we are so made that though we
may know that a course is the wise, the happy, the true course, we
cannot always pursue it.  I remember a story of a public man who bore
his responsibilities very hardly, worried and agonised over them,
saying to Mr Gladstone, who was at that time in the very thick of a
fierce political crisis: "But don't you find you lie awake at night,
thinking how you ought to act, and how you ought to have acted?"  Mr
Gladstone turned his great, flashing eyes upon his interlocutor, and
said, with a look of wonder: "No, I don't; where would be the use of
that?"  And again I remember that old Canon Beadon--who lived, I think,
to his 104th year--said to a friend that the secret of long life in his
own case was that he had never thought of anything unpleasant after ten
o'clock at night.  Of course, if you have a series of compartments in
your brain, and at ten o'clock can turn the key quietly upon the room
that holds the skeletons and nightmares, you are a very fortunate man.

But still, we can all of us do something.  If one has the courage and
good sense, when in a melancholy mood, to engage in some piece of
practical work, it is wonderful how one can distract the great beast
that, left to himself, crops and munches the tender herbage of the
spirit.  For myself I have generally a certain number of dull tasks to
perform, not in themselves interesting, and out of which little
pleasure can be extracted, except the pleasure which always results
from finishing a piece of necessary work.  When I am wise, I seize upon
a day in which I am overhung with a shadow of sadness to clear off work
of this kind.  It is in itself a distraction, and then one has the
pleasure both of having fought the mood and also of having left the
field clear for the mind, when it has recovered its tone, to settle
down firmly and joyfully to more congenial labours.

To-day, little by little, the cloudy mood drew off and left me smiling.
The love of the peaceful and patient earth came to comfort me.  How
pure and free were the long lines of ploughland, the broad back of the
gently-swelling down!  How clear and delicate were the February tints,
the aged grass, the leafless trees!  What a sense of coolness and
repose!  I stopped a long time upon a rustic-timbered bridge to look at
a little stream that ran beneath the road, winding down through a rough
pasture-field, with many thorn-thickets.  The water, lapsing slowly
through withered flags, had the pure, gem-like quality of the winter
stream; in summer it will become dim and turbid with infusorial life,
but now it is like a pale jewel.  How strange, I thought, to think of
this liquid gaseous juice, which we call water, trickling in the cracks
of the earth!  And just as the fish that live in it think of it as
their world, and have little cognisance of what happens in the acid,
unsubstantial air above, except the occasional terror of the dim,
looming forms which come past, making the soft banks quiver and stir,
so it may be with us; there may be a great mysterious world outside of
us, of which we sometimes see the dark manifestations, and yet of the
conditions of which we are wholly unaware.

And now it grew dark; the horizon began to redden and smoulder; the
stream gleamed like a wan thread among the distant fields.  It was time
to hurry home, to dip in the busy tide of life again.  Where was my sad
mood gone?  The clear air seemed to have blown through my mind, hands
had been waved to me from leafless woods, quiet voices of field and
stream had whispered me their secrets; "We would tell, if we could,"
they seemed to say.  And I, listening, had learnt patience, too--for
awhile.




IV

The Flower

I have made friends with a new flower.  If it had a simple and
wholesome English name, I would like to know it, though I do not care
to know what ugly and clumsy title the botany books may give it; but it
lives in my mind, a perfect and complete memory of brightness and
beauty, and, as I have said, a friend.

It was in a steep sea-cove that I saw it.  Round a small circular basin
of blue sea ran up gigantic cliffs, grey limestone bluffs; here and
there, where they were precipitous, slanted the monstrous wavy lines of
distorted strata, thrust up, God alone knows how many ages ago, by some
sharp and horrible shiver of the boiling earth.  Little waves broke on
the pebbly beach at our feet, and all the air was full of pleasant
sharp briny savours.  A few boats were drawn up on the shingle;
lobster-pots, nets, strings of cork, spars, oars, lay in pleasant
confusion, by the sandy road that led up to the tiny hamlet above.  We
had travelled far that day and were comfortably weary; we found a
sloping ledge of turf upon which we sat, and presently became aware
that on the little space of grass between us and the cliff must once
have stood a cottage and a cottage garden.  There was a broken wall
behind us, and the little platform still held some garden flowers
sprawling wildly, a stunted fruitbush or two, a knotted apple-tree.

My own flower, or the bushes on which it grew, had once, I think,
formed part of the cottage hedge; but it had found a wider place to its
liking, for it ran riot everywhere; it scaled the cliff, where, too,
the golden wall-flowers of the garden had gained a footing; it fringed
the sand-patches beyond us, it rooted itself firmly in the shingle.
The plant had rough light-brown branches, which were now all starred
with the greenest tufts imaginable; but the flower itself!  On many of
the bushes it was not yet fully out, and showed only in an abundance of
small lilac balls, carefully folded; but just below me a cluster had
found the sun and the air too sweet to resist, and had opened to the
light.  The flower was of a delicate veined purple, a five-pointed
star, with a soft golden heart.  All the open blossoms stared at me
with a tranquil gaze, knowing I would not hurt them.

Below, two fishermen rowed a boat quietly out to sea, the sharp
creaking of the rowlocks coming lazily to our ears in the pauses of the
wind.  The little waves fell with a soft thud, followed by the crisp
echo of the surf, feeling all round the shingly cove.  The whole place,
in that fresh spring day, was unutterably peaceful and content.

And I too forgot all my busy schemes and hopes and aims, the tiny part
I play in the world, with so much petty energy, such anxious
responsibility.  My purple-starred flower approved of my acquiescence,
smiling trustfully upon me.  "Here," it seemed to say, "I bloom and
brighten, spring after spring.  No one regards me, no one cares for me;
no one praises my beauty; no one sorrows when these leaves grow pale,
when I fall from my stem, when my dry stalks whisper together in the
winter wind.  But to you, because you have seen and loved me, I whisper
my secret."  And then the flower told me something that I cannot write
even if I would, because it is in the language unspeakable, of which St
Paul wrote that such words are not lawful for a man to utter; but they
are heard in the third heaven of God.

Then I felt that if I could but remember what the flower said I should
never grieve or strive or be sorrowful any more; but, as the wise
Psalmist said, be content to tarry the Lord's leisure.  Yet, even when
I thought that I had the words by heart, they ceased like a sweet music
that comes to an end, and which the mind cannot recover.

I saw many other things that day, things beautiful and wonderful, no
doubt; but they had no voice for me, like the purple flower; or if they
had, the sea wind drowned them in the utterance, for their voices were
of the earth; but the flower's voice came, as I have said, from the
innermost heaven.

I like well to go on pilgrimage; and in spite of weariness and rainy
weather, and the stupid chatter of the men and women who congregate
like fowls in inn-parlours, I pile a little treasure of sights and
sounds in my guarded heart, memories of old buildings, spring woods,
secluded valleys.  All these are things seen, impressions registered
and gratefully recorded.  But my flower is somehow different from all
these; and I shall never again hear the name of the place mentioned, or
even see a map of that grey coast, without a quiet thrill of gladness
at the thought that there, spring by spring, blooms my little friend,
whose heart I read, who told me its secret; who will wait for me to
return, and indeed will be faithfully and eternally mine, whether I
return or no.




V

The Fens

I have lately become convinced--and I do not say it either
sophistically, to plead a bad cause with dexterity, or resignedly, to
make the best out of a poor business; but with a true and hearty
conviction--that the most beautiful country in England is the flat
fenland.  I do not here mean moderately flat country, low sweeps of
land, like the heaving of a dying groundswell; that has a miniature
beauty, a stippled delicacy of its own, but it is not a fine quality of
charm.  The country that I would praise is the rigidly and
mathematically flat country of Eastern England, lying but a few feet
above the sea, plains which were once the bottoms of huge and ancient
swamps.

In the first place, such country gives a wonderful sense of expanse and
space; from an eminence of a few feet you can see what in other parts
of England you have to climb a considerable hill to discern.  I love to
feast my eyes on the interminable rich level plain, with its black and
crumbling soil; the long simple lines of dykes and water-courses carry
the eye peacefully out to a great distance; then, too, by having all
the landscape compressed into so narrow a space, into a belt of what
is, to the eye, only a few inches in depth, you get an incomparable
richness of colour.  The solitary distant clumps of trees surrounding a
lonely farm gain a deep intensity of tint from the vast green level all
about them; and the line of the low far-off wolds, that close the view
many miles away, is of a peculiar delicacy and softness; the eye, too,
is provided with a foreground of which the elements are of the
simplest; a reedy pool enclosed by willows, the clustered buildings of
a farmstead; a grey church-tower peering out over churchyard elms; and
thus, instead of being checked by near objects, and hemmed in by the
limited landscape, the eye travels out across the plain with a sense of
freedom and grateful repose.  Then, too, there is the huge perspective
of the sky; nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, the slow
march of clouds from horizon to horizon; it all gives a sense of
largeness and tranquillity such as you receive upon the sea, with the
additional advantage of having the solid earth beneath you, green and
fertile, instead of the steely waste of waters.

A day or two ago I found myself beside the lower waters of the Cam, in
flat pastures, full of ancient thorn-trees just bursting into bloom.  I
gained the towing-path, which led me out gradually into the heart of
the fen; the river ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between its
high green flood-banks; the wide spaces between the embanked path and
the stream were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white
cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed.  I stood long to listen to
the sharp song of the reed-warbler, slipping from spray to spray of a
willow-patch.  Far to the north the great tower of Ely rose blue and
dim above the low lines of trees; in the centre of the pastures lay the
long brown line of the sedge-beds of Wicken Mere, almost the only
untouched tract of fenland; slow herds of cattle grazed, more and more
minute, in the unhedged pasture-land, and the solitary figure of a
labourer moving homeward on the top of the green dyke, seemed in the
long afternoon to draw no nearer.  Here and there were the floodgates
of a lode, with the clear water slowly spilling itself over the rim of
the sluice, full of floating weed.  There was something infinitely
reposeful in the solitude, the width of the landscape; there was no
sense of crowded life, no busy figures, intent on their small aims, to
cross one's path, no conflict, no strife, no bitterness, no insistent
voice; yet there was no sense of desolation, but rather the spectacle
of glad and simple lives of plants and birds in the free air, their
wildness tamed by the far-off and controlling hand of man, the calm
earth patiently serving his ends.  I seemed to have passed out of
modern life into a quieter and older world, before men congregated into
cities, but lived the quiet and sequestered life of the country side;
and little by little there stole into my heart something of a dreamful
tranquillity, the calm of the slow brimming stream, the leisurely
herds, the growing grass.  All seemed to be moving together, neither
lingering nor making haste, to some far-off end within the quiet mind
of God.  Everything seemed to be waiting, musing, living the untroubled
life of nature, with no thought of death or care or sorrow.  I passed a
trench of still water that ran as far as the eye could follow it across
the flat; it was full from end to end of the beautiful water violet,
the pale lilac flowers, with their faint ethereal scent, clustered on
the head of a cool emerald spike, with the rich foliage of the plant,
like fine green hair, filling the water.  The rising of these beautiful
forms, by some secret consent, in their appointed place and time, out
of the fresh clear water, brought me a wistful sense of peace and
order, a desire for I hardly know what--a poised stateliness of life, a
tender beauty--if I could but win it for myself!

On and on, hour by hour, that still bright afternoon, I made my slow
way over the fen; insensibly and softly the far-off villages fell
behind; and yet I seemed to draw no nearer to the hills of the horizon.
Now and then I passed a lonely grange; once or twice I came near to a
tall shuttered engine-house of pale brick, and heard the slow beat of
the pumps within, like the pulse of a hidden heart, which drew the
marsh-water from a hundred runlets, and poured it slowly seawards.
Field after field slid past me, some golden from end to end with
buttercups, some waving with young wheat, till at last I reached a
solitary inn beside a ferry, with the quaint title: "_No hurry! five
miles from anywhere._"  And here I met with a grave and kindly welcome,
such as warms the heart of one who goes on pilgrimage: as though I was
certainly expected, and as if the lord of the place had given charge
concerning me.  It would indeed hardly have surprised me if I had been
had into a room, and shown strange symbols of good and evil; or if I
had been given a roll and a bottle, and a note of the way.  But no such
presents were made to me, and it was not until after I had left the
little house, and had been ferried in an old blackened boat across the
stream, that I found that I had the gifts in my bosom all the while.

The roll was the fair sight that I had seen, in this world where it is
so sweet to live.  My cordial was the peace within my spirit.  And as
for the way, it seemed plain enough that day, easy to discern and
follow; and the heavenly city itself as near and visible as the blue
towers that rose so solemnly upon the green horizon.




VI

The Well and the Chapel

It is not often that one is fortunate enough to see two perfectly
beautiful things in one day.  But such was my fortune in the late
summer, on a day that was in itself perfect enough to show what
September can do, if he only has a mind to plan hours of delight for
man.  The distance was very blue and marvellously clear.  The trees had
the bronzed look of the summer's end, with deep azure shadows.  The
cattle moved slowly about the fields, and there was harvesting going
on, so that the villages we passed seemed almost deserted.  I will not
say whence we started or where we went, and I shall mention no names at
all, except one, which is of the nature of a symbol or incantation; for
I do not desire that others should go where I went, unless I could be
sure that they went with the same peace in their hearts that I bore
with me that day.

One of the places we visited on purpose; the other we saw by accident.
On the small map we carried was marked, at the corner of a little wood
that seemed to have no way to it, a well with the name of a saint, of
whom I never heard, though I doubt not she is written in the book of
God.

We reached the nearest point to the well upon the road, and we struck
into the fields; that was a sweet place where we found ourselves!  In
ancient days it had been a marsh, I think.  For great ditches ran
everywhere, choked with loose-strife and water-dock, and the ground
quaked as we walked, a pleasant springy black mould, the dust of
endless centuries of the rich water plants.

To the left, the ground ran up sharply in a minute bluff, with the soft
outline of underlying chalk, covered with small thorn-thickets; and it
was all encircled with small, close woods, where we heard the pheasants
scamper.  We found an old, slow, bovine man, with a cheerful face, who
readily threw aside some fumbling work he was doing, and guided us; and
we should never have found the spot without him.  He led us to a
stream, crossed by a single plank with a handrail, on which some
children had put a trap, baited with nuts for the poor squirrels, that
love to run chattering across the rail from wood to wood.  Then we
entered a little covert; it was very pleasant in there, all dark and
green and still; and here all at once we came to the place; in the
covert were half a dozen little steep pits, each a few yards across,
dug out of the chalk.  From each of the pits, which lay side by side, a
channel ran down to the stream, and in each channel flowed a small
bickering rivulet of infinite clearness.  The pits themselves were a
few feet deep; at the bottom of each was a shallow pool, choked with
leaves; and here lay the rare beauty of the place.  The water rose in
each pit out of secret ways, but in no place that we could see.  The
first pit was still when we looked upon it; then suddenly the water
rose in a tiny eddy, in one corner, among the leaves, sending a little
ripple glancing across the pool.  It was as though something, branch or
insect, had fallen from above, the water leapt so suddenly.  Then it
rose again in another place, then in another; then five or six little
freshets rose all at once, the rings crossing and recrossing.  And it
was the same in all the pits, which we visited one by one; we descended
and drank, and found the water as cold as ice, and not less pure; while
the old man babbled on about the waste of so much fine water, and of
its virtues for weak eyes: "Ain't it cold, now?  Ain't it, then?  My
God, ain't it?"--he was a man with a rich store of simple
asseverations,--"And ain't it good for weak eyes neither!  You must
just come to the place the first thing in the morning, and wash your
eyes in the water, and ain't it strengthening then!"  So he chirped on,
saying everything over and over, like a bird among the thickets.

We paid him for his trouble, with a coin that made him so gratefully
bewildered that he said to us: "Now, gentlemen, if there's anything
else that you want, give it a name; and if you meet any one as you go
away, say 'Perrett told me' (Perrett's my name), and then you'll see!"
What the precise virtue of this invocation was, we did not have an
opportunity of testing, but that it was a talisman to unlock hidden
doors, I make no doubt.

We went back silently over the fields, with the wonder of the thing
still in our minds.  To think of the pure wells bubbling and flashing,
by day and by night, in the hot summer weather, when the smell of the
wood lies warm in the sun; on cold winter nights under moon and stars,
for ever casting up the bright elastic jewel, that men call water, and
feeding the flowing stream that wanders to the sea.  I was very full of
gratitude to the pure maiden saint that lent her name to the well and I
am sure she never had a more devout pair of worshippers.

So we sped on in silence, thinking--at least I thought--how the water
leaped and winked in the sacred wells, and how clear showed the chalk,
and the leaves that lay at the bottom: till at last we drew to our
other goal.  "Here is the gate," said my companion at last.

On one side of the road stood a big substantial farm; on the other, by
a gate, was a little lodge.  Here a key was given us by an old hearty
man, with plenty of advice of a simple and sententious kind, until I
felt as though I were enacting a part in some little _Pilgrim's
Progress_, and as if _Mr Interpreter_ himself, with a very grave smile,
would come out and have me into a room by myself, to see some odd
pleasant show that he had provided.  But it was perhaps more in the
manner of _Evangelist_, for our guide pointed with his finger across a
very wide field, and showed us a wicket to enter in at.

Here was a great flat grassy pasture, the water again very near the
surface, as the long-leaved water-plants, that sprawled in all the
ditches, showed.  But when we reached the wicket we seemed to be as far
removed from humanity as dwellers in a lonely isle.  A few cattle
grazed drowsily, and the crisp tearing of the grass by their big lips
came softly across the pasture.  Inside the wicket stood a single
ancient house, uninhabited, and festooned with ivy into a thing more
bush than house; though a small Tudor window peeped from the leaves,
like the little suspicious eye of some shaggy beast.

A stone's throw away lay a large square moat, full of water, all
fringed with ancient gnarled trees; the island which it enclosed was
overgrown with tiny thickets of dishevelled box-trees, and huge
sprawling laurels; we walked softly round it, and there was our goal: a
small church of a whitish stone, in the middle of a little close of old
sycamores in stiff summer leaf.

It stood so remote, so quietly holy, so ancient, that I could think of
nothing but the "old febel chapel" of the _Morte d'Arthur_.  It had, I
know not why, the mysterious air of romance all about it.  It seemed to
sit, musing upon what had been and what should be, smilingly guarding
some tender secret for the pure-hearted, full of the peace the world
cannot give.

Within it was cool and dark, and had an ancient holy smell; it was
furnished sparely with seat and screen, and held monuments of old
knights and ladies, sleeping peacefully side by side, heads pillowed on
hands, looking out with quiet eyes, as though content to wait.

Upon the island in the moat, we learned, had stood once a flourishing
manor, but through what sad vicissitudes it had fallen into dust I care
not.  Enough that peaceful lives had been lived there; children had
been born, had played on the moat-edge, had passed away to bear
children of their own, had returned with love in their hearts for the
old house.  From the house to the church children had been borne for
baptism; merry wedding processions had gone to and fro, happy Christmas
groups had hurried backwards and forwards; and the slow funeral pomp
had passed thither, under the beating of the slow bell, bearing one
that should not return.

Something of the love and life and sorrow of the good days passed into
my mind, and I gave a tender thought to men and women whom I had never
known, who had tasted of life, and of joyful things that have an end;
and who now know the secret of the dark house to which we all are bound.

When we at last rose unwillingly to go, the sun was setting, and flamed
red and brave through the gnarled trunks of the little wood; the mist
crept over the pasture, and far away the lights of the lonely farm
began to wink through the gathering dark.

But I had seen!  Something of the joy of the two sweet places had
settled in my mind; and now, in fretful, weary, wakeful hours, it is
good to think of the clear wells that sparkle so patiently in the dark
wood; and, better still, to wander in mind about the moat and the
little silent church; and to wonder what it all means; what the love is
that creeps over the soul at the sight of these places, so full of a
remote and delicate beauty; and whether the hunger of the heart for
peace and permanence, which visits us so often in our short and
difficult pilgrimage, has a counterpart in the land that is very far
off.




VII

The Cuckoo

I have been much haunted, indeed infested, if the word may be pardoned,
by cuckoos lately.  When I was a child, acute though my observation of
birds and beasts and natural things was, I do not recollect that I ever
saw a cuckoo, though I often tried to stalk one by the ear, following
the sweet siren melody, as it dropped into the expectant silence from a
hedgerow tree; and I remember to have heard the notes of two, that
seemed to answer each other, draw closer each time they called.

But of late I have become familiar with the silvery grey body and the
gliding flight; and this year I have been almost dogged by them.  One
flew beside me, as I rode the other day, for nearly a quarter of a mile
along a hedgerow, taking short gliding flights, and settling till I
came up; I could see his shimmering wings and his long barred tail.  I
dismounted at last, and he let me watch him for a long time, noting his
small active head, his decent sober coat.  Then, when he thought I had
seen enough, he gave one rich bell-like call, with the full force of
his soft throat, and floated off.

He seemed loath to leave me.  But what word or gift, I thought, did he
bring with him, false and pretty bird?  Do I too desire that others
should hatch my eggs, content with flute-like notes of pleasure?

And yet how strange and marvellous a thing this instinct is; that one
bird, by an absolute and unvarying instinct, should forego the dear
business of nesting and feeding, and should take shrewd advantage of
the labours of other birds!  It cannot be a deliberately reasoned or
calculated thing; at least we say that it cannot; and yet not Darwin
and all his followers have brought us any nearer to the method by which
such an instinct is developed and trained, till it has become an
absolute law of the tribe; making it as natural a thing for the cuckoo
to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there,
as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder.  It seems so
satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the
Creator to take thought in originating it!  It is this whimsicality,
the _bizarre_ humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in
the world, because it seems like the sport of a child with odd
inconsequent fancies, and with omnipotence behind it all the time.  It
seems strange enough to think of the laws that govern the breeding,
nesting, and nurture of birds at all, especially when one considers all
the accidents that so often make the toil futile, like the stealing of
eggs by other birds, and the predatory incursions of foes.  One would
expect a law, framed by omnipotence, to be invariable, not hampered by
all kinds of difficulties that omnipotence, one might have thought,
could have provided against.  And then comes this further strange
variation in the law, in the case of this single family of birds, and
the mystery thickens and deepens.  And stranger than all is the
existence of the questioning and unsatisfied human spirit, that
observes these things and classifies them, and that yet gets no nearer
to the solution of the huge, fantastic, patient plan!  To make a law,
as the Creator seems to have done; and then to make a hundred other
laws that seem to make the first law inoperative; to play this gigantic
game century after century; and then to put into the hearts of our
inquisitive race the desire to discover what it is all about; and to
leave the desire unsatisfied.  What a labyrinthine mystery!  Depth
beyond depth, and circle beyond circle!

It is a dark and bewildering region that thus opens to the view.  But
one conclusion is to beware of seeming certainties, to keep the windows
of the mind open to the light; not to be over-anxious about the little
part we have to play in the great pageant, but to advance, step by
step, in utter trustfulness.

Perhaps that is your message to me, graceful bird, with the rich joyful
note!  With what a thrill, too, do you bring back to me the brightness
of old forgotten springs, the childish rapture at the sweet tunable
cry!  Then, in those far-off days, it was but the herald of the glowing
summer days, the time of play and flowers and scents.  But now the soft
note, it seems, opens a door into the formless and uneasy world of
speculation, of questions that have no answer, convincing me of
ignorance and doubt, bidding me beat in vain against the bars that hem
me in.  Why should I crave thus for certainty, for strength?  Answer
me, happy bird!  Nay, you guard your secret.  Softer and more distant
sound the sweet notes, warning me to rest and believe, telling me to
wait and hope.

But one further thought!  One is expected, by people of conventional
and orthodox minds, to base one's conceptions of God on the writings of
frail and fallible men, and to accept their slender and eager testimony
to the occurrence of abnormal events as the best revelation of God that
the world contains.  And all the while we disregard his own patient
writing upon the wall.  Every day and every hour we are confronted with
strange marvels, which we dismiss from our minds because, God forgive
us, we call them natural; and yet they take us back, by a ladder of
immeasurable antiquity, to ages before man had emerged from a savage
state.  Centuries before our rude forefathers had learned even to
scratch a few hillocks into earthworks, while they lived a brutish
life, herding in dens and caves, the cuckoo, with her traditions
faultlessly defined, was paying her annual visits, fluting about the
forest glades, and searching for nests into which to intrude her
speckled egg.  The patient witness of God!  She is as direct a
revelation of the Creator's mind, could we but interpret the mystery of
her instincts, as Augustine himself with his scheme of salvation
logically defined.  Each of these missions, whether of bird or man, a
wonder and a marvel!  But do we not tend to accept the eager and
childish hopes of humanity, arrayed with blithe certainty, as a nearer
evidence of the mind of God than the bird that at his bidding pursues
her annual quest, unaffected by our hasty conclusions, unmoved by our
glorified visions?  I have sometimes thought that Christ probably spoke
more than is recorded about the observation of Nature; the hearts of
those that heard him were so set on temporal ends and human
applications, that they had not perhaps leisure or capacity to
recollect aught but those few scattered words, that seem to speak of a
deep love for and insight into the things of earth.  They remembered
better that Christ blasted a fig-tree for doing what the Father bade
the poor plant do, than his tender dwelling upon grasses and lilies,
sparrow and sheep.  The withering of the tree made an allegory: while
the love of flowers and streams was to those simple hearts perhaps an
unaccountable, almost an eccentric thing.  But had Christ drawn human
breath in our bleaker Northern air, he would have perhaps, if those
that surrounded him had had leisure and grace to listen, drawn as grave
and comforting a soul-music from our homely cuckoo, with her punctual
obedience, her unquestioning faith, as he did from the birds and
flowers of the hot hillsides, the pastoral valleys of Palestine.  I am
sure he would have loved the cuckoo, and forgiven her her heartless
customs.  Those that sing so delicately would not have leisure and
courage to make their music so soft and sweet, if they had not a hard
heart to turn to the sorrows of the world.

Yet still I am no nearer the secret.  God sends me, here the frozen
peak, there the blue sea; here the tiger, there the cuckoo; here
Virgil, there Jeremiah; here St Francis of Assisi, there Napoleon.  And
all the while, as he pushes his fair or hurtful toys upon the stage,
not a whisper, not a smile, not a glance escapes him; he thrusts them
on, he lays them by; but the interpretation he leaves with us, and
there is never a word out of the silence to show us whether we have
guessed aright.




VIII

Spring-time

Yesterday was a day of brisk airs.  The wind was at work brushing great
inky clouds out of the sky.  They came sailing up, those great rounded
masses of dark vapour, like huge galleons driving to the West, spilling
their freight as they came.  The air would be suddenly full of tall
twisted rain-streaks, and then would come a bright burst of the sun.

But a secret change came in the night; some silent power filled the air
with warmth and balm.  And to-day, when I walked out of the town with
an old and familiar friend, the spring had come.  A maple had broken
into bloom and leaf; a chestnut was unfolding his gummy buds; the
cottage gardens were full of squills and hepatica; and the mezereons
were all thick with damask buds.  In green and sheltered underwoods
there were bursts of daffodils; hedges were pricked with green points;
and a delicate green tapestry was beginning to weave itself over the
roadside ditches.

The air seemed full of a deep content.  Birds fluted softly, and the
high elms which stirred in the wandering breezes were all thick with
their red buds.  There was so much to look at and to point out that we
talked but fitfully; and there was, too, a gentle languor abroad which
made us content to be silent.

In one village which we passed, a music-loving squire had made a
concert for his friends and neighbours, and doubtless, too, for our
vagrant delight; we stood uninvited to listen to a tuneful stir of
violins, which with a violoncello booming beneath, broke out very
pleasantly from the windows of a village school-room.

When body and mind are fresh and vigorous, these outside impressions
often lose, I think, their sharp savours.  One is preoccupied with
one's own happy schemes and merry visions; the bird sings shrill within
its cage, and claps its golden wings.  But on such soft and languorous
days as these days of early spring, when the body is unstrung, and the
bonds and ties that fasten the soul to its prison are loosened and
unbound, the spirit, striving to be glad, draws in through the passages
of sense these swift impressions of beauty, as a thirsty child drains a
cup of spring-water on a sun-scorched day, lingering over the limpid
freshness of the gliding element.  The airy voices of the strings being
stilled, with a sort of pity for those penned in the crowded room,
interchanging the worn coinage of civility, we stood a while looking in
at a gate, through which we could see the cool front of a Georgian
manor-house, built of dusky bricks, with coigns and dressings of grey
stone.  The dark windows with their thick white casements, the
round-topped dormers, the steps up to the door, and a prim circle of
grass which seemed to lie like a carpet on the pale gravel, gave the
feeling of a picture; the whole being framed in the sombre yews of
shrubberies which bordered the drive.  It was hard to feel that the
quiet house was the scene of a real and active life; it seemed so full
of a slumberous peace, and to be tenanted only by soft shadows of the
past.  And so we went slowly on by the huge white-boarded mill, its
cracks streaming with congealed dust of wheat, where the water
thundered through the sluices and the gear rattled within.

We crossed the bridge, and walked on by a field-track that skirted the
edge of the wold.  How thin and clean were the tints of the dry
ploughlands and the long sweep of pasture!  Presently we were at the
foot of a green drift-road, an old Roman highway that ran straight up
into the downs.  On such a day as this, one follows a spirit in one's
feet, as Shelley said; and we struck up into the wold, on the green
road, with its thorn-thickets, until the chalk began to show white
among the ruts; and we were soon at the top.  A little to the left of
us appeared, in the middle of the pasture, a tiny round-topped tumulus
that I had often seen from a lower road, but never visited.  It was
fresher and cooler up here.  On arriving at the place we found that it
was not a tumulus at all, but a little outcrop of the pure chalk.  It
had steep, scarped sides with traces of caves scooped in them.  The
grassy top commanded a wide view of wold and plain.

Our talk wandered over many things, but here, I do not know why, we
were speaking of the taking up of old friendships, and the comfort and
delight of those serene and undisturbed relations which one sometimes
establishes with a congenial person, which no lapse of time or lack of
communication seems to interrupt--the best kind of friendship.  There
is here no blaming of conditions that may keep the two lives apart; no
feverish attempt to keep up the relation, no resentment if mutual
intercourse dies away.  And then, perhaps, in the shifting of
conditions, one's life is again brought near to the life of one's
friend, and the old easy intercourse is quietly resumed.  My companion
said that such a relation seemed to him to lie as near to the solution
of the question of the preservation of identity after death as any
other phenomenon of life.  "Supposing," he said, "that such a
friendship as that of which we have spoken is resumed after a break of
twenty years.  One is in no respect the same person; one looks
different, one's views of life have altered, and physiologists tell us
that one's body has changed perhaps three times over, in the time, so
that there is not a particle of our frame that is the same; and yet the
emotion, the feeling of the friendship remains, and remains unaltered.
If the stuff of our thoughts were to alter as the materials of our body
alter, the continuity of such an emotion would be impossible.  Of
course it is difficult to see how, divested of the body, our
perceptions can continue; but almost the only thing we are really
conscious of is our own identity, our sharp separation from the mass of
phenomena that are not ourselves.  And, if an emotion can survive the
transmutation of the entire frame, may it not also survive the
dissolution of that frame?"

"Could it be thus?" I said.  "A ray of light falls through a chink in a
shutter; through the ray, as we watch it, floats an infinite array of
tiny motes, and it is through the striking of the light upon them that
we are aware of the light; but they are never the same.  Yet the ray
has a seeming identity, though even the very ripples of light that
cause it are themselves ever changing, ever renewed.  Could not the
soul be such a ray, illuminating the atoms that pass through it, and
itself a perpetual motion, a constant renewal?"

But the day warned us to descend.  The shadows grew longer, and a great
pale light of sunset began to gather in the West.  We came slowly down
through the pastures, till we joined the familiar road again.  And at
last we parted, in that wistful silence that falls upon the mood when
two spirits have achieved a certain nearness of thought, have drawn as
close as the strange fence of identity allows.  But as I went home, I
stood for a moment at the edge of a pleasant grove, an outlying
pleasaunce of a great house on the verge of the town.  The trees grew
straight and tall within it, and all the underwood was full of spring
flowers and green ground-plants, expanding to light and warmth; the sky
was all full of light, dying away to a calm and liquid green, the
colour of peace.  Here I encountered another friend, a retiring man of
letters, who lives apart from the world in dreams of his own.  He is a
bright-eyed, eager creature, tall and shadowy, who has but a slight
hold upon the world.  We talked for a few moments of trivial things,
till a chance question of mine drew from him a sad statement of his own
health.  He had been lately, he said, to a physician, and had been
warned that he was in a somewhat precarious condition.  I tried to
comfort him, but he shook his head; and though he tried to speak
lightly and cheerfully, I could see that there was a shadow of doom
upon him.

As I turned to go, he held up his hand, "Listen to the birds!" he said.
We were silent, and could hear the clear flute-like notes of thrushes
hidden in the tall trees, and the soft cooing of a dove.  "That gives
one," he said, "some sense of the happiness which one cannot capture
for oneself!"  He smiled mournfully, and in a moment I saw his light
figure receding among the trees.  What a world it is for sorrow!  My
friend was going, bearing the burden of a lonely grief, which I could
not lighten for him; and yet the whole scene was full of so sweet a
content, the birds full of hope and delight, the flowers and leaves
glad to feel themselves alive.  What was one to make of it all?  Where
to turn for light?  What conceivable benefit could result from thus
perpetually desiring to know and perpetually being baffled?

Yet, after all, to-day has been one of those rare days, like the gold
sifted from the _débris_ of the mine, which has had for me, by some
subtle alchemy of the spirit, the permanent quality which is often
denied to more stirring incidents and livelier experiences.  I had seen
the mysteries of life and death, of joy and sorrow, sharply and sadly
contrasted.  I had been one with Nature, with all her ardent ecstasies,
her vital impulses; and then I had seen too the other side of the
picture, a soul confronted with the mystery of death, alone in the
shapeless gloom; the very cries and stirrings and joyful dreams of
Nature bringing no help, but only deepening the shadow.

And there came too the thought of how little such easy speculations as
we had indulged in on the grassy mound, thoughts which seemed so
radiant with beauty and mystery, how little they could sustain or
comfort the sad spirit which had entered into the cloud.

So that bright first day of spring shaped itself for me into a day when
not only the innocent and beautiful flowers of the world rose into life
and sunshine; but a day when sadder thoughts raised their head too, red
flowers of suffering, and pale blooms of sadness; and yet these too can
be woven into the spirit's coronal, I doubt not, if one can but find
heart to do it, and patience for the sorrowful task.




IX

The Hare

I have just read a story that has moved me strangely, with a helpless
bewilderment and a sad anger of mind.  When the doors of a factory, in
the heart of a northern town, were opened one morning, a workman, going
to move a barrel that stood in a corner, saw something crouching behind
it that he believed to be a dog or cat.  He pushed it with his foot,
and a large hare sprang out.  I suppose that the poor creature had been
probably startled by some dog the evening before, in a field close to
the town, had fled in the twilight along the streets, frightened and
bewildered, and had slipped into the first place of refuge it had
found; had perhaps explored its prison in vain, when the doors were
shut, with many dreary perambulations, and had then sunk into an uneasy
sleep, with frequent timid awakenings, in the terrifying unfamiliar
place.

The man who had disturbed it shouted aloud to the other workmen who
were entering; the doors were shut, and the hare was chased by an eager
and excited throng from corner to corner; it fled behind some planks;
the planks were taken up; it made, in its agony of fear, a great leap
over the men who were bending down to catch it; it rushed into a corner
behind some tanks, from which it was dislodged with a stick.  For half
an hour the chase continued, until at last it was headed into a
work-room, where it relinquished hope; it crouched panting, with its
long ears laid back, its pretty brown eyes wide open, as though
wondering desperately what it had done to deserve such usage; until it
was despatched with a shower of blows, and the limp, bleeding body
handed over to its original discoverer.

Not a soul there had a single thought of pity for the creature; they
went back to work pleased, excited, amused.  It was a good story to
tell for a week, and the man who had struck the last blows became a
little hero for his deftness.  The old savage instinct for prey had
swept fiercely up from the bottom of these rough hearts--hearts
capable, too, of tenderness and grief, of compassion for suffering,
gentle with women and children.  It seems to be impossible to blame
them, and such blame would have been looked upon as silly and misplaced
sentiment.  Probably not even an offer of money, far in excess of the
market value of the dead body, if the hare could be caught unharmed,
would have prevailed at the moment over the instinct for blood.

There are many hares in the world, no doubt, and _nous sommes tous
condamnés_.  But that the power which could call into being so
harmless, pretty, and delicately organised a creature does not care or
is unable to protect it better, is a strange mystery.  It cannot be
supposed that the hare's innocent life deserved such chastisement; and
it is difficult to believe that suffering, helplessly endured at one
point of the creation, can be remedial at another.  Yet one cannot bear
to think that the extremity of terror and pain, thus borne by a
sensitive creature, either comes of neglect, or of cruel purpose, or is
merely wasted.  And yet the chase and the slaughter of the unhappy
thing cannot be anything but debasing to those who took part in it.
And at the same time, to be angry and sorry over so wretched an episode
seems like trying to be wiser than the mind that made us.  What single
gleam of brightness is it possible to extract from the pitiful little
story?  Only this: that there must lie some tender secret, not only
behind what seems a deed of unnecessary cruelty, but in the implanting
in us of the instinct to grieve with a miserable indignation over a
thing we cannot cure, and even in the withholding from us any hope that
might hint at the solution of the mystery.

But the thought of the seemly fur stained and bedabbled, the bright
hazel eyes troubled with the fear of death, the silky ears, in which
rang the horrid din of pursuit, rises before me as I write, and casts
me back into the sad mood, that makes one feel that the closer that one
gazes into the sorrowful texture of the world, the more glad we may
well be to depart.




X

The Diplodocus

I have had my imagination deeply thrilled lately by reading about the
discovery in America of the bones of a fossil animal called the
_Diplodocus_.  I hardly know what the word is derived from, but it
might possibly mean an animal which _takes twice as much_, of
nourishment, perhaps, or room; either twice as much as is good for it,
or twice as much as any other animal.  In either case it seems a
felicitous description.  The creature was a reptile, a gigantic toad or
lizard that lived, it is calculated, about three million years ago.  It
was in Canada that this particular creature lived.  The earth was then
a far hotter place than now; a terrible steaming swamp, full of rank
and luxuriant vegetation, gigantic palms, ferns as big as trees.  The
diplodocus was upwards of a hundred feet long, a vast inert creature,
with a tough black hide.  In spite of its enormous bulk its brain was
only the size of a pigeon's egg, so that its mental processes must have
been of the simplest.  It had a big mouth full of rudimentary teeth, of
no use to masticate its food, but just sufficing to crop the luxuriant
juicy vegetable stalks on which it lived, and of which it ate in the
course of the day as much as a small hayrick would contain.  The
poisonous swamps in which it crept can seldom have seen the light of
day; perpetual and appalling torrents of rain must have raged there,
steaming and dripping through the dim and monstrous forests, with their
fallen day, varied by long periods of fiery tropical sunshine.  In this
hot gloom the diplodocus trailed itself about, eating, eating; living a
century or so; loving, as far as a brain the size of a pigeon's egg can
love, and no doubt with a maternal tenderness for its loathly
offspring.  It had but few foes, though, in the course of endless
generations, there sprang up a carnivorous race of creatures which seem
to have found the diplodocus tender eating.  The particular diplodocus
of which I speak probably died of old age in the act of drinking, and
was engulfed in a pool of the great curdling, reedy river that ran
lazily through the forest.  The imagination sickens before the thought
of the speedy putrefaction of such a beast under such conditions; but
this process over, the creature's bones lay deep in the pool.

Another feature of the earth at that date must have been the vast
volcanic agencies at work; whole continents were at intervals submerged
or uplifted.  In this case the whole of the forest country, where the
diplodocus lay, was submerged beneath the sea, and sank to a depth of
several leagues; for, in the course of countless ages, sea-ooze, to a
depth of at least three miles, was deposited over the forest,
preserving the trunks and even the very sprays of the tropical
vegetation.  Who would suppose that the secret history of this great
beast would ever be revealed, as it lay century after century beneath
the sea-floor?  But another convulsion took place, and a huge ridge of
country, forming the rocky backbone of North and South America, was
thrust up again by a volcanic convulsion, so that the diplodocus now
lay a mile above the sea, with a vast pile of downs over his head which
became a huge range of snow mountains.  Then the rain and the sun began
their work; and the whole of the immense bed of uplifted ocean-silt,
now become chalk, was carried eastward by mighty rivers, forming the
whole continent of North America, between these mountains and the
eastern sea.  At last the tropic forest was revealed again, a wide
tract of petrified tree-trunks and fossil wood.  And then out of an
excavation, made where one of the last patches of the chalk still lay
in a rift of the hills, where the old river-pool had been into which
the great beast had sunk, was dug the neck-bone of the creature.
Curiosity was aroused by the sight of this fragment of an unknown
animal, and bit by bit the great bones came to light; some portions
were missing, but further search revealed the remains of three other
specimens of the great lizard, and a complete skeleton was put together.

The mind positively reels before the story that is here revealed; we,
who are feebly accustomed to regard the course of recorded history as
the crucial and critical period of the life of the world, must be
sobered by the reflection that the whole of the known history of the
human race is not the thousandth, not the ten-thousandth part of the
history of the planet.  What does this vast and incredible panorama
mean to us?  What is it all about?  This ghastly force at work, dealing
with life and death on so incredible a scale, and yet guarding its
secret so close?  The diplodocus, I imagine, seldom indulged in
reveries as to how it came to be there; it awoke to life; its business
was to crawl about in the hot gloom, to eat, and drink, and sleep, to
propagate its kind; and not the least amazing part of the history is
that at length should have arisen a race of creatures, human beings,
that should be able to reconstruct, however faintly, by investigation,
imagination, and deduction, a picture of the dead life of the world.
It is this capacity for arriving at what has been, for tracing out the
huge mystery of the work of God, that appears to me the most wonderful
thing of all.  And yet we seem no nearer to the solution of the secret;
we come into the world with this incredible gift of placing ourselves,
so to speak, on the side of the Creator, of surveying his work; and yet
we cannot guess what is in his heart; the stern and majestic eyes of
Nature behold us stonily, permitting us to make question, to explore,
to investigate, but withholding the secret.  And in the light of those
inscrutable eyes, how weak and arrogant appear our dogmatic systems of
religion, that would profess to define and read the very purposes of
God; our dearest conceptions of morality, our pathetic principles, pale
and fade before these gigantic indications of mysterious, indifferent
energy.

Yet even here, I think, the golden thread gleams out in the darkness;
for slight and frail as our so-called knowledge, our beliefs, appear,
before that awful, accumulated testimony of the past, yet the latest
development is none the less the instant guiding of God; it is all as
much a gift from him as the blind impulses of the great lizard in the
dark forest; and again there emerges the mighty thought, the only
thought that can give us the peace we seek, that we are all in his
hand, that nothing is forgotten, nothing is small or great in his
sight; and that each of our frail, trembling spirits has its place in
the prodigious scheme, as much as the vast and fiery globe of the sun
on the one hand, and, on the other, the smallest atom of dust that
welters deep beneath the sea.  All that is, exists; indestructible,
august, divine, capable of endless rearrangement, infinite
modifications, but undeniably there.

This truth, however dimly apprehended, however fitfully followed, ought
to give us a certain confidence, a certain patience.  In careless moods
we may neglect it; in days of grief and pain we may feel that it cannot
help us; but it is the truth; and the more we can make it our own, the
deeper that we can set it in our trivial spirits, the better are we
prepared to learn the lesson which the deepest instinct of our nature
bids us believe, that the Father is trying to teach us, or is at least
willing that we should learn if we can.




XI

The Beetle

How strange it is that sometimes the smallest and commonest incident,
that has befallen one a hundred times before, will suddenly open the
door into that shapeless land of fruitless speculation; the land on to
which, I think, the Star Wormwood fell, burning it up and making it
bitter; the land in which we most of us sometimes have to wander, and
always alone.

It was such a trifling thing after all.  I was bicycling very
pleasantly down a country road to-day, when one of those small pungent
beetles, a tiny thing, in black plate-armour, for all the world like a
minute torpedo, sailed straight into my eye.  The eyelid, quicker even
than my own thought, shut itself down, but too late.  The little fellow
was engulphed in what Walt Whitman would call the liquid rims.  These
small, hard creatures are tenacious of life, and they have, moreover,
the power of exuding a noxious secretion--an acrid oil, with a strong
scent, and even taste, of saffron.  It was all over in a moment.  I
rubbed my eye, and I suppose crushed him to death; but I could not get
him out, and I had no companion to extract him; the result was that my
eye was painful and inflamed for an hour or two, till the tiny, black,
flattened corpse worked its way out for itself.

Now, that is not a very marvellous incident; but it set me wondering.
In the first place, what a horrible experience for the creature; in a
moment, as he sailed joyfully along, saying, "Aha," perhaps, like the
war-horse among the trumpets, on the scented summer breeze, with the
sun warm on his mail, to find himself stuck fast in a hot and oozy
crevice, and presently to be crushed to death.  His little taste of the
pleasant world so soon over, and for me an agreeable hour spoilt, so
far as I could see, to no particular purpose.

Now, one is inclined to believe that such an incident is what we call
fortuitous; but the only hope we have in the world is to believe that
things do not happen by chance.  One believes, or tries to believe,
that the Father of all has room in his mind for the smallest of his
creatures; that not a sparrow, as Christ said, falls to the ground
without his tender care.  Theologians tell us that death entered into
the world by sin; but it is not consistent to believe that, whereas
both men and animals suffer and die, the sufferings and death of men
are caused by their sins, or by the sins of their ancestors, while
animals suffer and die without sin being the cause.  Surely the cause
must be the same for all the creation? and still less is it possible to
believe that the suffering and death of creatures is caused by the sin
of man, because they suffered and died for thousands of centuries
before man came upon the scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XII

The Farm-yard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XIII

The Artist

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

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

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

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

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




XIV

Young Love

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

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




XV

A Strange Gathering

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

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

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

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




XVI

The Cripple

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

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

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

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

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

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




XVII

Oxford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XVIII

Authorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XIX

Hamlet

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

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

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

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




XX

A Sealed Spirit

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

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

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

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




XXI

Leisure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And you did it well?" I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XXII

The Pleasures of Work

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

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

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

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

Again, I remember that, when I was a schoolmaster, one of my colleagues
was a perfect byword for the disorder and noise that prevailed in his
form.  I happened once to hold a conversation with him on disciplinary
difficulties, thinking that he might have the relief of confiding his
troubles to a sympathising friend.  What was my amazement when I
discovered that his view of the situation was, that every one was
confronted with the same difficulties as himself, and that he obviously
believed that he was rather more successful than most of us in dealing
with them tactfully and strictly.

I believe my principle to be of almost universal application; and that
if one could see into the heart of the people who are accounted, and
rightly accounted, to be gross and conspicuous failures, we should find
that they were not free from a certain pleasant vanity about their own
qualifications and efficiency.  The few people whom I have met who are
apt to despond over their work are generally people who do it
remarkably well, and whose ideal of efficiency is so high that they
criticise severely in themselves any deviation from their standard.
Moreover, if one goes a little deeper--if, for instance, one cordially
re-echoes their own criticisms upon their work--such criticisms are apt
to be deeply resented.

I will go further, and say that only once in the course of my life have
I found a man who did his work really well, without any particular
pride and pleasure in it.  To do that implies an extraordinary degree
of will-power and self-command.

I do not mean to say that, if any professional person found himself
suddenly placed in the possession of an independent income, greater
than he had ever derived from his professional work, his pleasure in
his work would be sufficient to retain him in the exercise of it.  We
have most of us an unhappy belief in our power of living a pleasurable
and virtuous life of leisure; and the desire to live what is called the
life of a gentleman, which character has lately been defined as a
person who has no professional occupation, is very strong in the hearts
of most of us.

But, for all that, we most of us enjoy our work; the mere fact that one
gains facility, and improves from day to day, is a source of sincere
pleasure, however far short of perfection our attempts may fall; and,
generally speaking, our choice of a profession is mainly dictated by a
certain feeling of aptitude for and interest in what we propose to
undertake.

It is, then, a happy and merciful delusion by which we are bound.  We
grow, I think, to love our work, and we grow, too, to believe in our
method of doing it.  We cannot, a great preacher once said, all delude
ourselves into believing that we are richer, handsomer, braver, more
distinguished than others; but there are few of us who do not cherish a
secret belief that, if only the truth were known, we should prove to be
more interesting than others.

To leave our work for a moment, and to turn to ordinary social
intercourse.  I am convinced that the only thing that can account for
the large number of bad talkers in the world is the wide-spread belief
that prevails among individuals as to their power of contributing
interest and amusement to a circle.  One ought to keep this in mind,
and bear faithfully and patiently the stream of tiresome talk that
pours, as from a hose, from the lips of diffuse and lengthy
conversationalists.  I once made a terrible mistake.  I complimented,
from the mere desire of saying something agreeable, and finding my
choice of praiseworthy qualities limited, an elderly, garrulous
acquaintance on his geniality, on an evening when I had writhed
uneasily under a steady downpour of talk.  I have bitterly rued my
insincerity.  Not only have I received innumerable invitations from the
man whom the Americans would call my complimentee, but when I am in his
company I see him making heroic attempts to make his conversation
practically continuous.  How often since that day have I sympathised
with St James in his eloquent description of the deadly and poisonous
power of the tongue!  A bore is not, as is often believed, a merely
selfish and uninteresting person.  He is often a man who labours
conscientiously and faithfully at an accomplishment, the exercise of
which has become pleasurable to him.  And thus a bore is the hardest of
all people to convert, because he is, as a rule, conscious of virtue
and beneficence.

On the whole, it is better not to disturb the amiable delusions of our
fellow-men, unless we are certain that we can improve them.  To break
the spring of happiness in a virtuous bore is a serious responsibility.
It is better, perhaps, both in matters of work and in matters of social
life, to encourage our friends to believe in themselves.  We must not,
of course, encourage them in vicious and hurtful enjoyment, and there
are, of course, bores whose tediousness is not only not harmless, but a
positively noxious and injurious quality.  There are bores who have but
to lay a finger upon a subject of universal or special interest, to
make one feel that under no circumstances will one ever be able to
allow one's thoughts to dwell on the subject again; and such a person
should be, as far as possible, isolated from human intercourse, like a
sufferer from a contagious malady.  But this extremity of noxiousness
is rare.  And it may be said that, as a rule, one does more to increase
happiness by a due amount of recognition and praise, even when one is
recognising rather the spirit of a performance than the actual result;
and such a course of action has the additional advantage of making one
into a person who is eagerly welcomed and sought after in all kinds of
society.




XXIII

The Abbey

The fresh wind blew cheerily as we raced, my friend and I, across a
long stretch of rich fen-land.  The sunlight, falling somewhat dimly
through a golden haze, lay very pleasantly on the large pasture-fields.
There are few things more beautiful, I think, than these great level
plains; they give one a delightful sense of space and repose.  The
distant lines of trees, the far-off church towers, the long dykes, the
hamlets half-hidden in orchards, the "sky-space and field-silence,"
give one a feeling of quiet rustic life lived on a large and simple
scale, which seems the natural life of the world.

Our goal was the remains of an old religious house, now a farm.  We
were soon at the place; it stood on a very gentle rising ground, once
an island above the fen.  Two great columns of the Abbey Church served
as gate-posts.  The house itself lay a little back from the road, a
comfortable cluster of big barns and outhouses, with great walnut trees
all about, in the middle of an ancient tract of pasture, full of
dimpled excavations, in which the turf grew greener and more compact.
The farm-house itself, a large irregular Georgian building covered with
rough orange plaster, showed a pleasant tiled roof among the barns,
over a garden set with venerable sprawling box-trees.  We found a
friendly old labourer, full of simple talk, who showed us the orchard,
with its mouldering wall of stone, pierced with niches, the line of dry
stew-ponds, the refectory, now a great barn, piled high with heaps of
grain and straw.  We walked through byres tenanted by comfortable pigs
routing in the dirt.  We hung over a paling to watch the creased and
discontented face of an old hog, grunting in shrill anticipation of a
meal.  Our guide took us to the house, where we found a transept of the
church, now used as a brew-house, with the line of the staircase still
visible, rising up to a door in the wall that led once to the
dormitory, down the steps of which, night after night, the shivering
and sleepy monks must have stumbled into their chilly church for
prayers.  The hall of the house was magnificent with great Norman
arches, once the aisle of the nave.

The whole scene had the busy, comfortable air of a place full of
patriarchal life, the dignity of a thing existing for use and not for
show, of quiet prosperity, of garnered provender and well-fed stock.
Though it made no deliberate attempt at beauty, it was full of a seemly
and homely charm.  The face of the old fellow that led us about,
chirping fragments of local tradition, with a mild pride in the fact
that strangers cared to come and see the place, wore the contented,
weather-beaten look that comes of a life of easy labour spent in the
open air.  His patched gaiters, the sacking tied round him with a cord
to serve as an apron, had the same simple appropriateness.  We walked
leisurely about, gathering a hundred pretty impressions,--as the old
filbert-trees that fringed the orchard, the wall-flowers, which our
guide called the blood-warriors, on the ruined coping, a flight of
pigeons turning with a sharp clatter in the air.  At last he left us to
go about his little business; and we, sitting on a broken
mounting-block in the sunshine, gazed lazily and contentedly at the
scene.

We attempted to picture something of the life of the Benedictines who
built the house.  It must have been a life of much quiet happiness.  We
tried to see in imagination the quaint clustered fabrics, the ancient
church, the cloister, the barns, the out-buildings.  The brethren must
have suffered much from cold in winter.  The day divided by services,
the nights broken by prayers; probably the time was dull enough, but
passed quickly, like all lives full of monotonous engagements.  They
were not particularly ascetic, these Benedictines, and insisted much on
manual labour in the open air.  Probably at first the monks did their
farm-work as well; but as they grew richer, they employed labourers,
and themselves fell back on simpler and easier garden-work.  Perhaps
some few were truly devotional spirits, with a fire of prayer and
aspiration burning in their hearts; but the majority would be quiet
men, full of little gossip about possible promotions, about lands and
crops, about wayfarers and ecclesiastics who passed that way and were
entertained.  Very few, except certain officials like the Cellarer, who
would have to ride to market, ever left the precincts of the place, but
laid their bones in the little graveyard east of the church.  We make a
mistake in regarding the life and the buildings as having been so
picturesque, as they now appear after the long lapse of time.  The
church was more venerable than the rest; but the refectory, at the time
of the dissolution, cannot have been long built; still, the old tiled
place, with its rough stone walls, must have always had a quaint and
irregular air.

Probably it was as a rule a contented and amiable society.  The regular
hours, the wholesome fatigue which the rule entailed, must have tended
to keep the inmates in health and good-humour.  But probably there was
much tittle-tattle; and a disagreeable, jealous, or scheming inmate
must have been able to stir up a good deal of strife in a society
living at such close quarters.  One thinks loosely that it must have
resembled the life of a college at the University, but that is an
entire misapprehension; for the idea of a college is liberty with just
enough discipline to hold it together, while the idea of a monastery
was discipline with just enough liberty to make life tolerable.

Well, it is all over now! the idea of the monastic life, which was to
make a bulwark for quiet-minded people against the rougher world, is no
longer needed.  The work of the monks is done.  Yet I gave an
affectionate thought across the ages to the old inmates of the place,
whose bones have mouldered into the dust of the yard where we sat.  It
seemed half-pleasant, half-pathetic to think of them as they went about
their work, sturdy, cheerful figures, looking out over the wide fen
with all its clear pools and reed-beds, growing old in the familiar
scene, passing from the dormitory to the infirmary, and from the
infirmary to the graveyard, in a sure and certain hope.  They too
enjoyed the first breaking of spring, the return of balmy winds, the
pushing up of the delicate flowers in orchard and close, with something
of the same pleasure that I experience to-day.  The same wonder that I
feel, the same gentle thrill speaking of an unattainable peace, an
unruffled serenity that lies so near me in the spring sunshine,
flashed, no doubt, into those elder spirits.  Perhaps, indeed, their
heart went out to the unborn that should come after them, as my heart
goes out to the dead to-day.

And even the slow change that has dismantled that busy place, and
established it as the quiet farmstead that I see, holds a hope within
it.  There must indeed have been a sad time when the buildings were
slipping into decay, and the church stood ruined and roofless.  But how
soon the scars are healed!  How calmly nature smiles at the eager
schemes of men, breaks them short, and then sets herself to harmonise
and adorn the ruin, till she makes it fairer than before, writing her
patient lesson of beauty on broken choir and tottering wall, flinging
her tide of fresh life over the rents, and tenderly drawing back the
broken fragments into her bosom.  If we could but learn from her not to
fret or grieve, to gather up what remains, to wait patiently and wisely
for our change!

So I reasoned softly to myself in a train of gentle thought, till the
plough-horses came clattering in, and the labourers plodded gratefully
home; and the sun went down over the flats in a great glory of orange
light.




XXIV

Wordsworth

I believe that I was once taken to Rydal Mount as a small boy, led
there meekly, no doubt, in a sort of dream; but I retain not the
remotest recollection of the place, except of a small flight of stone
steps, which struck me as possessing some attractive quality or other.
And I have since read, I suppose, a good many descriptions of the
place; but on visiting it, as I recently did, I discovered that I had
not the least idea of what it was like.  And I would here shortly speak
of the extraordinary kindness which I received from the present
tenants, who are indeed of the hallowed dynasty; it may suffice to say
that I could only admire the delicate courtesy which enabled people,
who must have done the same thing a hundred times before, to show me
the house with as much zest and interest, as if I was the first pilgrim
that had ever visited the place.

In the first place, the great simplicity of the whole struck me.  It is
like a little grange or farm.  The rooms are small and low, and of a
pleasant domesticity; it is a place apt for a patriarchal life, where
simple people might live at close quarters with each other.  The house
is hardly visible from the gate.  You turn out of a steep lane,
embowered by trees, into a little gravel sweep, approaching the house
from the side.  But its position is selected with admirable art; the
ground falls steeply in front of it, and you look out over a wide
valley, at the end of which Windermere lies, a tract of sapphire blue,
among wooded hills and dark ranges.  Behind, the ground rises still
more steeply, to the rocky, grassy heights of Nab Scar; and the road
leads on to a high green valley among the hills, a place of unutterable
peace.

In this warm, sheltered nook, hidden in woods, with its southerly
aspect, the vegetation grows with an almost tropical luxuriance, so
that the general impression of the place is by no means typically
English.  Laurels and rhododendrons grow in dense shrubberies; the
trees are full of leaf; flowers blossom profusely.  There is a little
orchard beneath the house, and everywhere there is the fragrant and
pungent smell of sun-warmed garden-walks and box-hedges.  There are
little terraces everywhere, banked up with stone walls built into the
steep ground, where stonecrops grow richly.  One of these leads to a
little thatched arbour, where the poet often sat; below it, the ground
falls very rapidly, among rocks and copse and fern, so that you look
out on to the tree-tops below, and catch a glimpse of the steely waters
of the hidden lake of Rydal.

Wordsworth lived there for more than thirty years; and half a century
has passed since he died.  He was a skilful landscape gardener; and I
suppose that in his lifetime, when the walks were being constructed and
the place laid out, it must have had a certain air of newness, of
interference with the old wild peace of the hillside, which it has
since parted with.  Now it is all as full of a quiet and settled order,
as if it had been thus for ever.  One little detail deserves a special
mention; just below the house, there is an odd, circular, low, grassy
mound, said to be the old meeting-place for the village council, in
primitive and patriarchal days,--the Mount, from which the place has
its name.

I thought much of the stately, simple, self-absorbed poet, whom somehow
one never thinks of as having been young; the lines of Milton haunted
me, as I moved about the rooms, the garden-terraces:--

  "_In this mount he appeared; under this tree
  Stood visible; among these pines his voice
  I heard; here with him at this fountain talked._"

The place is all permeated with the thought of him, his deep and
tranquil worship of natural beauty, his love of the kindly earth.

I do not think that Wordsworth is one whose memory evokes a deep
personal attachment.  I doubt if any figures of bygone days do that,
unless there is a certain wistful pathos about them; unless something
of compassion, some wish to proffer sympathy or consolation, mingles
with one's reverence.  I have often, for instance, stayed at a house
where Shelley spent a few half-rapturous, half-miserable months.
There, meditating about him, striving to reconstruct the picture of his
life, one felt that he suffered much and needlessly; one would have
wished to shelter, to protect him if it had been possible, or at least
to have proffered sympathy to that inconsolable spirit.  One's heart
goes out to those who suffered long years ago, whose love of the earth,
of life, of beauty, was perpetually overshadowed by the pain that comes
from realising transitoriness and decay.

But Wordsworth is touched by no such pathos.  He was extraordinarily
prosperous and equable; he was undeniably self-sufficient.  Even the
sorrows and bereavements that he had to bear were borne gently and
philosophically.  He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and did it.
Those sturdy, useful legs of his bore him many a pleasant mile.  He
always had exactly as much money as he needed, in order to live his
life as he desired.  He chose precisely the abode he preferred; his
fame grew slowly and solidly.  He became a great personage; he was
treated with immense deference and respect.  He neither claimed nor
desired sympathy; he was as strong and self-reliant as the old yeomen
of the hills, of whom he indeed was one; his vocation was poetry, just
as their vocation was agriculture; and this vocation he pursued in as
business-like and intent a spirit as they pursued their farming.

Wordsworth, indeed, was armed at all points by a strong and simple
pride, too strong to be vanity, too simple to be egotism.  He is one of
the few supremely fortunate men in the history of literature, because
he had none of the sensitiveness or indecision that are so often the
curse of the artistic temperament.  He never had the least misgivings
about the usefulness of his life; he wrote because he enjoyed it; he
ate and drank, he strolled and talked, with the same enjoyment.  He had
a perfect balance of physical health.  His dreams never left him cold;
his exaltations never plunged him into depression.  He felt the
mysteries of the world with a solemn awe, but he had no uneasy
questionings, no remorse, no bewilderment, no fruitless melancholy.

He bore himself with the same homely dignity in all companies alike; he
was never particularly interested in any one; he never had any fear of
being thought ridiculous or pompous.  His favourite reading was his own
poetry; he wished every one to be interested in his work, because he
was conscious of its supreme importance.  He probably made the mistake
of thinking that it was his sense of poetry and beauty that made him
simple and tranquil.  As a matter of fact, it was the simplicity and
tranquillity of his temperament that gave him the power of enjoyment in
so large a measure.  There is no growth or expansion about his life; he
did not learn his serene and impassioned attitude through failures and
mistakes: it was his all along.

And yet what a fine, pure, noble, gentle life it was!  The very thought
of him, faring quietly about among his hills and lakes, murmuring his
calm verse, in a sober and temperate joy, looking everywhere for the
same grave qualities among quiet homekeeping folk, brings with it a
high inspiration.  But we tend to think of Wordsworth as a father and a
priest, rather than as a brother and a friend.  He is a leader and a
guide, not a comrade.  We must learn that, though he can perhaps turn
our heart the right way, towards the right things, we cannot
necessarily acquire that pure peace, that solemn serenity, by obeying
his precepts, unless we too have something of the same strong calmness
of soul.  In some moods, far from sustaining and encouraging us, the
thought of his equable, impassioned life may only fill us with
unutterable envy.  But still to have sat in his homely rooms, to have
paced his little terraces, does bring a certain imagined peace into the
mind, a noble shame for all that is sordid or mean, a hatred for the
conventional aims, the pitiful ambitions of the world.

Alas, that the only sound from the little hill-platform, the embowered
walks, should be the dull rolling of wheels--motors, coaches,
omnibuses--in the road below!  That is the shadow of his greatness.  It
is a pitiable thought that one of the fruits of his genius is that it
has made his holy retreat fashionable.  The villas rise in rows along
the edges of the clear lakes, under the craggy fell-sides, where the
feathery ashes root among the mimic precipices.  A stream of
chattering, vacuous, indifferent tourists pours listlessly along the
road from _table-d'hôte_ to _table-d'hôte_.  The turbid outflow of the
vulgar world seems a profanation of these august haunts.  One hopes
despairingly that something of the spirit of lonely beauty speaks to
these trivial heads and hearts.  But is there consolation in this?
What would the poet himself have felt if he could have foreseen it all?

I descended the hill-road and crossed the valley highway; it was full
of dust; the vehicles rolled along, crowded with men smoking cigars and
reading newspapers, tired women, children whose idea of pleasure had
been to fill their hands with ferns and flowers torn from cranny and
covert.  I climbed the little hill opposite the great Scar; its green
towering head, with its feet buried in wood, the hardy trees straggling
up the front wherever they could get a hold among the grey crags, rose
in sweet grandeur opposite to me.  I threaded tracks of shimmering
fern, out of which the buzzing flies rose round me; I went by silent,
solitary places where the springs soak out of the moorland, while I
pondered over the bewildering ways of the world.  The life, the ideals
of the great poet, set in the splendid framework of the great hills,
seemed so majestic and admirable a thing.  But the visible results--the
humming of silly strangers round his sacred solitudes, the
contaminating influence of commercial exploitation--made one
fruitlessly and hopelessly melancholy.

But even so the hills were silent; the sun went down in a great glory
of golden haze among the shadowy ridges.  The valleys lay out at my
feet, the rolling woodland, the dark fells.  There fell a mood of
strange yearning upon me, a yearning for the peaceful secret that, as
the orange sunset slowly waned, the great hills seemed to guard and
hold.  What was it that was going on there, what solemn pageant, what
sweet mystery, that I could only desire to behold and apprehend?  I
know not!  I only know that if I could discern it, if I could tell it,
the world would stand to listen; its littleness, its meanness, would
fade in that august light; the peace of God would go swiftly and
secretly abroad.




XXV

Dorsetshire

I am travelling just now, and am this week at _Dorchester_, in the
company of my oldest and best friend.  We like the same things; and I
can be silent if I will, while I can also say anything, however
whimsical, that comes into my mind; there are few things better than
that in the world, and I count the precious hours very gratefully;
_appono lucro_.

Dorsetshire gives me the feeling of being a very old country.  The big
downs seem like the bases of great rocky hills which have through long
ages been smoothed and worn away, softened and mellowed, the rocks,
grain by grain, carried downwards into the flat alluvial meadowlands
beneath.  In these rich pastures, all intersected with clear streams,
runnels and water-courses, full at this season of rich water-plants,
the cattle graze peacefully.  The downs have been ploughed and sown up
to the sky-line.  Then there are fine tracts of heather and pines in
places.  And then, too, there is a sense of old humanity, of ancient
wars about the land.  There are great camps and earthworks everywhere,
with ramparts and ditches, both British and Roman.  The wolds from
which the sea is visible are thickly covered with barrows, each holding
the mouldering bones of some forgotten chieftain, laid to rest, how
many centuries ago, with the rude mourning of a savage clan.  I stood
on one of the highest of these the other day, on a great gorse-clad
headland, and sent my spirit out in quest of the old warrior that lay
below--"Audisne haec, Amphiaräe, sub terram condite?"  But there was no
answer from the air; though in my sleep one night I saw a wild,
red-bearded man, in a coat of skins, with rude gaiters, and a hat of
foxes' fur on his head; he carried a long staff in his hand, pointed
with iron, and looked mutely and sorrowfully upon me.  Who knows if it
was he?

And then of later date are many ruinous strongholds, with Cyclopean
walls, like the huge shattered bulk of _Corfe_, upon its green hill,
between the shoulders of great downs.  There are broken abbeys,
pinnacled church-towers in village after village.  And then, too, in
hamlet after hamlet, rise quaint stone manors, high-gabled,
many-mullioned, in the midst of barns and byres.  One of the sweetest
places I have seen is _Cerne Abbas_.  The road to it winds gently up
among steep downs, a full stream gliding through flat pastures at the
bottom.  The hamlet has a forgotten, wistful air; there are many houses
in ruins.  Close to the street rises the church-tower, of rich and
beautiful design, with gurgoyles and pinnacles, cut out of a soft
orange stone and delicately weathered.  At the end of the village
stands a big farm-house, built out of the abbey ruins, with a fine
oriel in one of the granaries.  In a little wilderness of trees, the
ground covered with primroses, stands the exquisite old gatehouse with
mullioned windows.  I have had for years a poor little engraving of the
place, and it seemed to greet me like an old friend.  Then, in the
pasture above, you can see the old terraces and mounds of the monastic
garden, where the busy Benedictines worked day by day; further still,
on the side of the down itself, is cut a very strange and ancient
monument.  It is the rude and barbarous figure of a naked man, sixty
yards long, as though moving northwards, and brandishing a huge knotted
club.  It is carved deep into the turf, and is overgrown with rough
grass.  No one can even guess at the antiquity of the figure, but it is
probably not less than three thousand years old.  Some say that it
records the death of a monstrous giant of the valley.  The good monks
Christianised it, and named it _Augustine_.  But it seems to be
certainly one of the frightful figures of which Caesar speaks, on which
captives were bound with twisted osiers, and burnt to death for a
Druidical sacrifice.  The thing is grotesque, vile, horrible; the very
stones of the place seemed soaked with terror, cruelty and death.  Even
recently foul and barbarous traditions were practised there, it is
said, by villagers, who were Christian only in name.  Yet it lay
peacefully enough to-day, the shadows of the clouds racing over it, the
wind rustling in the grass, with nothing to break the silence but the
twitter of birds, the bleat of sheep on the down, and the crying of
cocks in the straw-thatched village below.

What a strange fabric of history, memory, and tradition is here
unrolled, of old unhappy far-off things!  How bewildering to think of
the horrible agonies of fear, the helpless, stupefied creatures lying
bound there, the smoke sweeping over them and the flames crackling
nearer, while their victorious foes laughed and exulted round them, and
the priests performed the last hideous rites.  And all the while God
watched the slow march of days from the silent heaven, and worked out
his mysterious purposes!  And yet, surveying the quiet valley to-day,
it seems as though there were no memory of suffering or sorrow in it at
all.

We climbed the down; and there at our feet the world lay like a map,
with its fields, woods, hamlets and church-towers, the great rich plain
rolling to the horizon, till it was lost in haze.  How infinitely
minute and unimportant seemed one's own life, one's own thoughts, the
schemes of one tiny moving atom on the broad back of the hills.  And
yet my own small restless identity is almost the only thing in the
world of which I am assured!

There came to me at that moment a thrill of the spirit which comes but
rarely; a deep hope, the sense of a secret lying very near, if one
could only grasp it; an assurance that we are safe and secure in the
hand of God, and a certainty that there is a vast reality behind,
veiled from us only by the shadows of fears, ambitions, and desires.
And the thought, too, came that all the tiny human beings that move
about their tasks in the plain beneath--nay, the animals, the trees,
the flowers, every blade of grass, every pebble--each has its place in
the great and awful mystery.  Then came the sense of the vast
fellowship of created things, the tender Fatherhood of the God who made
us all.  I can hardly put the thought into words; but it was one of
those sudden intuitions that seem to lie deeper even than the mind and
the soul, a message from the heart of the world, bidding one wait and
wonder, rest and be still.




XXVI

Portland

I will put another little sketch side by side with the last, for the
sake of contrast; I think it is hardly possible within the compass of a
few days to have seen two scenes of such minute and essential
difference.  At _Cerne_ I had the tranquil loneliness of the
countryside, the silent valley, the long faintly-tinted lines of
pasture, space and stillness; the hamlets nestled among trees in the
dingles of the down.  To-day I went south along a dusty road; at first
there were quiet ancient sights enough, such as the huge grass-grown
encampment of _Maiden Castle_, now a space of pasture, but still
guarded by vast ramparts and ditches, dug in the chalk, and for a
thousand years or more deserted.  The downs, where they faced the sea,
were dotted with grassy barrows, air-swept and silent.  We topped the
hill, and in a moment there was a change; through the haze we saw the
roofs of _Weymouth_ laid out like a map before us, with the smoke
drifting west from innumerable chimneys; in the harbour, guarded by the
slender breakwaters, floated great ironclads, black and sinister bulks;
and beyond them frowned the dark front of _Portland_.  Very soon the
houses began to close in upon the road,--brick-built, pretentious,
bow-windowed villas; then we were in the streets, showing a wholesome
antiquity in the broad-windowed mansions of mellow brick, which sprang
into life when the honest king George III. made the quiet port
fashionable by spending his simple summers there.  There was the king's
lodging itself, Gloucester House, now embedded in a hotel, with the big
pilastered windows of its saloons giving it a faded courtly air.  Soon
we were by the quays, with black red-funnelled steamers unloading, and
all the quaint and pretty bustle of a port.  We went out to a
promontory guarded by an old stone fort, and watched a red merchant
steamer roll merrily in, blowing a loud sea-horn.  Then over a
low-shouldered ridge, and we were by the great inner roads, full of
shipping; we sat for a while by the melancholy walls of an ancient
Tudor castle, now crumbling into the sea; and then across the narrow
causeway that leads on to _Portland_.  On our right rose the _Chesil
Bank_, that mysterious mole of orange shingle, which the sea, for some
strange purpose of its own, has piled up, century after century, for
eighteen miles along the western coast.  And then the grim front of
_Portland Island_ itself loomed out above us.  The road ran up steeply
among the bluffs, through line upon line of grey-slated houses; to the
left, at the top of the cliff, were the sunken lines of the huge fort,
with the long slopes of its earthworks, the glacis overgrown with
grass, and the guns peeping from their embrasures; to the left, dipping
to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve.  The streets
were alive with an abundance of merry young sailors and soldiers,
brisk, handsome boys, with the quiet air of discipline that converts a
country lout into a self-respecting citizen.  An old bronzed sergeant
led a child with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill
directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip
beside him; he looked at us with a half-proud, half-shamefaced smile,
calling down a rebuke for his inattention from the girl.

We wound slowly up the steep roads smothered in dust; landwards the
view was all drowned in a pale haze, but the steep grey cliffs by
_Lulworth_ gleamed with a tinge of gold across the sea.

At the top, one of the dreariest landscapes I have ever seen met the
sight.  The island lies, so to speak, like a stranded whale, the great
head and shoulders northwards to the land.  The moment you surmount the
top, the huge, flat side of the monster is extended before you,
shelving to the sea.  Hardly a tree grows there; there is nothing but a
long perspective of fields, divided here and there by stone walls, with
scattered grey houses at intervals.  There is not a feature of any kind
on which the eye can rest.  In the foreground the earth is all
tunnelled and tumbled; quarries stretch in every direction, with huge,
gaunt, straddling, gallows-like structures emerging, a wheel spinning
at the top, and ropes travelling into the abyss; heaps of grey
_débris_, interspersed with stunted grass, huge excavations, ugly
ravines with a spout of grim stone at the seaward opening, like the
burrowings of some huge mole.  The placid green slopes of the fort give
an impression of secret strength, even grandeur.  Otherwise it is but a
ragged, splashed aquarelle of grey and green.  Over the _débris_ appear
at a distance the blunt ominous chimneys of the convict prison, which
seems to put the finishing touch on the forbidding character of the
scene.

To-day the landward view was all veiled in haze, which seemed to shut
off the sad island from the world.  On a clear day, no doubt, the view
must be full of grandeur, the inland downs, edged everywhere with the
tall scarped cliffs, headland after headland, with the long soft line
of the _Chesil Bank_ below them.  But on a day of sea mist, it must be,
I felt, one of the saddest and most mournful regions in the world, with
no sound but the wail of gulls, and the chafing of the surge below.




XXVII

Canterbury Tower

To-day I had a singular pleasure heightened by an intermingled
strangeness and even terror--qualities which bring out the quality of
pleasure in the same way that a bourdon in a pedal-point passage brings
out the quality of what a German would, I think, call the _over-work_.
I was at _Canterbury_, where the great central tower is wreathed with
scaffolding, and has a dim, blurred outline from a distance, as though
it were being rapidly shaken to and fro.  I found a friendly and
communicable man who offered to take me over it; we climbed a dizzy
little winding stair, with bright glimpses at intervals, through
loop-holes, of sunlight and wheeling birds; then we crept along the top
of a vaulted space with great pockets of darkness to right and left.
Soon we were in the gallery of the lantern, from which we could see the
little people crawling on the floor beneath, like slow insects.  And
then we mounted a short ladder which took us out of one of the great
belfry windows, on to the lowest of the planked galleries.  What a
frail and precarious structure it seemed: the planks bent beneath our
feet.  And here came the first exquisite delight--that of being close
to the precipitous face of the tower, of seeing the carved work which
had never been seen close at hand since its erection except by the
jackdaws and pigeons.  I was moved and touched by observing how fine
and delicate all the sculpture was.  There were rows and rows of little
heraldic devices, which from below could appear only as tiny fretted
points; yet every petal of rose or _fleur-de-lys_ was as scrupulously
and cleanly cut as if it had been meant to be seen close at hand; a
waste of power, I suppose; but what a pretty and delicate waste! and
done, I felt, in faithful days, when the carving was done as much to
delight, if possible, the eye of God, as to please the eye of man.
Higher and higher we went, till at last we reached the parapet.  And
then by a dizzy perpendicular ladder to which I committed myself in
faith, we reached a little platform on the very top of one of the
pinnacles.  The vane had just been fixed, and the stone was splashed
with the oozing solder.  And now came the delight of the huge view all
round: the wooden heights, the rolling hills; old church towers rose
from flowering orchards; a mansion peeped through immemorial trees; and
far to the north-east we could see the white cliff of _Pegwell Bay_;
endeared to me through the beautiful picture by Dyce, where the pale
crags rise from the reefs green with untorn weeds.  There on the
horizon I could see shadowy sails on the steely sea-line.

Near at hand there were the streets, and then the Close, with its
comfortable canonical houses, in green trim gardens, spread out like a
map at my feet.  We looked down on to the tops of tall elm-trees, and
saw the rooks walking and sitting on the grey-splashed platforms of
twigs, that swayed horribly in the breeze.  It was pleasant to see, as
I did, the tiny figure of my reverend host walking, a dot of black, in
his garden beneath, reading in a book.  The long grey-leaded roof ran
broad and straight, a hundred feet below.  One felt for a moment as a
God might feel, looking on a corner of his created world, and seeing
that it was good.  One seemed to have surmounted the earth, and to
watch the little creeping orbits of men with a benevolent compassion,
perceiving how strait they were.  The large air hissed briskly in the
pinnacles, and roared through the belfry windows beneath.  I cannot
describe the eager exhilaration which filled me; but I guessed that the
impulse which bids men fling themselves from such heights is not a
morbid prepossession, not a physical dizziness, but an intemperate and
overwhelming joy.  It seems at such a moment so easy to float and swim
through the viewless air, as if one would be borne up on the wings of
angels.

But, alas! the hour warned us to return.  On our way down we disturbed
a peevish jackdaw from her nest; she had dragged up to that intolerable
height a pile of boughs that would have made a dozen nests; she had
interwoven for the cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of purloined
canvas.  There lay the three speckled eggs, the hope of the race, while
the chiding mother stood on a pinnacle hard by, waiting for the
intruder to begone.

A strange sense of humiliation and smallness came upon me as we emerged
at last into the nave; the people that had seemed so small and
insignificant, were, alas! as big and as important as myself; I felt as
an exile from the porches of heaven, a fallen spirit.




XXVIII

Prayer

I am often baffled when I try to think what prayer is; if our thoughts
do indeed lie open before the eyes of the Father, like a little clear
globe of water which a man may hold in his hand--and I am sure they
do--it certainly seems hardly worth while to put those desires into
words.  Many good Christians seem to me to conceive of prayers partly
as a kind of tribute they are bound to pay, and partly as requests that
are almost certain to be refused.  With such people religion, then,
means the effort which they make to trust a Father who hears prayers,
and very seldom answers them.  But this does not seem to be a very
reasonable attitude.

I confess that liturgical prayer does not very much appeal to me.  It
does not seem to me to correspond to any particular need in my mind.
It seems to me to sacrifice almost all the things that I mean by
prayer--the sustained intention of soul, the laying of one's own
problems before the Father, the expression of one's hopes for others,
the desire that the sorrows of the world should be lightened.  Of
course, a liturgy touches these thoughts at many points; but the
exercise of one's own liberty of aspiration and wonder, the pursuing of
a train of thought, the quiet dwelling upon mysteries, are all lost if
one has to stumble and run in a prescribed track.  To follow a service
with uplifted attention requires more mental agility than I possess;
point after point is raised, and yet, if one pauses to meditate, to
wonder, to aspire, one is lost, and misses the thread of the service.
I suppose that there is or ought to be something in the united act of
intercession.  But I dislike all public meetings, and think them a
waste of time.  I should make an exception in favour of the Sacrament,
but the rapid disappearance of the majority of a congregation before
the solemn act seems to me to destroy the sense of unity with singular
rapidity.  As to the old theory that God requires of his followers that
they should unite at intervals in presenting him with a certain amount
of complimentary effusion, I cannot even approach the idea.  The
holiest, simplest, most benevolent being of whom I can conceive would
be inexpressibly pained and distressed by such an intention on the part
of the objects of his care; and to conceive of God as greedy of
recognition seems to me to be one of the conceptions which insult the
dignity of the soul.

I have heard lately one or two mediaeval stories which illustrate what
I mean.  There is a story of a pious monk, who, worn out by long
vigils, fell asleep, as he was saying his prayers before a crucifix.
He was awakened by a buffet on the head, and heard a stern voice
saying, "Is this an oratory or a dormitory?"  I cannot conceive of any
story more grotesquely human than the above, or more out of keeping
with one's best thoughts about God.  Again, there is a story which is
told, I think, of one of the first monasteries of the Benedictine
order.  One of the monks was a lay brother, who had many little menial
tasks to fulfil; he was a well-meaning man, but extremely forgetful,
and he was often forced to retire from some service in which he was
taking part, because he had forgotten to put the vegetables on to boil,
or omitted other duties which would lead to the discomfort of the
brethren.  Another monk, who was fond of more secular occupations, such
as wood-carving and garden-work, and not at all attached to habits of
prayer, seeing this, thought that he would do the same; and he too used
to slip away from a service, in order to return to the business that he
loved better.  The Prior of the monastery, an anxious, humble man, was
at a loss how to act; so he called in a very holy hermit, who lived in
a cell hard by, that he might have the benefit of his advice.  The
hermit came and attended an Office.  Presently the lay brother rose
from his knees and slipped out.  The hermit looked up, followed him
with his eyes, and appeared to be greatly moved.  But he took no
action, and only addressed himself more assiduously to his prayers.
Shortly after, the other brother rose and went out.  The hermit looked
up, and seeing him go, rose too, and followed him to the door, where he
fetched him a great blow upon the head that nearly brought him to the
ground.  Thereupon the stricken man went humbly back to his place and
addressed himself to his prayers; and the hermit did the same.

The Office was soon over, and the hermit went to the Prior's room to
talk the matter over.  The hermit said: "I bore in my mind what you
told me, dear Father, and when I saw one of the brethren rise from his
prayers, I asked God to show me what I should do; but I saw a wonderful
thing; there was a shining figure with our brother, his hand upon the
other's sleeve; and this fair comrade, I have no doubt, was an angel of
God, that led the brother forth, that he might be about his Father's
business.  So I prayed the more earnestly.  But when our other brother
rose, I looked up; and I saw that he had been plucked by the sleeve by
a little naked, comely boy, very swarthy of hue, that I saw had no
business among our holy prayers; he wore a mocking smile on his face,
as though he prevailed in evil.  So I rose and followed; and just as
they came to the door, I aimed a shrewd blow, for it was told me what
to do, at the boy, and struck him on the head, so that he fell to the
ground, and presently went to his own place; and then our brother came
back to his prayers."

The Prior mused a little over this wonder, and then he said, smiling:
"It seemed to me that it was our brother that was smitten."  "Very
like," said the hermit, "for the two were close together, and I think
the boy was whispering in the brother's ear; but give God the glory;
for the dear brother will not offend again."

There is an abundance of truth in this wholesome ancient tale; but I
will not draw the morals out here.  All I will say is that the old
theory of prayer, simple and childlike as it is, seems to have a
curious vitality even nowadays.  It presupposes that the act of prayer
is in itself pleasing to God; and that is what I am not satisfied of.

That theory seems to prevail even more strongly in the Roman Church of
to-day than in our own.  The Roman priest is not a man occupied
primarily with pastoral duties; his business is the business of prayer.
To neglect his daily offices is a mortal sin, and when he has said
them, his priestly duty is at an end.  This does not seem to me to bear
any relation to the theory of prayer as enunciated in the Gospel.
There the practice of constant and secret prayer, of a direct and
informal kind, is enjoined upon all followers of Christ; but Our Lord
seems to be very hard upon the lengthy and public prayers of the
Pharisees, and indeed against all formality in the matter at all.  The
only united service that he enjoined upon his followers was the
Sacrament of the common meal; and I confess that the saying of formal
liturgies in an ornate building seems to me to be a practice which has
drifted very far away from the simplicity of individual religion which
Christ appears to have aimed at.

My own feeling about prayer is that it should not be relegated to
certain seasons, or attended by certain postures, or even couched in
definite language; it should rather be a constant uplifting of the
heart, a stretching out of the hands to God.  I do not think we should
ask for definite things that we desire; I am sure that our definite
desires, our fears, our plans, our schemes, the hope that visits one a
hundred times a day, our cravings for wealth or success or influence,
are as easily read by God, as a man can discern the tiny atoms and
filaments that swim in his crystal globe.  But I think we may ask to be
led, to be guided, to be helped; we may put our anxious little
decisions before God; we may ask for strength to fulfil hard duties; we
may put our desires for others' happiness, our hopes for our country,
our compassion for sorrowing or afflicted persons, our horror of
cruelty and tyranny before him; and here I believe lies the force of
prayer; that by practising this sense of aspiration in his presence, we
gain a strength to do our own part.  If we abstain from prayer, if we
limit our prayers to our own small desires, we grow, I know, petty and
self-absorbed and feeble.  We can leave the fulfilment of our concrete
aims to God; but we ought to be always stretching out our hands and
opening our hearts to the high and gracious mysteries that lie all
about us.

A friend of mine told me that a little Russian peasant, whom he had
visited often in a military hospital, told him, at their last
interview, that he would tell him a prayer that was always effective,
and had never failed of being answered.  "But you must not use it," he
said, "unless you are in a great difficulty, and there seems no way
out."  The prayer which he then repeated was this: "Lord, remember King
David, and all his grace."

I have never tested the efficacy of this prayer, but I have a thousand
times tested the efficacy of sudden prayer in moments of difficulty,
when confronted with a little temptation, when overwhelmed with
irritation, before an anxious interview, before writing a difficult
passage.  How often has the temptation floated away, the irritation
mastered itself, the right word been said, the right sentence written!
To do all we are capable of, and then to commit the matter to the hand
of the Father, that is the best that we can do.

Of course, I am well aware that there are many who find this kind of
help in liturgical prayer; and I am thankful that it is so.  But for
myself, I can only say that as long as I pursued the customary path,
and confined myself to fixed moments of prayer, I gained very little
benefit.  I do not forego the practice of liturgical attendance even
now; for a solemn service, with all the majesty of an old and beautiful
building full of countless associations, with all the resources of
musical sound and ceremonial movement, does uplift and rejoice the
soul.  And even with simpler services, there is often something vaguely
sustaining and tranquillising in the act.  But the deeper secret lies
in the fact that prayer is an attitude of soul, and not a ceremony;
that it is an individual mystery, and not a piece of venerable pomp.  I
would have every one adopt his own method in the matter.  I would not
for an instant discourage those who find that liturgical usage uplifts
them; but neither would I have those to be discouraged who find that it
has no meaning for them.  The secret lies in the fact that our aim
should be a relation with the Father, a frank and reverent confidence,
a humble waiting upon God.  That the Father loves all his children with
an equal love I doubt not.  But he is nearest to those who turn to him
at every moment, and speak to him with a quiet trustfulness.  He alone
knows why he has set us in the middle of such a bewildering world,
where joy and sorrow, darkness and light, are so strangely
intermingled; and all that we can do is to follow wisely and patiently
such clues as he gives us, into the cloudy darkness in which he seems
to dwell.




XXIX

The Death-bed of Jacob

I heard read the other morning, in a quiet house-chapel, a chapter
which has always seemed to me one of the most perfectly beautiful
things in the Bible.  And as it was read, I felt, what is always a test
of the highest kind of beauty, that I had never known before how
perfect it was.  It was the 48th chapter of Genesis, the blessing of
Ephraim and Manasses.  Jacob, feeble and spent, is lying in the quiet,
tranquil passiveness of old age, with bygone things passing like dreams
before the inner eye of the spirit--in that mood, I think, when one
hardly knows where the imagined begins or the real ends.  He is told
that his son Joseph is coming, and he strengthens himself for an
effort.  Joseph enters, and, in a strain of high solemnity, Jacob
speaks of the promise made long before on the stone-strewn hills of
Bethel, and its fulfilment; but even so he seems to wander in his
thought, the recollection of his Rachel comes over him, and he cannot
forbear to speak of her: "_And as for me, when I came from Padan,
Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan, in the way, and when yet there
was but a little way to come unto Ephrath; and I buried her there in
the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem._"

Could there be anything more human, more tender than that?  The memory
of the sad day of loss and mourning, and then the gentle, aged
precision about names and places, the details that add nothing, and yet
are so natural, so sweet an echo of the old tale, the symbols of the
story, that stand for so much and mean so little,--"_the same is
Bethlehem_."  Who has not heard an old man thus tracing out the
particulars of some remote recollected incident, dwelling for the
hundredth time on the unimportant detail, the side-issue, so needlessly
anxious to avoid confusion, so bent on useless accuracy.

Then, as he wanders thus, he becomes aware of the two boys, standing in
wonder and awe beside him; and even so he cannot at once piece together
the facts, but asks, with a sudden curiosity, "_Who are these?_"  Then
it is explained very gently by the dear son whom he had lost, and who
stands for a parable of tranquil wisdom and loyal love.  The old man
kisses and embraces the boys, and with a full heart says, "_I had not
thought to see thy face; and lo, God hath showed me also thy seed._"
And at this Joseph can bear it no more, puts the boys forward, who seem
to be clinging shyly to him, and bows himself down with his face to the
earth, in a passion of grief and awe.

And then the old man will not bless them as intended, but gives the
richer blessing to the younger; with those words which haunt the memory
and sink into the heart: "_The angel which redeemed me from all evil,
bless the lads._"  And Joseph is moved by what he thinks to be a
mistake, and would correct it, so as to give the larger blessing to his
firstborn.  But Jacob refuses.  "_I know it, my son, I know it ... he
also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater
than he._"

And so he adds a further blessing; and even then, at that deep moment,
the old man cannot refrain from one flash of pride in his old prowess,
and speaks, in his closing words, of the inheritance he won from the
Amorite with his sword and bow; and this is all the more human because
there is no trace in the records of his ever having done anything of
the kind.  He seems to have been always a man of peace.  And so the
sweet story remains human to the very end.  I care very little what the
critics may have to say on the matter.  They may call it legendary if
they will, they may say that it is the work of an Ephraimite scribe,
bent on consecrating the Ephraimite supremacy by the aid of tradition.
But the incident appears to me to be of a reality, a force, a
tenderness, that is above historical criticism.  Whatever else may be
true, there is a breathing reality in the picture of the old weak
patriarch making his last conscious effort; Joseph, that wise and
prudent servant, whose activities have never clouded his clear natural
affections; the boys, the mute and awed actors in the scene, not made
to utter any precocious phrases, and yet centring the tenderness of
hope and joy upon themselves.  If it is art, it is the perfection of
art, which touches the very heart-strings into a passion of sweetness
and wonder.

Compare this ancient story with other achievements of the human mind
and soul: with Homer, with Virgil, with Shakespeare.  I think they pale
beside it, because with no sense of effort or construction, with all
the homely air of a simple record, the perfectly natural, the perfectly
pathetic, the perfectly beautiful, is here achieved.  There is no
painting of effects, no dwelling on accessories, no consciousness of
beauty; and yet the heart is fed, the imagination touched, the spirit
satisfied.  For here one has set foot in the very shrine of truth and
beauty, and the wise hand that wrote it has just opened the door of the
heart, and stands back, claiming no reward, desiring no praise.




XXX

By the Sea of Galilee

I have often thought that the last chapter of St John's Gospel is one
of the most bewildering and enchanting pieces of literature I know.  I
suppose Robert Browning must have thought so, because he makes the
reading of it, in that odd rich poem, _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, the
sign, together with testing a plough, of a man's conversion, from the
unreal life of talk and words, to the realities of life; though I have
never divined why he used this particular chapter as a symbol; and
indeed I hope no one will ever make it clear to me, though I daresay
the connection is plain enough.

It is bewildering, because it is a postscript, added, with a singular
artlessness, after the Gospel has come to a full close.  Perhaps St
John did not even write it, though the pretty childlike conclusion
about the world itself not being able to contain the books that might
be written about Christ has always seemed to me to be in his spirit,
the words of a very simple-minded and aged man.  It is enchanting,
because it contains two of the most beautiful episodes in the whole of
the Gospel History, the charge to St Peter to feed the lambs and sheep
of the fold, where one of the most delicate nuances of language is lost
in the English translation, and the appearance of Jesus beside the sea
of Galilee.  I must not here discuss the story of the charge to St
Peter, though I once heard it read, with exquisite pathos, when an
archbishop of Canterbury was being enthroned with all the pomp and
circumstance of ecclesiastical ceremony, in such a way that it brought
out, by a flash of revelation, the true spirit of the scene we were
attending; we were simple Christians, it seemed, assembled only to set
a shepherd over a fold, that he might lead a flock in green pastures
and by waters of comfort.

But a man must not tell two tales at once, or he loses the savour of
both.  Let us take the other story.

The dreadful incidents of the Passion are over; the shame, the horror,
the humiliation, the disappointment.  The hearts of the Apostles must
have been sore indeed at the thought that they had deserted their
friend and Master.  Then followed the mysterious incidents of the
Resurrection, about which I will only say that it is plain from the
documents, if they are accepted as a record at all, from the
astonishing change which seems to have passed over the Apostles,
converting their timid faithfulness into a tranquil boldness, that
they, at all events, believed that some incredibly momentous thing had
happened, and that their Master was among them again, returning through
the gates of Death.

They go back, like men wearied of inaction, tired of agitated thought,
to their homely trade.  All night the boat sways in the quiet tide, but
they catch nothing.  Then, as the morning begins to come in about the
promontories and shores of the lake, they see the figure of one moving
on the bank, who hails them with a familiar heartiness, as a man might
do who had to provide for unexpected guests, and had nothing to give
them to eat.  I fancy, I know not whether rightly, that they see in him
a purchaser, and answer sullenly that they have nothing to sell.  Then
follows a direction, which they obey, to cast the net on the right side
of the boat.  Perhaps they thought the stranger--for it is clear that
as yet they had no suspicion of his identity--had seen some sign of a
moving shoal which had escaped them.  They secure a great haul of fish.
Then John has an inkling of the truth; and I know no words which thrill
me more strangely than the simple expression that bursts from his lips:
_It is the Lord!_  With characteristic impetuosity Peter leaps into the
water, and wades or swims ashore.

And then comes another of the surprising touches of the story.  As a
mother might tenderly provide a meal for her husband and sons who have
been out all night, they find that their visitant has made and lit a
little fire, and is broiling fish, how obtained one knows not; then the
haul is dragged ashore, the big shoal leaping in the net; and then
follows the simple invitation and the distribution of the food.  It
seems as though that memorable meal, by the shore of the lake, with the
fresh brightness of the morning breaking all about them, must have been
partaken of in silence; one can almost hear the soft crackling of the
fire, and the waves breaking on the shingle.  They dared not ask him
who he was: they knew; and yet, considering that they had only parted
from him a few days before, the narrative implies that some mysterious
change must have passed over him.  Perhaps they were wondering, as we
may wonder, how he was spending those days.  He was seen only in sudden
and unexpected glimpses; where was he living, what was he doing through
those long nights and days in which they saw him not?  I can only say
that for me a deep mystery broods over the record.  The glimpses of
him, and even more his absences, seem to me to transcend the powers of
human invention.  That these men lived, that they believed they saw the
Lord, seems to me the only possible explanation, though I admit to the
full the baffling mystery of it all.

And then the scene closes with absolute suddenness; there is no attempt
to describe, to amplify, to analyse.  There follows the charge to
Peter, the strange prophecy of his death, and the still stranger
repression of curiosity as to what should be the fate of St John.

But the whole incident, coming to us as it does out of the hidden
ancient world, defying investigation, provoking the deepest wonder,
remains as faint and sweet as the incense of the morning, as the cool
breeze that played about the weary brows of the sleepless fishermen,
and stirred the long ripple of the clear lake.




XXXI

The Apocalypse

I think that there are few verses of the Bible that give one a more
sudden and startling thrill than the verse at the beginning of the
viiith chapter of the Revelation.  _And when he had opened the seventh
seal there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour_.  The
very simplicity of the words, the homely note of specified time, is in
itself deeply impressive.  But further, it gives the dim sense of some
awful and unseen preparation going forward, a period allowed in which
those that stood by, august and majestic as they were, should collect
their courage, should make themselves ready with bated breath for some
dire pageant.  Up to that moment the vision had followed hard on the
opening of each seal.  Upon the opening of the first, had resounded a
peal of thunder, and the voice of the first beast had called the
awestruck eyes and the failing heart to look upon the sight: _Come and
see_!  Then the white horse with the crowned conqueror had ridden
joyfully forth.  At the opening of the second seal, had sprung forth
the red horse, and the rider with the great sword.  When the third was
opened, the black horse had gone forth, the rider bearing the balances;
and then had followed the strange and naïve charge by the unknown
voice, which gives one so strong a sense that the vision was being
faithfully recorded rather than originated, the voice that quoted a
price for the grain of wheat and barley, and directed the protection of
the vineyard and olive-yard.  This homely reference to the simple food
of earth keeps the mind intent upon the actual realities and needs of
life in the midst of these bewildering sights.  Then at the fourth
opening, the pale horse, bestridden by Death, went mournfully abroad.
At the fifth seal, the crowded souls beneath the altar cry out for
restlessness; they are clothed in white robes, and bidden to be patient
for a while.  Then, at the sixth seal, falls the earthquake, the
confusion of nature, the dismay of men, before the terror of the anger
of God; and the very words _the wrath of the Lamb_, have a marvellous
significance; the wrath of the Most Merciful, the wrath of one whose
very symbol is that of a blithe and meek innocence.  Then the earth is
guarded from harm, and the faithful are sealed; and in words of the
sublimest pathos, the end of pain and sorrow is proclaimed, and the
promise that the redeemed shall be fed and led forth by fountains of
living waters.  And then, at the very moment of calm and peace, the
seventh seal is opened,--and nothing follows! the very angels of heaven
seem to stand with closed eyes, compressed lips, and beating heart,
waiting for what shall be.

And then at last the visions come crowding before the gaze again--the
seven trumpets are sounded, the bitter, burning stars fall, the locusts
swarm out from the smoking pit, and death and woe begin their work;
till at last the book is delivered to the prophet, and his heart is
filled with the sweetness of the truth.

I have no desire to trace the precise significance of these things.  I
do not wish that these tapestries of wrought mysteries should be
suspended upon the walls of history.  I do not think that they can be
so suspended; nor have I the least hope that these strange sights, so
full both of brightness and of horror, should ever be seen by mortal
eye.  But that a human soul should have lost itself in these august
dreams, that the book of visions should have been thus strangely
guarded through the ages, and at last, clothed in the sweet cadences of
our English tongue, should be read in our ears, till the words are
soaked through and through with rich wonder and tender
associations--that is, I think, a very wonderful and divine thing.  The
lives of all men that have an inner eye for beauty are full of such
mysteries, and surely there is no one, of those that strive to pierce
below the dark experiences of life, who is not aware, as he reckons
back the days of his life, of hours when the seals of the book have
been opened.  It has been so, I know, in my own life.  Sometimes, at
the rending of the seal, a gracious thing has gone forth, bearing
victory and prosperity.  Sometimes a dark figure has ridden away,
changing the very face of the earth for a season.  Sometimes a thunder
of dismay has followed, or a vision of sweet peace and comfort; and
sometimes one has assuredly known that a seal has been broken, to be
followed by a silence in heaven and earth.

And thus these solemn and mournful visions retain a great hold over the
mind; it is, with myself, partly the childish associations of wonder
and delight.  One recurred so eagerly to the book, because, instead of
mere thought and argument, earthly events, wars and dynasties, here was
a gallery of mysterious pictures, things seen out of the body, scenes
of bright colour and monstrous forms, enacted on the stage of heaven.
That is entrancing still; but beyond and above these strange forms and
pictured fancies, I now discern a deeper mystery of thought; not pure
and abstract thought, flashes of insight, comforting grace, kindled
desires, but rather that more complex thought that, through a
perception of strange forms, a waving robe of scarlet, a pavement
bright with jewels, a burning star, a bird of sombre plumage, a dark
grove, breathes a subtle insight, like a strain of unearthly music,
interpreting the hopes and fears of the heart by haunted glimpses and
obscure signs.  I do not know in what shadowy region of the soul these
things draw near, but it is in a region which is distinct and apart, a
region where the dreaming mind projects upon the dark its dimly-woven
visions; a region where it is not wise to wander too eagerly and
carelessly, but into which one may look warily and intently at seasons,
standing upon the dizzy edge of time, and gazing out beyond the flaming
ramparts of the world.




XXXII

The Statue

I saw a strange and moving thing to-day.  I went with a friend to visit
a great house in the neighbourhood.  The owner was away, but my friend
enjoyed the right of leisurely access to the place, and we thought we
would take the opportunity of seeing it.

We entered at the lodge, and walked through the old deer-park with its
huge knotted oaks, its wide expanse of grass.  The deer were feeding
quietly in a long herd.  The great house itself came in sight, with its
portico and pavilions staring at us, so it seemed, blankly and
seriously, with shuttered eyes.  The whole place unutterably still and
deserted, like a house seen in a dream.

There was one particular thing that we came to visit; we left the house
on the left, and turned through a little iron gate into a thick grove
of trees.  We soon became aware that there was open ground before us,
and presently we came to a space in the heart of the wood, where there
was a silent pool all overgrown with water-lilies; the bushes grew
thickly round the edge.  The pool was full of water-birds, coots, and
moor-hens, sailing aimlessly about, and uttering strange, melancholy
cries at intervals.  On the edge of the water stood a small marble
temple, streaked and stained by the weather.  As we approached it, my
friend told me something of the builder of the little shrine.  He was a
former owner of the place, a singular man, who in his later days had
lived a very solitary life here.  He was a man of wild and wayward
impulses, who had drunk deeply in youth of pleasure and excitement.  He
had married a beautiful young wife, who had died childless in the first
year of their marriage, and he had abandoned himself after this event
to a despairing seclusion, devoted to art and music.  He had filled the
great house with fine pictures, he had written a book of poems, and
some curious stilted volumes of autobiographical prose; but he had no
art of expression, and his books had seemed like a powerless attempt to
give utterance to wild and melancholy musings; they were written in a
pompous and elaborate style, which divested the thoughts of such charm
as they might have possessed.

He had lived thus to a considerable age in a wilful sadness, unloving
and unloved.  He had cared nothing for the people of the place,
entertained no visitors; rambling, a proud solitary figure, about the
demesne, or immured for days together in his library.  Had the story
not been true, it would have appeared like some elaborate fiction.

He built this little temple in memory of the wife whom he had lost, and
often visited it, spending hours on hot summer days wandering about the
little lake, or sitting silent in the portico.  We went up to the
building.  It was a mere alcove, open to the air.  But what arrested my
attention was a marble figure of a young man, in a sitting position,
lightly clad in a tunic, the neck, arms, and knees bare; one knee was
flung over the other, and the chin was propped on an arm, the elbow of
which rested on the knee.  The face was a wonderful and expressive
piece of work.  The boy seemed to be staring out, not seeing what he
looked upon, but lost in a deep agony of thought.  The face was
wonderfully pure and beautiful; and the anguish seemed not the anguish
of remorse, but the pain of looking upon things both sweet and
beautiful, and of yet being unable to take a share in them.  The whole
figure denoted a listless melancholy.  It was the work of a famous
French sculptor, who seemed to have worked under close and minute
direction; and my friend told me that no less than three statues had
been completed before the owner was satisfied.

On the pedestal were sculptured the pathetic words, _Oímoi mal authis_.
There was a look of revolt of dumb anger upon the face that lay behind
its utter and hopeless sadness.  I knew too well, by a swift instinct,
what the statue stood for.  Here was one, made for life, activity, and
joy, who yet found himself baffled, thwarted, shut out from the
paradise that seemed to open all about him; it was the face of one who
had found satiety in pleasure, and sorrow in the very heart of joy.
There was no taint of grossness or of luxury in the face, but rather a
strength, an intellectual force, a firm lucidity of thought.  I confess
that the sight moved me very strangely.  I felt a thrill of the deepest
compassion, a desire to do something that might help or comfort, a
yearning wish to aid, to explain, to cheer.  The silence, the
stillness, the hopelessness of the pathetic figure woke in me the
intensest desire to give I knew not what--an overwhelming impulse of
pity.  It seemed a parable of all the joy that is so sternly checked,
all the hopes made vain, the promise disappointed, the very death of
the soul.  It seemed infinitely pathetic that God should have made so
fair a thing, and then withheld joy.  And it seemed as though I had
looked into the very soul of the unhappy man who had set up so strange
and pathetic an allegory of his sufferings.  The boy seemed as though
he would have welcomed death--anything that brought an end; yet the
health and suppleness of the bright figure held out no hope of that.
It was the very type of unutterable sorrow, and that not in an outworn
body, and reflected in a face dim with sad experience, but in a
perfectly fresh and strong frame, built for action and life.  I cannot
say what remote thoughts, what dark communings, visited me at the
sight.  I seemed confronted all at once with the deepest sadness of the
world, as though an unerring arrow had pierced my very heart--an arrow
winged by beauty, and shot on a summer day of sunshine and song.

Is there any faith that is strong enough and deep enough to overcome
such questionings?  It seemed to bring me near to all those pale and
hopeless agonies of the world; all the snapping short of joy, the
confronting of life with death--those dreadful moments when the heart
asks itself, in a kind of furious horror, "How can it be that I am
filled so full of all the instinct of joy and life, and yet bidden to
suffer and to die?"

The only hope is in an utter and silent resignation; in the belief
that, if there is a purpose in the gift of joy, there is a purpose in
the gift of suffering.  And as thus, in that calm afternoon, in the
silent wood, by the shining pool, I lifted up my heart to God to be
consoled, I felt a great hope draw near, as when the vast tide flows
landward, and fills the dry, solitary sand-pools with the leaping
brine.  "Only wait," said the deep and tender voice, "only endure, only
believe; and a sweetness, a beauty, a truth beyond your utmost dreams
shall be revealed."




XXXIII

The Mystery of Suffering

Here is a story which has much occupied my thoughts lately.  A man in
middle life, with a widowed sister and her children depending on him,
living by professional exertions, is suddenly attacked by a painful,
horrible, and fatal complaint.  He goes through a terrible operation,
and then struggles back to his work again, with the utmost courage and
gallantry.  Again the complaint returns, and the operation is repeated.
After this he returns again to his work, but at last, after enduring
untold agonies, he is forced to retire into an invalid life, after a
few months of which he dies in terrible suffering, and leaves his
sister and the children nearly penniless.

The man was a quiet, simple-minded person, fond of his work, fond of
his home, conventional and not remarkable except for the simply heroic
quality he displayed, smiling and joking up to the moment of the
administering of anaesthetics for his operations, and bearing his
sufferings with perfect patience and fortitude, never saying an
impatient word, grateful for the smallest services.

His sister, a simple, active woman, with much tender affection and
considerable shrewdness, finding that the fear of incurring needless
expense distressed her brother, devoted herself to the ghastly and
terrible task of nursing him through his illnesses.  The children
behaved with the same straightforward affection and goodness.  None of
the circle ever complained, ever said a word which would lead one to
suppose that they had any feeling of resentment or cowardice.  They
simply received the blows of fate humbly, resignedly, and cheerfully,
and made the best of the situation.

Now, let us look this sad story in the face, and see if we can derive
any hope or comfort from it.  In the first place, there was nothing in
the man's life which would lead one to suppose that he deserved or
needed this special chastening, this crucifixion of the body.  He was
by instinct humble, laborious, unselfish, and good, all of which
qualities came out in his illness.  Neither was there anything in the
life or character of the sister which seemed to need this stern and
severe trial.  The household had lived a very quiet, active, useful
life, models of good citizens--religious, contented, drawing great
happiness from very simple resources.

One's belief in the goodness, the justice, the patience of the Father
and Maker of men forbids one to believe that he can ever be wantonly
cruel, unjust, or unloving.  Yet it is impossible to see the mercy or
justice of his actions in this case.  And the misery is that, if it
could be proved that in one single case, however small, God's goodness
had, so to speak, broken down; if there were evidence of neglect or
carelessness or indifference, in the case of one single child of his,
one single sentient thing that he has created, it would be impossible
to believe in his omnipotence any more.  Either one would feel that he
was unjust and cruel, or that there was some evil power at work in the
world which he could not overcome.

For there is nothing remedial in this suffering.  The man's useful,
gentle life is over, the sister is broken down, unhappy, a second time
made desolate; the children's education has suffered, their home is
made miserable.  The only thing that one can see, that is in any degree
a compensation, is the extraordinary kindness displayed by friends,
relations, and employers in making things easy for the afflicted
household.  And then, too, there is the heroic quality of soul
displayed by the sufferer himself and his sister--a heroism which is
ennobling to think of, and yet humiliating too, because it seems to be
so far out of one's own reach.

This is a very dark abyss of the world into which we are looking.  The
case is an extreme one perhaps, but similar things happen every day, in
this sad and wonderful and bewildering world.  Of course, one may take
refuge in a gloomy acquiescence, saying that such things seem to be
part of the world as it is made, and we cannot explain them, while we
dumbly hope that we may be spared such woes.  But that is a dark and
despairing attitude, and, for one, I cannot live at all, unless I feel
that God is indeed more upon our side than that.  I cannot live at all,
I say.  And yet I must live; I must endure the Will of God in whatever
form it is laid upon me--in joy or in pain, in contentment or sick
despair.  Why am I at one with the Will of God when it gives me
strength, and hope, and delight?  Why am I so averse to it when it
brings me languor, and sorrow, and despair?  That I cannot tell; and
that is the enigma which has confronted men from generation to
generation.

But I still believe that there is a Will of God; and, more than that, I
can still believe that a day comes for all of us, however far off it
may be, when we shall understand; when these tragedies, that now
blacken and darken the very air of Heaven for us, will sink into their
places in a scheme so august, so magnificent, so joyful, that we shall
laugh for wonder and delight; when we shall think not more sorrowfully
over these sufferings, these agonies, than we think now of the sad days
in our childhood when we sat with a passion of tears over a broken toy
or a dead bird, feeling that we could not be comforted.  We smile as we
remember such things--we smile at our blindness, our limitations.  We
smile to reflect at the great range and panorama of the world that has
opened upon us since, and of which, in our childish grief, we were so
ignorant.  Under what conditions the glory will be revealed to us I
cannot guess.  But I do not doubt that it will be revealed; for we
forget sorrow, but we do not forget joy.




XXXIV

Music

I have just come back from hearing a great violinist, who played, with
three other professors, in two quartettes, Mozart and Beethoven.  I
know little of the technicalities of music, but I know that the Mozart
was full to me of air and sunlight, and a joy which was not the
light-hearted gaiety of earth, but the untainted and unwearying joy of
heaven; the Beethoven I do not think I understood, but there was a
grave minor movement, with pizzicato passages for the violoncello,
which seemed to consecrate and dignify the sorrow of the heart.

But apart from the technical merits of the music--and the performance,
indeed, seemed to me to lie as near the thought and the conception as
the translation of music into sound can go--the sight of these four big
men, serious and grave, as though neither pursuing nor creating
pleasure, but as though interpreting and giving expression to some
weighty secret, had an inspiring and solemnising effect.  The sight of
the great violinist himself was full of awe; his big head, the full
grey beard which lay over the top of the violin, his calm, set brows,
his weary eyes with their heavy lids, had a profound dignity and
seriousness; and to see his wonderful hands, not delicate or slender,
but full, strong, and muscular, moving neither lingeringly nor hastily,
but with a firm and easy deliberation upon the strings, was deeply
impressive.  It all seemed so easy, so inevitable, so utterly without
display, so simple and great.  It gave one a sense of mingled fire and
quietude, which is the end of art,--one may almost say the end of life;
it was no leaping and fitful flame, but a calm and steady glow; not a
consuming fire, but like the strength of a mighty furnace; and then the
peace of it!  The great man did not stand before us as a performer; he
seemed utterly indifferent to praise or applause, and he had rather a
grave, pontifical air, as of a priest, divinely called to minister,
celebrating a divine mystery, calling down the strength of heaven to
earth.  Neither was there the least sense of one conferring a favour;
he rather appeared to recognise that we were there in the same spirit
as himself, the worshippers in some high solemnity, and his own skill
not a thing to be shown or gloried in, but a mere ministering of a
sacred gift.  He seemed, indeed, to be like one who distributed a
sacramental meat to an intent throng; not a giver of pleasure, but a
channel of secret grace.

From such art as this one comes away not only with a thrill of mortal
rapture, but with a real and deep faith in art, having bowed the head
before a shrine, and having tasted the food of the spirit.  When, at
the end of a sweet and profound movement, the player raised his great
head and looked round tenderly and gently on the crowd, one felt as
though, like Moses, he had struck the rock, and the streams had gushed
out, _ut bibat populus_.  And there fell an even deeper awe, which
seemed to say, "God was in this place ... and I knew it not."  The
world of movement, of talk, of work, of conflicting interests, into
which one must return, seemed all a fantastic noise, a shadowy
striving; the only real thing seemed the presence-chamber from which we
had gone out, the chamber in which music had uttered its voice at the
bidding of some sacred spell, the voice of an infinite Spirit, the
Spirit that had brooded upon the deep, evoking order out of chaos and
light out of darkness; with no eager and dusty manoeuvrings, no clink
and clatter of human toil, but gliding resistlessly and largely upon
the world, as the sun by silent degrees detaches himself from the dark
rim of the world, and climbs in stately progress into the unclouded
heaven.




XXXV

The Faith of Christ

I read a terrible letter in the newspaper this morning, a letter from a
clergyman of high position, finding fault with a manifesto put out by
certain other clergymen; the letter had a certain volubility about it,
and the writer seemed to me to pull out rather adroitly one or two
loose sticks in his opponents' bundle, and to lay them vehemently about
their backs.  But, alas! the acrimony, the positiveness, the arrogance
of it!

I do not know that I admired the manifesto very much myself; it was a
timid and half-hearted document, but it was at least sympathetic and
tender.  The purport of it was to say that, just as historical
criticism has shown that some of the Old Testament must be regarded as
fabulous, so we must be prepared for a possible loss of certitude in
some of the details of the New Testament.  It is conceivable, for
instance, that without sacrificing the least portion of the essential
teaching of Christ, men may come to feel justified in a certain
suspension of judgment with regard to some of the miraculous
occurrences there related; may even grow to believe that an element of
exaggeration is there, that element of exaggeration which is never
absent from the writings of any age in which scientific historical
methods had no existence.  A suspension of judgment, say: because in
the absence of any converging historical testimony to the events of the
New Testament, it will never be possible either to affirm or to deny
historically that the facts took place exactly as related; though,
indeed, the probability of their having so occurred may seem to be
diminished.

The controversialist, whose letter I read with bewilderment and pain,
involved his real belief in ingenious sentences, so that one would
think that he accepted the statements of the Old Testament, such as the
account of the Creation and the Fall, the speaking of Balaam's Ass, the
swallowing of Jonah by the whale, as historical facts.  He went on to
say that the miraculous element of the New Testament is accredited by
the Revelation of God, as though some definite revelation of truth had
taken place at some time or other, which all rational men recognised.
But the only objective process which has ever taken place is, that at
certain Councils of the Church, certain books of Scripture were
selected as essential documents, and the previous selection of the Old
Testament books was confirmed.  But would the controversialist say that
these Councils were infallible?  It must surely be clear to all
rational people that the members of these Councils were merely doing
their best, under the conditions that then prevailed, to select the
books that seemed to them to contain the truth.  It is impossible to
believe that if the majority at these Councils had supposed that such
an account as the account in Genesis of the Creation was mythological,
they would thus have attested its literal truth.  It never occurred to
them to doubt it, because they did not understand the principle that,
while a normal event can be accepted, if it is fairly well confirmed,
an abnormal event requires a far greater amount of converging testimony
to confirm it.

If only the clergy could realise that what ordinary laymen like myself
want is a greater elasticity instead of an irrational certainty! if
only instead of feebly trying to save the outworks, which are already
in the hands of the enemy, they would man the walls of the central
fortress!  If only they would say plainly that a man could remain a
convinced Christian, and yet not be bound to hold to the literal
accuracy of the account of miraculous incidents recorded in the Bible,
it would be a great relief.

I am myself in the position of thousands of other laymen.  I am a
sincere Christian; and yet I regard the Old Testament and the New
Testament alike as the work of fallible men and of poetical minds.  I
regard the Old Testament as a noble collection of ancient writings,
containing myths, chronicles, fables, poems, and dramas, the value of
which consists in the intense faith in a personal God and Father with
which it is penetrated.

When I come to the New Testament, I feel myself, in the Gospels,
confronted by the most wonderful personality which has ever drawn
breath upon the earth.  I am not in a position to affirm or to deny the
exact truth of the miraculous occurrences there related; but the more
conscious I am of the fallibility, the lack of subtlety, the absence of
trained historical method that the writers display, the more convinced
I am of the essential truth of the Person and teaching of Christ,
because he seems to me a figure so infinitely beyond the intellectual
power of those who described him to have invented or created.

If the authors of the Gospels had been men of delicate literary skill,
of acute philosophical or poetical insight, like Plato or Shakespeare,
then I should be far less convinced of the integral truth of the
record.  But the words and sayings of Christ, the ideas which he
disseminated, seem to me so infinitely above the highest achievements
of the human spirit, that I have no difficulty in confessing, humbly
and reverently, that I am in the presence of one who seems to me to be
above humanity, and not only of it.  If all the miraculous events of
the Gospels could be proved never to have occurred, it would not
disturb my faith in Christ for an instant.  But I am content, as it is,
to believe in the possibility of so abnormal a personality being
surrounded by abnormal events, though I am not in a position to
disentangle the actual truth from the possibilities of
misrepresentation and exaggeration.

Dealing with the rest of the New Testament, I see in the Acts of the
Apostles a deeply interesting record of the first ripples of the faith
in the world.  In the Pauline and other epistles I see the words of
fervent primitive Christians, men of real and untutored genius, in
which one has amazing instances of the effect produced, on contemporary
or nearly contemporary persons, of the same overwhelming personality,
the personality of Christ.  In the Apocalypse I see a vision of deep
poetical force and insight.

But in none of these compositions, though they reveal a glow and
fervour of conviction that places them high among the memorials of the
human spirit, do I recognise anything which is beyond human
possibilities.  I observe, indeed, that St Paul's method of argument is
not always perfectly consistent, nor his conclusions absolutely cogent.
Such inspiration as they contain they draw from their nearness to and
their close apprehension of the dim and awe-inspiring presence of
Christ Himself.

If, as I say, the Church would concentrate her forces in this inner
fortress, the personality of Christ, and quit the debatable ground of
historical enquiry, it would be to me and to many an unfeigned relief;
but meanwhile, neither scientific critics nor irrational pedants shall
invalidate my claim to be of the number of believing Christians.  I
claim a Christian liberty of thought, while I acknowledge, with bowed
head, my belief in God the Father of men, in a Divine Christ, the
Redeemer and Saviour, and in the presence in the hearts of men of a
Divine spirit, leading humanity tenderly forward.  I can neither affirm
nor deny the literal accuracy of Scripture records; I am not in a
position to deny the superstructure of definite dogma raised by the
tradition of the Church about the central truths of its teaching, but
neither can I deny the possibility of an admixture of human error in
the fabric.  I claim my right to receive the Sacraments of my Church,
believing as I do that they invigorate the soul, bring the presence of
its Redeemer near, and constitute a bond of Christian unity.  But I
have no reason to believe that any human pronouncement whatever, the
pronouncements of men of science as well as the pronouncements of
theologians, are not liable to error.  There is indeed no fact in the
world except the fact of my own existence of which I am absolutely
certain.  And thus I can accept no system of religion which is based
upon deductions, however subtle, from isolated texts, because I cannot
be sure of the infallibility of any form of human expression.  Yet, on
the other hand, I seem to discern with as much certainty as I can
discern anything in this world, where all is so dark, the presence upon
earth at a certain date of a personality which commands my homage and
allegiance.  And upon this I build my trust.




XXXVI

The Mystery of Evil

I was staying the other day in a large old country-house.  One morning,
my host came to me and said: "I should like to show you a curious
thing.  We have just discovered a cellar here that seems never to have
been visited or used since the house was built, and there is the
strangest fungoid growth in it I have ever seen."  He took a big bunch
of keys, rang the bell, gave an order for lights to be brought, and we
went together to the place.  There were ranges of brick-built, vaulted
chambers, through which we passed, pleasant, cool places, with no
plaster to conceal the native brick, with great wine-bins on either
hand.  It all gave one an inkling of the change in material conditions
which must have taken place since they were built; the quantity of wine
consumed in eighteenth-century days must have been so enormous, and the
difficulty of conveyance so great, that every great householder must
have felt like the Rich Fool of the parable, with much goods laid up
for many years.  In the corner of one of the great vaults was a low
arched door, and my friend explained that some panelling which had been
taken out of an older house, demolished to make room for the present
mansion, had been piled up here, and thus the entrance had been hidden.
He unlocked the door, and a strange scent came out.  An abundance of
lights were lit, and we went into the vault.  It was the strangest
scene I have ever beheld; the end of the vault seemed like a great bed,
hung with brown velvet curtains, through the gaps of which were visible
what seemed like white velvet pillows, strange humped conglomerations.
My friend explained to me that there had been a bin at the end of the
vault, out of the wood of which these singular fungi had sprouted.  The
whole place was uncanny and horrible.  The great velvet curtains swayed
in the current of air, and it seemed as though at any moment some
mysterious sleeper might be awakened, might peer forth from his dark
curtains, with a fretful enquiry as to why he was disturbed.

The scene dwelt in my mind for many days, and aroused in me a strange
train of thought; these dim vegetable forms, with their rich
luxuriance, their sinister beauty, awoke a curious repugnance in the
mind.  They seemed unholy and evil.  And yet it is all part of the life
of nature; it is just as natural, just as beautiful to find life at
work in this gloomy and unvisited place, wreathing the bare walls with
these dark, soft fabrics.  It was impossible not to feel that there was
a certain joy of life in these growths, sprouting with such security
and luxuriance in a place so precisely adapted to their well-being; and
yet there was the shadow of death and darkness about them, to us whose
home is the free air and the sun.  It seemed to me to make a curious
parable of the baffling mystery of evil, the luxuriant growth of sin in
the dark soul.  I have always felt that the reason why the mystery of
evil is so baffling is because we so resolutely think of evil as of
something inimical to the nature of God; and yet evil must derive its
vitality from him.  The one thing that it is impossible to believe is
that, in a world ruled by an all-powerful God, anything should come
into existence which is in opposition to his Will.  It is impossible to
arrive at any solution of the difficulty, unless we either adopt the
belief that God is not all-powerful, and that there is a real dualism
in nature, two powers in eternal opposition; or else realise that evil
is in some way a manifestation of God.  If we adopt the first theory,
we may conceive of the stationary tendency in nature, its inertness,
the force that tends to bring motion to a standstill, as one power, the
power of Death; and we may conceive of all motion and force as the
other power, the quickening spirit, the power of life.  But even here
we are met with a difficulty, for when we try to transfer this dualism
to the region of humanity, we see that in the phenomena of disease we
are confronted, not with inertness fighting against motion, but with
one kind of life, which is inimical to human life, fighting with
another kind of life which is favourable to health.  I mean that when a
fever or a cancer lays hold of a human frame, it is nothing but the
lodging inside the body of a bacterial and an infusorial life which
fights against the healthy native life of the human organism.  There
must be, I will not say a consciousness, but a sense of triumphant
life, in the cancer which feeds upon the limb, in spite of all efforts
to dislodge it; and it is impossible to me to believe that the vitality
of those parasitical organisms, which prey upon the human frame, is not
derived from the vital impulse of God.  We, who live in the free air
and the sun, have a way of thinking and speaking as if the plants and
animals which develop under the same conditions were of a healthy type,
while the organisms which flourish in decay and darkness, such as the
fungi of which I saw so strange an example, the larva; which prey on
decaying matter, the soft and pallid worm-like forms that tunnel in
vegetable ooze, were of an unhealthy type.  But yet these creatures are
as much the work of God as the flowers and trees, the brisk animals
which we love to see about us.  We are obliged in self-defence to do
battle with the creatures which menace our health; we do not question
our right to deprive them of life for our own comfort; but surely with
this analogy before us, we are equally compelled to think of the forms
of moral evil, with all their dark vitality, as the work of God's hand.
It is a sad conclusion to be obliged to draw, but I can have no doubt
that no comprehensive system of philosophy can ever be framed, which
does not trace the vitality of what we call evil to the same hand as
the vitality of what we call good.  I have no doubt myself of the
supremacy of a single power; but the explanation that evil came into
the world by the institution of free-will, and that suffering is the
result of sin, seems to me to be wholly inadequate, because the mystery
of strife and pain and death is "far older than any history which is
written in any book."  The mistake that we make is to count up all the
qualities which seem to promote our health and happiness, and to invent
an anthropomorphic figure of God, whom we array upon the side which we
wish to prevail.  The truth is far darker, far sterner, far more
mysterious.  The darkness is his not less than the light; selfishness
and sin are the work of his hand, as much as unselfishness and
holiness.  To call this attitude of mind pessimism, and to say that it
can only end in acquiescence or despair, is a sin against truth.  A
creed that does not take this thought into account is nothing but a
delusion, with which we try to beguile the seriousness of the truth
which we dread; but such a stern belief does not forbid us to struggle
and to strive; it rather bids us believe that effort is a law of our
natures, that we are bound to be enlisted for the fight, and that the
only natures that fail are those that refuse to take a side at all.

There is no indecision in nature, though there is some illusion.  The
very star that rises, pale and serene, above the darkening thicket, is
in reality a globe wreathed in fiery vapour, the centre of a throng of
whirling planets.  What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into
the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered
gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and
protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as
faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul.




XXXVII

Renewal

There sometimes falls upon me a great hunger of heart, a sad desire to
build up and renew something--a broken building it may be, a fading
flower, a failing institution, a ruinous character.  I feel a great and
vivid pity for a thing which sets out to be so bright and beautiful,
and lapses into shapeless and uncomely neglect.  Sometimes, indeed, it
must be a desolate grief, a fruitless sorrow: as when a flower that has
stood on one's table, and cheered the air with its freshness and
fragrance, begins to droop, and to grow stained and sordid.  Or I see
some dying creature, a wounded animal; or even some well-loved friend
under the shadow of death, with the hue of health fading, the dear
features sharpening for the last change; and then one can only bow,
with such resignation as one can muster, before the dreadful law of
death, pray that the passage may not be long or dark, and try to dream
of the bright secrets that may be waiting on the other side.

But sometimes it is a more fruitful sadness, when one feels that decay
can be arrested, that new life can be infused; that a fresh start may
be taken, and a life may be beautifully renewed, and be even the
brighter, one dares to hope, for a lapse into the dreary ways of
bitterness.

This sadness is most apt to beset those who have anything to do with
the work of education.  One feels sometimes, with a sudden shiver, as
when the shadow of a cloud passes over a sunlit garden, that many
elements are at work in a small society; that an evil secret is
spreading over lives that were peaceful and contented, that suspicion
and disunion and misunderstanding are springing up, like poisonous
weeds, in the quiet corner that God has given one to dress and keep.
Then perhaps one tries to put one's hand on what is amiss; sometimes
one does too much, and in the wrong way; one has not enough faith, one
dares not leave enough to God.  Or from timidity or diffidence, or from
the base desire not to be troubled, from the poor hope that perhaps
things will straighten themselves out, one does too little; and that is
the worst shadow of all, the shadow of cowardice or sloth.

Sometimes, too, one has the grief of seeing a slow and subtle change
passing over the manner and face of one for whom one cares--not the
change of languor or physical weakness; that can be pityingly borne;
but one sees innocence withering, indifference to things wholesome and
fair creeping on, even sometimes a ripe and evil sort of beauty
maturing, such as comes of looking at evil unashamed, and seeing its
strong seductiveness.  One feels instinctively that the door which had
been open before between such a soul and one's own spirit is being
slowly and firmly closed, or even, if one attempts to open it, pulled
to with a swift motion; and then one may hear sounds within, and even
see, in that moment, a rush of gliding forms, that makes one sure that
a visitant is there, who has brought with him a wicked company; and
then one has to wait in sadness, with now and then a timid knocking,
even happy, it may be, if the soul sometimes call fretfully within, to
say that it is occupied and cannot come forth.

But sometimes, God be praised, it is the other way.  A year ago a man
came at his own request to see me.  I hardly knew him; but I could see
at once that he was in the grip of some hard conflict, which withered
his natural bloom.  I do not know how all came to be revealed; but in a
little while he was speaking with simple frankness and naturalness of
all his troubles, and they were many.  What was the most touching thing
of all was that he spoke as if he were quite alone in his experience,
isolated and shut off from his kind, in a peculiar horror of darkness
and doubt; as if the thoughts and difficulties at which he stumbled had
never strewn a human path before.  I said but little to him; and,
indeed, there was but little to say.  It was enough that he should
"cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the
heart."  I tried to make him feel that he was not alone in the matter,
and that other feet had trodden the dark path before him.  No advice is
possible in such cases; "therein the patient must minister to himself";
the solution lies in the mind of the sufferer.  He knows what he ought
to do; the difficulty is for him sufficiently to desire to do it; yet
even to speak frankly of cares and troubles is very often to melt and
disperse the morbid mist that gathers round them, which grows in
solitude.  To state them makes them plain and simple; and, indeed, it
is more than that; for I have often noticed that the mere act of
formulating one's difficulties in the hearing of one who sympathises
and feels, often brings the solution with it.  One finds, like
Christian in Doubting Castle, the key which has lain in one's bosom all
the time--the key of Promise; and when one has finished the recital,
one is lost in bewilderment that one ever was in any doubt at all.

A year has passed since that date, and I have had the happiness of
seeing health and contentment stream back into the man's face.  He has
not overcome, he has not won an easy triumph; but he is in the way now,
not wandering on trackless hills.

So, in the mood of which I spoke at first--the mood in which one
desires to build up and renew--one must not yield oneself to luxurious
and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the
half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain--the region,
I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken
dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities.  One must
rather look round for some little definite failure that is within the
circle of one's vision.  And even so, there sometimes comes what is the
most evil and subtle temptation of all, which creeps upon the mind in
lowly guise, and preaches inaction.  What concern have you, says the
tempting voice, to meddle with the lives and characters of others--to
guide, to direct, to help--when there is so much that is bitterly amiss
with your own heart and life?  How will you dare to preach what you do
not practice?  The answer of the brave heart is that, if one is aware
of failure, if one has suffered, if one has gathered experience, one
must be ready to share it.  If I falter and stumble under my own heavy
load, which I have borne so querulously, so clumsily, shall not I say a
word which can help a fellow-sufferer to bear his load more easily,
help him to avoid the mistakes, the falls into which my own perversity
has betrayed me?  To make another's burden lighter is to lighten one's
own burden; and, sinful as it may be to err, it is still more sinful to
see another err, and be silent, to withhold the word that might save
him.  Perhaps no one can help so much as one that has suffered himself,
who knows the turns of the sad road, and the trenches which beset the
way.

For thus comes most truly the joy of repentance; it is joy to feel that
one's own lesson is learnt, and that the feeble feet are a little
stronger; but if one may also feel that another has taken heed, has
been saved the fall that must have come if he had not been warned, one
does not grudge one's own pain, that has brought a blessing with it,
that is outside of one's own blessing; one hardly even grudges the sin.




XXXVIII

The Secret

I have been away from my books lately, in a land of downs and valleys;
I have walked much alone, or with a silent companion--that greatest of
all luxuries.  And, as is always the case when I get out of the reach
of books, I feel that I read a great deal too much, and do not meditate
enough.  It sounds indolent advice to say that one ought to meditate;
but I cannot help feeling that reading is often a still more indolent
affair.  When I am alone, or at leisure among my books, I take a volume
down; and the result is that another man does my thinking for me.  It
is like putting oneself in a comfortable railway carriage; one runs
smoothly along the iron track, one stops at specified stations, one
sees a certain range of country, and an abundance of pretty things in
flashes--too many, indeed, for the mind to digest; and that is the
reason, I think, why a modern journey, even with all the luxuries that
surround it, is so tiring a thing.  But to meditate is to take one's
own path among the hills; one turns off the track to examine anything
that attracts the attention; one makes the most of the few things that
one sees.

Reading is often a mere saving of trouble, a soporific for a restless
brain.  This last week, as I say, I have had very few books with me.
One of the few has been Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and I have read it
from end to end.  I want to say a few words about the book first, and
then to diverge, to a larger question.  I have read the poem with a
certain admiration; it is a large, strong, rugged, violent thing.  I
have, however, read it without emotion, except that a few of the
similes in it, which lie like shells on a beach of sand, have pleased
me.  Yet it is not true to say that I have read it without emotion,
because I have read it with anger and indignation.  I have come to the
conclusion that the book has done a great deal of harm.  It is
responsible, I think, for a great many of the harsh, business-like,
dismal views of religion that prevail among us.  Milton treated God,
the Saviour, and the angels, from the point of view of a scholar who
had read the _Iliad_.  I declare that I think that the passages where
God the Father speaks, discusses the situation of affairs, and arranges
matters with the Saviour, are some of the most profane and vicious
passages in English literature.  I do not want to be profane myself,
because it is a disgusting fault; but the passage where the scheme of
Redemption is arranged, where God enquires whether any of the angels
will undergo death in order to satisfy his sense of injured justice, is
a passage of what I can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in
the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language.  The angels timidly
decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful
situation.  The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a
commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan.  There is no largeness or
graciousness about it, no wistful love.  He keeps his purposes to
himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve
to do, some one has got to be punished.  If the guilty ones cannot, so
much the worse; an innocent victim will do, but a victim there must be.
It is a wicked, an abominable passage, and I would no more allow an
intelligent child to read it than I would allow him to read an obscene
book.

Then, again, the passage where the rebel angels cast cannon, make
gunpowder, and mow the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile
and ridiculous.  The hateful materialism of the whole thing is patent.
I wish that the English Church could have an Index, and put _Paradise
Lost_ upon it, and allow no one to read it until he had reached years
of discretion, and then only with a certificate, and for purely
literary purposes.

It is a terrible instance how strong a thing Art is; the grim old
author, master of every form of ugly vituperation, had drifted
miserably away from his beautiful youth, when he wrote the sweet poems
and sonnets that make the pedestal for his fame; and on that delicate
pedestal stands this hideous iron figure, with its angry gestures, its
sickening strength.

I could pile up indignant instances of the further harm the book has
done.  Who but Milton is responsible for the hard and shameful view of
the position of women?  He represents her as a clinging, soft,
compliant creature, whose only ideal is to be to make things
comfortable for her husband, and to submit to his embraces.  Milton
spoilt the lives of all the women he had to do with, by making them
into slaves, with the same consciousness of rectitude with which he
whipped his nephews, the sound of whose cries made his poor girl-wife
so miserable.  But I do not want to go further into the question of
Milton himself.  I want to follow out a wider thought which came to me
among the downs to-day.

There seems to me to be in art, to take the metaphor of the temple at
Jerusalem, three gradations or regions, which may be typified by the
Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.  Into the Court many
have admittance, both writers and readers; it is just shut off from the
world, but admittance is easy and common.  All who are moved and
stirred by ideas and images can enter here.  Then there is the Holy
Place, dark and glorious, where the candlestick glimmers and the altar
gleams.  And to this place the priests of art have access.  Here are to
be found all delicate and strenuous craftsmen, all who understand that
there are secrets and mysteries in art.  They can please and thrill the
mind and ear; they can offer up a fragrant incense; but the full
mystery is not revealed to them.  Here are to be found many graceful
and soulless poets, many writers of moving tales, and discriminating
critics, who are satisfied, but cannot satisfy.  Those who frequent
this place are generally of opinion that they know all that is to be
known; they talk much of form and colour, of values and order.  They
can make the most of their materials; and indeed their skill outruns
their emotion.

But there is the inmost shrine of all within, where the darkness
broods, lit at intervals by the shining of a divine light, that
glimmers on the ark and touches the taper wings of the adoring angels.
The contents indeed of the sacred chest are of the simplest; a withered
branch, a pot of food, two slabs of grey stone, obscurely engraved.
Nothing rich or rare.  But those who have access to the inner shrine
are face to face with the mystery.  Some have the skill to hint it,
none to describe it.  And there are some, too, who have no skill to
express themselves, but who have visited the place, and bring back some
touch of radiance gushing from their brows.

Milton, in his youth, had looked within the shrine, but he forgot, in
the clamorous and sordid world, what he had seen.  Only those who have
visited the Holiest place know those others who have set foot there,
and they cannot err.  I cannot define exactly what it is that makes the
difference.  It cannot be seen in performance; for here I will humbly
and sincerely make the avowal that I have been within the veil myself,
though I know not when or how.  I learnt there no perfection of skill,
no methods of expression.  But ever since, I have looked out for the
signs that tell me whether another has set foot there or no.  I
sometimes see the sign in a book, or a picture; sometimes it comes out
in talk; and sometimes I discern it in the glance of an eye, for all
the silence of the lips.  It is not knowledge, it is not pride that the
access confers.  Indeed it is often a sweet humility of soul.  It is
nothing definite; but it is a certain attitude of mind, a certain
quality of thought.  Some of those who have been within are very sinful
persons, very unhappy, very unsatisfactory, as the world would say.
But they are never perverse or wilful natures; they are never cold or
mean.  Those in whom coldness and meanness are found are of necessity
excluded from the Presence.  But though the power to step behind the
veil seldom brings serenity, or strength, or confidence, yet it is the
best thing that can happen to a man in the world.

Some perhaps of those who read these words will think that it is all a
vain shadow, and that I am but wrapping up an empty thought in veils of
words.  But though I cannot explain, though I cannot say what the
secret is, I can claim to be able to say almost without hesitation
whether a human spirit has passed within; and more than that.  As I
write these words, I know that if any who have set foot in the secret
shrine reads them, they will understand, and recognise that I am
speaking a simple truth.

Some, indeed, find their way thither through religion; but none whose
religion is like Milton's.  Indeed, part of the wonder of the secret is
the infinite number of paths that lead there; they are all lonely; the
moment is unexpected; indeed, as was the case with myself, it is
possible to set foot within, and yet not to know it at the time.

It is this secret which constitutes the innermost brotherhood of the
world.  The innermost, I say, because neither creed, nor nationality,
nor occupation, nor age, nor sex affects the matter.  It is difficult,
or shall I say unusual, for the old to enter; and most find the way
there in youth, before habit and convention have become tyrannous, and
have fenced the path of life with hedges and walls.

Again it is the most secret brotherhood of the world; no one can dare
to make public proclamation of it, no one can gather the saints
together, for the essence of the brotherhood is its isolation.  One may
indeed recognise a brother or a sister, and that is a blessed moment;
but one must not speak of it in words; and indeed there is no need of
words, where all that matters is known.  It may be asked what are the
benefits which this secret brings.  It does not bring laughter, or
prosperity, or success, or even cheerfulness; but it brings a high,
though fitful, joy--a joy that can be captured, practised, retained.
No one can, I think, of set purpose, capture the secret.  No one can
find the way by desiring it.  And yet the desire to do so is the seed
of hope.  And if it be asked, why I write and print these veiled words
about so deep and intimate a mystery, I would reply that it is because
not all who have found the way, know that they have found it; and my
hope is that these words of mine may show some restless hearts that
they have found it.  For one may find the shrine in youth, and for want
of knowing that one has found it, may forget it in middle age; and that
is what I sorrowfully think that not a few of my brothers do.  And the
sign of such a loss is that such persons speak contemptuously and
disdainfully of their visions, and try to laugh and deride the young
and gracious out of such hopes; which is a sin that is hateful to God,
a kind of murder of souls.

And now I have travelled a long way from where I began, but the path
was none of my own making.  It was Milton, that fierce and childish
poet, that held open the door, and within I saw the ladder, at the
fiery head of which is God Himself.  And like Jacob (who was indeed of
our company) I made a pillow for my head of the stones of the place,
that I might dream more abundantly.

And so, as I walked to-day among the green places of the down, I made a
prayer in my heart to God, the matter of which I will now set down; and
it was that all of us who have visited that most Holy Place may be true
to the vision; and that God may reveal us to each other, as we go on
pilgrimage; and that as the world goes forward, he may lead more and
more souls to visit it, that bare and secret place, which yet holds
more beauty than the richest palace of the world.  For palaces but hold
the outer beauty, in types and glimpses and similitudes.  While in the
secret shrine we visit the central fountainhead, from which the water
of life, clear as crystal, breaks in innumerable channels, and flows
out from beneath the temple door, as Ezekiel saw it flow, lingering and
delaying, but surely coming to gladden the earth.  I could indeed go
further, and speak many things out of a full heart about the matter.  I
could quote the names of many poets and artists, great and small; and I
could say which of them belongs to the inner company, and which of them
is outside.  But I will not do this, because it would but set
inquisitive people puzzling and wondering, and trying to guess the
secret; and that I have no desire to do; because these words are not
written to make those who do not understand to be curious; but they are
written to those who know, and, most of all, to those who know, but
have forgotten.  No one may traffic in these things; and indeed there
is no opportunity to do so.  I could learn in a moment, from a sentence
or a smile, if one had the secret; and I could spend a long summer day
trying to explain it to a learned and intelligent person, and yet give
no hint of what I meant.  For the thing is not an intelligible process,
a matter of reasoning and logic; it is an intuition.  And therefore it
is that those who cannot believe in anything that they do not
understand, will think these words of mine to be folly and vanity.  The
only case where I have found a difficulty in deciding, is when I talk
to one who has lived much with those who had the secret, and has
caught, by a kind of natural imitation, some of the accent and cadence
of the truth.  An old friend of mine, a pious woman, used in her last
days to have prayers and hymns read much in her room; there was a
parrot that sat there in his cage, very silent and attentive; and not
long after, when the parrot was ill, he used to mutter prayers and
hymns aloud, with a devotion that would have deceived the very elect.
And it is even so with the people of whom I have spoken.  Not long ago
I had a long conversation with one, a clever woman, who had lived much
in the house of a man who had seen the truth; and I was for a little
deceived, and thought that she also knew the truth.  But suddenly she
made a hard judgment of her own, and I knew in a moment that she had
never seen the shrine.

And now I have said enough, and must make an end.  I remember that long
ago, when I was a boy, I painted a picture on a panel, and set it in my
room.  It was the figure of a kneeling youth on a hillock, looking
upwards; and beyond the hillock came a burst of rays from a hidden sun.
Underneath it, for no reason that I can well explain, I painted the
words _phôs etheasamen kai emphobos en_--_I beheld a light and was
afraid_.  I was then very far indeed from the sight of the truth; but I
know now that I was prophesying of what should be; for the secret sign
of the mystery is a fear, not a timid and shrinking fear, but a holy
and transfiguring awe.  I little guessed what would some day befall me;
but now that I have seen, I can only say with all my heart that it is
better to remember and be sad, than to forget and smile.




XXXIX

The Message

I was awakened this morning, at the old house where I am staying, by
low and sweet singing.  The soft murmur of an organ was audible, on
which some clear trebles seemed to swim and float--one voice of great
richness and force seeming to utter the words, and to draw into itself
the other voices, appropriating their tone but lending them
personality.  These were the words I heard--

  "The High Priest once a year
    Went in the Holy Place
  With garments white and clear;
    It was the day of Grace.

  Without the people stood
    While unseen and alone
  With incense and with blood
    He did for them atone.

  "So we without abide
    A few short passing years,
  While Christ who for us died
    Before our God appears.

  "Before His Father there
    His Sacrifice He pleads,
  And with unceasing prayer
    For us He intercedes."


The sweet sounds ceased; the organ lingered for an instant in a low
chord of infinite sweetness, and then a voice was heard in prayer.
That there was a chapel in the house I knew, and that a brief morning
prayer was read there.  But I could not help wondering at the
remarkable distinctness with which I heard the words--they seemed close
to my ear in the air beside me.  I got up, and drawing my curtains
found that it was day; and then I saw that a tiny window in the corner
of my room, that gave on the gallery of the chapel, had been left open,
by accident or design, and that thus I had been an auditor of the
service.

I found myself pondering over the words of the hymn, which was familiar
to me, though strangely enough is to be found in but few collections.
It is a perfect lyric, both in its grave language and its beautiful
balance; and it is too, so far as such a composition can be, or ought
to be, intensely dramatic.  The thought is just touched, and stated
with exquisite brevity and restraint; there is not a word too much or
too little; the image is swiftly presented, the inner meaning flashed
upon the mind.  It seemed to me, too, a beautiful and desirable thing
to begin the day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours; to put
one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed by the sweet music.  But
then my reflections took a further drift; beautiful as the little
ceremony was, noble and refined as the thought of the tender hymn was,
I began to wonder whether we do well to confine our religious life to
so restricted a range of ideas.  It seemed almost ungrateful to
entertain the thought, but I felt a certain bewilderment as to whether
this remote image, drawn from the ancient sacrificial ceremony, was not
even too definite a thought to feed the heart upon.  For strip the idea
of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have we but the sad
belief, drawn from the dark ages of the world, that the wrathful
Creator of men, full of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and
wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the Eternal Son, who is
too, in a sense, Himself, to appease the anger with which he regards
the sheep of his hand.  I cannot really in the depths of my heart echo
that dark belief.  I do not indeed know why God permits such blindness
and sinfulness among men, and why he allows suffering to cloud and
darken the world.  But it would cause me to despair of God and man
alike, if I felt that he had flung our pitiful race into the world,
surrounded by temptation both within and without, and then abandoned
himself to anger at their miserable dalliance with evil.  I rather
believe that we are rising and struggling to the light, and that his
heart is with us, not against us in the battle.  It may of course be
said that all that kind of Calvinism has disappeared; that no rational
Christians believe it, but hold a larger and a wider faith.  I think
that this is true of a few intelligent Christians, as far as the
dropping of Calvinism goes, though it seems to me that they find it
somewhat difficult to define their faith; but as to Calvinism having
died out in England, I do not think that there is any reason to suppose
that it has done so; I believe that a large majority of English
Christians would believe the above-quoted hymn to be absolutely
justified in its statements both by Scripture and reason, and that a
considerable minority would hardly consider it definite enough.

But then came a larger and a wider thought.  We talk and think so
carelessly of the divine revelation; we, who have had a religious
bringing up, who have been nurtured upon Israelite chronicles and
prophecies, are inclined, or at least predisposed, to think that the
knowledge of God is written larger and more directly in these records,
the words of anxious and troubled persons, than in the world which we
see about us.  Yet surely in field and wood, in sea and sky, we have a
far nearer and more instant revelation of God.  In these ancient
records we have the thoughts of men, intent upon their own schemes and
struggles, and looking for the message of God, with a fixed belief that
the history of one family of the human race was his special and
particular prepossession.  Yet all the while his immediate Will was
round them, written in a thousand forms, in bird and beast, in flower
and tree.  He permits and tolerates life.  He deals out joy and sorrow,
life and death.  Science has at least revealed a far more vast and
inscrutable force at work in the world, than the men of ancient days
ever dreamed of.

Do we do well to confine our religious life to these ancient
conceptions?  They have no doubt a certain shadow of truth in them; but
while I know for certain that the huge Will of God is indeed at work
around me, in every field and wood, in every stream and pool, do I
_really_ know, do I honestly believe that any such process as the hymn
indicates, is going on in some distant region of heaven?  The hymn
practically presupposes that our little planet is the only one in which
the work of God is going forward.  Science hints to me that probably
every star that hangs in the sky has its own ring of planets, and that
in every one of these some strange drama of life and death is
proceeding.  It is a dizzy thought!  But if it be true, is it not
better to face it?  The mind shudders, appalled at the immensity of the
prospect.  But do not such thoughts as these give us a truer picture of
ourselves, and of our own humble place in the vast complexity of
things, than the excessive dwelling upon the wistful dreams of ancient
law-givers and prophets?  Or is it better to delude ourselves?
Deliberately to limit our view to the history of a single race, to a
few centuries of records?  Perhaps that may be a more practical, a more
effective view; but when once the larger thought has flashed into the
mind, it is useless to try and drown it.

Everything around me seems to cry aloud the warning, not to aim at a
conceit of knowledge about these deep secrets, but to wait, to leave
the windows of the soul open for any glimpse of truth from without.

To beguile the time I took up a volume near me, the work of a much
decried poet, Walt Whitman.  Apart from the exquisite power of
expression that he possesses, he always seems to me to enter, more than
most poets, into the largeness of the world, to keep his heart fixed on
the vast wonder and joy of life.  I read that poem full of tender
pathos and suggestiveness, _A Word out of the Sea_, where the child,
with the wind in his hair, listens to the lament of the bird that has
lost his mate, and tries to guide her wandering wings back to the
deserted nest.  While the bird sings, with ever fainter hope, its
little heart aching with the pain of loss, the child hears the sea,
with its "liquid rims and wet sands" breathing out the low and
delicious word _death_.

The poet seems to think of death as the loving answer to the yearning
of all hearts, the sleep that closes the weary eyes.  But I cannot rise
to this thought, tender and gentle as it is.

If indeed there be another life beyond death, I can well believe that
death is in truth an easier and simpler thing than one fears; only a
cloud on the hill, a little darkness upon Nature.  But God has put it
into my heart to dread it; and he hides from me the knowledge of
whether indeed there be another side to it.  And while I do not even
know that, I can but love life, and be fain of the good days.  All the
religion in the world depends upon the belief that, set free from the
bonds of the flesh, the spirit will rest and recollect.  But is that
more than a hope?  Is it more than the passionate instinct of the heart
that cannot bear the thought that it may cease to be?

I seem to have travelled far away from the hymn that sounded so sweetly
in my ears; but I return to the thought; is not, I will ask, the poet's
reverie--the child with his wet hair floating in the sea-breeze, the
wailing of the deserted bird, the waves that murmur that death is
beautiful--is not this all more truly and deeply religious than the
hymn which speaks of things, that not only I cannot affirm to be true,
but which, if true, would plunge me into a deeper and darker
hopelessness even than that in which my ignorance condemns me to live?
Ought we not, in fact, to try and make our religion a much wider,
quieter thing?  Are we not exchanging the melodies of the free birds
that sing in the forest glade, for the melancholy chirping of the caged
linnet?  It seems to me often as though we had captured our religion
from a multitude of fair hovering presences, that would speak to us of
the things of God, caged it in a tiny prison, and closed our ears to
the larger and wider voices?

I walked to-day in sheltered wooded valleys; and at one point, in a
very lonely and secluded lane, leant long upon a gate that led into a
little forest clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the wood.
There were the trees extending their fresh leaves to the rain; the
birds slipped from tree to tree; a mouse frisked about the grassy road;
a hundred flowers raised their bright heads.  None of these little
lives have, I suppose, any conception of the extent of life that lies
about them; each of them knows the secrets and instincts of its own
tiny brain, and guesses perhaps at the thoughts of the little lives
akin to it.  Yet every tiniest, shortest, most insignificant life has
its place in the mind of God.  It seemed to me then such an amazing,
such an arrogant thing to define, to describe, to limit the awful
mystery of the Creator and his purpose.  Even to think of him, as he is
spoken of in the Old Testament, with fierce and vindictive schemes,
with flagrant partialities, seemed to me nothing but a dreadful
profanation.  And yet these old writings do, in a degree, from old
association, colour my thoughts about him.

And then all these anxious visions left me; and I felt for awhile like
a tiny spray of sea-weed floating on an infinite sea, with the
brightness of the morning overhead.  I felt that I was indeed set where
I found myself to be, and that if now my little heart and brain are too
small to hold the truth, yet I thanked God for making even the
conception of the mystery, the width, the depth, possible to me; and I
prayed to him that he would give me as much of the truth as I could
bear.  And I do not doubt that he gave me that; for I felt for an
instant that whatever befell me, I was indeed a part of Himself; not a
thing outside and separate; not even his son and his child: but Himself.




XL

After Death

I had so strange a dream or vision the other night, that I cannot
refrain from setting it down; because the strangeness and the wonder of
it seem to make it impossible for me to have conceived of it myself; it
was suggested by nothing, originated by nothing that I can trace; it
merely came to me out of the void.

After confused and troubled dreams of terror and bewilderment, enacted
in blind passages and stifling glooms, with crowds of unknown figures
passing rapidly to and fro, I seemed to grow suddenly light-hearted and
joyful.  I next appeared to myself to be sitting or reclining on the
grassy top of a cliff, in bright sunlight.  The ground fell
precipitously in front of me, and I saw to left and right the sharp
crags and horns of the rock-face below me; behind me was a wide space
of grassy down, with a fresh wind racing over it.  The sky was
cloudless.  Far below I could see yellow sands, on which a blue sea
broke in crisp waves.  To the left a river flowed through a little
hamlet, clustered round a church; I looked down on the roofs of the
small houses, and saw people passing to and fro, like ants.  The river
spread itself out in shallow shining channels over the sand, to join
the sea.  Further to the left rose shadowy headland after headland, and
to the right lay a broad well-watered plain, full of trees and
villages, bounded by a range of blue hills.  On the sea moved ships,
the wind filling their sails, and the sun shining on them with a
peculiar brightness.  The only sound in my ears was that of the whisper
of the wind in the grass and stone crags.

But I soon became aware with a shock of pleasant surprise that my
perception of the whole scene was of a different quality to any
perception I had before experienced.  I have spoken of seeing and
hearing: but I became aware that I was doing neither; the perceptions,
so to speak, both of seeing and hearing were not distinct, but the
same.  I was aware, for instance, at the same moment, of the _whole_
scene, both of what was behind me and what was in front of me.  I have
described what I saw successively, because there is no other way of
describing it; but it was all present at once in my mind, and I had no
need to turn my attention to one point or another, but everything was
there before me, in a unity at which I cannot even hint in words.  I
then became aware too, that, though I have spoken of myself as seated
or reclined, I had no body, but was merely, as it were, a sentient
point.  In a moment I became aware that to transfer that sentience to
another point was merely an act of will.  I was able to test this; in
an instant I was close above the village, which a moment before was far
below me, and I perceived the houses, the very faces of the people
close at hand; at another moment I was buried deep in the cliff, and
felt the rock with its fissures all about me; at another moment,
following my wish, I was beneath the sea, and saw the untrodden sands
about me, with the blue sunlit water over my head.  I saw the fish dart
and poise above me, the ribbons of sea-weed floating up, just swayed by
the currents, shells crawling like great snails on the ooze, crabs
hurrying about among piles of boulders.  But something drew me back to
my first station, I know not why; and there I poised, as a bird might
have poised, and lost myself in a blissful dream.  Then it darted into
my mind that I was what I had been accustomed to call dead.  So this
was what lay on the other side of the dark passage, this lightness,
this perfect freedom, this undreamed-of peace!  I had not a single care
or anxiety.  It seemed as if nothing could trouble my repose and
happiness.  I could only think with a deep compassion of those who were
still pent in uneasy bodies, under strait and sad conditions, anxious,
sad, troubled, and blind, not knowing that the shadow of death which
encompassed them was but the cloud which veiled the gate of perfect and
unutterable happiness.

I felt rising in my mind a sense of all that lay before me, of all the
mysteries that I would penetrate, all the unvisited places that I would
see.  But at present I was too full of peace and quiet happiness to do
anything but stay in an infinite content where I was.  All sense of
_ennui_ or restlessness had left me.  I was utterly free, utterly
blest.  I did, indeed, once send my thought to the home which I loved,
and saw a darkened house, and my dear ones moving about with grief
written legibly on their faces.  I saw my mother sitting looking at
some letters which I perceived to be my own, and was aware that she
wept.  But I could not even bring myself to grieve at that, because I
knew that the same peace and joy that filled me was also surely
awaiting them, and the darkest passage, the sharpest human suffering,
seemed so utterly little and trifling in the light of my new knowledge;
and I was soon back on my cliff-top again, content to wait, to rest, to
luxuriate in a happiness which seemed to have nothing selfish about it,
because the satisfaction was so perfectly pure and natural.

While I thus waited I became aware, with the same sort of sudden
perception, of a presence beside me.  It had no outward form; but I
knew that it was a spirit full of love and kindness: it seemed to me to
be old; it was not divine, for it brought no awe with it; and yet it
was not quite human; it was a spirit that seemed to me to have been
human, but to have risen into a higher sphere of perception.  I simply
felt a sense of deep and pure companionship.  And presently I became
aware that some communication was passing between my consciousness and
the consciousness of the newly-arrived spirit.  It did not take place
in words, but in thought; though only by words can I now represent it.

"Yes," said the other, "you do well to rest and to be happy: is it not
a wonderful experience? and yet you have been through it many times
already, and will pass through it many times again."

I suppose that I did not wholly understand this, for I said: "I do not
grasp that thought, though I am certain it is true: have I then died
before?"

"Yes," said the other, "many times.  It is a long progress; you will
remember soon, when you have had time to reflect, and when the sweet
novelty of the change has become more customary.  You have but returned
to us again for a little; one needs that, you know, at first; one needs
some refreshment and repose after each one of our lives, to be renewed,
to be strengthened for what comes after."

All at once I understood.  I knew that my last life had been one of
many lives lived at all sorts of times and dates, and under various
conditions; that at the end of each I had returned to this joyful
freedom.

It was the first cloud that passed over my thought.  "Must I return
again to life?" I said.

"Oh yes," said the other; "you see that; you will soon return
again--but never mind that now; you are here to drink your fill of the
beautiful things which you will only remember by glimpses and visions
when you are back in the little life again."

And then I had a sudden intuition.  I seemed to be suddenly in a small
and ugly street of a dark town.  I saw slatternly women run in and out
of the houses; I saw smoke-stained grimy children playing in the
gutter.  Above the poor, ill-kept houses a factory poured its black
smoke into the air, and hummed behind its shuttered windows.  I knew in
a sad flash of thought that I was to be born there, to be brought up as
a wailing child, under sad and sordid conditions, to struggle into a
life of hard and hopeless labour, in the midst of vice, and poverty,
and drunkenness, and hard usage.  It filled me for a moment with a sort
of nauseous dread, remembering the free and liberal conditions of my
last life, the wealth and comfort I had enjoyed.

"No," said the other; for in a moment I was back again, "that is an
unworthy thought--it is but for a moment; and you will return to this
peace again."

But the sad thought came down upon me like a cloud.  "Is there no
escape?" I said; and at that, in a moment, the other spirit seemed to
chide me, not angrily, but patiently and compassionately.  "One
suffers," he said, "but one gains experience; one rises," adding more
gently: "We do not know why it must be, of course--but it is the Will;
and however much one may doubt and suffer in the dark world there, one
does not doubt of the wisdom or the love of it here."  And I knew in a
moment that I did not doubt, but that I would go willingly wherever I
should be sent.

And then my thought became concerned with the spirit that spoke with
me, and I said, "And what is your place and work? for I think you are
like me and yet unlike."  And he said: "Yes, it is true; I have to
return thither no more; that is finished for me, and I grudge no single
step of the dark road: I cannot explain to you what my work or place
is; but I am old, and have seen many things; each of us has to return
and return, not indeed till we are made perfect, but till we have
finished that part of our course; but the blessedness of this peace
grows and grows, while it becomes easier to bear what happens in that
other place, for we grow strong and simple and sincere, and then the
world can hurt us but little.  We learn that we must not judge men; but
we know that when we see them cruel and vicious and selfish, they are
then but children learning their first lessons; and on each of our
visits to this place we see that the evil matters less and less, and
the hope becomes brighter and brighter; till at last we see."  And I
then seemed to turn to him in thought, for he said with a grave joy:
"Yes, I have seen."  And presently I was left alone to my happiness.

How long it lasted I cannot tell; but presently I seemed less free,
less light of heart; and soon I knew that I was bound; and after a
space I woke into the world again, and took up my burden of cares.

But for all that I have a sense of hopefulness left which I think will
not quite desert me.  From what dim cell of the brain my vision rose, I
know not, but though it came to me in so precise and clear a form, yet
I cannot help feeling that something deep and true has been revealed to
me, some glimpse of pure heaven and bright air, that lies outside our
little fretted lives.




XLI

The Eternal Will

I have spoken above, I know well, of things in which I have no skill to
speak; I know no philosophy or metaphysics; to look into a
philosophical book is to me like looking into a room piled up with
bricks, the pure materials of thought; they have no meaning for me,
until the beautiful mind of some literary architect has built them into
a house of life; but just as a shallow pool can reflect the dark and
infinite spaces of night, pierced with stars, so in my own shallow mind
these perennial difficulties, which lie behind all that we do and say,
can be for a moment mirrored.

The only value that such thoughts can have in life is that they should
teach us to live in a frank and sincere mood, waiting patiently for the
Lord, as the old Psalmist said.  My own philosophy is a very simple
one, and, if I could only be truer to it, it would bring me the
strength which I lack.  It is this; that being what we are, such frail,
mysterious, inexplicable beings, we should wait humbly and hopefully
upon God, not attempting, nor even wishing, to make up our minds upon
these deep secrets, only determined that we will be true to the inner
light, and that we will not accept any solution which depends for its
success upon neglecting or overlooking any of the phenomena with which
we are confronted.  We find ourselves placed in the world, in definite
relations with certain people, endowed with certain qualities, with
faults and fears, with hopes and joys, with likes and dislikes.  Evil
haunts us like a shadow, and though it menaces our happiness, we fall
again and again under its dominion; in the depths of our spirit a voice
speaks, which assures us again and again that truth and purity and love
are the best and dearest things that we can desire; and that voice,
however imperfectly, I try to obey, because it seems the strongest and
clearest of all the voices that call to me.  I try to regard all
experience, whether sweet or bitter, fair or foul, as sent me by the
great and awful power that put me where I am.  The strongest and best
things in the world seem to me to be peace and tranquillity, and the
same hidden power seems to be leading me thither; and to lead me all
the faster whenever I try not to fret, not to grieve, not to despair.
"_Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you,_" says the
Divine Word; and the more that I follow intuition rather than reason,
the nearer I seem to come to the truth.  I have lately wasted much
fruitless thought over an anxious decision, weighing motives,
forecasting possibilities.  I knew at the time how useless it all was,
and that my course would be made clear at the right moment; and I will
tell the story of how it was made clear, as testimony to the perfect
guidance of the divine hand.  I was taking a journey, and the weary
process was going on in my mind; every possible argument for and
against the step was being reviewed and tested; I could not read, I
could not even look abroad upon the world.  The train drew up at a dull
suburban station, where our tickets were collected.  The signal was
given, and we started.  It was at this moment that the conviction came,
and I saw how I must act, with a certainty which I could not gainsay or
resist.  My reason had anticipated the opposite decision, but I had no
longer any doubt or hesitation.  The only question was how and when to
announce the result; but when I returned home the same evening there
was the letter waiting for me which gave the very opportunity I
desired; and I have since learnt without surprise that the letter was
being penned at the very moment when the conviction came to me.

I have told this experience in detail, because it seems to me to be a
very perfect example of the suddenness with which conviction comes.
But neither do I grudge the anxious reveries which for many days had
preceded that conviction, because through them I learnt something of
the inner weakness of my nature.  But the true secret of it all is that
we ought to live as far as we can in the day, the hour, the minute; to
waste no time in anxious forecasting and miserable regrets, but just do
what lies before us as faithfully as possible.  Gradually, too, one
learns that the restricting of what is called religion to certain times
of prayer and definite solemnities is the most pitiful of all mistakes;
life lived with the intuition that I have indicated is all religion.
The most trivial incident has to be interpreted; every word and deed
and thought becomes full of a deep significance.  One has no longer any
anxious sense of duty; one desires no longer either to impress or
influence; one aims only at guarding the quality of all one does or
says--or rather the very word "aims" is a wrong one; there is no longer
any aim or effort, except the effort to feel which way the gentle
guiding hand would have us to go; the only sorrow that is possible is
when we rather perversely follow our own will and pleasure.

The reason why I desire this book to say its few words to my brothers
and sisters of this life, without any intrusion of personality, is that
I am so sure of the truth of what I say, that I would not have any one
distracted from the principles I have tried to put into words, by being
able to compare it with my own weak practice.  I am so far from having
attained; I have, I know, so many weary leagues to traverse yet, that I
would not have my faithless and perverse wanderings known.  But the
secret waits for all who can throw aside convention and insincerity,
who can make the sacrifice with a humble heart, and throw themselves
utterly and fearlessly into the hands of God.  Societies,
organisations, ceremonies, forms, authority, dogma--they are all
outside; silently and secretly, in the solitude of one's heart, must
the lonely path be found; but the slender track once beneath our feet,
all the complicated relations of the world become clear and simple.  We
have no need to change our path in life, to seek for any human guide,
to desire new conditions, because we have the one Guide close to us,
closer than friend or brother or lover, and we know that we are set
where he would have us to be.  Such a belief destroys in a flash all
our embarrassment in dealing with others, all our anxieties in dealing
with ourselves.  In dealing with ourselves we shall only desire to be
faithful, fearless and sincere; in dealing with others we shall try to
be patient, tender, appreciative, and hopeful.  If we have to blame, we
shall blame without bitterness, without the outraged sense of personal
vanity that brings anger with it.  If we can praise, we shall praise
with generous prodigality; we shall not think of ourselves as a centre
of influence, as radiating example and precept; but we shall know our
own failures and difficulties, and shall realise as strongly that
others are led likewise, and that each is the Father's peculiar care,
as we realise it about ourselves.  There will be no thrusting of
ourselves to the front, nor an uneasy lingering upon the outskirts of
the crowd, because we shall know that our place and our course are
defined.  We may crave for happiness, but we shall not resent sorrow.
The dreariest and saddest day becomes the inevitable, the true setting
for our soul; we must drink the draught, and not fear to taste its
bitterest savour; it is the Father's cup.  That a Christian, in such a
mood, can concern himself with what is called the historical basis of
the Gospels, is a thought which can only be met by a smile; for there
stands the record of perhaps the only life ever lived upon earth that
conformed itself, at every moment, in the darkest experiences that life
could bring, entirely and utterly to the Divine Will.  One who walks in
the light that I have spoken of is as inevitably a Christian as he is a
human being, and is as true to the spirit of Christ as he is
indifferent to the human accretions that have gathered round the august
message.

The possession of such a secret involves no retirement from the world,
no breaking of ties, no ecclesiastical exercises, no endeavour to
penetrate obscure ideas.  It is as simple as the sunlight and the air.
It involves no protest, no phrase, no renunciation.  Its protest will
be an unconcerned example, its phrase will be a perfect sincerity of
speech, its renunciation will be what it does, not what it abstains
from doing.  It will go or stay as the inner voice bids it.  It will
not attempt the impossible nor the novel.  Very clearly, from hour to
hour, the path will be made plain, the weakness fortified, the sin
purged away.  It will judge no other life, it will seek no goal; it
will sometimes strive and cry, it will sometimes rest; it will move as
gently and simply in unison with the one supreme will, as the tide
moves beneath the moon, piled in the central deep with all its noises,
flooding the mud-stained waterway, where the ships ride together, or
creeping softly upon the pale sands of some sequestered bay.




XLII

Until the Evening

I stop sometimes on a landing in an old house, where I often stay, to
look at a dusky, faded water-colour that hangs upon the wall.  I do not
think its technical merit is great, but it somehow has the poetical
quality.  It represents, or seems to represent, a piece of high open
ground, down-land or heath, with a few low bushes growing there,
sprawling and wind-brushed; a road crosses the fore-ground, and dips
over to the plain beyond, a forest tract full of dark woodland, dappled
by open spaces.  There is a long faint distant line of hills on the
horizon.  The time appears to be just after sunset, when the sky is
still full of a pale liquid light, before objects have lost their
colour, but are just beginning to be tinged with dusk.  In the road
stands the figure of a man, with his back turned, his hand shading his
eyes as he gazes out across the plain.  He appears to be a wayfarer,
and to be weary but not dispirited.  There is a look of serene and
sober content about him, how communicated I know not.  He would seem to
have far to go, but yet to be certainly drawing nearer to his home,
which indeed he seems to discern afar off.  The picture bears the
simple legend, _Until the evening_.

This design seems always to be charged for me with a beautiful and
grave meaning.  Just so would I draw near to the end of my pilgrimage,
wearied but tranquil, assured of rest and welcome.  The freshness and
blithe eagerness of the morning are over, the solid hours of sturdy
progress are gone, the heat of the day is past, and only the gentle
descent among the shadows remains, with cool airs blowing from darkling
thickets, laden with woodland scents, and the rich fragrance of rushy
dingles.  Ere the night falls the wayfarer will push the familiar gate
open, and see the lamplit windows of home, with the dark chimneys and
gables outlined against the green sky.  Those that love him are
awaiting him, listening for the footfall to draw near.

Is it not possible to attain this?  And yet how often does it seem to
be the fate of a human soul to stumble, like one chased and hunted,
with dazed and terrified air, and hurried piteous phrase, down the
darkening track.  Yet one should rather approach God, bearing in
careful hands the priceless and precious gift of life, ready to restore
it if it be his will.  God grant us so to live, in courage and trust,
that, when he calls us, we may pass willingly and with a quiet
confidence to the gate that opens into tracts unknown!




CONCLUSION

_And now I will try if I can in a few words to sum up what the purpose
of this little volume has been, these pages torn from my book of life,
though I hope that some of my readers may, before now, have discerned
it for themselves.  _The Thread of Gold_ has two chief qualities.  It
is bright, and it is strong; it gleams with a still and precious light
in the darkness, glowing with the reflected radiance of the little lamp
that we carry to guide our feet, and adding to the ray some rich tinge
from its own goodly heart; and it is strong too; it cannot easily be
broken; it leads a man faithfully through the dim passages of the cave
in which he wanders, with the dark earth piled above his head._

_The two qualities that we should keep with us in our journey through a
world where it seems that so much must be dark, are a certain rich
fiery essence, a glowing ardour of spirit, a mind of lofty temper,
athirst for all that is noble and beautiful.  That first; and to that
we must add a certain soberness and sedateness of mood, a smiling
tranquillity, a true directness of aim, that should lead us not to form
our ideas and opinions too swiftly and too firmly; for then we suffer
from an anxious vexation when experience contradicts hope, when things
turn out different from what we had desired and supposed.  We should
deal with life in a generous and high-hearted mood, giving men credit
for lofty aims and noble imaginings, and not be cast down if we do not
see these purposes blazing and glowing on the surface of things; we
should believe that such great motives are there even if we cannot see
them; and then we should sustain our lively expectations with a deep
and faithful confidence, assured that we are being tenderly and wisely
led, and that the things which the Father shows us by the way, if they
bewilder, and disappoint, and even terrify us, have yet some great and
wonderful meaning, if we can but interpret them rightly.  Nay, that the
very delaying of these secrets to draw near to our souls, holds within
it a strong and temperate virtue for our spirits._

_Neither of these great qualities, ardour and tranquillity, can stand
alone; if we aim merely at enthusiasm, the fire grows cold, the world
grows dreary, and we lapse into a cynical mood of bitterness, as the
mortal flame turns low._

_Nor must we aim at mere tranquillity; for so we may fall into a mere
placid acquiescence, a selfish inaction; our peace must be heartened by
eagerness, our zest calmed by serenity.  If we follow the fire alone,
we become restless and dissatisfied; if we seek only for peace, we
become like the patient beasts of the field._

_I would wish, though I grow old and grey-haired, a hundred times a day
to ask why things are as they are, and to desire that they were
otherwise; and again a hundred times a day I would thank God that they
are as they are, and praise him for showing me his will rather than my
own.  For the secret lies in this; that we must not follow our own
impulses, and thus grow pettish and self-willed: neither must we float
feebly upon the will of God, like a branch that spins in an eddy;
rather we must try to put our utmost energy in line with the will of
God, hasten with all our might where he calls us, and turn our back as
resolutely as we can when he bids us go no further; as an eager dog
will intently await his master's choice, as to which of two paths he
may desire to take; but the way once indicated, he springs forward,
elate and glad, rejoicing with all his might._

_He leads me.  He leads me; but He has also given me this wild and
restless heart, these untamed desires: not that I may follow them and
obey them, but that I may patiently discern His will, and do it to the
uttermost._


_Father, be patient with me, for I yield myself to Thee; Thou hast
given me a desirous heart, and I have a thousand times gone astray
after vain shadows, and found no abiding joy.  I have been weary many
times, and sad often; and I have been light of heart and very glad; but
my sadness and my weariness, my lightness and my joy have only blessed
me, whenever I have shared them with Thee.  I have shut myself up in a
perverse loneliness, I have closed the door of my heart, miserable that
I am, even upon Thee.  And Thou hast waited smiling, till I knew that I
had no joy apart from Thee.  Only uphold me, only enfold me in Thy
arms, and I shall be safe; for I know that nothing can divide us,
except my own wilful heart; we forget and are forgotten, but Thou alone
rememberest; and if I forget Thee, at least I know that Thou forgettest
not me._











End of Project Gutenberg's The Thread of Gold, by Arthur Christopher Benson