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 THE ALTAR FIRE
 
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 LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 
 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.
 
 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 
 FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Cecidit autem ignis Domini, et voravit holocaustum 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, fer CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1907 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 £4^A7 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It will perhaps be said, and truly felt, that the 
 following is a morbid book. No doubt the sub- 
 ject is a morbid one, because the book deliberately 
 gives a picture of a diseased spirit. But a patho- 
 logical treatise, dealing with cancer or paralysis, is 
 not necessarily morbid, though it may be studied 
 in a morbid mood. We have learnt of late years, 
 to our gain and profit, to think and speak of bodily 
 ailments as natural phenomena, not to slur over 
 them and hide them away in attics and bed- 
 rooms. We no longer think of insanity as de- 
 moniacal possession, and we no longer immure 
 people with diseased brains in the secluded apart- 
 ments of lonely houses. But we still tend to think 
 of the sufferings of the heart and soul as if they 
 were unreal, imaginary, hypochondriacal things, 
 which could be cured by a little resolution and 
 by intercourse with cheerful society ; and by this 
 foolish and secretive reticence we lose both sym- 
 pathy and help. Mrs. Procter, the friend of Carlyle 
 and Lamb, a brilliant and somewhat stoical lady, 
 is recorded to have said to a youthful relative 
 of a sickly habit, with stern emphasis, " Never tell 
 people how you are ! They don't want to know." 
 Up to a certain point this is shrewd and whole-
 
 VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 some advice. One does undoubtedly keep some 
 kinds of suffering in check by resolutely mini- 
 mising them. But there is a significance in 
 suffering too. It is not all a clumsy error, a 
 well-meaning blunder. It is a deliberate part of 
 the constitution of the world. 
 
 Why should we wish to conceal the fact that 
 we have suffered, that we suffer, that we are likely 
 to suffer to the end ? There are abundance of 
 people in like case ; the very confession of the 
 fact may help others to endure, because one of 
 the darkest miseries of suffering is the horrible 
 sense of isolation that it brings. And if this book 
 casts the least ray upon the sad problem — a ray of 
 the light that I have learned to recognise is truly 
 there — I shall be more than content. There is no 
 morbidity in suffering, or in confessing that one 
 suffers. Morbidity only begins when one acquiesces 
 in suffering as being incurable and inevitable ; and 
 the motive of this book is to show that it is at once 
 curative and curable, a very tender part of a wholly 
 loving and Fatherly design. 
 
 A. C. B. 
 
 Magdalene College, Cambridge, 
 July 14, 1907.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I had intended to allow the records that follow 
 — the records of a pilgrimage sorely beset and 
 hampered by sorrow and distress — to speak for 
 themselves. Let me only say that one who makes 
 public a record so intimate and outspoken incurs, 
 as a rule, a certain responsibility. He has to con- 
 sider in the first place, or at least he cannot help 
 instinctively considering, what the wishes of the 
 writer would have been on the subject. I do not 
 mean that one who has to decide such a point is 
 bound to be entirely guided by that. He must 
 weigh the possible value of the record to other 
 spirits against what he thinks that the writer him- 
 self would have personally desired. A far more 
 important consideration is what living people who 
 play a part in such records feel about their publi- 
 cation. But I cannot help thinking that our whole 
 standard in such matters is a very false and con- 
 ventional one. Supposing, for instance, that a 
 very sacred and intimate record, say, two hundred 
 years old, were to be found among some family 
 papers, it is inconceivable that any one would 
 object to its publication on the ground that the 
 writer of it, or the people mentioned in it, would 
 not have wished it to see the light. We show how 
 
 vu
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 weak our faith really is in the continuance of per- 
 sonal identity after death, by allowing the lapse of 
 time to affect the question at all ; just as we should 
 consider it a horrible profanation to exhume and 
 exhibit the body of a man who had been buried a 
 few years ago, while we approve of the action of 
 archaeologists who explore Egyptian sepulchres, 
 subscribe to their operations, and should consider 
 a man a mere sentimentalist who suggested that 
 the mummies exhibited in museums ought to be 
 sent back for interment in their original tombs. 
 We think vaguely that a man who died a few 
 years ago would in some way be outraged if his 
 body were to be publicly displayed, while we do 
 not for an instant regard the possible feelings of 
 delicate and highly-born Egyptian ladies, on whose 
 seemly sepulture such anxious and tender care was 
 expended so many centuries ago. 
 
 But in this case there is no such responsibility. 
 None of the persons concerned have any objection 
 to the publication of these records, and as for the 
 writer himself he was entirely free from any desire 
 for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a secluded 
 one enough, and he felt strongly that a man has 
 a right to his own personal privacy. But his own 
 words sufficiently prove, if proof were needed, 
 that he felt that to deny the right of others to par- 
 ticipate in thoughts and experiences, which might 
 uplift or help a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish 
 form of individualism with which he had no sym- 
 pathy whatever. He felt, and I have heard him say, 
 that one has no right to withhold from others any
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 reflections which can console and sustain, and he 
 held it to be the supreme duty of a man to ease, 
 if he could, the burden of another. He knew that 
 there is no sympathy in the world so effective as 
 the sharing of similar experiences, as the power of 
 assuring a sufferer that another has indeed trodden 
 the same dark path and emerged into the light of 
 Heaven. I will even venture to say that he de- 
 liberately intended that his record should be so 
 used, for purposes of alleviation and consolation, 
 and the bequest that he made of his papers to 
 myself, entrusting them to my absolute discretion, 
 makes it clear to me that I have divined his wishes 
 in the matter. I think, indeed, that his only doubt 
 was a natural diffidence as to whether the record 
 had sufficient importance to justify its publication. 
 In any case, my own duty in the matter is to me 
 absolutely clear. 
 
 But I think that it will be as well for me to 
 sketch a brief outline of my friend's life and 
 character. I would have preferred to have done 
 this, if it had been possible, by allowing him to 
 speak for himself. But the earlier Diaries which 
 exist are nothing but the briefest chronicle of 
 events. He put his earlier confessions into his 
 books, but he was in many ways more interesting 
 than his books, and so I will try and draw a 
 portrait of him as he appeared to one of his 
 earliest friends. I knew him first as an under- 
 graduate, and our friendship was unbroken after 
 that. The Diary, written as it is under the 
 shadow of a series of calamities, gives an im-
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 pression of almost wilful sadness which is far from 
 the truth. The requisite contrast can only be 
 attained by representing him as he appeared to 
 those who knew him. 
 
 He was the son of a moderately wealthy 
 country solicitor, and was brought up on 
 normal lines. His mother died while he was a 
 boy. He had one brother, younger than him- 
 self, and a sister who was younger still. He went 
 to a leading public school, where he was in no 
 way distinguished either in work or athletics. 
 I gathered, when I first knew him, that he had 
 been regarded as a clever, quiet, good-natured, 
 simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm 
 of manner, but decidedly retiring. He was not 
 expected to distinguish himself in any way, and 
 he did not seem to have any particular ambitions. 
 I went up to Cambridge at the same time as he, 
 and we formed a very close friendship. We had 
 kindred tastes, and we did not concern ourselves 
 very much with the social life of the place. We 
 read, walked, talked, played games, idled, and 
 amused ourselves together. I was more attached 
 to him, I think, than he was to me ; indeed, I do 
 not think that he cared at that time to form 
 particularly close ties. He was frank, engaging, 
 humorous, and observant ; but I do not think 
 that he depended very much upon any one ; he 
 rather tended to live an interior life of his own, of 
 poetical and fanciful reflection. I think he tended 
 to be pensive rather than high-spirited — at least, 
 I do not often remember any particular ebullition
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 of youthful enthusiasm. He liked congenial com- 
 pany, but he was always ready to be alone. He 
 very seldom went to the rooms of other men, 
 except in response to definite invitations; but he 
 was always disposed to welcome any one who 
 came spontaneously to see him. He was a really 
 diffident and modest fellow, and I do not think it 
 even entered into his head to imagine that he had 
 any social gifts or personal charm. But I gradually 
 came to perceive that his mind was of a very fine 
 quality. He had a mature critical judgment, and, 
 though I used to think that his tastes were some- 
 what austere, I now see that he had a very sure 
 instinct for alighting upon what was best and 
 finest in books and art alike. He used to write 
 poetry in those days, but he was shy of confessing 
 it, and very conscious of the demerits of what he 
 wrote. I have some of his youthful verses by me, 
 and though they are very unequal and full of 
 lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note and displays 
 a subtle insight. I think that he was more ambi- 
 tious than I perhaps knew, and had that vague 
 belief in his own powers which is characteristic of 
 able and unambitious men. His was certainly, on 
 the whole, a cold nature in those days. He could 
 take up a friendship where he laid it down, by 
 virtue of an easy frankness and a sympathy that 
 was intellectual rather than emotional. But the 
 suspension of intercourse with a friend never 
 troubled him. 
 
 I became aware, in the course of a walking tour 
 that I took with him in those days, that he had a
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 deep perception of the beauties of nature ; it was 
 not a vague accessibility to picturesque impres- 
 sions, but a critical discernment of quality. He 
 always said that he cared more for little vignettes, 
 which he could grasp entire, than for wide and 
 majestic prospects; and this was true of his whole 
 mind. 
 
 I suppose that I tended to idealise him ; but he 
 certainly seems to me, in retrospect, to have then 
 been invested with a singular charm. He was 
 pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had 
 considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of 
 expression than of feature. He was one of those 
 people with a natural grace of movement, gesture 
 and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in 
 manner, but he talked little in a mixed company. 
 No one had fewer enemies or fewer intimate 
 friends. The delightful years soon came to an 
 end, and one of the few times I ever saw him 
 exhibit strong emotion was on the evening before 
 he left Cambridge, when he altogether broke 
 down. I remember his quoting a verse from 
 Omar Khayyam : — 
 
 " Yet ah ! that spring should vanish with the rose, 
 That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close," 
 
 and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears. 
 
 It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, 
 and I remember envying him greatly when he told 
 me that his father, who, I gathered, rather idolised 
 him, was quite content that he should choose for 
 himself at his leisure. He went abroad for a time :
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 and I met him next in London, where he was pro- 
 posing to read for the bar ; but I discovered that 
 he had really found his metier. He had written 
 a novel, which he showed me, and though it was 
 in some ways an immature performance, it had, I 
 felt, high and unmistakable literary qualities. It 
 was published soon afterwards and met with some 
 success. He thereupon devoted himself to writing, 
 and I was astonished at his industry and eagerness. 
 He had for the first time found a congenial occu- 
 pation. He lived mostly at home in those days, 
 but he was often in London, where he went a good 
 deal into society. I do not know very much about 
 him at this time, but I gather that he achieved 
 something of a social reputation. He was never 
 a voluble talker ; I do not suppose he ever set 
 the table in a roar, but he had a quiet, humorous 
 and sympathetic manner. His physical health was 
 then, as always, perfect. He was never tired or 
 peevish ; he was frank, kindly and companionable; 
 he talked little about himself, and had a genuine 
 interest in the study of personality, so that people 
 were apt to feel at their best in his society. 
 Meanwhile his books came out one after another 
 — not great books exactly, but full of humour 
 and perception, each an advance on the last. 
 By the age of thirty he was accepted as one of the 
 most promising novelists of the day. 
 
 Then he did what I never expected he would 
 do ; he fell wildly and enthusiastically in love with 
 the only daughter of a Gloucestershire clergyman, 
 a man of good family and position. She was the
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 only child ; her mother had died some years before, 
 and her father died shortly after the marriage. 
 She was a beautiful, vigorous girl, extraordinarily 
 ingenuous, simple-minded, and candid. She was 
 not clever in the common acceptance of the term, 
 and was not the sort of person by whom I should 
 have imagined that my friend would have been 
 attracted. They settled in a pleasant house, which 
 they built in Surrey, on the outskirts of a village. 
 Three children were born to them — a boy and a 
 girl, and another boy, who survived his birth only 
 a few hours. From this time he almost entirely 
 deserted London, and became, I thought, almost 
 strangely content with a quiet domestic life. I 
 was often with them in those early days, and I do 
 not think I ever saw a happier circle. It was a 
 large and comfortable house, very pleasantly fur- 
 nished, with a big garden. His father died in the 
 early years of the marriage, and left him a good 
 income ; with the proceeds of his books he was 
 a comparatively wealthy man. His wife was one 
 of those people who have a serene and unaffected 
 interest in human beings. She was a religious 
 woman, but her relations with others were rather 
 based on the purest kindliness and sympathy. She 
 knew every one in the place, and, having no touch 
 of shyness, she went in and out among their 
 poorer neighbours, the trusted friend and provi- 
 dence of numerous families ; but she had not in 
 the least what is called a parochial mind. She 
 had no touch of the bustling and efficient Lady 
 Bountiful. The simple people she visited were
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 her friends and neighbours, not her patients and 
 dependents. She was simply an overflowing foun- 
 tain of goodness, and it was as natural to her to 
 hurry to a scene of sorrow and suffering as it is 
 for most people to desire to stay away. My friend 
 himself had not the same taste ; it was always 
 rather an effort to him to accommodate himself to 
 people in a different way of life ; but it ought to 
 be said that he was universally liked and respected 
 for his quiet courtesy and simplicity, and fully as 
 much for his own sake as for that of his wife. 
 This fact could hardly be inferred from his Diary, 
 and indeed he was wholly unconscious of it him- 
 self, because he never realised his natural charm, 
 and indeed was unduly afraid of boring people by 
 his presence. 
 
 He was not exactly a hard worker, but he was 
 singularly regular ; indeed, though he sometimes 
 took a brief holiday after writing a book, he seldom 
 missed a day without writing some few pages. 
 One of the reasons why they paid so few visits 
 was that he tended, as he told me, to feel so much 
 bored away from his work. It was at once his 
 occupation and his recreation. He was not one 
 of those who write fiercely and feverishly, and then 
 fall into exhaustion ; he wrote cheerfully and tem- 
 perately, and never appeared to feel the strain. 
 They lived quietly, but a good many friends came 
 and went. He much preferred to have a single 
 guest, or a husband and wife, at a time, and 
 pursued his work quietly all through. He used 
 to see that one had all one could need, and then
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 withdrew after tea-time, not reappearing until 
 dinner. His wife, it was evident, was devoted to 
 him with an almost passionate adoration. The 
 reason why life went so easily there was that she 
 studied unobtrusively his smallest desires and pre- 
 ferences ; and thus there was never any sense of 
 special contrivance or consideration for his wishes : 
 the day was arranged exactly as he liked, without 
 his ever having to insist upon details. He pro- 
 bably did not realise this, for though he liked settled 
 ways, he was sensitively averse to feeling that his 
 own convenience was in any way superseding or 
 overriding the convenience of others. It used to 
 be a great delight and refreshment to stay there. 
 He was fond of rambling about the country, and 
 was an enchanting companion in a tete-a-tete. In 
 the evening he used to expand very much into a 
 genial humour which was very attractive ; he had, 
 too, the art of making swift and subtle transitions 
 into an emotional mood ; and here his poetical 
 gift of seeing unexpected analogies and delicate 
 characteristics gave his talk a fragrant charm which 
 I have seldom heard equalled. 
 
 It was indeed a picture of wonderful prosperity, 
 happiness, and delight. The children were engag- 
 ing, clever, and devotedly affectionate, and indeed 
 the atmosphere of mutual affection seemed to 
 float over the circle like a fresh and scented 
 summer air. One used to feel, as one drove away, 
 that though one's visit had been a pleasure, there 
 would be none of the flatness which sometimes 
 follows the departure of a guest, but that one was
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 leaving them to a home life that was better than 
 sociability, a life that was both sacred and beauti- 
 ful, full to the brim of affection, yet without any 
 softness or sentimentality. 
 
 Then came my friend's great success. He had 
 written less since his marriage, and his books, I 
 thought, were beginning to flag a little. There 
 was a want of freshness about them ; he tended 
 to use the same characters and similar situations ; 
 both thought and phraseology became somewhat 
 mannerised. I put this down myself to the belief 
 that life was beginning to be more interesting to 
 him than art. But there suddenly appeared the 
 book which made him famous, a book both 
 masterly and delicate, full of subtle analysis and 
 perception, and with that indescribable sense of 
 actuality which is the best test of art. The style 
 at the same time seemed to have run clear ; he 
 had gained a perfect command of his instrument, 
 and I had about this book, what I had never 
 had about any other book of his, the sense 
 that he was producing exactly the effects he 
 meant to produce. The extraordinary merit of 
 the book was instantly recognised by all, I think, 
 but the author. He went abroad for a time 
 after the book was published, and eventually 
 returned ; it was at that point of his life that 
 the Diary began. 
 
 I went to see him not long after, and it be- 
 came rapidly clear to me that something had 
 happened to him. Instead of being radiant with 
 success, eager and contented, I found him de- 
 
 b
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 pressed, anxious, haggard. He told me that he 
 felt unstrung and exhausted, and that his power 
 of writing had deserted him. But I must bear 
 testimony at the same time to the fact which 
 does not emerge in the Diary, namely, the extra- 
 ordinary gallantry and patience of his conduct and 
 demeanour. He struggled visibly and patheti- 
 cally, from hour to hour, against his depression. 
 He never complained ; he never showed, at least 
 in my presence, the smallest touch of irritability. 
 Indeed to myself, who had known him as the most 
 equable and good-humoured of men, he seemed 
 to support the trial with a courage little short of 
 heroism. The trial was a sore one, because it 
 deprived him both of motive and occupation. But 
 he made the best of it ; he read, he took long 
 walks, and he threw himself with great eagerness 
 into the education of his children — a task for 
 which he was peculiarly qualified. Then a series 
 of calamities fell upon him : he lost his boy, a 
 child of wonderful ability and sweetness ; he lost 
 his fortune, or the greater part of it. The latter 
 calamity he bore with perfect imperturbability — 
 they let their house and moved into Gloucester- 
 shire. Here a certain measure of happiness seemed 
 to return to him. He made a new friend, as the 
 Diary relates, in the person of the Squire of the 
 village, a man who, though an invalid, had a strong 
 and almost mystical hold upon life. Here he began 
 to interest himself in the people of the place, and 
 tried all sorts of educational and social experiments. 
 But his wife fell ill, and died very suddenly ; and,
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 not long after, his daughter died too. He was for 
 a time almost wholly broken down. I went abroad 
 with him at his request for a few weeks, but I was 
 myself obliged to return to England to my profes- 
 sional duties. I can only say that I did not expect 
 ever to see him again. He was like a man, the 
 spring of whose life was broken ; but at the same 
 time he bore himself with a patience and a gentle- 
 ness that fairly astonished me. We were together 
 day by day and hour by hour. He made no com- 
 plaint, and he used to force himself, with what 
 sad effort was only too plain, to converse on all 
 sorts of topics. Some time after he drifted back 
 to England ; but at first he appeared to be in a 
 very listless and dejected state. Then there arrived, 
 almost suddenly, it seemed to me, a change. He 
 had made the sacrifice ; he had accepted the situa- 
 tion. There came to him a serenity which was 
 only like his old serenity from the fact that it 
 seemed entirely unaffected ; but it was based, I 
 felt, on a very different view of life. He was now 
 content to wait and to believe. It was at this time 
 that the Squire died ; and not long afterwards, 
 the Squire's niece, a woman of great strength and 
 simplicity of character, married a clergyman to 
 whom she had been long attached, both being 
 middle-aged people ; and the living soon after- 
 wards falling vacant, her husband accepted it, and 
 the newly-married pair moved into the Rectory \ 
 while my friend, who had been named as the 
 Squire's ultimate heir, a life-interest in the property 
 being secured to the niece, went into the Hall.
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 Shortly afterwards he adopted a nephew — his 
 sister's son — who, with the consent of all con- 
 cerned, was brought up as the heir to the estate, 
 and is its present proprietor. 
 
 My friend lived some fifteen years after that, a 
 quiet, active, and obviously contented life. I was 
 a frequent guest at the Hall, and I am sure that I 
 never saw a more attached circle. My friend led 
 an active life. He became a magistrate, and he 
 did a good deal of county business ; but his main 
 interest was in the place, where he was the trusted 
 friend and counsellor of every household in the 
 parish. He took a great deal of active exercise 
 in the open air ; he read much. He taught his 
 nephew, whom he did not send to school. He 
 regained, in fuller measure than ever, his old de- 
 lightful charm of conversation, and his humour, 
 which had always been predominant in him, took 
 on a deeper and a richer tinge ; but whereas in 
 old days he had been brilliant and epigrammatic, 
 he was now rather poetical and suggestive ; and 
 whereas he had formerly been reticent about his 
 emotions and his religion, he now acquired what 
 is to my mind the profoundest conversational 
 charm — the power of making swift and natural 
 transitions into matters of what, for want of a 
 better word, I will call spiritual experience. I 
 remember his once saying to me that he had 
 learnt, from his intercourse with his village neigh- 
 bours, that the one thing in the world in which 
 every one was interested was religion ; " even 
 more," he added, with a smile, " than is the one
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 subject in which Sir Robert Walpole said that 
 every one could join." 
 
 I do not suppose that his religion was of a 
 particularly orthodox kind ; he was impatient 
 of dogmatic definition and of ecclesiastical ten- 
 dencies ; but he cared with all his heart for 
 the vital principles of religion, the love of God 
 and the love of one's neighbour. 
 
 He lived to see his adopted son grow up to 
 maturity ; and I do not think I ever saw anything 
 so beautiful as the confidence and affection that 
 subsisted between them ; and then he died one 
 day, as he had often told me he desired to die. 
 He had been ailing for a week, and on rising 
 from his chair in the morning he was seized by 
 a sudden faintness and died within half-an-hour, 
 hardly knowing, I imagine, that he was in any 
 danger. 
 
 It fell to me to deal with his papers. There was 
 a certain amount of scattered writing, but no com- 
 pleted work ; it all dated from before the publication 
 of his great book. It was determined that this 
 Diary should eventually see the light, and circum- 
 stances into which I need not now enter have 
 rendered its appearance advisable at the present 
 date. 
 
 The interest of the document is its candour and 
 outspokenness. If the tone of the record, until 
 near the end, is one of unrelieved sadness, it must 
 be borne in mind that all the time he bore himself 
 in the presence of others with a singular courage 
 and simplicity. He said to me once, in an hour
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of dark despair, that he had drunk the dregs of 
 self-abasement. That he believed that he had 
 no sense of morality, no loyal affection, no love 
 of virtue, no patience or courage. That his only 
 motives had been timidity, personal ambition, love 
 of respectability, love of ease. He added that 
 this had been slowly revealed to him, and that the 
 only way out was a way that he had not as yet 
 strength to tread ; the way of utter submission, 
 absolute confidence, entire resignation. He said 
 that there was one comfort, which was, that he 
 knew the worst about himself that it was possible 
 to know. I told him that his view of his character 
 was unjust and exaggerated, but he only shook 
 his head with a smile that went to my heart. It 
 was on that day, I think, that he touched the 
 lowest depth of all ; and after that he found the 
 way out, along the path that he had indicated. 
 This is no place for eulogy and panegyric. My 
 task has been just to trace the portrait of my 
 friend as he appeared to others ; his own words 
 shall reveal the inner spirit. The beauty of the 
 life to me was that he attained, unconsciously 
 and gradually, to the very virtues which he most 
 desired and in which he felt himself to be most 
 deficient. He had to bear a series of devas- 
 tating calamities. He had loved the warmth 
 and nearness of his home circle more deeply 
 than most men, and the whole of it was swept 
 away ; he had depended for stimulus and occu- 
 pation alike upon his artistic work, and the power 
 was taken from him at the moment of his highest
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 achievement. His loss of fortune is not to be 
 reckoned among his calamities, because it was 
 no calamity to him. He ended by finding a 
 richer treasure than any that he had set out to 
 obtain ; and I remember that he said to me 
 once, not long before his end, that whatever others 
 might feel about their own lives, he could not 
 for a moment doubt that his own had been an 
 education of a deliberate and loving kind, and 
 that the day when he realised that, when he 
 saw that there was not a single incident in his 
 life that had not a deep and an intentional value 
 for him, was one of the happiest days of his 
 whole existence. I do not know that he expected 
 anything or speculated on what might await him 
 hereafter ; he put his future, just as he put his 
 past and his present, in the hands of God, to 
 Whom he committed himself " as unto a faithful 
 Creator."
 
 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 September % y 1888. 
 We came back yesterday, after a very prosperous 
 time at Zermatt ; we have been there two entire 
 months. Yes, it was certainly prosperous 1 We 
 had delicious weather, and I have seen a number 
 of pleasant people. I have done a great deal of 
 walking, I have read a lot of novels and old 
 poetry, I have sate about a good deal in the open 
 air ; but I do not really like Switzerland ; there 
 are of course an abundance of noble wide-hung 
 views, but there are few vignettes, little on 
 which the mind and heart dwell with an intimate 
 and familiar satisfaction. Those airy pinnacles 
 of toppling rocks, those sheets of slanted snow, 
 those ice-bound crags — there is a sense of fear 
 and mystery about them ! One does not know 
 what is going on there, what they are waiting for ; 
 they have no human meaning. They do not seem 
 to have any relation to humanity at all. Sunday 
 after Sunday one used to have sermons in that 
 hot, trim little wooden church — some from 
 quite famous preachers — about the need of rest, 
 the advantage of letting the mind and eye dwell 
 in awe upon the wonderful works of God. Of 
 
 A
 
 2 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 course the mountains are wonderful enough ; but 
 they make me feel that humanity plays a very 
 trifling part in the mind and purpose of God. I 
 do not think that if I were a preacher of the 
 Gospel, and had a speculative turn, I should care 
 to take a holiday among the mountains. 1 should 
 be beset by a dreary wonder whether the wel- 
 fare of humanity was a thing very dear to God at 
 all. I should feel very strongly what the Psalmist 
 said, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" 
 It would take the wind out of my sails, when I 
 came to preach about Redemption, because I 
 should be tempted to believe that, after all, human 
 beings were only in the world on sufferance, and 
 that the aching, frozen, barren earth, so inimical 
 to life, was in even more urgent need of redemp- 
 tion. Day by day, among the heights, I grew to 
 feel that I wanted some explanation of why the 
 strange panorama of splintered crag and hanging 
 ice-fall was there at all. It certainly is not there 
 with any reference to man — at least it is hard to 
 believe that it is all there that human beings may 
 take a refreshing holiday in the midst of it. When 
 one penetrates Switzerland by the green pine-clad 
 valleys, passing through and beneath those delicious 
 upland villages, each clustering round a church 
 with a glittering cupola, the wooden houses with 
 their brown fronts, their big eaves, perched up 
 aloft at such pleasant angles, one thinks of 
 Switzerland as an inhabited land of valleys, with 
 screens and backgrounds of peaks and snowfields ; 
 but when one goes up higher still, and gets up to
 
 SWITZERLAND 3 
 
 the top of one of the peaks, one sees that Switzer- 
 land is really a region of barren ridges, millions 
 of acres of cold stones and ice, with a few little 
 green cracks among the mountain bases, where 
 men have crept to live ; and that man is only 
 tolerated there. 
 
 One day I was out with a guide on a peak at 
 sunrise. Behind the bleak and shadowy ridges 
 there stole a flush of awakening dawn ; then came 
 a line of the purest yellow light, touching the crags 
 and snowfields with sharp blue shadows ; the 
 lemon-coloured radiance passed into fiery gold, 
 the gold flushed to crimson, and then the sun 
 leapt into sight, and shed the light of day upon 
 the troubled sea of mountains. It was more than 
 that — the hills made, as it were, the rim of a great 
 cold shadowy goblet ; and the light was poured 
 into it from the uprushing sun, as bubbling and 
 sparkling wine is poured into a beaker. I found 
 myself thrilled from head to foot with an intense 
 and mysterious rapture. What did it all mean, 
 this awful and resplendent solemnity, full to the 
 brim of a solitary and unapproachable holiness ? 
 What was the secret of the thing ? Perhaps every 
 one of those stars that we had seen fade out of the 
 night was ringed round by planets such as ours, 
 peopled by forms undreamed of ; doubtless on 
 millions of globes, the daylight of some central 
 sun was coming in glory over the cold ridges, and 
 waking into life sentient beings, in lands outside 
 our ken, each with civilisations and histories and 
 hopes and fears of their own. A stupendous, an
 
 4 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 overwhelming thought ! And yet, in the midst of 
 it, here was I myself, a little consciousness sharply 
 divided from it all, permitted to be a spectator, a 
 partaker of the intolerable and gigantic mystery, 
 and yet so strangely made that the whole of that 
 vast and prodigious complexity of life and law 
 counted for less to me than the touch of weariness 
 that hung, after my long vigil, over limbs and 
 brain. The faculty, the godlike power of knowing 
 and imagining, all actually less to me than my 
 own tiny and fragile sensations. Such moods as 
 these are strange things, because they bring with 
 them so intense a desire to know, to perceive, and 
 yet paralyse one with the horror of the darkness 
 in which one moves. One cannot conceive why 
 it is that one is given the power of realising the 
 multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time 
 left so wholly ignorant of its significance. One 
 longs to leap into the arms of God, to catch some 
 whisper of His voice ; and at the same time there 
 falls the shadow of the prison-house ; one is 
 driven relentlessly back upon the old limited life, 
 the duties, the labours, the round of meals and 
 sleep, the tiny relations with others as ignorant as 
 ourselves, and, still worse, with the petty spirits 
 who have a complacent explanation of it all. 
 Even over love itself the shadow falls. I am as 
 near to my own dear and true Maud as it is 
 possible to be ; but I can tell her nothing of the 
 mystery, and she can tell me nothing. We are 
 allowed for a time to draw close to each other, 
 to whisper to each other our hopes and fears ;
 
 THE EMPTY SOUL 5 
 
 but at any moment we can be separated. The 
 children, Alec and Maggie, dearer to me — I can 
 say it honestly — than life itself, to whom we have 
 given being, whose voices I hear as I write, what 
 of them ? They are each of them alone, though 
 they hardly know it yet. The little unnamed son, 
 who opened his eyes upon the world six years 
 ago, to close them in a few hours, where and 
 what is he now ? Is he somewhere, anywhere ? 
 Does he know of the joy and sorrow he has 
 brought into our lives ? I would fain believe it 
 . . . these are profitless thoughts, of one staring 
 into the abyss. Somehow these bright weeks have 
 been to me a dreary time. I am well in health ; 
 nothing ails me. It is six months since my last 
 book was published, and I have taken a deliberate 
 holiday ; but always before, my mind, the strain 
 of a book once taken off it, has begun to sprout 
 and burgeon with new ideas and schemes : but 
 now, for the first time in my life, my mind and 
 heart remain bare and arid. I seem to have 
 drifted into a dreary silence. It is not that things 
 have been less beautiful, but beauty seems to have 
 had no message, no significance for me. The 
 people that I have seen have come and gone like 
 ghosts and puppets. I have had no curiosity 
 about them, their occupations and thoughts, their 
 hopes and loves ; it has not seemed worth while 
 to be interested, in a life which appears so short, 
 and which leads nowhere. It seems morbid to 
 write thus, but I have not been either morbid or 
 depressed. It has been an easy life, the life of the
 
 6 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 last few months, without effort or dissatisfaction, 
 but without zest. It is a mental tiredness, I 
 suppose. I have written myself out, and the 
 cistern must fill again. Yet I have had no feeling 
 of fatigue. It would have been almost better to 
 have had something to bear ; but I am richer than 
 I need be, Maud and the children have been in 
 perfect health and happiness, I have been well 
 and strong. I shall hope that the familiar scene, 
 the pleasant activities of home-life will bring the 
 desire back. I realise how much the fabric of my 
 life is built upon my writing, and write I must. 
 Well, I have said enough ; the pleasure of these 
 entries is that one can look back to them, and see 
 the movement of the current of life in a bygone 
 day. I have an immense mass of arrears to make 
 up, in the form of letters and business, but I want 
 to survey the ground ; and the survey is not a very 
 happy one this morning ; though if I made a list 
 of my benefits and the reverse, like Robinson 
 Crusoe, the credit side would be full of good 
 things, and the debit side nearly empty. 
 
 September 15, 1888. 
 
 It is certainly very sweet to be at home again ; 
 to find oneself in familiar scenes, with all the 
 pretty homely comfortable things waiting patiently 
 for us to return — pictures, books, rooms, trees, 
 kindly people. Wright, my excellent gardener, 
 with whom I spent an hour strolling round the 
 garden to-day, touched me by saying that he was
 
 HOME 7 
 
 glad to see me back, and that it had seemed dull 
 without me ; he has done fifty little simple things 
 in our absence, in his tranquil and faithful way, 
 and is pleased to have them noticed. Alec, who 
 was with me to-day, delighted me by finding his 
 stolid wooden horse in the summer-house, rather 
 damp and dishevelled, and almost bursting into 
 tears at the pathos of the neglect. " Did you 
 think we had forgotten you ? " he said as he 
 hugged it. I suggested that he should have a good 
 meal. " I don't think he would care about grass," 
 said Alec thoughtfully, " he shall have some leaves 
 and berries for a treat." And this was tenderly 
 executed. Maud went off to see some of her old 
 pensioners, and came back glowing with pleasure, 
 with twenty pleasant stories of welcome. Two or 
 three people came in to see me on business, and I 
 was glad to feel I was of use. In the afternoon 
 we all went off on a long ramble together, and we 
 were quite surprised to see that everything seemed 
 to be in its place as usual. Summer is over, the 
 fields have been reaped ; there is a comfortable 
 row of stacks in the rickyard ; the pleasant 
 humming of an engine came up the valley, as 
 it sang its homely monotone, now low, now loud. 
 After tea — the evenings have begun to close in — 
 I went off to my study, took out my notebook 
 and looked over my subjects, but I could make 
 nothing of any of them. I could see that there 
 were some good ideas among them ; but none of 
 them took shape. Often I have found that to 
 glance over my subjects thus, after a holiday, is
 
 8 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 like blowing soap-bubbles. The idea comes out 
 swelling and eddying from the bowl ; a globe 
 swimming with lucent hues, reflecting dim moving 
 shapes of rooms and figures. Not so to-day. 
 My mind winked and flapped and rustled like a 
 burnt-out fire ; not in a depressed or melancholy 
 way, but phlegmatically and dully. Well, the 
 spirit bloweth as it listeth ; but it is strange to find 
 my mind so unresponsive, with none of that plea- 
 sant stir, that excitement that has a sort of fantastic 
 terror about it, such as happens when a book 
 stretches itself dimly and mysteriously before the 
 mind — when one has a glimpse of a quiet room 
 with people talking, a man riding fiercely on 
 lonely roads, two strolling together in a moonlit 
 garden, with the shadows of the cypresses on the 
 turf, and the fragrance of the sleeping flowers 
 blown abroad. They stop to listen to the 
 nightingale in the bush . . . they turn to each 
 other . . . the currents of life are intermingled 
 at the meeting of the lips, the warm shudder at 
 the touch of the floating tress of fragrant hair. 
 To-day nothing comes to me ; I throw it all 
 aside and go to see the children, am greeted 
 delightfully, and join in some pretty and absurd 
 game. Then dinner comes ; and I sit afterwards 
 reading, dropping the book to talk, Maud working 
 in her corner by the fire — all things moving so 
 tranquilly and easily in this pleasantly ordered 
 home-like house of ours. It is good to be at 
 home ; and how pitiful to be hankering thus for 
 something else to fill the mind, which should
 
 SUCCESS 9 
 
 obliterate all the beloved things so tenderly pro- 
 vided. Maud asks about the reception of the 
 latest book, and sparkles with pride at some of 
 the things I tell her. She sees somehow — how do 
 women divine these things ? — that there is a little 
 shadow of unrest over me, and she tells me all the 
 comforting things that I dare not say to myself — 
 that it is only that the book took more out of me 
 than I knew, and that the resting-time is not over 
 yet ; but that I shall soon settle down again. 
 Then I go off to smoke awhile ; and then the 
 haunting shadow comes back for a little ; till at 
 last I go softly through the sleeping house ; and 
 presently lie listening to the quiet breathing of my 
 wife beside me, glad to be at home again, until 
 the thoughts grow blurred, take grotesque shapes, 
 sinking softly into repose. 
 
 September 18, 1 888. 
 
 1 have spent most of the morning in clearing 
 up business, and dealing with papers and letters. 
 Among the accumulations was a big bundle of 
 press-cuttings, all dealing with my last book. It 
 comes home to me that the book has been a 
 success ; it began by slaying its thousands, like 
 Saul, and now it has slain its tens of thousands. 
 It has brought me hosts of letters, from all sorts 
 of people, some of them very delightful and en- 
 couraging, many very pleasant — just grateful and 
 simple letters of thanks — some vulgar and im- 
 pertinent, some strangely intimate. What is it, 
 I wonder, that makes some people want to tell a
 
 io. THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 writer whom they have never seen all about them- 
 selves, their thoughts and histories ? In some 
 cases it is an unaffected desire for sympathy from 
 a person whom they think perceptive and sympa- 
 thetic ; in some cases it proceeds, I think, from a 
 hysterical desire to be thought interesting, with 
 a faint hope, I fear, of being possibly put into a 
 book. Some of the letters have been simply un- 
 intelligible and inconceivable on any hypothesis, 
 except for the human instinct to confess, to bare 
 the heart, to display the secret sorrow. Many 
 of these letters are intensely pathetic, affecting, 
 heart-rending ; an invalid lady writes to say that 
 she would like to know me, and will I come to the 
 North of England to see her ? A man writes a 
 pretentious letter, to ask me to go and stay with 
 him for a week. He has nothing to offer, he says, 
 but plain fare and rather cramped quarters ; but 
 he has thought deeply, he adds, on many of the 
 problems on which I touch, and thinks that he 
 could throw light upon some of them. Imagine 
 what reserves of interest and wisdom he must 
 consider that he possesses ! Then there are 
 patronising letters from people who say that I 
 have put into words thoughts which they have 
 always had, and which they never took the 
 trouble to write down ; then there are requests 
 for autographs, and " sentiments," and sugges- 
 tions for new books. A man writes to say that 
 I could do untold good if I would write a book 
 with a purpose, and ventures to propose that I 
 should take up anti-vivisection. There are a few
 
 A PAINFUL LETTER n 
 
 letters worth their weight in gold, from good men 
 and true, writers and critics, who thank me for 
 a book which fulfils its aim and artistic purpose, 
 while on the other hand there are some from 
 people who find fault with my book for not doing 
 what I never even attempted to do. Here is one 
 that has given me deep and unmitigated pain ; it 
 is from an old friend, who, I am told, is aggrieved 
 because he thinks that I have put him into my 
 book, in the form of an unpleasant character. 
 The worst of it is that there is enough truth in 
 it to make it difficult for me to deny it. My 
 character is, in some superficial ways, habits, and 
 tricks of speech, like Reginald. Well, on hearing 
 what he felt, I wrote him a letter of apology for 
 my carelessness and thoughtlessness, saying, as 
 frankly as I could, that the character was not in 
 any way drawn from him, but that I undoubtedly 
 had, almost unconsciously, taken an external trait or 
 two from him ; adding that I was truly and heartily 
 sorry, and hoped that there would be no ill-feel- 
 ing ; and that I valued his friendship even more 
 than he probably imagined. Here is his reply : 
 
 My dear F , — If you spit on the head of a man 
 
 passing in the street, and then write to him a few days 
 after to say that all is forgiven, and that you are sorry 
 your aim was so accurate, you don't mend matters. 
 
 You express a hope that after what has occurred there 
 may be no ill-feeling between us. Well, you have done 
 me what I consider an injury. I have no desire to 
 repay it; if I had a chance of doing you a good turn,
 
 12 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 / should do it ; if I heard you abused, I should stick up 
 for you. I have no intention of making a grievance 
 out of it. But if you ask me to say that I do not feel 
 a sense of ivrong, or to express a wish to meet you, or 
 to trust you any longer as I have hitherto trusted you, I 
 must decline saying anything of the kind, because it 
 zvould not be true. 
 
 Of course I know that there cannot be omelettes without 
 breaking eggs ; and I suppose that there cannot be what 
 are called psychological novels, without violating confi- 
 dences. But you cannot be surprised, when you en- 
 courage an old friend to trust you and confide in you, 
 and then draw an ugly caricature of him in a book, if 
 he thinks the worse of you in consequence. I hear that 
 the book is a great success ; you must be content with 
 the fact that the yolks are as golden as they are. Please 
 do not write to me again on the subject. I will try to 
 forget it, and if I succeed, I will let you know. 
 
 Yours 
 
 That is the kind of letter that poisons life for 
 awhile. While I am aware that I meant no 
 treachery, I am none the less aware that I have 
 contrived to be a traitor. Of course one vows one 
 will never write another line ; but I do not sup- 
 pose I shall keep the vow. I reply shortly, eating 
 all the dirt I can collect ; and I shall try to forget 
 it too ; though it is a shabby end of an old friend- 
 ship. 
 
 Then I turn to the reviews. I find them 
 gracious, respectful, laudatory. They are to be 
 taken cum grano, of course. When an enthusiastic
 
 MY BOOK 13 
 
 reviewer says that I have passed at one stride into 
 the very first class of contemporary writers, I do 
 not feel particularly elated, though I am undeni- 
 ably pleased. I find my conception, my structure, 
 my style, my descriptions, my character-drawing, 
 liberally and generously praised. There is no 
 doubt that the book has been really successful 
 beyond my wildest hopes. If I were in any 
 doubt, the crop of letters from editors and pub- 
 lishers asking me for articles and books of every 
 kind, and offering me incredible terms, would 
 convince me. 
 
 Now what do I honestly feel about all this ? 
 I will try for my own benefit to say. Of course 
 I am very much pleased, but the odd thing is 
 that I am not more pleased. I can say quite 
 unaffectedly that it does not turn my head in 
 the least. I reflect that if this had happened 
 when I began to write, I should have been beside 
 myself with delight, full of self-confidence, blown 
 out with wind, like the frog in the fable. Even 
 now there is a deep satisfaction in having done 
 what one has tried to do. But instead of raking 
 in the credit, I am more inclined to be grateful 
 for my good fortune. I feel as if I had found 
 something valuable rather than made something 
 beautiful ; as if I had stumbled on a nugget of 
 gold or a pearl of price. I am very fatalistic 
 about writing ; one is given a certain thing to 
 say, and the power to say it ; it does not come 
 by effort, but by a pleasant felicity. After all, 
 I reflect, the book is only a good story, well told.
 
 14 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 I do not feel like a benefactor of the human race, 
 but at the best like a skilful minstrel, who has 
 given some innocent pleasure. What, after all, 
 does it amount to ? I have touched to life, perhaps 
 a few gracious, tender, romantic fancies — but, after 
 all, the thoughts and emotions were there to start 
 with, just as the harmonies which the musician 
 awakes are all dormant in his throbbing strings. 
 I have created nothing, only perceived and repre- 
 sented phenomena. I have gained no sensibility, 
 no patience, no wisdom in the process. I know 
 no more of the secret of life and love, than before 
 I wrote my book. I am only like a scientific 
 investigator who has discovered certain delicate 
 processes, subtle laws at work. They were there 
 all the time ; the temptation of the investigator 
 and of the writer alike is to yield to the delusion 
 that he has made them, by discerning and naming 
 them. As for the style, which is highly praised, 
 it has not been made by effort. It is myself. 
 I have never written for any other reason than 
 because I liked writing. It has been a pleasure 
 to overcome difficulties, to make my way round 
 obstacles, to learn how to express the vague and 
 intangible thing. But I deserve no credit for 
 this ; I should deserve credit if I had made my- 
 self a good writer out of a bad one ; but I could 
 always write, and I am not a better writer, only 
 a more practised one. There is no satisfaction 
 there. 
 
 And then, too, I find myself overshadowed by 
 the thought that I do not want to do worse, to
 
 THE PROSPECT 15 
 
 go downhill, to decline. I do not feel at all sure 
 that I can write a better book, or so good a one 
 indeed. I should dislike failing far more than 
 I like having succeeded. To have reached a 
 certain standard makes it incumbent on one that 
 one should not fall below that standard ; and no 
 amount of taking pains will achieve that. It can 
 only be done through a sort of radiant felicity of 
 mood, which is really not in my power to count 
 upon. I was happy, supremely happy, when I 
 was writing the book. I lighted upon a fine 
 conception, and it was the purest joy to see the 
 metal trickle firmly from the furnace into the 
 mould. Can I make such a mould again ? Can 
 I count upon the ingots piled in the fierce 
 flame ? Can I reckon upon the same tempera- 
 mental glow ? I do not know — I fear not. 
 
 Here is the net result — that I have become a 
 sort of personage in the world of letters. Do I 
 desire it ? Yes, in a sense 1 do, but in a sense 
 I do not. I do not want money, I do not wish 
 for public appearances. I have no social ambi- 
 tions. To be pointed out as the distinguished 
 novelist is distinctly inconvenient. People will 
 demand a certain standard of talk, a certain 
 brilliance, which I am not in the least capable of 
 giving them. I want to sit at my ease at the 
 banquet of life, not to be ushered to the highest 
 rooms. I prefer interesting and pleasant people 
 to important and majestic persons. Perhaps if 
 I were more simple-minded, I should not care 
 about the matter at all ; just be grateful for the
 
 16 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 increased warmth and amenity of life — but I am 
 not simple-minded, and I hate not fulfilling other 
 people's expectations. I am not a prodigal, full- 
 blooded, royal sort of person at all. I am not 
 conscious of greatness, but far more of emptiness. 
 I do not wish to seem pretentious. I have got 
 this one faculty ; but it has outrun all the rest of 
 me, and I am aware that it has drained the rest 
 of my nature. The curious thing is that this sort 
 of fame is the thing that as a young man I used 
 to covet. I used to think it would be so sustain- 
 ing and resplendent. Now that it has come to 
 me, in far richer measure, I will not say than 
 I hoped, but at all events than I had expected, 
 it does not seem to be a wholly desirable thing. 
 Fame is only one of the sauces of life ; it is not 
 the food of the spirit at all. The people that 
 praise one are like the courtiers that bow in the 
 anterooms of a king, through whom he passes to 
 the lonely study where his life is lived. I am not 
 feeling ungrateful or ungenerous ; but I would 
 give all that I have gained for a new and inspiring 
 friendship, or for the certainty that I should write 
 another book with the same happiness as I wrote 
 my last book. Perhaps I ought to feel the re- 
 sponsibility more ! I do feel it in a sense, but 
 I have never estimated the moral effectiveness of 
 a writer of fiction very high ; one comforts rather 
 than sustains ; one diverts rather than feeds. If 
 I could hear of one self-sacrificing action, one 
 generous deed, one tranquil surrender that had 
 been the result of my book, I should be more
 
 FAME 17 
 
 pleased than I am with all the shower of compli- 
 ments. Of course in a sense praise makes life 
 more interesting ; but what I really desire to 
 apprehend is the significance and meaning of life, 
 that strange mixture of pain and pleasure, of 
 commonplace events and raptures ; and my book 
 brings me no nearer that. To feel God nearer 
 me, to feel, not by evidence but by instinct, that 
 there is a Heart that cares for me, and moulded 
 me from the clay for a purpose — why, I would 
 give all that I have in the world for that ! 
 
 Of course Maud will be pleased ; but that will 
 be because she believes that I deserve everything 
 and anything, and is only surprised that the world 
 has not found out sooner what a marvellous 
 person I am. God knows I do not undervalue her 
 belief in me ; but it makes and keeps me humble 
 to feel how far she is from the truth, how far from 
 realising the pitiful weakness and emptiness of her 
 lover and husband. 
 
 Is this, I wonder, how all successful people 
 feel about fame ? The greatest of all have often 
 never enjoyed the least touch of it in their life- 
 time ; and they are happier so. Some few rich 
 and generous natures, like Scott and Browning, 
 have neither craved for it nor valued it. Some of 
 the greatest have desired it, slaved for it, clung 
 to it. Yet when it comes, one realises how small 
 a part of life and thought it fills — unless indeed 
 it brings other desirable things with it ; and this 
 is not the case with me, because I have all I 
 want. Well, if I can but set to work at another
 
 18 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 book, all these idle thoughts will die away ; but 
 my mind rattles like a shrunken kernel. I must 
 kneel down and pray, as Blake and his wife did, 
 when the visions deserted them. 
 
 September 25, 1888. 
 
 Here is a social instance of what it means 
 to become " quite a little man," as Stevenson 
 used to say. Some county people near here, 
 good-natured, pushing persons, who have always 
 been quite civil but nothing more, invited them- 
 selves to luncheon here a day or two ago, 
 bringing with them a distinguished visitor. They 
 throw in some nauseous compliments to my 
 book, and say that Lord Wilburton wishes to make 
 my acquaintance. I do not particularly want 
 to make his, though he is a man of some note. 
 But there was no pretext for declining. Such 
 an incursion is a distinct bore ; it clouds the 
 morning — one cannot settle down with a tran- 
 quil mind to one's work ; it fills the afternoon. 
 They came, and it proved not uninteresting. 
 They are pleasant people enough, and Lord Wilbur- 
 ton is a man who has been everywhere and seen 
 everybody. The fact that he wished to make my 
 acquaintance shows, no doubt, that I have sailed 
 into his ken, and that he wishes to add me to his 
 collection. I felt myself singularly unrewarding. 
 I am not a talker at the best of times, and to feel 
 that I am expected to be witty and suggestive is 
 the last straw. Lord Wilburton discoursed fluently
 
 VISITORS 19 
 
 and agreeably. Lady Harriet said that she envied 
 me my powers of writing, and asked how I came 
 to think of my last brilliant book, which she had 
 so enjoyed. I did not know what to say, and 
 could not invent anything. They made a great 
 deal of the children. They walked round the 
 garden. They praised everything ingeniously. 
 They could not say the house was big, and so 
 they called it convenient. They could not say 
 that the garden was ample, but Lord Wilburton said 
 that he had never seen so much ground go to the 
 acre. That was neat enough. They made a great 
 point of visiting my library, and carried away my 
 autograph, written with the very same pen with 
 which I wrote my great book. This they called a 
 privilege. They made us promise to go over to 
 the Castle, which I have no great purpose of doing. 
 We parted with mutual goodwill, and with that 
 increase of geniality on my own part which 
 comes on me at the end of a visit. Altogether I 
 did not dislike it, though it did not seem to me 
 particularly worth while. To-day my wife tells 
 me that they told the Fitzpatricks that it was a 
 great pleasure seeing me, because I was so modest 
 and unaffected. That is a courteous way of con- 
 cealing their disappointment that I was not more 
 brilliant. But, good heavens, what did they 
 expect ? I suppose, indeed I have no doubt, that 
 if I had talked mysteriously about my book, and 
 had described the genesis of it, and my method 
 of working, they would have, preferred that. Just 
 as in reminiscences of the Duke of Wellington, the
 
 20 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 people who saw him in later life seem to have been 
 struck dumb by a sort of tearful admiration at 
 the sight of the Duke condescending to eat his 
 dinner, or to light a guest's bedroom candle. Per- 
 haps if I had been more simple-minded I should 
 have talked frankly about myself. I don't know ; 
 it seems to me all rather vulgar. But my visitors 
 are kindly and courteous people, and felt, I am 
 sure, that they were both receiving and conferring 
 benefits. They will like to describe me and my 
 house, and they will feel that I am pleased at 
 being received on equal terms into county society. 
 I don't put this down at all cynically ; but they 
 are not people with whom I have anything in 
 common. I am not of their tnonde at all. I belong 
 to the middle class, and they are of the upper 
 class. I have a faint desire to indicate that I don't 
 want to cross the border-line, and that what I 
 desire is the society of interesting and congenial 
 people, not the society of my social superiors. 
 This is not unworldliness in the least, merely 
 hedonism. Feudalism runs in the blood of these 
 people, and they feel, not consciously but quite in- 
 stinctively, that they confer a benefit by making my 
 acquaintance. " No doubt but ye are the people," 
 as Job said, but I do not want to rise in the social 
 scale. It would be the earthen pot and the brazen 
 pot at best. I am quite content with my own class, 
 and life is not long enough to change it, and to 
 learn the habits of another. I have no quarrel 
 with the aristocracy, and do not in the least wish 
 to level them to the ground. I am quite pre-
 
 FEUDAL INHERITANCES 21 
 
 pared to acknowledge them as the upper class. 
 They are, as a rule, public-spirited, courteous 
 barbarians, with a sense of honour and responsi- 
 bility. But they take a great many things as 
 matters of course which are to me simply alien. 
 I no more wish to live with them than Wright, 
 my self-respecting gardener, wishes to live with 
 me — though so deeply rooted are feudal ideas in 
 the blood of the race, that Wright treats me with 
 a shade of increased deference because I have 
 been entertaining a party of Lords and Ladies ; 
 and the Vicar's wife said to Maud that she heard 
 we had been giving a very grand party, and 
 would soon be quite county people. The poor 
 woman will think more of my books than she 
 has ever thought before. I don't think this is 
 snobbish, because it is so perfectly instinctive and 
 natural. 
 
 But what I wanted to say was that this is the 
 kind of benefit which is conferred by success ; 
 and for a quiet person, who likes familiar and 
 tranquil ways, it is no benefit at all ; indeed, 
 rather the reverse ; unless it is a benefit that the 
 stationmaster touched his hat to me to-day, which 
 he has never done before. It is a funny little 
 world. Meanwhile I have no ideas, and my 
 visitors to-day haven't given me any, though 
 Lord Wilburton might be a useful figure in a book ; 
 so perfectly appointed, so quiet, so deferential, 
 so humorous, so deliciously insincere 1
 
 22 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 October 4, 1888. 
 
 1 have happened to read lately, in some maga- 
 zines, certain illustrated interviews with prominent 
 people, which have given me a deep sense of mental 
 and moral nausea. I do not think I am afflicted 
 with a strong sense of the sacredness of a man's 
 home life — at least, if it is sacred at all, it seems 
 to me to be just as much profaned by allowing 
 visitors or strangers to see it and share it as it is 
 by allowing it to be written about in a periodical. 
 If it is sacred in a peculiar sense, then only very 
 intimate friends ought to be allowed to see it, and 
 there should be a tacit sense that they ought not 
 to tell any one outside what it is like ; but if I am 
 invited to luncheon with a celebrated man whom 
 I do not know, because I happen to be staying in 
 the neighbourhood, I do not think I violate his 
 privacy by describing my experience to other people. 
 If a man has a beautiful house, a happy interior, a 
 gifted family circle, and if he is himself a remark- 
 able man, it is a privilege to be admitted to it, it 
 does one good to see it ; and it seems to me 
 that the more people who realise the beauty 
 and happiness of it the better. The question of 
 numbers has nothing to do with it. Suppose, for 
 instance, that I am invited to stay with a great 
 man, and suppose that I have a talent for drawing ; 
 I may sketch his house and his rooms, himself and 
 his family, if he does not object — and it seems to 
 me that it would be churlish and affected of him 
 to object — I may write descriptive letters from the
 
 PRIVACY 23 
 
 place, giving an account of his domestic ways, his 
 wife and family, his rooms, his books, his garden, 
 his talk. I do not see that there is any reasonable 
 objection to my showing those sketches to other 
 people who are interested in the great man, or to 
 the descriptive letters or diary that I write being 
 shown or read to others who do not know him. 
 Indeed I think it is a perfectly natural and whole- 
 some desire to know something of the life and 
 habits of great men ; I would go further, and say 
 that it is an improving and inspiring sort of know- 
 ledge to be acquainted with the pleasant details of 
 the well-ordered, contented, and happy life of a 
 high-minded and effective man. Who, for in- 
 stance, considers it to be a sort of treachery for 
 the world at large to know something of the splen- 
 did and affectionate life of the Kingsley circle at 
 Eversley Rectory, or of the Tennyson circle at 
 Freshwater ? to look at pictures of the scene, to 
 hear how the great men looked and moved and 
 spoke ? And if it is not profanation to hear and 
 see this in the pages of a biography, why is it a 
 profanation to read and see it in the pages of a 
 magazine ? To object to it seems to me to be 
 a species of prudish conventionality. 
 
 Only you must be sure that you get a natural, 
 simple, and unaffected picture of it all ; and what 
 I object to in the interviews which I have been 
 reading is that one gets an unnatural, affected, 
 self-conscious, and pompous picture of it all. To 
 go and pose in your favourite seat in a shrubbery 
 or a copse, where you think out your books or
 
 *4 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 poems, in order that an interviewer may take a snap- 
 shot of you — especially if in addition you assume a 
 look of owlish solemnity as though you were the 
 prey of great thoughts — that seems to me to be an 
 infernal piece of posing. But still worse than that 
 is the kind of conversation in which people are 
 tempted to indulge in the presence of an inter- 
 viewer. A man ought not to say to a wandering 
 journalist whom he has never seen before, in the 
 presence of his own wife, that women are the 
 inspirers and magnetisers of the world, and that 
 he owes all that has made him what he is to the 
 sweet presence and sympathetic tenderness of his 
 Bessy. This, it seems to me, is the lowest kind of 
 melodrama. The thing may be perfectly true, the 
 thought may be often in his mind, but he cannot be 
 accustomed to say such things in ordinary life ; and 
 one feels that when he says them to an interviewer 
 he does it in a thoroughly self-conscious mood, in 
 order that he may make an impressive figure before 
 the public. The conversations in the interview's I 
 have been reading give me the uncomfortable sense 
 that they have been thought out beforehand from the 
 dramatic point of view ; and indeed one earnestly 
 hopes that this is the solution of the situation, 
 because it would make one feel very faint if one 
 thought that remarks of this kind were the habitual 
 utterances of the circle — indeed, it would cure one 
 very effectually of the desire to know anything of 
 the interiors of celebrated people, if one thought 
 that they habitually talked like the heroes of a 
 Sunday-school romance. That is why the read-
 
 INTERVIEWERS 25 
 
 ing of tliese interviews is so painful, because, in 
 the first place, one feels sure that one is not realis- 
 ing the daily life of these people at all, but only 
 looking on at a tableau vivant prepared by them 
 for the occasion ; and secondly, it makes one very 
 unhappy to think that people of real eminence 
 and effectiveness can condescend to behave in this 
 affected way in order to win the applause of vulgar 
 readers. One vaguely hopes, indeed, that some 
 of the dismal platitudes that they are represented 
 as uttering may have been addressed to them in 
 the form of questions by the interviewer, and that 
 they have merely stammered a shamefaced assent. 
 It makes a real difference, for instance, whether 
 as a matter of fact a celebrated authoress leads 
 her golden-haired children up to an interviewer, 
 and says, " These are my brightest jewels ; " or 
 whether, when she tells her children to shake 
 hands, the interviewer says, " No doubt these are 
 your brightest jewels ?" A mother is hardly in 
 a position to return an indignant negative to such 
 a question, and if she utters an idiotic affirmative, 
 she is probably credited with the original remark 
 in all its unctuousness ! 
 
 It is a difficult question to decide what is the 
 most simple-minded thing to do, if you are in the 
 unhappy position of being requested to grant an 
 interview for journalistic purposes. My own feel- 
 ing is that if people really wish to know how I 
 live, what I wear, what I eat and drink, what books 
 I read, what kind of a house I live in, they are 
 perfectly welcome to know. It does not seem to
 
 26 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 me that it would detract from the sacredness of 
 my home life, if a picture of my dining-room, with 
 the table laid for luncheon in a very cramped per- 
 spective, or if a photogravure of the scrap of grass 
 and shrubbery that I call my garden, were to be 
 published in a magazine. All that is to a certain 
 extent public already. I should not wish to have 
 a photograph of myself in bed, or shaving, pub- 
 lished in a magazine, because those are not moments 
 when I am inclined to admit visitors. Neither do 
 I particularly want my private and informal con- 
 versation taken down and reproduced, because that 
 often consists of opinions which are not my de- 
 liberate and thought-out utterances. But I hope 
 that I should be able to talk simply and courteously 
 to an interviewer on ordinary topics, in a way that 
 would not discredit me if it was made public ; and 
 I hope, too, that decency would restrain me from 
 making inflated and pompous remarks about my 
 inner beliefs and motives, which were not in the 
 least characteristic of my usual method of con- 
 versation. 
 
 The truth is that what spoils these records is 
 the desire on the part of worthy and active 
 people to appear more impressive in ordinary 
 life than they actually are ; it is a well-meant 
 sort of hypocrisy, because it is intended, in a 
 way, to influence other people, and to make 
 them think that celebrated people live habitu- 
 ally on a higher tone of intellect and emotion 
 than they do actually live upon. My own ex- 
 perience of meeting great people is that they
 
 A POET 27 
 
 are, as a rule, disappointingly like ordinary people, 
 both in their tastes and in their conversation. Very 
 few men or women, who are extremely effective 
 in practical or artistic lines, have the energy or 
 the vitality to expend themselves very freely in 
 talk or social intercourse. They do not save 
 themselves up for their speeches or their books ; 
 but they give their best energies to them, and 
 have little current coin of high thought left for 
 ordinary life. The mischief is that these inter- 
 views are generally conducted by inquisitive 
 and rhetorical strangers, not distinguished for 
 social tact or overburdened with good taste ; 
 and so the whole occasion tends to wear a melo- 
 dramatic air, which is fatal both to artistic effect 
 as well as to simple propriety. 
 
 October 9, 1888. 
 
 Let me set against my fashionable luncheon- 
 party of a few weeks ago a visit which I owe no 
 less to my success, and which has been a true and 
 deep delight to me. I had a note yesterday from 
 a man whom I hold in great and deep reverence, 
 a man whom I have met two or three times, a 
 poet indeed, one of our true and authentic singers. 
 He writes that he is in the neighbourhood ; may 
 he come over for a few hours and renew our 
 acquaintance ? 
 
 He came, in the morning. One has only to set 
 eyes upon him to know that one is in the presence 
 of a hero, to feel that his poetry just streams from 
 him like light from the sun ; that it is not the
 
 28 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 central warmth, but the flying rippling radiance of 
 the outward-bound light, falling in momentary 
 beauty on the common things about his path. 
 He is a great big man, carelessly dressed, like a 
 Homeric king. I liked everything about him from 
 head to foot, his big carelessly-worn clothes, the 
 bright tie thrust loosely through a cameo ring ; 
 his loose shaggy locks, his strong beard. His 
 face, with its delicate pallor, and purely moulded 
 features, had a youthful air of purity and health ; 
 yet there was a dim trouble of thought on his 
 brow, over the great, smiling, flashing grey eyes. 
 He came in with a sort of royal greeting, he flung 
 his big limbs on a sofa ; he talked easily, quietly, 
 lavishly, saying fine things with no effort, dropping 
 a subject quickly if he thought it did not interest 
 me ; sometimes flashing out with a quick gesture 
 of impatience or gusto, enjoying life, every moment 
 and every detail. His quick eyes, roving about, 
 took in each smallest point, mot in the weary 
 feverish way in which I apprehend a new scene, 
 but as though he liked everything new and un- 
 familiar, like an unsated child. He greeted Maud 
 and the children with a kind of chivalrous tender- 
 ness and intimacy, as though he loved all pretty 
 and tender things, and took joy in their nearness. 
 He held Alec between his knees, and played with 
 him while he talked. The children took possession 
 of him, as if they had known him all their lives. 
 And yet there was no touch of pose, no conscious- 
 ness of greatness or vigour about him. He was 
 as humble, grateful, interested, as though he were a
 
 THE OLD PRIEST 29 
 
 poor stranger dependent on our bounty. I asked 
 him in a quiet moment about his work. " No, I 
 am writing nothing," he said with a smile, " I 
 have said all I have got to say," — and then with 
 a sudden humorous flash, " though I believe I 
 should be able to write more if I could get decent 
 paper and respectable type to print my work." 
 I ventured to ask if he did not feel any desire to 
 write ? " No," he said, " frankly I do not — the 
 world is so full of pleasant things to do and hear 
 and see, that I sometimes think myself almost 
 a fool for having spent so much time in scribbling. 
 Do you know," he went on, " a delicious story 
 I picked up the other day ? A man was travelling 
 in some God-forsaken out-of-the-way place — I 
 believe it was the Andes — and he fell in with 
 an old podgy Roman priest who was going every- 
 where, in a state of perpetual fatigue, taking long 
 expeditions every day, and returning worn-out in 
 the evening, but perfectly content. The man saw 
 a good deal of the priest, and asked him what he 
 was doing. The priest smiled and said, ' Well, I 
 will tell you. I had an illness some time ago 
 and believed that I was going to die. One even- 
 ing — I was half unconscious — I thought I saw 
 some one standing by my bed. I looked, and it 
 was a young man with a beautiful and rather 
 severe face, whom I knew to be an angel, who 
 was gazing at me rather strangely. I thought it 
 was the messenger of death, and — for I was wish- 
 ing to be gone and have done with it all — I said 
 something to him about being ready to depart —
 
 30 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 and then added that I was waiting hopefully 
 to see the joys of Paradise, the glory of the saints 
 in light. He looked at me rather fixedly, and 
 said, "I do not know why you should say that, 
 and why you should expect to take so much 
 pleasure in the beauty of heaven, when you have 
 taken so little trouble to see anything of the 
 beauty of earth ; " and then he left me ; and I 
 reflected that I had always been doing my work 
 in a dull humdrum way, in the same place all my 
 life ; and I determined that, if I got well, I would 
 go about and see something of the glory that is 
 revealed to us, and not expect only the glory that 
 shall be revealed to us.' It is a fine story," he 
 went on, " and makes a parable for us writers, 
 who are inclined to think too much about our 
 work, and disposed to see that it is very good, 
 like God brooding over the world." He sate for 
 a little, smiling to himself. And then I plied him 
 with questions about his writing, how his thoughts 
 came to him, how he worked them out. He told 
 me as if he was talking about some one else, half 
 wondering that there could be anything to care 
 about. I have heard many craftsmen talk about 
 their work, but never one who talked with such 
 detachment. As a rule, writers talk with a secret 
 glee, and with a deprecating humility that deceives 
 no one ; but the great man talked, not as if he 
 cared to think about it, but because it happened 
 to interest me. He strolled with me, he lunched ; 
 and he thanked us when he went away with an 
 earnest and humble thankfulness, as though we
 
 THE POET 31 
 
 had extended our hospitality to an obscure and 
 unworthy guest. And then his praise of my own 
 books — it was all so natural ; not as if he had 
 come there with fine compliments prepared, with 
 incense to burn ; but speaking about them as 
 though they were in his mind, and he could not 
 help it. " I read all you write," he said ; " ah, 
 you go deep — you are a lucky fellow, to be able 
 to see so far and so minutely, and to bring it all 
 home to our blind souls. He must be a terrible 
 fellow to live with," he said, smiling at my wife. 
 tl It must be like being married to a doctor, 
 and feeling that he knows so much more about 
 one than one knows oneself — but he sees what 
 is best and truest, thank God ; and says it with 
 the voice of an angel, speaking softly out of his 
 golden cloud." 
 
 I can't say what words like these have meant to 
 me ; but the visit itself, the sight of this strong, 
 equable, good-humoured man, with no feverish 
 ambitions, no hankering after fame or recognition, 
 has done even more. I have heard it said that he 
 is indolent, that he has not sufficient sense of 
 responsibility for his gifts. But the man has done 
 a great work for his generation ; he has written 
 poetry of the purest and finest quality. Is not 
 that enough ? I cannot understand the mere 
 credit we give to work, without any reference to 
 the object of the work, or the spirit in which 
 it is done. We think with respect of the man who 
 makes a fortune, or who fills an official post, the 
 duties of which do nothing in particular for any
 
 32 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 one. It is a kind of obsession with us practical 
 Westerners ; of course a man ought to contribute 
 to the necessary work of the world ; but many 
 men spend their lives in work which is not neces- 
 sary ; and, after all, we are sent into the world to 
 live, and work is only a part of life. We work to 
 live, we do not live to work. Even if we were all 
 socialists, we should, I hope, have the grace to dig 
 the gardens and make the clothes of our poets and 
 prophets, so as to give them the leisure they need. 
 
 I do not question the instinct of my hero in 
 the matter ; he lives eagerly and peacefully ; he 
 touches into light the spirits of those who draw 
 near to him ; and I admire a man who knows 
 how to stop when he has done his best work, and 
 does not spur and whip his tired mind into pro- 
 ducing feebler, limper, duller work of the same 
 kind ; how few of our great writers have known 
 when to hold their hand ! 
 
 God be praised for great men ! My poet 
 to-day has made me feel that life is a thing to be 
 lived eagerly and high-heartedly ; that the world 
 is full of beautiful, generous, kindly things, of free 
 air and sunshine ; and that we ought to find 
 leisure to drink it all in, and to send our hearts 
 out in search of love and beauty and God — for 
 these things are all about us, if we could but feel 
 and hear and see them. 
 
 October 12, 1888. 
 
 How absurd it is to say that a writer could not 
 write a large, wise, beautiful book unless he had a
 
 THE ARTIST'S EQUIPMENT 33 
 
 great soul — it is almost like saying that an artist 
 could not paint a fine face unless he had a fine 
 face himself. It is all a question of seeing clearly, 
 and having a skilled hand. There is nothing to 
 make one believe that Shakespeare had a particu- 
 larly noble or beautiful character ; and some of 
 our greatest writers have been men of unbalanced, 
 childish, immature temperaments, full of vanity 
 and pettiness. Of course a man must be interested 
 in what he is describing ; but I think that a man 
 of a naturally great, wise, and lofty spirit is so 
 disposed as a rule to feel that his qualities are 
 instinctive, and so ready to credit other people with 
 them, that it does not occur to him to depict those 
 qualities. I am not sure that the best equipment 
 for an artist is not that he should see and admire 
 great and noble and beautiful things, and feel his 
 own deficiency in them acutely, desiring them with 
 the desire of the moth for the star. The best 
 characters in my own books have been, I am sure, 
 the people least like myself, because the creation 
 of a character that one whole-heartedly admires, 
 and that yet is far out of one's reach, is the most 
 restful and delightful thing in the world. If one 
 is unready in speech, thinking of one's epigrams 
 three hours after the occasion for them has arisen, 
 how pleasant to draw the man who says the neat, 
 witty, appropriate, consoling thing ! If one suffers 
 from timidity, from meanness, from selfishness, 
 what a delight to depict the man who is brave, 
 generous, unselfish ! Of course the quality of a 
 man's mind flows into and over his work, but that 
 
 c
 
 34 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 is rather like the varnish of the picture than its tints 
 — it is the medium rather than the design. The 
 artistic creation of ideal situations is often a sort 
 of refuge to the man who knows that he makes a 
 mess of the beautiful and simple relations of life. 
 The artist is fastidious and moody, feeling the pres- 
 sure of strained nerves and tired faculties, easily 
 discouraged, disgusted by the superficial defect, the 
 tiny blot that spoils alike the noble character, the 
 charming prospect, the attractive face. He sees, 
 let us say, a person with a beautiful face and an 
 ugly hand. The normal person thinks of the face 
 and forgets the hand. The artist thinks with pain 
 of the hand and forgets the face. He desires an 
 impossible perfection, and flies for safety to the 
 little world that he can make and sway. That is 
 why artists, as a rule, love twilight hours, shaded 
 rooms, half-tones, subdued hues, because what is 
 common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and hidden. 
 Men of rich vitality are generally too much occu- 
 pied with life as it is, its richness, its variety, its 
 colour and fragrance, to think wistfully of life as 
 it might be. The unbridled, sensuous, luxurious 
 strain, that one finds in so many artists, comes from 
 a lack of moral temperance, a snatching at delights. 
 They fear dreariness and ugliness so much that 
 they welcome any intoxication of pleasure. But 
 after all, it is clearness of vision that makes the 
 artist, the power of disentangling the central feature 
 from the surrounding details, the power of subor- 
 dinating accessories, of seeing which minister to 
 the innermost impression, and which distract and
 
 ARTIST AND MORALIST 35 
 
 blur. An artist who creates a great character need 
 not necessarily even desire to attain the great 
 qualities which he discerns ; he sees them, as he 
 sees the vertebras of the mountain ridge under 
 pasture and woodland, as he sees the structure of 
 the tree under its mist of green ; but to see beauty 
 is not necessarily to desire it ; for, as in the moun- 
 tain and the tree, it may have no ethical significance 
 at all, only a symbolical meaning. The best art 
 is inspired more by an intellectual force than by a 
 vital sympathy. Of course to succeed as a novelist 
 in England to-day, one must have a dash of the 
 moralist, because an English audience is far more 
 preoccupied with moral ideals than with either 
 intellectual or artistic ideals. The reading public 
 desires that love should be loyal rather than pas- 
 sionate ; it thinks ultimate success a more impres- 
 sive thing than ultimate failure ; it loves sadness 
 as a contrast and preface to laughter. It prefers 
 that the patriarch Job should end by having a nice 
 new family of children and abundant flocks, rather 
 than that he should sink into death among the ashes, 
 refusing to curse God for his reverses. Its view 
 of existence after death is that Dives should join 
 Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. To succeed, one 
 must compromise with this comfortable feeling, 
 sacrificing, if needs be, the artistic conscience, be- 
 cause the place of the minstrel in England is after 
 the banquet, when the warriors are pleasantly tired, 
 have put off the desire of meat and drink, and the 
 fire roars and crackles in the hearth. When Ruskin 
 deserted his clouds and peaks, his sunsets and sun-
 
 36 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 rises, and devoured his soul over the brutalities and 
 uglinesses and sordid inequalities of life, it was all 
 put down to the obscure pressure of mental disease. 
 Ophelia does not sob and struggle in the current, 
 but floats dreamily to death in a bed of meadow- 
 flowers. 
 
 October 21, 1888. 
 
 Let me try to recollect for my own amusement 
 how it was that my last book grew up and took 
 shape. How well I remember the day and the 
 hour when the first thought came to me ! Some 
 one was dining here, and told a story about a 
 friend of his, and an unhappy misunderstanding 
 between him and a girl whom he loved, or thought 
 he loved. A figure, two figures, a scene, a conversa- 
 tion, came into my head, absolutely and perfectly 
 life-like. I lay awake half the night, I remember, 
 over it. How did those people come to be in 
 exactly that situation ? how would it develop ? 
 At first it was just the scene by itself, nothing 
 more ; a room which filled itself with furniture. 
 There were doors — where did they lead to ? There 
 were windows — where did they look out ? The 
 house was full, too, of other people, whose quiet 
 movements I heard. One person entered the room, 
 and then another ; and so the story opened out. 
 I saw the wrong word spoken, I saw the mist of 
 doubt and distress that filled the girl's mind ; I 
 felt that I would have given anything to intervene, 
 to explain; but instead of speaking out, the girl con- 
 fided in the wrong person, who had an old grudge
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF A BOOK 37 
 
 against the man, so old that it had become instinc- 
 tive and irrational. So the thing evolved itself. 
 Then at one time the story got entangled and 
 confused. I could go no further. The characters 
 were by this time upon the scene, but they could 
 not speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake 
 somewhere. The scaffolding was all taken down, 
 spar by spar, and still the defect was not revealed. 
 I must go, I saw, backwards ; and so I felt my 
 way, like a man groping in the dark, into what 
 had gone before, and suddenly came out into the 
 light. It was a mistake far back in the concep- 
 tion. I righted it, and the story began to evolve 
 itself again ; this time with a delicate certainty, 
 that made me feel I was on the track at last. An 
 impressive scene was sacrificed — it was there that 
 my idea had gone wrong ! As to the writing of it, 
 I cannot say it was an effort. It wrote itself. I 
 was not creating ; I was describing and selecting. 
 There was one scene in particular, a scene which 
 has been praised by all the reviewers. How did 
 I invent it ? I do not know. I had no idea what 
 the characters were to say when I began to write 
 it, but one remark grew inevitably and surely out 
 of the one before. I was never at a loss ; I never 
 stuck fast ; indeed the one temptation which I 
 firmly and constantly resisted was the temptation 
 to write morning, noon, and night. Sometimes 
 I had a horrible fear that I might not live to set 
 down what was so clear in my mind ; but there is 
 a certain freshness which comes of self-restraint. 
 Day after day, as I strolled, and read, and talked,
 
 38 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 I used to hug myself at the thought of the beloved 
 evening hours that were coming, when I should 
 fling myself upon the book with a passionate zest, 
 and feel it grow under my hand. And then it was 
 done ! I remember writing the last words, and 
 the conviction came upon me that it was the end. 
 There was more to be told ; the story stretched 
 on into the distance ; but it was as though the 
 frame of the picture had suddenly fallen upon 
 the canvas, and I knew that just so much and no 
 more was to be seen. And then, as though to 
 show me plainly that the work was over, the next 
 day came an event which drew my mind off the 
 book. I had had a period of unclouded health 
 and leisure, everything had combined to help me, 
 and then this event, of which I need not speak, 
 came and closed the book at the right moment. 
 
 What wonder if one grows fatalistic about writ- 
 ing ; that one feels that one can only say what 
 is given one to say ! And now, dry and arid as 
 my mind is, I would give all I have for a renewal 
 of that beautiful glow, which I cannot recover. 
 It is misery — I can conceive no greater — to be 
 bound hand and foot in this helpless silence. 
 
 November 6, 1888. 
 It is a joy to think of the way in which the best, 
 most beautiful, most permanent things have stolen 
 unnoticed into life. I like to think of Wordsworth, 
 an obscure, poor, perverse, absurd man, living in 
 the corner of the great house at Alfoxden, walking
 
 THE GENESIS OF BEAUTY 39 
 
 in the moonlight with Coleridge, living on milk 
 and eggs, utterly unaccountable and puerile to the 
 sensible man of affairs, while the two planned the 
 Lyrical Ballads. I like to think of Keats, sitting 
 lazily and discontentedly in the villa garden at 
 Hampstead, with his illness growing upon him and 
 his money melting away, scribbling the " Ode to 
 the Nightingale," and caring so little about the fate 
 of it that it was only by chance, as it were, that 
 the pencil scraps were rescued from the book 
 where he had shut them. I love to think of Char- 
 lotte Bronte, in the bare kitchen of the little house 
 in the grey, wind-swept village on the edge of the 
 moorland, penning, in sickness and depression, the 
 scenes of Jane Eyre, without a thought that she 
 was doing anything unusual or lasting. We sur- 
 round such scenes with a heavenly halo, born of 
 the afterglow of fame ; we think them romantic, 
 beautiful, thrilled and flushed by passionate joy ; 
 but there was little that was delightful about them 
 at the time. 
 
 The most beautiful of all such scenes is the tale 
 of the maiden-wife in the stable at Bethlehem, with 
 the pain and horror and shame of the tragic ex- 
 perience, in all its squalid publicity, told in those 
 simple words, which I never hear without a smile 
 that is full of tears, because there was no room for 
 them in the inn. We poor human souls, knowing 
 what that event has meant for the race, make the 
 bare, ugly place seemly and lovely, surrounding 
 the Babe with a tapestry of heavenly forms, holy 
 lights, rapturous sounds ; taking the terror and the
 
 4 o THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 meanness of the scene away, and thereby, by our 
 clumsy handling, losing the divine seal of the great 
 mystery, the fact that hope can spring, in unstained 
 and sublime radiance, from the vilest, lowest, 
 meanest, noisiest conditions that can well be con- 
 ceived. 
 
 November 20, 1S88. 
 
 I wonder aimlessly what it is that makes a book, 
 a picture, a piece of music, a poem, great. When 
 any of these things has become a part of one's 
 mind and soul, utterly and entirely familiar, one 
 is tempted to think that the precise form of them 
 is inevitable. That is a great mistake. 
 
 Here is a tiny instance. I see that in the 
 " Lycidas " Milton wrote : — 
 
 " Who would not sing for Lycidas ? He well knew 
 Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme." 
 
 The word " well " occurs in two MSS., and it 
 seems to have been struck out in the proof. The 
 introduction of the word seems barbarous, un- 
 metrical, an outrage on the beauty of the line. 
 Yet Milton must have thought that it was needed, 
 and have only decided by an after-thought that it 
 was better away. If it had been printed so, we 
 should equally have thought its omission bar- 
 barous and inartistic. 
 
 And thus, to an artist, there must be many 
 ways of working out a conception. I do not 
 believe in the theory that the form is so in- 
 evitable, because what great artist was ever per-
 
 GREATNESS IN ART 41 
 
 fectly content with the form ? The greater the 
 artist, the more conscious he probably is of the 
 imperfection of his work ; and if it could be 
 bettered, how is it then inevitable? It is only our 
 familiarity with it that gives it inevitableness. A 
 beautiful building gains its mellow outline by a 
 hundred accidents of wear and weather, never 
 contemplated by the designer's mind. We love it 
 so, we would not have it otherwise ; but we should 
 have loved it just as intensely if it had been other- 
 wise. Only a small part, then, of the greatness of 
 artistic work is what we ourselves bring to it; and it 
 becomes great, not only from itself, but from the fact 
 that it fits our minds as the dagger fits the sheath. 
 The greatness of a conception depends largely 
 upon its being near enough to our own concep- 
 tions, and yet a little greater, just as the vault 
 of a great church gives one a larger sense of 
 immensity than the sky with its sailing clouds. 
 Indeed it is often the very minuteness of a con- 
 ception rather than its vastness that makes it great. 
 It must not be outside our range. As to the form, 
 it depends upon some curious felicity of hand, and 
 touch, and thought. Suppose that a great painter 
 gave a rough pencil-sketch of a picture to a hundred 
 students, and told them all to work it out in colour. 
 Some few of the results would be beautiful, the 
 majority would be still uninteresting and tame. 
 
 Thus I am somewhat of a fatalist about art, 
 because it seems to depend upon a lucky union 
 of conception and technical instinct. The saddest 
 proof of which is that many good and even great
 
 42 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 artists have not improved in greatness as their 
 skill improved. The youthful works of genius 
 are generally the best, their very crudities and 
 stiffnesses adorable. 
 
 The history of art and literature alike seems to 
 point to the fact that each artistic soul has a 
 flowering period, which generally comes early, 
 rarely comes late ; and therefore the supreme 
 artist ought also to know when the bloom is 
 over, when his good work is done. And then, 
 I think, he ought to be ready to abjure his art, 
 to drown his book, like Prospero, and set himself 
 to live rather than to produce. But what a 
 sacrifice to demand of a man, and how few attain 
 it ! Most men cannot do without their work, 
 and go on to the end producing more feeble, 
 more tired, more mannerised work, till they cloud 
 the beauty of their prime by masses of inferior 
 and uninspired production. 
 
 November 1$, 1888. 
 
 Soft wintry skies, touched with faintest gleams 
 of colour, like a dove's wing, blue plains and 
 heights, over the nearer woodland ; everywhere 
 fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel ; every- 
 thing, tint and form, restrained, austere, delicate ; 
 nature asleep and breathing gently in the cool 
 airs ; a tranquil and sober hopefulness abroad. 
 
 I walked alone in deep woodland lanes, content 
 for once to rest and dream. The country seemed 
 absolutely deserted ; such labour as was going
 
 THE BEGGAR'S CHILD 43 
 
 forward was being done in barn and byre ; beasts 
 being fed, hurdles made. 
 
 I passed in a solitary road a draggled ugly 
 woman, a tramp, wheeling an old perambulator 
 full of dingy clothes and sordid odds and ends ; 
 she looked at me sullenly and suspiciously. Where 
 she was going God knows : to camp, I suppose, in 
 some dingle, with ugly company ; to beg, to lie, 
 to purloin, perhaps to drink ; but by the perambu- 
 lator walked a little boy, seven or eight years old, 
 grotesquely clothed in patched and clumsy gar- 
 ments ; he held on to the rim, dirty, unkempt ; 
 but he was happy too ; he was with his mother, 
 of whom he had no fear ; he had been fed as 
 the birds are fed ; he had no anxious thoughts of 
 the future, and as he went, he crooned to himself 
 a soft song, like the piping of a finch in a wayside 
 thicket. What was in his tiny mind and heart ? 
 I do not know ; but perhaps a little touch of the 
 peace of God. 
 
 November ib, 1888. 
 Another visitor ! I am not sure that his visit is 
 not a more distinguished testimonial than any I 
 have yet received. He is a young Don with a 
 very brilliant record indeed. He wrote to ask if 
 he might have the honour of calling, and renewing 
 a very slight acquaintance. He came and con- 
 quered. I am still crushed and battered by his 
 visit. I feel like a land that has been harried by 
 an invading army. Let me see if, dizzy and un-
 
 44 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 manned as I am, I can recall some of the incidents 
 of his visit. He has only been gone an hour, yet 
 I feel as though a month had elapsed since he 
 entered the room, since I was a moderately happy 
 man. He is a very pleasant fellow to look at, 
 small, trim, well-appointed, courteous, friendly, with 
 a deferential air. His eyes gleam brightly through 
 his glasses, and he has brisk dexterous gestures. 
 He was genial enough till he settled down upon 
 literature, and since then what waves and storms 
 have gone over me ! I have or had a grovelling 
 taste for books ; I possess a large number, and 
 I thought I had read them. But I feel now, not 
 so much as if I had read the wrong ones, but 
 as if those I had read were only, so to speak, 
 the anterooms and corridors which led to the 
 really important books — and of them, it seems, I 
 know nothing. Epigrams flowed from his tongue, 
 brilliant characterisations, admirable judgments. 
 He had " placed " every one, and literature to him 
 seemed like a great mosaic in which he knew the 
 position of every cube. He knew all the move- 
 ments and tendencies of literature, and books 
 seemed to him to be important, not because they 
 had a message for the mind and heart, but because 
 they illustrated a tendency, or were a connecting 
 link in a chain. He quoted poems I had never 
 heard of, he named authors I had never read. 
 He did it all modestly and quietly enough, with 
 no parade, (I want to do him full justice) but 
 with an evidently growing disappointment to find 
 that he had fallen among savages. I am sure
 
 THE DON'S VISIT 45 
 
 that his conclusion was that authors of popular 
 novels were very shallow, ill-informed people, and I 
 am sure I wholly agreed with him. Good heavens, 
 what a mind the man had, how stored with 
 knowledge ! how admirably equipped ! Nothing 
 that he had ever put away in his memory seemed 
 to have lost its colour or outline ; and he knew, 
 moreover, how to lay his hand upon everything. 
 Indeed, it seemed to me that his mind was like an 
 emporium, with everything in the world arranged 
 on shelves, all new and varnished and bright, and 
 that he knew precisely the place of everything. 
 I became the prey of hopeless depression ; when 
 I tried to join in, I confused writers and dates ; he 
 set me right, not patronisingiy but paternally. " Ah, 
 but you will remember," he said, and " Yes, but we 
 must not overlook the fact that " — adding, with 
 admirable humility, "Of course these are small 
 points, but it is my business to know them." 
 Now I find myself wondering why I disliked 
 knowledge, communicated thus, so much as I did. 
 It may be envy and jealousy, it may be humilia- 
 tion and despair. But I do not honestly think 
 that it is. I am quite sure I do not want to possess 
 that kind of knowledge. It is the very sharpness 
 and clearness of outline about it all that I dislike. 
 The things that he knows have not become part 
 of his mind in any way : they are stored away 
 there, like walnuts j and I feel that I have been 
 pelted with walnuts, deluged and buried in walnuts. 
 The things which my visitor knows have under- 
 gone no change, they have not been fused and
 
 46 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 blended by his personality ; they have not affected 
 his mind, nor has his mind affected them. I don't 
 wish to despise or to decry his knowledge ; as a 
 lecturer, he must be invaluable ; but he treats 
 literature as a purveyor might — it has not been 
 food to him, but material and stock-in-trade. 
 Some of the poetry we talked about — Elizabethan 
 lyrics — grow in my mind like flowers in a copse ; 
 in his mind they are planted in rows, with their 
 botanical names on tickets. The worst of it is 
 that I do not even feel encouraged to fill up my 
 gaps of knowledge, or to master the history of 
 tendency. I feel as if he had rather trampled 
 down the hyacinths and anemones in my wild 
 and uncultivated woodlands. I should like, in a 
 dim way, to have his knowledge as well as my 
 own appreciation, but I would not exchange my 
 knowledge for his. The value of a lyric or a 
 beautiful sentence, for me, is its melody, its charm, 
 its mysterious thrill ; and there are many books 
 and poems, which I know to be excellent of their 
 kind, but which have no meaning or message 
 for me. He seems to think that it is important 
 to have complete texts of old authors, and I do 
 not think that he makes much distinction between 
 first-rate and second-rate work. In fact, I think 
 that his view of literature is the sociological view, 
 and he seems to care more about tendencies and 
 influences than about the beauty and appeal of 
 literature. I do not go so far as to say or to 
 think that literature cannot be treated scientifi- 
 cally ; but I feel as I feel about the doctor in
 
 THE SUICIDE 47 
 
 Balzac, I think, who, when his wife cried upon 
 his shoulder, said, " Hold, I have analysed tears," 
 adding that they contained so much chlorate of 
 sodium and so much mucus. The truth is that he 
 is a philosopher, and that I am an individualist ; 
 but it leaves me with an intense desire to be left 
 alone in my woodland, or, at all events, not to 
 walk there with a ruthless botanist ! 
 
 November 29, 1888. 
 
 I have heard this morning of the suicide of an 
 old friend. Is it strange to say that I have heard 
 the news with an unfeigned relief, even gladness ? 
 He was formerly a charming and brilliant creature, 
 full of enthusiasm and artistic impulses, fitful, way- 
 ward, wilful. Somehow he missed his footing ; 
 he fell into disreputable courses; he did nothing, 
 but drifted about, planning many things, executing 
 nothing. The last time I saw him was exquisitely 
 painful; we met by appointment, and I could see 
 that he had tried to screw himself up for the 
 interview by stimulants. The ghastly feigning of 
 cheerfulness, the bloated face, the trembling hands, 
 told the sad tale. And now that it is all over, the 
 shame and the decay, the horror of his having 
 died by his own act is a purely conventional one. 
 One talks pompously about the selfishness of it, 
 but it is one of the most unselfish things poor 
 Dick has ever done ; he was a burden and a 
 misery to all those who cared for him. Recovery 
 was, I sincerely believe, impossible. His was a
 
 48 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 fine, uplifted, even noble spirit in youth, but there 
 were terrible hereditary influences at work, and I 
 cannot honestly say that I think he was wholly 
 responsible for his sins. If I could think that this 
 act was done reasonably, in a solemn and recol- 
 lected spirit, and was not a mere frightened 
 scurrying out of life, I should be, I believe, 
 wholly glad. I do not see that any one had any- 
 thing to gain by his continuing to live ; and if 
 reason is given us to use, to guide our actions 
 by, it seems to me that we do right to obey 
 it. Suicide may, of course, be a selfish and a 
 cowardly thing, but the instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion is so strong that a man must always manifest 
 a certain courage in making such a decision. 
 The sacrifice of one's own life is not necessarily 
 and absolutely an immoral thing, because it is 
 always held to be justified if one's motive is to 
 save another. It is purely, I believe, a question 
 of motive ; whatever poor Dick's motives were, it 
 was certainly the kindest and bravest thing that he 
 could do ; and I look upon his life as having been as 
 naturally ended as if he had died of disease or by 
 an accident. There is not a single one of his 
 friends who would not have been thankful if he 
 had died in the course of nature ; and I for one 
 am even more thankful as it is, because it seems to 
 me that his act testifies to some tenderness, some 
 consideration for others, as well as to a degree of 
 resolution with which I had not credited him. 
 
 Of course such a thing deepens the mystery of 
 the world ; but such an act as this is not to me
 
 A WINTER SUNSET 49 
 
 half as mysterious as the action of an omnipotent 
 Power which allowed so bright and gracious a 
 creature as Dick was long ago to drift into ugly, 
 sordid, and irreparable misery. Yet it seems to me 
 now that Dick has at last trusted God completely, 
 made the last surrender, and put his miserable 
 case in the Father's hands. 
 
 December 2, 1888. 
 
 As I came home to-night, moving slowly west- 
 ward along deserted roads, among wide and 
 solitary fields, in the frosty twilight, I passed a 
 great pale fallow, in the far corner of which, 
 beside a willow-shaded stream, a great heap of 
 weeds was burning, tended by a single lonely 
 figure raking in the smouldering pile. A dense 
 column of thick smoke came volleying from the 
 heap, that went softly and silently up into the 
 orange-tinted sky ; some forty feet higher the 
 smoke was caught by a moving current of air ; 
 much of it ascended higher still, but the thin 
 streak of moving wind caught and drew out upon 
 itself a long weft of aerial vapour, that showed 
 a delicate blue against the rose-flushed west. 
 The long lines of leafless trees, the faint out- 
 lines of the low distant hills seemed wrapped 
 in meditative silence, dreaming wistfully, as the 
 earth turned her broad shoulder to the night, 
 and as the forlorn and chilly sunset faded by 
 soft degrees on the horizon. As the day thus 
 died, the frost made itself felt, touching the hedge- 
 
 D
 
 50 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 rows with rime, and crisping the damp road 
 beneath my feet. The end drew on with a 
 mournful solemnity ; but the death of the light 
 seemed a perfectly natural and beautiful thing, 
 not an event to be grieved over or regretted, 
 but all part of a sweet and grave progress, in 
 which silence and darkness seemed, not an in- 
 terruption to the eager life of the world, but a 
 happy suspension of activity and life. I was 
 haunted, as I often am at sunset, by a sense 
 that the dying light was trying to show me some 
 august secret, some gracious mystery, which 
 would silence and sustain the soul could it but 
 capture it. Some great and wonderful presence 
 seemed to hold up a hand, with a gesture half 
 of invitation, half of compassion for my blindness. 
 Down there, beyond the lines of motionless trees, 
 where the water gleamed golden in the reaches 
 of the stream, the secret brooded, withdrawing 
 itself resistlessly into the glowing west. A wist- 
 ful yearning rilled my soul to enter into that 
 incommunicable peace. Yet if one could take 
 the wings of the morning, and follow that flying 
 zone of light, as swiftly as the air, one could 
 pursue the same sunset all the world over, and 
 see the fiery face of the sun ever sinking to 
 his setting, over the broad furrows of moving 
 seas, over tangled tropic forests, out to the 
 shapeless wintry land of the south. Day by 
 day has the same pageant enacted itself, for 
 who can tell what millions of years. And in 
 that vast perspective of weltering aeons has come
 
 THE DYING DAY 51 
 
 the day when God has set me here, a tiny 
 sentient point, conscious, in a sense, of it all, 
 and conscious too that, long after I sleep in 
 the dust, the same strange and beautiful thing 
 will be displayed age after age. And yet it is 
 all outside of me, all without. I am a part 
 of it, yet with no sense of my unity with it. 
 That is the marvellous and bewildering thing, 
 that each tiny being like myself has the same 
 sense of isolation, of distinctness, of the per- 
 fectly rounded life, complete faculties, inde- 
 pendent existence. Another day is done, and 
 leaves me as bewildered, as ignorant as ever, 
 as aware of my small limitations, as lonely and 
 uncomforted. 
 
 Who shall show me why I love, with this deep 
 and thirsty intensity, the array of gold and silver 
 light, these mist-hung fields with their soft tints, 
 the glow that flies and fades, the cold veils of 
 frosty vapour ? Thousands of men and women 
 have seen the sunset pass, loving it even as I love 
 it. They have gone into the silence as I too shall 
 go, and no hint comes back as to whether they 
 understand and are satisfied. 
 
 And now I turn in at the well-known gate, and 
 see the dark gables of my house, with the high 
 elms of the grove outlined against the pale sky. 
 The cheerful windows sparkle with warmth and 
 light, welcoming me, fresh from the chilly air, out 
 of the homeless fields. With such array of cheerful 
 usages I beguile my wondering heart, and chase 
 away the wild insistent thoughts, the deep yearnings
 
 52 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that thrill me. Thus am I bidden to desire and 
 to be unsatisfied, to rest and marvel not, to stay, 
 on this unsubstantial show of peace and security, 
 the aching and wondering will. 
 
 December 4, 1888. 
 
 Writing, like music, ought to have two dimen- 
 sions — a horizontal movement of melody, a per- 
 pendicular depth of tone. A person unskilled in 
 music can only recognise a single horizontal 
 movement, an air. One who is a little more 
 skilled can recognise the composition of a chord. 
 A real musician can read a score horizontally, 
 with all its contrasting and combining melodies. 
 Sometimes one gets, in writing, a piece of hori- 
 zontal structure, a firm and majestic melody, with 
 but little harmony. Such are the great spare, 
 strong stories of the old world. Modern writing 
 tends to lay much more emphasis upon depth of 
 colour, and the danger there is that such writing 
 may become a mere structureless modulation. 
 The perfect combination is to get firm structure, 
 sparingly and economically enriched by colour, 
 but colour always subordinated to structure. 
 When I was young I undervalued structure and 
 overvalued colour ; but it was a good training in 
 a way, because I learned to appreciate the vital 
 necessity of structure, and I learnt the command 
 of harmony. What is it that gives structure ? It 
 is firm and clear intellectual conception, the grasp 
 of form and proportion ; while colour is given by
 
 STRUCTURE AND COLOUR 53 
 
 depth and richness of personality, by power of 
 perception, and still more by the power of fusing 
 perception with personality. The important thing 
 here is that the thing perceived and felt should 
 not simply be registered and pigeon-holed, but 
 that it should become a cell of the writer's soul, 
 respond to his pulse, be animated by his vital 
 forces. 
 
 Now, in my present state, I have lost my hold 
 on melody in some way or other ; my creative 
 intellectual power has struck work ; and when I 
 try to exercise it, I can only produce vague textures 
 of modulated thoughts — things melodious in them- 
 selves, but ineffective because they are isolated 
 effects, instead of effects emphasising points, crises, 
 climaxes. I have strained some mental muscle, I 
 suppose ; but the unhappy part of the situation is 
 that I have not lost the desire to use it. 
 
 It would be a piece of good fortune for me now 
 if I could fall in with some vigorous mind who 
 could give me a lead, indicate a subject. But 
 then the work that resulted would miss unity, I 
 think. What I ought to be content to do is to 
 garner more impressions ; but I seem to be sur- 
 feited of impressions. 
 
 December 10, 1888. 
 
 To-day I stumbled upon one of my old childish 
 books — Grimm's Household Stories. I am ashamed 
 to say how long I read it. These old tales, which 
 I used to read as transcripts of marvellous and
 
 54 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 ancient facts, have, many of them, gained for 
 me, through experience of life, a beautiful and 
 symbolical value ; one in particular, the tale of 
 Karl Katz. 
 
 Karl used to feed his goats in the ruins of an 
 old castle, high up above the stream. Day after 
 day one of his herd used to disappear, coming 
 back in the evening to join the homeward pro- 
 cession, very fat and well-liking. So Karl set 
 himself to watch, and saw that the goat slipped 
 in at a hole in the masonry. He enlarged the 
 hole, and presently was able to creep into a dark 
 passage. He made his way along, and soon heard 
 a sound like a falling hailstorm. He groped his way 
 thither, and found the goat, in the dim light, feed- 
 ing on grains of corn which came splashing down 
 from above. He looked and listened, and, from 
 the sounds of stamping and neighing overhead, 
 he became aware that the grain was falling through 
 the chinks of a paved floor from a stable inside 
 the hill. I forget at this moment what happened 
 next — the story is rich in inconsequent details — 
 but Karl shortly heard a sound like thunder, 
 which he discerned at last to be persons laughing 
 and shouting and running in the vaulted passages. 
 He stole on, and found, in an open, grassy place, 
 great merry men playing at bowls. He was 
 welcomed and set down in a chair, though he 
 could not even lift one of the bowls when in- 
 vited to join in the game. A dwarf brought him 
 wine in a cup, which he drank, and presently he 
 fell asleep.
 
 KARL KATZ 55 
 
 When he woke, all was silent and still ; he made 
 his way back ; the goats were gone, and it was 
 the early morning, all misty and dewy among the 
 ruins, when he squeezed out of the hole. 
 
 He fell strangely haggard and tired, and reached 
 the village only to find that seventy years had 
 elapsed, and that he was an old and forgotten man, 
 with no place for him. He had lost his home, 
 and though there were one or two old grandfathers, 
 spent and dying, who remembered the day when 
 he was lost, and the search made for him, yet 
 now there was no room for the old man. The 
 gap had filled up, life had flowed on. They 
 had grieved for him, but they did not want him 
 back. He disturbed their arrangements ; he was 
 another useless mouth to feed. 
 
 The pretty old story is full of parables, sad and 
 sweet. But the kernel of the tale is a warning to 
 all who, for any wilfulness or curiosity, however 
 romantic or alluring the quest, forfeit their place 
 for an instant in the world. You cannot return. 
 Life accommodates itself to its losses, and however 
 sincerely a man may be lamented, yet if he returns, 
 if he tries to claim his place, he is in the way, 
 de trop. No one has need of him. 
 
 An artist has most need of this warning, because 
 he of all men is tempted to enter the dark place 
 in the hill, to see wonderful things and to drink 
 the oblivious wine. Let him rather keep his hold 
 on the world, at whatever sacrifice. Because by 
 the time that he has explored the home of the 
 merry giants, and dreamed his dream, the world
 
 56 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 to which he tries to tell the vision will heed it 
 not, but treat it as a fanciful tale. 
 
 All depends on the artist being in league with 
 his day ; if he is born too early or too late, he has 
 no hold on the world, no message for it. Either 
 he is a voice out of the past, an echo of old 
 joys, piping a forgotten message, or he is fanciful, 
 unreal, visionary, if he sees and tries to utter what 
 shall be. By the time that events confirm his 
 foresight, the vitality of his prophecy is gone, and 
 he is only looked at with a curious admiration, as 
 one that had a certain clearness of vision, but no 
 more ; he is called into court by the historian of 
 tendency, but he has had no hold on living men. 
 
 One sees men of great artistic gifts who suffer 
 from each of these disadvantages. One sees poets, 
 born in a prosaic age, who would have won high 
 fame if they had been born in an age of poets. 
 And one sees, too, men who seem to struggle 
 with big, unintelligible thoughts, thoughts which 
 do not seem to fit on to anything existing. The 
 happy artist is the man who touches the note 
 which awakens a responsive echo in many hearts ; 
 the man who instinctively uses the medium of the 
 time, and who neither regrets the old nor portends 
 the new. 
 
 Karl Katz must content himself, if he can find 
 a corner and a crust, with the memory of the day 
 when the sun lay hot among the ruins, with the 
 thought of the pleasant coolness of the vault, the 
 leaping shower of corn, the thunder of the im- 
 prisoned feet, the heroic players, the heady wine.
 
 ART AND LIFE 57 
 
 That must be enough for him. He has had a 
 taste, let him remember, of marvels hidden from 
 common eyes and ears. Let it be for him to 
 muse in the sun, and to be grateful for the space 
 of recollection given him. If he had lived the 
 life of the world, he would but have had a treasure 
 of simple memories, much that was sordid, much 
 that was sad. 
 
 But now he has his own dreams, and he must 
 pay the price in heaviness and dreariness ! 
 
 December 14, 1888. 
 The danger of art as an occupation is that one 
 uses life, looks at life, as so much material for 
 one's art. Life becomes a province of art, instead 
 of art being a province of life. That is all a 
 sad mistake, perhaps an irreparable mistake ! I 
 walked to-day on the crisp frozen snow, down the 
 valley, by field-paths, among leafless copses and 
 wood - ends. The stream ran dark and cold, 
 between its brambly banks ; the snow lay pure 
 and smooth on the high-sloping fields. It made 
 a heart of whiteness in the covert, the trees all 
 delicately outlined, the hazels weaving an intricate 
 pattern. All perfectly and exquisitely beautiful. 
 Sight after sight of subtle and mysterious beauty, 
 vignette after vignette, picture after picture. If I 
 could but sing it, or say it, depict or record it, I 
 thought to myself ! Yet I could not analyse what 
 the desire was. I do not think I wished to inter- 
 pret the sight to others, or even to capture it for
 
 58 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 myself. No matter at what season of the year I 
 pass through the valley, it is always filled from end 
 to end with beauty, ever changing, perishing, ever 
 renewing itself. In spring the copse is full of 
 tender points of green, uncrumpling and uncurl- 
 ing. The hyacinths make a carpet of steely blue, 
 the anemones weave their starred tapestry. In 
 the summer, the grove hides its secret, dense with 
 leaf, the heavy-seeded grass rises in the field, the 
 tall flowering plants make airy mounds of colour ; 
 in autumn, the woods blaze with orange and gold, 
 the air is heavy with the scent of the dying leaf. 
 In winter, the eye dwells with delight upon the 
 spare low tints ; and when the snow falls and lies, 
 as it does to-day, the whole scene has a still and 
 mournful beauty, a pure economy of contrasted 
 light and gloom. Yet the trained perception of 
 the artist does not dwell upon the thought of the 
 place as upon a perpetual feast of beauty and 
 delight. Rather, it shames me to reflect, one 
 dwells upon it as a quarry of effects, where one 
 can find and detach the note of background, the 
 sweet symbol that will lend point and significance 
 to the scene that one is labouring at. Instead of 
 being content to gaze, to listen, to drink in, one 
 thinks only what one can carry away and make 
 one's own. If one's art were purely altruistic, if 
 one's aim were to emphasise some sweet aspect 
 of nature which the careless might otherwise over- 
 look or despise ; or even if the sight haunted one 
 like a passion, and fed the heart with hope and 
 love, it would be well. But does one in reality
 
 THE ARTIST'S DESIRE 59 
 
 feel either of these purposes ? Speaking candidly, 
 I do not. I care very little for my message to 
 the world. It is true that I have a deep and 
 tender love for the gracious things of earth ; but 
 I cannot be content with that. One thinks of 
 Wordsworth, rapt in contemplation, sitting silent 
 for a whole morning, his eyes fixed upon the pool 
 of the moorland stream, or the precipice with the 
 climbing ashes. It was like a religion to him, a 
 communion with something holy and august 
 which in that moment drew near to his soul. 
 But with me it is different. To me the passion is 
 to express it, to embalm it, in phrase or word, not 
 for my pride in my art, not for any desire to give 
 the treasure to others, but simply, so it seems, 
 in obedience to a tyrannous instinct to lend the 
 thought, the sight, another shape. I despair of 
 defining the feeling. It is partly a desire to arrest 
 the fleeting moment, to give it permanence in the 
 ruinous lapse of things, the same feeling that made 
 old Herrick say to the daffodils, " We weep to see 
 you haste away so soon." Partly the joy of the 
 craftsman in making something that shall please 
 the eye and ear. It is not the desire to create, as 
 some say, but to record. For when one writes an 
 impassioned scene, it seems no more an act of 
 creation than one feels about one's dreams. The 
 wonder of dreams is that one does not make 
 them ; they come upon one with all the pleasure 
 of surprise and experience. They are there ; and 
 so, when one indulges imagination, one does not 
 make, one merely tells the dream. It is this that
 
 60 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 makes art so strange and sad an occupation, that 
 one lives in a beautiful world, which does not 
 seem to be of one's own designing, but from which 
 one is awakened, in terror and disgust, by bodily 
 pain, discomfort, anxiety, loss. Yet it seems 
 useless to say that life is real and imagination 
 unreal. They are both there, both real. The 
 danger is to use life to feed the imagination, not 
 to use imagination to feed life. In these sad 
 weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The 
 world of imagination, in which I have lived and 
 moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head ; 
 the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwell- 
 ing, and I must arise and go. I have sported 
 with life as though it were a pretty plaything ; 
 and I find it turn upon me like a wild beast, 
 gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil 
 motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep 
 mystery and horror of life, that one yields un- 
 erringly to blind and imperious instincts, not 
 knowing which may lead us into green and fertile 
 pastures of hope and happy labour, and which 
 may draw us into thorny wildernesses. The old 
 fables are true, that one must not trust the smiling 
 presences, the beguiling words. Yet how is one 
 to know which of the forms that beckon us 
 we may trust. Must we learn the lesson by 
 sad betrayals, by dark catastrophes ? I have 
 wandered, it seems, along a flowery path — and 
 yet I have not gathered the poisonous herbs of 
 sin ; I have loved innocence and goodness ; but 
 for all that I have followed a phantom, and now
 
 THE ARTISTIC CRITERION 61 
 
 that it is too late to retrace my steps, I find that I 
 have been betrayed. I feel 
 
 "As some bold seer in a trance 
 Seeing all his own mischance." 
 
 Well, at least one may still be bold ! 
 
 December 22, 1888. 
 Perhaps my trial comes to me that it may test 
 my faith in art ; perhaps to show me that the artist's 
 creed is a false and shallow one after all. What 
 is it that we artists do ? In a happy hour I should 
 have said glibly that we discern and interpret 
 beauty. But now it seems to me that no man 
 can ever live upon beauty. I think I have gone 
 wrong in busying myself so ardently in trying to 
 discern the quality of beauty in all things. I seem 
 to have submitted everything — virtue, honour, life 
 itself — to that test. I appear to myself like an 
 artist who has devoted himself entirely to the 
 appreciation of colour, who is suddenly struck 
 colour-blind; he sees the forms of things as clearly 
 as ever, but they are dreary and meaningless. I 
 seem to have tried everything, even conduct, by 
 an artistic standard, and the quality which I have 
 devoted myself to discerning has passed suddenly 
 out of life. And my mistake has been all the more 
 grievous, because I have always believed that it 
 was life of which I was in search. There are 
 three great writers — two of them artists as well — 
 whose personality has always interested me pro-
 
 62 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 foundry — Ruskin, Carlyle, Rossetti. But I have 
 never been able wholly to admire the formal and 
 deliberate products of their minds. Ruskin as an 
 art-critic — how profoundly unfair, prejudiced, un- 
 just he is ! He has made up his mind about the 
 merit of an artist ; he will lay down a principle about 
 accuracy in art, and to what extent "imagination 
 may improve upon vision ; and then he will abuse 
 Claude for modifying a scene, in the same breath, 
 and for the same reasons, with which he will praise 
 Turner for exaggerating one. He will use the 
 same stick that he throws for one dog to fetch, to 
 beat another dog that he dislikes. Of course he 
 says fine and suggestive things by the way, and he 
 did a great work in inspiring people to look for 
 beauty, though he misled many feeble spirits into 
 substituting one convention for another. I cannot 
 read a page of his formal writings without anger 
 and disgust. Yet what a beautiful, pathetic, noble 
 spirit he had ! The moment he writes, simply 
 and tenderly, from his own harrowed heart, he be- 
 comes a dear and honoured friend. In Prcelerita } 
 in his diaries and letters, in his familiar and un- 
 considered utterances, he is perfectly delightful, 
 conscious of his own waywardness and whimsi- 
 cality ; but when he lectures and dictates, he is 
 like a man blowing wild blasts upon a shrill 
 trumpet. Then Carlyle — his big books, his great 
 tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and 
 clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of 
 himself into the foreground, like some obstreperous 
 showman ; he wearies and dizzies my brain with
 
 RUSKIN, CARLYLE, ROSSETTI 63 
 
 his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. 
 I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a 
 boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it ; 
 three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid 
 with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in 
 the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, 
 with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon 
 a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The 
 Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle 
 seems to me like that ; he has no pity for humanity, 
 he only likes to add to its terrors and its be- 
 wilderment. He preached silence and seclusion to 
 men of activity, energy to men of contempla- 
 tion. He was furious, whatever humanity did, 
 whether it slept or waked. His message is the 
 message of the booming gale, and the swollen 
 cataract. Yet in his diaries and letters, what 
 splendid perception, what inimitable humour, what 
 rugged emotion ! I declare that Carlyle's thumb- 
 nail portraits of people and scenes are some of the 
 most admirable things ever set down on paper. 
 1 love and admire the old furious, disconsolate, 
 selfish fellow with all my heart ; though he was a 
 bad husband, he was a true friend, for all his dis- 
 cordant cries and groans. Then there is Rossetti — 
 a man who wrote a few incredibly beautiful poems, 
 and in whom one seems to feel the inner fire and 
 glow of art. Yet many of his pictures are to me little 
 but voluptuous and wicked dreams ; and his later 
 sonnets are full of poisonous fragrance — poetry 
 embroidered and scented, not poetry felt. What a 
 generous, royal prodigal nature he had, till he sank
 
 64 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 into his drugged and indulgent seclusion I Here 
 then are three great souls. Ruskin, the pure lover 
 of things noble and beautiful, but shadowed by a 
 prim perversity, an old-maidish delicacy, a petulant 
 despair. Carlyle, a great, rugged, and tumultuous 
 heart, brutalised by ill-health, morbidity, selfish- 
 ness. Rossetti, a sort of day-star in art, stepping 
 forth like an angel, to fall lower than Lucifer. 
 What is the meaning of these strange catastrophes, 
 these noble natures so infamously hampered ? 
 In the three cases, it seems to be that melancholy, 
 brooding over a world, so exquisitely designed 
 and yet so unaccountably marred, drove one to 
 madness, one to gloom, one to sensuality. We 
 believe or try to believe that God is pure and loving 
 and true, and that His Heart is with all that is 
 noble and hopeful and high. Yet the more gener- 
 ous the character, the deeper is the fall ! Can such 
 things be meant to show us that we have no 
 concern with art at all ; and that our only hope 
 is to cling to bare, austere, simple, uncomforted 
 virtue ? Ought we to try to think of art only as 
 an innocent amusement and diversion for our 
 leisure hours ? As a quest to which no man 
 may vow himself, save at the cost of walking in 
 a vain shadow all his days ? Ought we to steel 
 our hearts against the temptation, which seems to 
 be implanted as deep as anything in my own 
 nature — nay, deeper — that what one calls ugliness 
 and bad taste is of the nature of sin ? But what 
 then is the meaning of the tyrannous instinct to 
 select and to represent, to capture beauty ? Ought
 
 THE WORLD'S DESIRE 65 
 
 it to be enough to see beauty in the things around 
 us, in flowers and light, to hear it in the bird's 
 song and the falling stream — to perceive it thus 
 gratefully and thankfully, and to go back to our 
 simple lives ? I do not know ; it is all a great 
 mystery ; it is so hard to believe that God should 
 put these ardent, delicious, sweet, and solemn in- 
 stincts into our spirits, simply that we may learn 
 our error in following them. And yet I feel with a 
 sad certainty to-day that I have somehow missed 
 the way, and that God cannot or will not help me 
 to find it. Are we then bidden and driven to 
 wander ? Or is there indeed some deep and per- 
 fect secret of peace and tranquillity, which we are 
 meant to find ? Does it perhaps lie open to our 
 eyes — as when one searches a table over and over 
 for some familiar object, which all the while is 
 there before us, plain to touch or sight ? 
 
 January 3, 1889. 
 There is a tiny vignette of Blake's, a woodcut, 
 I think, in which one sees a ladder set up to the 
 crescent moon from a bald and bare corner of 
 the globe. There are two figures that seem to 
 be conversing together ; on the ladder itself, just 
 setting his foot to the lowest rung, is the figure 
 of a man who is beginning to climb in a furious 
 hurry. "I ivcrnt, I want" says the little legend 
 beneath. The execution is trivial enough ; it is 
 all done, and not very well done, in a space 
 not much bigger than a postage-stamp — but it 
 
 E
 
 66 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 is one of the many cases in which Blake, by 
 a minute symbol, expressed a large idea. One 
 wonders if he knew how large an idea it was. 
 It is a symbol for me of all the vague, eager, 
 intense longing of the world, the desire of satis- 
 faction, of peace, of fulfilment, of perfection ; the 
 power that makes people passionately religious, 
 that makes souls so much greater and stronger 
 than they appear to themselves to be. It is the 
 thought that makes us at moments believe in- 
 tensely and urgently in the justice, the mercy, 
 the perfect love of God, even at moments when 
 everything round us appears to contradict the 
 idea. It is the outcome of that strange right 
 to happiness which we all feel, the instinct that 
 makes us believe of pain and grief that they are 
 abnormal, and will be, must be, set right and 
 explained somewhere. The thought comes to me 
 most poignantly at sunset, when trees and 
 chimneys stand up dark against the fiery glow, 
 and when the further landscape lies smiling, lapt 
 in mist, on the verge of dreams ; that moment 
 always seems to speak to me with a personal 
 voice. " Yes," it seems to say, u I am here and 
 everywhere — larger, sweeter, truer, more gracious 
 than anything you have ever dreamed of or hoped 
 for — but the time to know all is not yet." I 
 cannot explain the feeling or interpret it ; but it 
 has sometimes seemed to me, in such moments, 
 that I am, in very truth, not a child of God, 
 but a part of Himself — separated from Him for 
 a season, imprisoned, for some strange and beauti-
 
 RESTLESS DISSATISFACTION 67 
 
 ful purpose, in the chains of matter, remembering 
 faintly and obscurely something that I have lost, 
 as a man strives to recall a beautiful dream that 
 has visited him. It is then that one most de- 
 sires to be strong and free, to be infinitely patient 
 and tender and loving, to be different. And 
 then one comes back to the world with a sense 
 of jar and shock, to broken purposes, and dull 
 resentments, to unkindly thoughts, and people who 
 do not even pretend to wish one well. I have 
 been trying with all my might in these desolate 
 weeks to be brave and affectionate and tender, 
 and I have not succeeded. It is easy enough, 
 when one is happily occupied for a part of the 
 day, but when one is restless, dissatisfied, im- 
 patient, ineffective, it is a constant and a weary 
 effort. And what is more, I dislike sympathy. 
 I would rather bear a thing in solitude and 
 silence. I have no self-pity, and it is humiliating 
 and weakening to be pitied. Yet of course Maud 
 knows that I am unhappy ; and the wretchedness 
 of it is that it has introduced a strain into our 
 relations which I have never felt before. I sit 
 reading, trying to pass the hours, trying to stifle 
 thought. I look up and see her eyes fixed on 
 me full of compassion and love — and I do not 
 want compassion. Maud knows it, divines it all ; 
 but she can no more keep her compassion hidden 
 than I can keep my unrest hidden. I have grown 
 irritable, suspicious, hard to live with. Yet with 
 all my heart and soul I desire to be patient, 
 tolerant, kindly, sweet-tempered. FitzGerald said
 
 68 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 somewhere that ill-health makes all of us villains. 
 This is the worst of it, that for all my efforts 
 I get weaker, more easily vexed, more discon- 
 tented. I do not and cannot trace the smallest 
 benefit which results to mc or any one else from 
 my unhappiness. The shadow of it has even 
 fallen over my relations with the children, who 
 are angelically good. Maggie, with that divine 
 instinct which women possess — what a perfectly 
 beautiful thing it is ! — has somehow contrived to 
 discern that things are amiss with me, and I can 
 perceive that she tries all that her little heart and 
 mind can devise to please, soothe, interest me. 
 But I do not want to be ministered to, exquisite 
 as the instinct is in the child ; and all the time 
 I am as far off my object as ever. I cannot 
 work, I cannot think. I have said fine things 
 in my books about the discipline of reluctant 
 suffering ; and now my feeling is that I could 
 bear any other kind of trial better. It seems 
 to be given to me with an almost demoniacal 
 prescience of what should most dishearten me. 
 
 " It would not school the shuddering will 
 To patience, were it sweet to bear," 
 
 says an old poet ; and it is true, I have no doubt ; 
 but, good God, to think that a man, so richly 
 dowered as I am with every conceivable blessing, 
 should yet have so small a reserve of faith and 
 patience ! Even now I can frame epigrams about 
 it. " To learn to be content not to be content " 
 — that is the secret — but meanwhile I stumble in
 
 A DESCENT INTO HELL 69 
 
 dark paths, through the grove nitllo penctrabilis 
 astro, where men have wandered before now. It 
 seems fine and romantic enough, when one thinks 
 of another soul in torment. One remembers the 
 old sage, reading quietly at a sunset hour, who 
 had a sudden vision of the fate that should befall 
 him. His book falls from his hands, he sits there, 
 a beautiful and venerable figure enough, staring 
 heavily into the void. It makes me feel that I 
 shall never dare to draw the picture of a man 
 in the grip of suffering again ; I have had so 
 little of it in my life, and I have drawn it with 
 a luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once 
 saying of a friend that his work was light and 
 trivial, because he had never descended into hell. 
 Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art 
 and love, and life itself, shrivel in the relentless 
 chill — for it is icy cold and drearily bright in hell, 
 not dark and fiery, as poets have sung ! I feel 
 that I could wrestle better with the loss of health, 
 of wealth, of love, for there would be something 
 to bear, some burden to lift. Now there is nothing 
 to bear, except a blank purposelessness which eats 
 the heart out of me. I am in the lowest place, 
 in the darkness and the deep. 
 
 January 8, 1889. 
 Snow underfoot this morning ; and a brown 
 blink on the horizon which shows that more is 
 coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never 
 really seen my house before, the snow lights it 
 all up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing
 
 70 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 white, touching up high lights on the top of 
 picture-frames, and throwing the lower part of 
 the rooms into a sort of pleasant dusk. 
 
 Maud and the children went off this afternoon 
 to an entertainment. I accompanied them to the 
 door ; what a pretty effect the snow background 
 gives to young faces ; it lends a pretty morbidezza 
 to the colouring, a sort of very delicate green 
 tinge to the paler shades. That does not sound 
 as if it would be beautiful in a human face, but 
 it is ; the faces look like the child-angels of Botti- 
 celli, and the pink and rose flush of the cheeks is 
 softly enriched and subdued ; and then the soft 
 warmth of fair and curly hair is delicious. I was 
 happy enough with them, in a sort of surface 
 happiness. The little waves at the top of the 
 mind broke in sunlight ; but down below, the cold 
 dark water sleeps still enough. I left them, and 
 took a long trudge among the valleys. Oh me ! 
 how beautiful it all was ; the snowy fields, with 
 the dark copses and leafless trees among them ; 
 the rich clean light everywhere, the world seen 
 as through a dusky crystal. Then the sun went 
 down in state, and the orange sky through the 
 dark tree-stems brought me a thrill of that strange 
 yearning desire for something — I cannot tell what 
 — that seems so near and yet so far away. Yet 
 I was sad enough too ; my mind works like a mill 
 with no corn to grind. I can devise nothing, 
 think of nothing. There beats in my head a verse 
 of a little old Latin poem, by an unhappy man 
 enough, in whose sorrowful soul the delight of
 
 A WINTRY WORLD 
 
 7i 
 
 the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by 
 the thought that it was passing, passing ; and that 
 the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, 
 could never again be at the same sweet point of 
 its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a 
 belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of 
 his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he 
 says, "for yon to-day King December is stripping 
 these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets 
 afford." That is my case. I have lingered too 
 late, trusting to the ease and prodigal wealth 
 of the summer, and now the woods stand bare 
 about me, while my comrades have taken wing 
 for the South. The beady eye, the puffed feathers 
 grow sick and dulled with hunger. Why cannot 
 I rest a little in the beauty all about me ? Take 
 it home to my shivering soul ? Nay, I will not 
 complain, even to myself. 
 
 I came back at sundown, through the silent 
 garden, all shrouded and muffled with snow. The 
 snow lay on the house, outlining the cornices, 
 cresting the roof-tiles, crusted sharply on the 
 cupola, whitening the tall chimney-stacks. The 
 comfortable smoke went up into the still air, and 
 the firelight darted in the rooms. What a sense 
 of beautiful permanence, sweet hopefulness, fire- 
 side warmth it all gave ; and it is real as well. 
 No life that I could have devised is so rich in 
 love and tranquillity as mine ; everything to give 
 me content, except the contented mind. Why 
 cannot I enter, seat myself in the warm firelight, 
 open a book, and let the old beautiful thoughts
 
 72 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 flow into my mind, till the voices of wife and 
 children return to gladden me, and I listen to 
 all that they have seen and done ? Why should 
 I rather sit, like a disconsolate child among its 
 bricks, feebly and sadly planning new combina- 
 tions and fantastic designs ? I have done as 
 much and more than most of my contem- 
 poraries ; what is this insensate hunger of the 
 spirit that urges me to work that I cannot do, 
 for rewards that I do not want ? Why cannot 
 I be content to dream and drowse a little ? 
 
 " Rest, then, and rest 
 And think of the best, 
 'Twixt summer and spring, 
 When no birds sing." 
 
 That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is 
 as though some creeper that had enfolded and 
 enringed a house with its tendrils, creeping 
 under window-ledges and across mellow brick- 
 work, had been suddenly cut off at the root, and 
 hung faded and lustreless, not even daring to be 
 torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is 
 alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, 
 except that my heart seems hollow at the core. 
 
 January 12, 1889. 
 I have had a very bad time of late. It seems 
 futile to say anything about it, and the plain man 
 would rub his eyes, and wonder where the misery 
 lay. I have been perfectly well, and everything 
 has gone smoothly ; but I cannot write. I have
 
 LOSS OF INSPIRATION 73 
 
 begun half-a-dozen books. I have searched my 
 notes through and through. I have sketched 
 plots, written scenes. I cannot go on with any 
 of them. I have torn up chapters with fierce 
 disgust, or have laid them quietly aside. There is 
 no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any 
 one, he would wonder what was wrong — they are 
 as well written as my other books, as amusing, 
 as interesting. But it is all without energy or 
 invention, it is all worse than my best. The 
 people are puppets, their words are pumped up 
 out of a stagnant reservoir. Everything I do 
 reminds me of something I have done before. If 
 I could bring myself to finish one of these books, 
 I could get money and praise enough. Many 
 people would not know the difference. But the 
 real and true critic would see through them ; he 
 would discern that I had lost the secret. I think 
 that perhaps I ought to be content to work dully 
 and faithfully on, to finish the poor dead thing, 
 to compose its dead limbs decently, to lay it out. 
 But I cannot do that, though it might be a moral 
 discipline. I am not conscious of the least mental 
 fatigue, or loss of power — quite the reverse. I 
 hunger and thirst to write, but I have no in- 
 vention. 
 
 The worst of it is that it reveals to me how 
 much the whole of my life was built up round the 
 hours I gave to writing. I used to read, write letters, 
 do business in the morning, holding myself back 
 from the beloved task, not thinking over it, not 
 anticipating the pleasure, yet aware that some
 
 74 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 secret germination was going on among the cells 
 of the brain. Then came the afternoon, the walk 
 or ride, and then at last after tea arrived the 
 blessed hour. The chapter was all ready to be 
 written, and the thing flowed equably and clearly 
 from the pen. The passage written, I would turn 
 to some previous chapter, which had been type- 
 written, smooth out the creases, enrich the dialogue, 
 retouch the descriptions, omit, correct, clarify. 
 Perhaps in the evening I would read a passage 
 aloud, if we were alone ; and how often would 
 Maud, with her perfect instinct, lay her finger on a 
 weak place, show me that something was abrupt 
 or lengthy, expose an unreal emotion, or, best of 
 all, generously and whole-heartedly approve. It 
 seems now, looking back upon it, that it was all 
 impossibly happy and delightful, too good to be 
 true. Yet I have everything that I had, except 
 my unhappy writing ; and the want of it poisons 
 life. I no longer seem to lie pleasantly in ambush 
 for pretty traits of character, humorous situations, 
 delicate nuances of talk. I look blankly at garden, 
 field, and wood, because I cannot draw from them 
 the setting that I want. Even my close and inti- 
 mate companionship with Maud seems to have 
 suffered, for I was like a child, bringing the little 
 wonders that it finds by the hedgerow to be looked 
 at by a loving eye. Maud is angelically tender, 
 kind, sweet. She tells me only to wait ; she draws 
 me on to talk ; she surrounds me with love and 
 care. And in the midst of it all I sit, in dry 
 misery, hating myself for my feebleness and
 
 ADRIFT 75 
 
 cowardice, keeping as far as possible my pain to 
 myself, brooding, feverishly straining, struggling 
 hopelessly to recover the clue. The savour has 
 gone out of life ; I feel widowed, frozen, desolate. 
 How often have I tranquilly and good-humouredly 
 contemplated the time when I need write no more, 
 when my work should be done, when I should 
 have said all I had to say, and could take life as it 
 came, soberly and wisely. Now that the end has 
 come of itself, I feel like a hopeless prisoner, with 
 death the only escape from a bitter and disconso- 
 late solitude. 
 
 Can I not amuse myself with books, pictures, 
 talk ? No, because it is all a purposeless passing 
 of dreary hours. Before, there was always an 
 object ahead of me, a light to which I made my 
 way ; and all the pleasant incidents of life were 
 things to guide me, and to beguile the plodding 
 path. Now I am adrift ; I need go neither for- 
 wards nor backwards ; and the things which before 
 were gentle and quiet occupations have become 
 duties to be drearily fulfilled. 
 
 I have put down here exactly what I feel. It 
 is not cowardice that makes me do it, but a desire 
 to face the situation, exactly as it is. Forsan et 
 hcec ohm meminisse juvabit ! And in any case 
 nothing can be done by blinking the truth. I 
 shall need all my courage and all my resolution to 
 meet it, and I shall meet it as manfully as I can. 
 Yet the thought of meeting it thus has no inspira- 
 tion in it. My only desire is that the frozen mind 
 may melt at the touch of some genial ray, and
 
 76 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that the buds may prick and unfold upon the 
 shrunken bough. 
 
 January 15, 1889. 
 One of the miseries of my present situation is 
 that it is all so intangible, and to the outsider so 
 incomprehensible. There is no particular reason 
 why I should write. I do not need the money ; 
 I believe I do not desire fame. Let me try to be 
 perfectly frank about this ; I do not at all desire 
 the tangible results of fame, invitations to banquets, 
 requests to deliver lectures, the acquaintance of 
 notable people, laudatory reviews. I like a quiet 
 life ; I do not want monstrari digito, as Horace says. 
 I have had a taste of all of these things, and they 
 do not amuse me, though I confess that I thought 
 they would. I feel in this rather as Tennyson felt 
 — that I dislike contemptuous criticism, and do not 
 value praise — except the praise of a very few, the 
 masters of the craft. And this one does not get, 
 because the great men are mostly too much 
 occupied in producing their own masterpieces to 
 have the time or inclination to appraise others. 
 Yet I am sure there is a vile fibre of ambition 
 lurking in me, interwoven with my nature, which 
 I cannot exactly disentangle. I very earnestly 
 desire to do good and fine work, to write great 
 books. If I genuinely and critically approved of 
 my own work, I could go on writing for the mere 
 pleasure of it, in the face of universal neglect. 
 But one may take it for granted that unless one is
 
 WHEN TO STOP 77 
 
 working on very novel and original lines — and I 
 am not — the good qualities of one's work are not 
 likely to escape attention. The reason why Keats, 
 and Shelley, and Tennyson, and Wordsworth were 
 decried, was because their work was so unusual, 
 so new, that conventional critics could not under- 
 stand it. But I am using a perfectly familiar 
 medium, and there is a large and acute band of 
 critics who are looking out for interesting work in 
 the region of novels. Besides I have arrived at 
 the point of having a vogue, so that anything I 
 write would be treated with a certain respect. 
 Where my ambition comes in is in the desire not 
 to fall below my standard. I suppose that while 
 I feel that I do not rate the judgment of the 
 ordinary critic highly, I have an instinctive sense 
 that my work is worthy of his admiration. The 
 pain I feel is the sort of pain that an athlete feels 
 who has established, say, a record in high-jumping, 
 and finds that he can no longer hurl his stiffening 
 legs and portly frame over the lath. Well, I have 
 always held strongly that men ought to know 
 when to stop. There is nothing more melancholy 
 and contemptible than to see a successful man, 
 who has brought out a brood of fine things, sitting 
 meekly on addled eggs, or, still worse, squatting 
 complacently among eggshells. It is like the story 
 of the old tiresome Breton farmer whose wife was 
 so annoyed by his ineffective fussiness, that she 
 clapt him down to sit on a clutch of stone eggs 
 for the rest of his life. How often have I thought 
 how deplorable it was to see a man issuing a series
 
 78 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 of books, every one of which is feebler than its 
 predecessor, dishing up the old characters, the 
 stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have 
 always hoped that some one would be kind and 
 brave enough to tell me when I did that. But 
 now that the end seems to have come to me 
 naturally and spontaneously, I cannot accept my 
 defeat. I am like the monkey of whom Frank 
 Buckland wrote, who got into the kettle when 
 the water was lukewarm, and found the outer air so 
 cold whenever he attempted to leave it, that he was 
 eventually very nearly boiled alive. The fact that 
 my occupation is gone leaves life hollow to the 
 core. Perhaps a wise man would content himself 
 with composing some placid literary essays, select- 
 ing some lesser figure in the world of letters, collect- 
 ing gossip, and what are called a side-lights," about 
 him, visiting his birthplace and early haunts, criti- 
 cising his writings. That would be a harmless 
 way of rilling the time. But any one who has ever 
 tried creative work gets rilled with a nauseating 
 disgust for making books out of other people's 
 writings, and constructing a kind of resurrection- 
 pie out of the shreds. Moreover I know nothing 
 except literature ; I could only write a literary 
 biography ; and it has always seemed to me a 
 painful irony that men who have put into their 
 writings what other people put into deeds and 
 acts should be the very people whose lives are 
 sedulously written and rewritten, generation after 
 generation. The instinct is natural enough. The 
 vivid memories of statesmen and generals fade ;
 
 DREARY PATIENCE 79 
 
 but as long as we have the fascinating and ador- 
 able reveries of great spirits, we are consumed 
 with a desire to reconstruct their surroundings, 
 that we may learn where they found their inspira- 
 tion. A great poet, a great imaginative writer, so 
 glorifies and irradiates the scene in which his 
 mighty thoughts came to him, that we cannot help 
 fancying that the secret lies in crag and hill and 
 lake, rather than in the mind that gathered in the 
 common joy. I have a passion for visiting the 
 haunts of genius, but rather because they teach 
 me that inspiration lies everywhere, if we can but 
 perceive it, than because I hope to detect where 
 the particular charm lay. And so I am driven 
 back upon my own poor imagination. I say to 
 myself, like Samson, " I will go out as at other 
 times before, and shake myself," and then the end 
 of the verse falls on me like a shadow — " and he 
 wist not that the Lord was departed from him." 
 
 January 18, 1889. 
 Nothing the matter, and yet everything the 
 matter ! I plough on drearily enough, like a 
 vessel forging slowly ahead against a strong, ugly, 
 muddy stream. I seem to gain nothing, neither 
 hope, patience, nor strength. My spirit revolted 
 at first, but now I have lost the heart even for 
 that : I simply bear my burden and wait. One 
 tends to think, at such times, that no one has 
 ever passed through a similar experience before ; 
 and the isolation in which one moves is the hardest
 
 80 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 part of it all. Alone, and cut off even from God ! 
 If one felt that one was learning something, gain- 
 ing power or courage, one could bear it cheerfully; 
 but I feel rather as though all my vitality and 
 moral strength was being pressed and drained 
 from me. Yet I do not desire death and silence. 
 I rather crave for life and light. 
 
 No, I am not describing my state fairly. At 
 times I have a sense that something, some power, 
 some great influence, is trying to communicate 
 with me, to deliver me some message. There are 
 many hours when it is not so, when my nerveless 
 brain seems losing its hold, slipping off into some 
 dark confusion of sense. Yet again there are 
 other moments, when sights and sounds have an 
 overpowering and awful significance ; when the 
 gleams of some tremendous secret seemed flashed 
 upon my mind, at the sight of the mist-hung 
 valley with its leafless woods and level water- 
 meadows ; the flaring pomp of sunset hung 
 low in the west over the bare ploughland or 
 the wide-watered plain ; the wailing of the wind 
 round the firelit house ; the faint twitter of 
 awakening birds in the ivy ; the voice and smile 
 of my children ; the music breaking the silence 
 of the house at evening. In a moment the sen- 
 sation comes over me, that the sound or sight 
 is sent not vaguely or lightly, but deliberately 
 shown to me, for some great purpose, if I could 
 but divine it ; an oracle of God, if I could but 
 catch the words He utters in the darkness and 
 the silence.
 
 HYPOCHONDRIA 81 
 
 February i, 1889. 
 
 My dissatisfaction and depression begin to tell 
 on me. I grow nervous and strained ; I am often 
 sleepless, or my sleep is filled by vivid, horrible, 
 intolerable dreams. I wake early in the clutch 
 of fear. I wrestle at times with intolerable irrita- 
 bility ; social gatherings become unbearable ; I 
 have all sorts of unmanning sensations, dizzi- 
 nesses, tremors ; I have that dreadful sensation 
 that my consciousness of things and people around 
 me are slipping away from me, and that only 
 by a strong effort can one retain one's hold upon 
 them. I fall into a sort of dull reverie, and 
 come back to the real world with a shock of sur- 
 prise and almost horror. I went the other day to 
 consult a great doctor about this. He reassured 
 me ; he laughed at my fears ; he told me that 
 it was a kind of neurasthenia, not fanciful but 
 real ; that my brain had been overworked, and 
 was taking its revenge ; that it was insufficiently 
 nourished, and so forth. He knew who I was, 
 and treated me with a respectful sympathy. I 
 told him I had taken a prolonged holiday since 
 my last book, and he replied that it had not been 
 long enough. " You must take it easy," he said. 
 " Don't do anything you don't like." I replied 
 that the difficulty was to find anything I did like. 
 He smiled at this, and said that I need not be 
 afraid of breaking down ; he sounded me, and 
 said that I was perfectly strong. " Indeed," he 
 added, " you might go to a dozen doctors to be 
 
 F'
 
 82 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 examined for an insurance policy, and you would 
 be returned as absolutely robust." In the course 
 of his investigations, he applied a test, quite casu- 
 ally and as if he were hardly interested, the point 
 of which he thought (I suppose) that I should 
 not divine. Unfortunately I knew it, and I need 
 only say that it was a test for something very bad 
 indeed. That was rather a horrible moment, when 
 a grim thing out of the shadow slipped forward 
 for a moment, and looked me in the face. But it 
 was over in an instant, and he went on to other 
 
 things. He ended by saying : " Mr. , you 
 
 are not as bad as you feel, or even as you think. 
 Just take it quietly ; don't overdo it, but don't be 
 bored. You say that you can't write to please 
 yourself at present. Well, this experience is 
 partly the cause, and partly the result of your 
 condition. You have used one particular part 
 of your brain too much, and you must give it 
 time to recover. My impression is that you will 
 get better very gradually, and I can only repeat 
 that there is no sort of cause for anxiety. I can't 
 help you more than that, and I am saying exactly 
 what I feel." 
 
 I looked at the worn face and kind eyes of the 
 man whose whole life is spent in plumbing abysses 
 of human suffering. What a terrible life, and yet 
 what a noble one ! He spoke as though he had 
 no other case in the world to consider except my 
 own ; yet when I went back to the waiting-room 
 to get my hat, and looked round on the anxious- 
 looking crowd of patients waiting there, each with
 
 NERVES 83 
 
 a secret burden, I felt how heavy a load he must 
 be carrying. 
 
 There is a certain strength, after all, in having 
 to live by rule ; and I have derived, I find, a cer- 
 tain comfort in having to abstain from things that 
 are likely to upset me, not because I wish it, 
 but because some one else has ordered it. So I 
 struggle on. The worst of nerves is that they are 
 so whimsical ; one never knows when to expect 
 their assaults ; the temptation is to think that they 
 attack one when it is most inconvenient ; but this 
 is not quite the case. They spare one when one 
 expects discomfort ; and again when one feels per- 
 fectly secure, they leap upon one from their lair. 
 The one secret of dealing with the malady is to 
 think of it as a definite ailment, not to regard the 
 attacks as the vagaries of a healthy mind, but as 
 the symptoms of an unhealthy one. So much of 
 these obsessions appears to be purely mental ; one 
 finds oneself the prey of a perfectly causeless de- 
 pression, which involves everything in its shadow. 
 As soon as one realises that this is not the result 
 of the reflections that seem to cause it, but that 
 one is, so to speak, merely looking at normal con- 
 ditions through coloured glasses, it is a great help. 
 But the perennial difficulty is to know whether 
 one needs repose and inaction, or whether one 
 requires the stimulus of work and activity. Some- 
 times an unexpected call on one's faculties will 
 encourage and gladden one ; sometimes it will 
 leave one unstrung and limp. A definite ill- 
 ness is always with one, more or less ; but in
 
 84 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 nervous ailments, one has interludes of perfect 
 and even buoyant health, which delude one into 
 hoping that the demon has gone out. 
 
 It is a very elaborate form of torture anyhow ; 
 and I confess that I find it difficult to discern 
 where its educative effect comes in, because it 
 makes one shrink from effort, it makes one timid, 
 indecisive, suspicious. It seems to encourage all 
 the weaknesses and meannesses of the spirit ; and, 
 worst of all, it centres one's thoughts upon one- 
 self. Perhaps it enlarges one's sympathy for all 
 secret sufferers ; and it makes me grateful for the 
 fact that I have had so little ill-health in my life. 
 Yet I find myself, too, testing with some curiosity 
 the breezy maxims of optimists. A cheerful writer 
 says somewhere : " Will not the future be the better 
 and the richer for memories of past pleasure ? So 
 surely must the sane man feel." Well, he must 
 be very sane indeed. It takes a very burly philo- 
 sopher to think of the future as being enriched by 
 past gladness, when one seems to have forfeited it, 
 and when one is by no means certain of getting 
 it back. One feels bitterly how little one appre- 
 ciated it at the time ; and to rejoice in reflecting 
 how much past happiness stands to one's credit, 
 is a very dispassionate attitude. I think Dante 
 was nearer the truth when he said that " a 
 sorrow's crown of sorrow was remembering 
 happier things."
 
 AMUSEMENT 85 
 
 February 3, 1889. 
 
 To amuse oneself — that is the difficulty. Amuse- 
 ments are or ought to be the childish, irrational, 
 savage things which a man goes on doing and 
 practising, in virtue, I suppose, of the noble privi- 
 lege of reason, far longer than any other animal 
 — only young animals amuse themselves ; a dog 
 perhaps retains the faculty longer than most 
 animals, but he only does it out of sympathy and 
 companionship, to amuse his inscrutable owner, 
 not to amuse himself. Amusements ought to be 
 things which one wants to do, and which one 
 is slightly ashamed of doing — enough ashamed, I 
 mean, to give rather elaborate reasons for con- 
 tinuing them. If one shoots, for instance, one 
 ought to say that it gets one out of doors, and 
 that what one really enjoys is the country, and so 
 forth. Personally I was never much amused by 
 amusements, and gave them up as soon as I 
 decently could. I regret it now. I wish we 
 were all taught a handicraft as a regular part of 
 education ! I used to sketch, and strum a piano 
 once, but I cannot deliberately set to work on 
 such things again. I gave them all up when I 
 became a writer, really, I suppose, because I did 
 not care for them, but nominally on the grounds 
 of " resolute limitation," as Lord Acton said — 
 with the idea that if you prune off the otiose 
 boughs of a tree, you throw the strength of the 
 sap into the boughs you retain. I see now that it 
 was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again
 
 86 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 now ; I was reading Kingsley's Life the other 
 day. He used to overwork himself periodically — 
 use up the grey matter at the base of his brain, 
 as he described it ; but he had a hundred 
 things that he wanted to do besides writing — 
 fishing, entomologising, botanising. Browning 
 liked modelling in clay, Wordsworth liked long 
 walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself 
 thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapestry 
 at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and he 
 died of softening of the brain. The happy people 
 are those who have work which they love, and a 
 hobby of a totally different kind which they love 
 even better. But I doubt whether one can make 
 a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a 
 very resolute person indeed. 
 
 Febritary y, 1889. 
 The children went off yesterday to spend the 
 inside of the day with a parson hard by, who has 
 three children of his own about the same age. 
 They did not want to go, of course, and it was 
 particularly terrible to them, because neither I 
 nor their mother were to go with them. But I 
 was anxious they should go : there is nothing 
 better for children than occasionally to visit a 
 strange house, and to go by themselves without 
 an elder person to depend upon. It gives them 
 independence and gets rid of shyness. They end 
 by enjoying themselves immensely, and perhaps 
 making some romantic friendship. As a child, I
 
 DESPAIR 87 
 
 was almost tearfully insistent that I should not 
 have to go on such visits ; but yet a few days of 
 the sort stand out in my childhood with a vivid- 
 ness and a distinctness, which show what an effect 
 they produced, and how they quickened one's 
 perceptive and inventive faculties. 
 
 When they were gone I went out with Maud. 
 I was at my very worst, I fear ; full of heaviness 
 and deeply disquieted ; desiring I knew well what 
 — some quickening of emotion, some hopeful 
 impulse — but utterly unable to attain it. We had 
 a very sad talk. I tried to make it clear to her 
 how desolate I felt, and to win some kind of 
 forgiveness for my sterile and loveless mood. She 
 tried to comfort me ; she said that it was only 
 like passing through a tunnel ; she made it clear 
 to me, by some unspoken communication, that I 
 was dearer than ever to her in these days of 
 sorrow ; but there was a shadow in her mind, the 
 shadow that fell from the loneliness in which I 
 moved, the sense that she could not share my 
 misery with me. I tried to show her that the one 
 thing one could not share was emptiness. If one's 
 cup is full of interests, plans, happinesses, even 
 tangible anxieties, it is easy and natural to make 
 them known to one whom one loves best. But one 
 cannot share the horror of the formless dark ; the 
 vacuous and tortured mind. It is the dark absence 
 of anything that is the source of my wretchedness. 
 If there were pain, grief, mournful energy of any 
 kind, one could put it into words ; but how can 
 one find expression for what is a total eclipse ?
 
 88 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 It was not, I said, that anything had come 
 between her and me ; but I seemed to be remote, 
 withdrawn, laid apart like some stiffening corpse 
 in the tomb. She tried to reassure me, to show 
 me that it was mainly physical, the overstrain of 
 long and actively enjoyed work, and that all I 
 needed was rest. She did not say one word of 
 reproach, or anything to imply that I was unmanly 
 and cowardly — indeed, she contrived, I know not 
 how, to lead me to think that my state was in 
 ordinary life hardly apparent. Once she asked 
 pathetically if there was no way in which she 
 could help. I had not the heart to say what was 
 in my mind, that it would be better and easier for 
 me if she ignored my unhappiness altogether ; and 
 that sympathy and compassion only plunged me 
 deeper into gloom, as showing me that it was 
 evident that there was something amiss — but I 
 said " No, there is nothing ; and no one can help 
 me, unless God kindles the light He has quenched. 
 Be your own dear self as much as possible ; think 
 and speak as little of me as you can," — and then 
 I added : " Dearest, my love for you is here, as 
 strong and pure as ever — don't doubt that — only 
 I cannot find it or come near it — it is hidden from 
 me somewhere — I am like a man wandering in 
 dark fields, who sees the fire-lit window of his 
 home ; he cannot feel the warmth, but he knows 
 that it is there waiting for him. He cannot return 
 till he has found that of which he is in search." 
 
 " Could he not give up the search ? " said Maud, 
 smiling tearfully. " Ah, not yet," I said. " You
 
 THE CONFLICT 89 
 
 do not know, Maud, what my work has been to 
 me — no man can ever explain that to any woman, 
 I think: for women live in life, but man lives 
 in work. Man does, woman is. There is the 
 difference." 
 
 We drew near the village. The red sun was 
 sinking over the plain, a ball of fire ; the mist was 
 creeping up from the low-lying fields ; the moon 
 hung, like a white nail-paring, high in the blue 
 sky. We went to the little inn, where we had 
 been before. We ordered tea — we were to return 
 by train — and Maud being tired, I left her, while I 
 took a turn in the village, and explored the remains 
 of an old manor-house, which I had seen often 
 from the road. I was intolerably restless. I found 
 a lane which led to the fields behind the manor. It 
 was a beautiful scene. To the left of me ran the 
 great plain brimmed with mist ; the manor, with 
 its high gables and chimney-stacks, stood up over 
 an orchard, surrounded by a high, ancient brick 
 wall, with a gate between tall gate-posts sur- 
 mounted by stone balls. The old pasture lay 
 round the house, and there were many ancient 
 elms and sycamores forming a small park, in the 
 boughs of which the rooks, who were now stream- 
 ing home from the fields, were clamorous. I 
 found myself near a chain of old fish-ponds, with 
 thorn-thickets all about them ; and here the old 
 house stood up against a pure evening sky, rusty 
 red below, melting into a pure green above. My 
 heart went out in wonder at the thought of the 
 unknown lives lived in this place, the past joys, the
 
 9 o THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 forgotten sorrows. What did it mean for me, 
 the incredible and caressing beauty of the scene r 
 Not only did it not comfort me, but it seemed to 
 darken the gloom of my own unhappy mind. 
 Suddenly, as with a surge of agony, my misery 
 flowed in upon me. I clutched the rail where 
 I stood, and bowed my head down in utter 
 wretchedness. There came upon me, as with 
 a sort of ghastly hopefulness, the temptation to 
 leave it all, to put my case back into God's hands. 
 Perhaps it was to this that I was moving ? There 
 might be a new life waiting for me, but it could 
 not well be as intolerable as this. Perhaps 
 nothing but silence and unconsciousness awaited 
 me, a sleep unstirred by any dream. Even Maud, 
 I thought, in her sorrow, would understand. How 
 long I stood there I do not know, but the air 
 darkened about me and the mist rose in long veils 
 about the pasture with a deadly chill. But then 
 there came back a sort of grim courage into my 
 mind, that not so could it be ended. The thought 
 of Maud and the children rose before me, and I 
 knew I could not leave them, unless I were with- 
 drawn from them. I must face it, I must fight it 
 out ; though I could and did pray with all my 
 might that God might take away my life : I thought 
 with what an utter joy I should feel the pang, the 
 faintness, of death creep over me there in the 
 dim pasture ; but I knew in my heart that it was 
 not to be ; and soon I went slowly back through 
 the thickening gloom. I found Maud awaiting 
 me : and I know in that moment that some touch
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 91 
 
 of the dark conflict I had been through had made 
 itself felt in her mind ; and indeed 1 think she read 
 something of it in my face, from the startled glance 
 she turned upon me. Perhaps it would have been 
 better if in that quiet hour I could have told her 
 the thought which had been in my mind ; but I 
 could not do that ; and indeed it seemed to me as 
 though some unseen light had sprung up for me, 
 shooting and broadening in the darkness. I ap- 
 prehended that I was no longer to suffer, I was to 
 fight. Hitherto I had yielded to my misery, but 
 the time was come to row against the current, not 
 to drift with it. 
 
 It was dark when we left the little inn ; the 
 moon had brightened to a crescent of pale gold ; 
 the last dim orange stain of sunset still slept above 
 the mist. It seemed to me as though I had some- 
 how touched the bottom. How could I tell ? 
 Perhaps the same horrible temptation would 
 beset me, again and again, deepening into a 
 despairing purpose ; the fertile mind built up 
 rapidly a dreadful vista of possibilities, terrible 
 facts that might have to be faced. Even so the 
 dark mood beckoned me again ; better to end it, 
 said a hollow voice, better to let your dear ones 
 suffer the worst, with a sorrow that will lessen 
 year by year, than sink into a broken shadowed 
 life of separation and restraint — but again it 
 passed ; again a grim resolution came to my aid. 
 
 Then, as we sped homewards in the speeding 
 train, there came over me another thought. Here 
 was I, who had lightly trafficked with human
 
 92 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 emotions, who had written with a romantic glow 
 of the dark things of life, despair, agony, thoughts 
 of self-destruction, insane fears, here was I at last 
 confronted with them. I could never dare, I felt, 
 to speak of such things again ; were such dark 
 mysteries to be used to heighten the sense of 
 security and joy, to give a trivial reader a thrill of 
 pleasure, a sympathetic reader a thrill of luxurious 
 emotion ? No, there was nothing uplifting or 
 romantic about them when they came ; they were 
 dark as the grave, cold as the underlying clay. 
 What a vile and loathsome profanation, deserv- 
 ing indeed of a grim punishment, to make a 
 picturesque background out of such things ! At 
 length I had had my bitter taste of grief, and drew 
 in to my trembling spirit the shuddering chill of 
 despair. I had stepped, like the light-hearted 
 maiden of the old story, within the forbidden door, 
 and the ugly, the ghastly reality of the place had 
 burst upon me, the huddled bodies, the basin filled 
 with blood. One had read in books of men and 
 women whose life had been suddenly curdled into 
 slow miseries. One had half blamed them in one's 
 thought ; one had felt that any experience, how- 
 ever dark and deep, must have its artistic value ; 
 and one had thought that they should have 
 emerged with new zest into life. I understood it 
 now, how life could be frozen at its very source, 
 how one could cry out with Job curses on the day 
 that gave one birth, and how gladly one would 
 turn one's face away from the world and all its 
 cheerful noise, awaiting the last stroke of God.
 
 THE MINE-SHAFT 93 
 
 February 20, 1889. 
 
 There is a story of a Cornish farmer who, re- 
 turning home one dark and misty night, struck 
 across the moorland, every yard of which he 
 knew, in order to avoid a long tramp by road. 
 In one place there were a number of disused 
 mine-shafts ; the railing which had once pro- 
 tected them had rotted away, and it had been 
 no one's business to see that it was renewed — 
 some few had been filled up, but many of them 
 were hundreds of feet deep, and entirely un- 
 guarded. The farmer first missed the track, and 
 after long wandering found himself at last among 
 the shafts. He sate down, knowing the extreme 
 danger of his situation, and resolved to wait till 
 the morning ; but it became so cold that he dared 
 stay no longer, for fear of being frozen alive, and 
 with infinite precautions he tried to make his way 
 out of the dangerous region, following the down- 
 ward slope of the ground. In spite, however, of 
 all his care, he found suddenly, on putting his 
 foot down, that he was on the edge of a shaft, 
 and that his foot was dangling in vacancy. He 
 threw himself backwards, but too late, and he slid 
 down several feet, grasping at the grass and 
 heather ; his foot fortunately struck against a large 
 stone, which though precariously poised, arrested 
 his fall ; and he hung there for some hours in 
 mortal anguish, not daring to move, clinging to a 
 tuft of heather, shouting at intervals, in the hope 
 that, when he did not return home, a search-party
 
 94 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 might be sent out to look for him. At last he 
 heard, to his intense relief, the sound of voices 
 hailing him, and presently the gleam of lanterns 
 shot through the mist. He uttered agonising cries, 
 and the rescuers were soon at his side ; when he 
 found that he had been lying in a shaft which had 
 been filled up, and that the firm ground was about 
 a foot below him ; and that, in fact, if the stone 
 that supported him had given way, he would have 
 been spared a long period of almost intolerable 
 horror. 
 
 It is a good parable of many of our disquieting 
 fears and anxieties ; as Lord Beaconsfield said, the 
 greatest tragedies of his life had been things that 
 never happened ; Carlyle truly and beautifully said 
 that the reason why the past always appeared to 
 be beautiful, in retrospect, was that the element of 
 fear was absent from it. William Morris said a 
 trenchant thing on the same subject. He attended 
 a Socialist Meeting of a very hostile kind, which 
 he anticipated with much depression. When some 
 one asked him how the meeting had gone off he 
 said, " Well, it was fuliy as damnable as I had 
 expected — a thing which seldom happens." A 
 good test of the happiness of anyone's life is to 
 what extent he has had trials to bear which are 
 unbearable even to recollect. I am myself of a 
 highly imaginative and anxious temperament, and 
 I have had many hours of depression at the 
 thought of some unpleasant anticipation or dis- 
 agreeable contingency, and I can honestly say that 
 nothing has ever been so bad, when it actually
 
 ANTICIPATIONS 95 
 
 occurred, as it had represented itself to me before- 
 hand. There are a few incidents in my life, the 
 recollection of which I deliberately shun ; but 
 they have always been absolutely unexpected and 
 unanticipated calamities. Yet even these have 
 never been as bad as I should have expected 
 them to be. The strange thing is that experience 
 never comes to one's aid, and that one never gets 
 patience or courage from the thought that the 
 reality will be in all probability less distressing 
 than the anticipation ; for the simple reason that 
 the fertile imagination is always careful to add 
 that this time the occasion will be intolerable, and 
 that at all events it is better to be prepared for the 
 worst that may happen. Moreover, one wastes 
 force in anticipating perhaps half-a-dozen painful 
 possibilities, when, after all, they are alternatives, 
 and only one of them can happen. That is what 
 makes my present situation so depressing, that I 
 instinctively clothe it in its worst horrors, and look 
 forward to a long and dreary life, in which my 
 only occupation will be an attempt to pass the 
 weary hours. Faithless ? yes, of course it is 
 faithless ! but the rational philosophy, which says 
 that it will all probably come right, does not 
 penetrate to the deeper region in which the mind 
 says to itself that there is no hope of amendment. 
 
 Can one acquire, by any effort of the mind, this 
 kind of patience ? I do not think one can. The 
 most that one can do is to behave as far as 
 possible like one playing a heavy part upon the 
 stage, to say with trembling lips that one has hope,
 
 96 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 when the sick mind beneath cries out that there is 
 none. 
 
 Perhaps one can practise a sort of indifference, 
 and hope that advancing years may still the 
 beating heart and numb the throbbing nerve. 
 But I do not even desire to live life on these 
 terms. The one great article of my creed has 
 been that one ought not to lose zest and spirit, 
 or acquiesce slothfully in comfortable and material 
 conditions, but that life ought to be full of percep- 
 tion and emotion. Here again lies my mistake ; 
 that it has not been perception or emotion that 
 I have practised, but the art of expressing what I 
 have perceived and felt. Of course, I wish with 
 all my heart and soul that it were otherwise ; but 
 it seems that I have drifted so far into these tepid, 
 sun-warmed shallows, the shallows of egoism and 
 self-centred absorption, that there is no possibility 
 of my finding my way again to the wholesome 
 brine, to the fresh movement of the leaping wave. 
 I am like one of those who lingered so long in the 
 enchanted isle of Circe, listening luxuriously to 
 the melting cadences of her magic song, that I 
 have lost all hope of extricating myself from the 
 spell. The old free days, when the heart beat 
 light, and the breeze blew keen against my brow, 
 have become only a memory of delights, just 
 enabling me to speak deftly and artfully of the 
 strong joys which I have forfeited.
 
 A VISIT 97 
 
 February 24, 1889. 
 
 I have been away for some days, paying a visit 
 to an old friend, a bachelor clergyman living in 
 the country. The only other occupant of the 
 house, a comfortable vicarage, is his curate. I am 
 better — ashamed almost to think how much better 
 — for the change. It is partly the new place, the 
 new surroundings, the new minds, no doubt. But 
 it is also the change of atmosphere. At home I 
 am surrounded by sympathy and compassion ; 
 however unobtrusive they are, I feel that they are 
 there. I feel that trivial things, words, actions, 
 looks are noted, commented upon, held to be 
 significant. If I am silent, I must be depressed ; 
 if I talk and smile, I am making an effort to over- 
 come my depression. It sounds unloving and 
 ungracious to resent this : but I don't undervalue 
 the care and tenderness that cause it ; at the same 
 time it adds to the strain by imposing upon me a 
 sort of vigilance, a constant effort to behave nor- 
 mally. It is infinitely and deeply touching to feel 
 love all about me ; but in such a state of mind as 
 mine, one is shy of emotion, one dreads it, one 
 shuns it. I suppose it argues a want of simplicity, 
 of perfect manfulness, to feel this ; but few or no 
 women can instinctively feel the difference. In a 
 real and deep affliction, one that could be frankly 
 confessed, the more affection and sympathy that 
 one can have the better ; it is the one thing that 
 sustains. But my unhappiness is not a real thing 
 altogether, not a frank thing ; the best medicine 
 
 G
 
 98 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 for it is to think as little about it ; the only help 
 one desires is the evidence that one does not need 
 sympathy ; and sympathy only turns one's thoughts 
 inwards, and makes one feel that one is forlorn 
 and desolate, when the only hope is to feel neither. 
 
 At Hapton it was just the reverse ; neither Mus- 
 grave nor the curate, Templeton, troubled their head 
 about my fancies. I don't imagine that Musgrave 
 noticed that anything was the matter with me. If 
 I was silent, he merely thought I had nothing to 
 say ; he took for granted I was in my normal state, 
 and the result was that I temporarily recovered it. 
 
 Then, too, the kind of talk I got was a relief. 
 With women, the real talk is intime talk ; the 
 world of politics, books, men, facts, incidents, is 
 merely a setting ; and when <hey talk about 
 them, it is merely to pass the time, as a man 
 turns to a game. At Hapton, Musgrave chatted 
 away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his 
 new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think 
 him rather a proser ; how I blessed his prosing 
 now ! I took long walks with him ; he asked 
 a few perfunctory questions about my books, but 
 otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like 
 a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and 
 he was more than content if I asked an occa- 
 sional question or assented courteously. Then 
 we had some good talks about the rural problems 
 of education — he is a sensible and intelligent man 
 enough — and some excellent arguments about the 
 movement of religion, where I found him unex- 
 pectedly liberal-minded. He left me to do very
 
 DEPRESSION 99 
 
 much what I liked. I read in the mornings and 
 before dinner ; and after dinner we smoked or 
 even played a game of dummy whist. It is a 
 pretty part of the country, and when he was 
 occupied in the afternoon, I walked about by my- 
 self. From first to last not a single word fell from 
 Musgrave to indicate that he thought me in any 
 way different, or suspected that I was not perfectly 
 content, with the blessed result that I immediately 
 became exactly what he thought me. 
 
 I got on no better with my writing ; my brain 
 is as bare as a winter wood ; but I found that 
 I did not rebel against that. Of course it does 
 not reveal a very dignified temperament, that one 
 should so take colour from one's surroundings. 
 If I can be equable and good-humoured here, I 
 ought to be able to be equable and good-humoured 
 at home ; at the same time I am conscious of an 
 intense longing to see Maud and the children. 
 Probably I should do better to absent myself 
 resolutely from home at stated intervals ; and I 
 think it argued a fine degree of perception in 
 Maud, that she decided not to accompany me, 
 though she was pressed to come. I am going 
 home to-morrow, delighted at the thought, grate- 
 ful to the good Musgrave, in a more normal frame 
 of mind than I have been for months. 
 
 February 28, 1889. 
 
 One of the most depressing things about my 
 present condition is that I feel, not only so use-
 
 ioo THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 less, but so prickly, so ugly, so unlovable. Even 
 Maud's affection, stronger and more tender than 
 ever, does not help me, because I feel that she 
 cannot love me for what I am, but for what she 
 remembers me as being, and hopes that I may be 
 again. I know it is not so, and that she would 
 love me whatever I did or became ; but I cannot 
 realise that now. 
 
 A few days ago an old friend came to see 
 me ; and I was so futile, so fractious, so dull, 
 so melancholy with him that I wrote to him 
 afterwards to apologise for my condition, telling 
 him that I knew that I was not myself, and hoped 
 he would forgive me for not making more of an 
 effort. To-day I have had one of the manliest, 
 tenderest, most beautiful letters I have ever had 
 in my life. He says, " Of course I saw that you 
 were not in your usual mood, but if you had pretended 
 to be, if you had kept me at amis length, if you had 
 grimaced and made pretence, we should have been no 
 nearer in spirit. I was proud and grateful that you 
 should so have trusted me, as to let me see into your 
 heart and mind ; and you must believe me when I say 
 that I never loved and honoured you more. I under- 
 stood fully what a deep and insupportable trial your 
 present state of mind must be; and I will be frank — 
 why should I not be ? — and say that I thought you were 
 bearing it bravely, and what is better still, simply and 
 naturally. I seemed to come closer to you in those hours 
 than I have ever done before, and to realise better what 
 you were. ' To make oneself beloved,' says an old 
 writer, ' is to make oneself useful to others ' — and you
 
 CONSOLATION 101 
 
 helped me perhaps most, when you knew it least yourself . 
 I won't tell you not to brood upon or exaggerate your 
 trouble — you know that well enough yourself. But 
 believe me that such times are indeed times of growth 
 and expansion, even when one seems most beaten back 
 upon oneself, most futile, most unmanly. So take a 
 little comfort, my old friend, and fare onwards hope- 
 fully'' 
 
 That is a very beautiful and wise letter, and 
 I cannot say how much it has meant for me. 
 It is a letter that forges an invisible chain, which 
 is yet stronger than the strongest tie that circum- 
 stance can forge ; it is a lantern for one's feet, 
 and one treads a little more firmly in the dark 
 path, where the hillside looms formless through 
 the shade. 
 
 March 3, 1889. 
 
 Best of all the psalms I love the Hundred-and- 
 nineteenth ; yet as a child what a weary thing I 
 thought it. It was long, it was monotonous ; it 
 dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think, 
 upon dull things — laws, commandments, statutes. 
 Now that I am older, it seems to me one of the 
 most human of all documents. It is tender, pen- 
 sive, personal ; other psalms are that ; but Psalm 
 cxix. is intime and autobiographical. One is 
 brought very close to a human spirit ; one hears 
 his prayers, his sighs, the dropping of his tears. 
 Then, too, in spite of its sadness, there is a deep 
 hopefulness and faithfulness about it, a firm belief
 
 io2 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 in the ultimate triumph of what is good and true, 
 a certainty that what is pure and beautiful is worth 
 holding on to, whatever may happen ; a nearness 
 to God, a quiet confidence in Him. It is all in 
 a subdued and minor key, but swelling up at 
 intervals into a chord of ravishing sweetness. 
 
 There is never the least note of loudness, none 
 of that terrible patriotism which defaces many 
 of the psalms, the patriotism which makes men 
 believe that God is the friend of the chosen race, 
 and the foe of all other races, the ugly self- 
 sufficiency that contemplates with delight, not the 
 salvation and inclusion of the heathen, but their 
 discomfiture and destruction. The worst side of 
 the Puritan found delight in those cruel and mili- 
 tant psalms, revelling in the thought that God 
 would rain upon the ungodly fire and brimstone, 
 storm and tempest, and exulting in the blasting of 
 the breath of His displeasure. Could anything be 
 more alien to the spirit of Christ than all that ? 
 But here, in this melancholy psalm, there breathes 
 a spirit naturally Christian, loving peace and con- 
 templation, very weary of the strife. 
 
 I have said it is autobiographical ; but it must 
 be remembered that it was a fruitful literary device 
 in those early days, to cast one's own thought in 
 the mould of some well-known character. In this 
 psalm I have sometimes thought that the writer 
 had Daniel in mind — the surroundings of the 
 psalm suit the circumstances of Daniel with 
 singular exactness. But even so, it was the work 
 of a man, I think, who had suffered the sorrows of
 
 PSALM CXIX 103 
 
 which he wrote. Let me try to disentangle what 
 manner of man he was. 
 
 He was young and humble ; he was rich, or had 
 opportunities of becoming so ; he was an exile, 
 or lived in an uncongenial society ; he was the 
 member of a court where he was derided, disliked, 
 slandered, plotted against, and even persecuted. 
 We can clearly discern his own character. He 
 was timid, and yet ambitious ; he was tempted to 
 use deceit and hypocrisy, to acquiesce in the tone 
 about him ; he was inclined to be covetous ; he 
 had sinned, and had learnt something of holiness 
 from his fall ; he was given to solitude and prayer. 
 He was sensitive, and his sorrows had affected his 
 health ; he was sleepless, and had lost the bloom of 
 his youth. 
 
 All this and more we can read of him ; but 
 what is the saddest touch of all is the isolation in 
 which he lived. There is not a word to show that 
 he met with any sympathy ; indeed the misunder- 
 standing, whatever it was, that overshadowed him, 
 had driven acquaintances, friends, and lovers away 
 from him ; and yet his tender confidence in God 
 never fails ; he feels that in his passionate worship 
 of virtue and truth, his intense love of purity and 
 justice, he has got a treasure which is more to him 
 than riches or honour, or even than human love. 
 He speaks as though this passion for holiness had 
 been the very thing that had cost him so dear, and 
 that exposed him to derision and dislike. Perhaps 
 he had refused to fall in with some customary form 
 of evil, and his resistance to temptation had led him
 
 104 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 to be regarded as a precisian and a saint ? I have 
 little doubt myself that this was so. He speaks as 
 one might speak who had been so smitten with the 
 desire for purity and Tightness of life, that he could 
 no longer even seem to condone the opposite. 
 And yet he was evidently not one who dared to 
 withstand and rebuke evil ; the most he could do 
 was to abstain from it ; and the result was that he 
 saw the careless and evil-minded people about him 
 prosperous, happy and light-hearted, while he was 
 himself plunged by his own act in misunder- 
 standing and solitude and tears. 
 
 And then how strange to see this beautiful and 
 delicate confession put into so narrow and con- 
 strained a shape ! It is the most artificial by far of 
 all the psalms. The writer has chosen deliberately 
 one of the most cramping and confining forms 
 that could be devised. Each of the eight verses 
 that form the separate stanzas begins with the 
 same letter of the alphabet, and each of the letters 
 is used in turn. Think of attempting to do the 
 same in English — it could not be done at all. 
 And then in every single verse, except in one, 
 where the word has probably disappeared in 
 translation, by a mistake, there is a mention of the 
 law of God. Infinite pains must have gone to 
 the slow building of this curious structure; stone by 
 stone must have been carved and lifted to its place. 
 And yet the art is so great that I know no composi- 
 tion of the same length that has so perfect a unity of 
 mood and atmosphere. There is never a false or 
 alien note struck. It is never jubilant or conten-
 
 PSALM CXIX 105 
 
 tious or assertive — and, best of all, it is wholly 
 free from any touch of that complacency which is 
 the shadow of virtue. The writer never takes any 
 credit to himself for his firm adherence to the 
 truth ; he writes rather as one who has had a 
 gift of immeasurable value entrusted to unworthy 
 hands, who hardly dares to believe that it has been 
 granted him, and who still speaks as though he 
 might at any time prove unfaithful, as though his 
 weakness might suddenly betray him, and who 
 therefore has little temptation to exult in the 
 possession of anything which his own frail nature 
 might at any moment forfeit. 
 
 And thus, from its humility, its sense of weak- 
 ness and weariness, its consciousness of sin and 
 failure, combined with its deep apprehension of the 
 stainless beauty of the moral law, this lyric has 
 found its way to the hearts of all who find the 
 world and temptation and fear too strong, all who 
 through repeated failure have learned that they 
 cannot even be true to what they so pathetically 
 desire and admire ; who would be brave and 
 vigorous if they could, but, as it is, can only hope 
 to be just led step by step, helped over the 
 immediate difficulty, past the dreaded moment ; 
 whose heart often fails them, and who have little 
 of the joy of God ; who can only trust that, if 
 they go astray, the mercy of God will yet go out 
 to seek them ; who cannot even hope to run in the 
 way of God's beloved commandments, till He has 
 set their heart at liberty.
 
 106 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 March 8, 1889. 
 
 I went to see Darell, my old schoolfellow, a few 
 days ago ; he wrote to say that he would much 
 like to see me, but that he was ill and unable to 
 leave home — could I possibly come to see him ? 
 
 I have never seen very much of him since I left 
 Cambridge ; but there I was a good deal in his 
 company — and we have kept up our friendship ever 
 since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do 
 keep up their friendships, meeting perhaps two or 
 three times in the year, exchanging letters occa- 
 sionally. He was not a very intimate friend — 
 indeed, he was not a man who formed intimacies ; 
 but he was a congenial companion enough. He 
 was a frankly ambitious man. He went to the 
 bar, where he has done well ; he married a wife 
 with some money ; and I think his ultimate ambi- 
 tion has been to enter Parliament. He told me, 
 when I last saw him, that he had now, he thought, 
 made enough money for this, and that he would 
 probably stand at the next election. I have always 
 liked his wife, who is a sensible, good-natured 
 woman, with social ambitions. They live in a 
 good house in London, in a wealthy sort of way. 
 I arrived to luncheon, and sate a little while with 
 Mrs. Darell in the drawing-room. I became aware, 
 while I sate with her, that there was a sense of 
 anxiety in the air somehow, though she spoke 
 cheerfully enough of her husband, saying that he 
 had overworked himself, and had to lie up for a 
 little. When he came into the room I under-
 
 A SHADOW OF DEATH 107 
 
 stood. It was not that he was physically much 
 altered — he is a strongly-built fellow, with a san- 
 guine complexion and thick curly hair, now some- 
 what grizzled ; but I knew at the first sight of him 
 that matters were serious. He was quiet and 
 even cheerful in manner, but he had a look on 
 his face that I had never seen before, the look of 
 a man whose view of life has been suddenly altered, 
 and who is preparing himself for the last long 
 journey. I knew instinctively that he believed 
 himself a doomed man. He said very little about 
 himself, and I did not ask him much ; he talked 
 about my books, and a good deal about old friends; 
 but all with a sense, I thought, of detachment, as 
 though he were viewing everything over a sort of 
 intangible fence. After luncheon, we adjourned 
 to his study and smoked. He then said a few 
 words about his illness, and added that it had 
 altered his plans. " I am told," he said, " that I 
 must take a good long holiday — rather a difficult 
 job for a man who cares a great deal about his 
 work and very little about anything else ; " he 
 added a few medical details, from which I gathered 
 the nature of his illness. Then he went on to 
 talk of casual matters ; it seemed to interest him 
 to discuss what had been happening to our school 
 and college friends ; but I knew, without being 
 told, that he wished me to understand that he did 
 not expect to resume his place in the world — and 
 indeed I divined, by some dim communication of 
 the spirit, that he thought my visit was probably a 
 farewell. But he talked with unabated courage
 
 108 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 and interest, smiling where he would in old days 
 have laughed, and speaking of our friends with 
 more tenderness than was his wont. Only once 
 did he half betray what was in his mind : " It is 
 rather strange," he said, " to be pushed aside like 
 this, and to have to reconsider one's theories. I 
 did not expect to have to pull up — the path lay 
 plain before me — and now it seems to me as if 
 there were a good many things I had lost sight of. 
 Well, one must take things as they come, and I 
 don't think that if I had it all to do again I 
 should do otherwise." He changed the subject 
 rather hurriedly, and began to talk about my work. 
 " You are quite a great man now," he said with a 
 smile ; " I hear your books talked about wherever 
 I go — I used to wonder if you would have had 
 the patience to do anything — you were hampered 
 by having no need to earn your living; but you 
 have come out on the top." I told him something 
 about my own late experiences and my difficulty 
 in writing. He listened with undisguised interest. 
 " What do you make of it ?" he said. " Well," I 
 said, " you will think I am talking transcendent- 
 ally, but I have felt often of late as if there were 
 two strains in our life, two kinds of experience ; 
 at one time we have to do our work with all our 
 might, to get absorbed in it, to do what little we 
 can to enrich the world ; and then at another time 
 it is all knocked out of our hands, and we have to 
 sit and meditate — to realise that we are here on 
 sufferance, that what we can do matters very little 
 to any one — the same sort of feeling that I once
 
 COURAGE 109 
 
 had when old Hoskyns, in whose class I was, 
 threw an essay, over which I had taken a lot of 
 trouble, into his waste-paper basket before my 
 eyes without even looking it over. I see now that 
 I had got all the good I could out of the essay by 
 writing it, and that the credit of it mattered very 
 little ; but then I simply thought he was a very 
 disagreeable and idle old fellow." 
 
 u Yes," he said, smiling, " there is something in 
 that ; but one wants the marks as well — I have 
 always liked to be marked for my work. I am 
 glad you told me that story, old man." 
 
 We went on to talk of other things, and when I 
 rose to go, he thanked me rather effusively for my 
 kindness in coming to see him. He told me that 
 he was shortly going abroad, and that if I could 
 find time to write he would be grateful for a letter ; 
 " and when I am on my legs again," he said with 
 a smile, " we will have another meeting." 
 
 That was all that passed between us of actual 
 speech. Yet how much more seems to have been 
 implied than was said. I knew, as well as if he 
 had told me in so many words, that he did not 
 expect to see me again ; that he was in the valley 
 of the shadow, and wanted help and comfort. 
 Yet he could not have described to me what was 
 in his mind, and he would have resented it, I 
 think, if I had betrayed any consciousness of my 
 knowledge ; and yet he knew that I knew, I am 
 sure of that. 
 
 The interview affected me deeply and poignantly. 
 The man's patience and courage are very great ;
 
 no THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 but he has lived, frankly and laboriously, for per- 
 fectly definite things. He never had the least 
 sense of what is technically called religion ; he 
 was strong and temperate by nature, with a fine 
 sense of honour ; loving work and the rewards of 
 work, despising sentiment and emotion — indeed 
 his respect for me, of which I was fully conscious, is 
 the respect he feels for a sentimental man who has 
 made sentiment pay. It is very hard to see what 
 part the prospect of suffering and death is meant to 
 play in the life of such a man. It must be, surely, 
 that he has something even more real than what 
 he has held to be realities to learn from the sudden 
 snapping off of life and activity. I find myself 
 filled with an immense pity for him ; and yet if 
 my faith were a little stronger and purer, I should 
 congratulate rather than commiserate him. And 
 yet the thought of him in his bewilderment helps 
 me too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I 
 have received a message of truth, the message that 
 the accomplishment of our plans and cherished 
 designs is not the best thing that can befall us. 
 How easy to see that in the case of another, how 
 hard to see it in our own case ! But it has helped 
 me too to throw myself outside the morbid per- 
 plexities in which I am involved ; to hold out open 
 hands to the gift of God, even though He seems 
 to give me a stone for bread, a stinging serpent for 
 wholesome provender. It has taught me to pray 
 — not only for myself, but for all the poor souls 
 who are in the grip of a sorrow that they cannot 
 understand or bear.
 
 DUTY in 
 
 March 14, 1889. 
 
 The question that haunts me, the problem I 
 cannot disentangle, is what is or what ought our 
 purpose to be ? What is our duty in life ? Ought 
 we to discern a duty which lies apart from our 
 own desires and inclinations ? The moralist says 
 that it ought to be to help other people ; but 
 surely that is because the people, whom by some 
 instinct we deem the highest, have had the irre- 
 sistible desire to help others? How many people 
 has one ever known who have taken up philan- 
 thropy merely from a sense of rectitude ? The 
 people who have done most to help the world 
 along have been the people who have had an 
 overwhelming natural tenderness, an overflowing 
 love for helpless, weak, and unhappy people. That 
 is a thing which cannot be simulated. One knows 
 quite well, to put the matter simply, the extent of 
 one's own limitations. There are courses of action 
 which seem natural and easy ; others which seem 
 hard, but just possible ; others again which are 
 frankly impossible. However noble a life, for 
 instance, I thought the life of a missionary or of 
 a doctor to be, I could not under any circum- 
 stances adopt the role of either. There are certain 
 things which I might force myself to do which I 
 do not do, and which I practically know I shall 
 not do. And the number of people is very small 
 who, when circumstances suggest one course, reso- 
 lutely carry out another. The artistic life is a 
 very hard one to analyse, because at the outset
 
 U2 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 it seems so frankly selfish a life. One does what 
 one most desires to do, one develops one's own 
 nature, its faculties and powers. If one is success- 
 ful, the most one can claim is that one has perhaps 
 added a little to the sum of happiness, of innocent 
 enjoyment, that one has perhaps increased or fed 
 in a few people the perception of beauty. Of 
 course the difficulty is increased by the conven- 
 tional belief that any career is justified by success 
 in that career. And as long as a man attains a 
 certain measure of renown we do not question 
 very much the nature of his aims. 
 
 Then, again, if we put that all aside, and look 
 upon life as a thing that is given us to teach us 
 something, it is easy to think that it does not 
 matter very much what we do ; we take the line 
 of least resistance, and think that we shall learn 
 our lesson somehow. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that our one object 
 ought to be to thwart all our own desires and 
 impulses, to abstain from doing what we desire 
 to do, and to force ourselves continually to do 
 what we have no impulse to do. That is a philo- 
 sophical and stoical business, and would end at 
 best in a patient and courteous dreariness of spirit. 
 
 Neither does it seem a right solution to say : 
 " I will parcel out my energies — so much will I 
 give to myself, so much to others." It ought to 
 be a larger, more generous business than that ; 
 yet the people who give themselves most freely 
 away too often end by having very little to give ; 
 instead of having a store of ripe and wise reflec-
 
 DESIRED HARMONY 113 
 
 tion, they have generally little more than an official 
 smile, a kindly tolerance, a voluble stream of 
 commonplaces. 
 
 And then, too, it is hard to see, to speak 
 candidly, what God is doing in the matter. One 
 sees useful careers cut ruthlessly short, generous 
 qualities nullified by bad health or minute faults, 
 promise unfulfilled, men and women bound in 
 narrow, petty, uncongenial spheres, the whole 
 matter in a sad disorder. One sees one man's 
 influence spoilt by over-confidence, by too strong 
 a sense of his own significance, and another man 
 made ineffective by diffidence and self-distrust. 
 The best things of life, the most gracious oppor- 
 tunities, such as love and marriage, cannot be 
 entered upon from a sense of duty, but only from 
 an overpowering and instinctive impulse. 
 
 Is it not possible to arrive at some tranquil 
 harmony of life, some self-evolution, which should 
 at the same time be ardent and generous ? In my 
 own sad unrest of spirit, I seem to be alike incap- 
 able of working for the sake of others and working 
 to please myself. Perhaps that is but the symptom 
 of a moral disease, a malady of the soul. Yet if 
 that is so, and if one once feels that disease and 
 suffering is not a part of the great and gracious 
 purpose of God — if it is but a failure in His design 
 — the struggle is hopeless. One sees all around 
 one men and women troubled by no misgivings, 
 with no certain aim, just doing whatever the tide 
 of life impels them to do. My neighbour here is 
 a man who for years has gone up to town every 
 
 H
 
 ii4 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 clay to his office. He is perfectly contented, 
 absolutely happy. He has made more money 
 than he will ever need or spend, and he will leave 
 his children a considerable fortune. He is kind, 
 respectable, upright ; he is considered a thoroughly 
 enviable man, and indeed, if prosperity and con- 
 tentment are the sign and seal of God's approba- 
 tion, such a man is the highest work of God, and 
 has every reason to be an optimist. He would 
 think my questionings morbid and my desires 
 moonshine. He is not necessarily right any more 
 than I ; but his theory of life works out a good 
 deal better for him than mine for me. 
 
 Well, we drift, we drift ! Sometimes the sun 
 shines bright on the wave, and the wheeling birds 
 dip and hover, and our heart is full of song. But 
 sometimes we plunge on rising billows, with the 
 wind wailing, and the rain pricking the surface with 
 needle-points ; we are weary and uncomforted ; 
 and we do not know why we suffer, or why we 
 are glad. Sometimes I have a far-off hope that I 
 shall know, that I shall understand and be satisfied ; 
 but sometimes, alas, I fear that my soul will flare 
 out upon the darkness, and know no more either 
 of weal or woe. 
 
 March 20, 1889. 
 
 I am reading a great deal now ; but I find 
 that I turn naturally to books of a sad intimite 
 — books in which are revealed the sorrowful 
 cares and troubles of sensitive people. Partly, I
 
 THE CARLYLES 115 
 
 suppose, it is to get the sense of comfort which 
 comes from feeling that others have suffered too ; 
 but partly to find, if I can, some medicine for 
 my soul, in learning how others struggled out 
 of the mire. Thus I have been reading Froude's 
 Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters over again, 
 and they have moved me strangely and deeply. 
 Perhaps it is mostly that I have felt, in these 
 dark months, drawn to the society of two brave 
 people — she was brave in her silences, he in 
 the way in which he stuck doggedly to his work 
 — who each suffered so horribly, so imaginatively, 
 so inexplicably, and, alas, it would seem, so un- 
 necessarily ! Of course Carlyle indulged his 
 moods, while Mrs. Carlyle fought against hers ; 
 moreover, he had the instinct for translating 
 thoughts, instantaneously and volubly, into 
 vehement picturesque speech. How he could 
 bite in a picture, an ugly, ill-tempered one 
 enough very often, as when he called Coleridge 
 a "weltering" man! Many of his sketches are 
 mere Gillray caricatures of people, seen through 
 bile unutterable, exasperated by nervous irrita- 
 bility. And Mrs. Carlyle had a mordant wit 
 enough. But still both of them had an fond a 
 deep need of love, and a power of lavishing 
 love. It comes out in the old man's whimsical 
 notes and prefaces ; and indeed it is true to 
 say that if a person once actually penetrated 
 into Carlyle's inner circle, he found himself loved 
 hungrily and devotedly, and never forgotten or 
 cast out. And as to Mrs. Carlyle, I suppose
 
 n6 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 it was impossible to be near her and not to 
 love her ! This comes out in glimpses in her 
 sad pathological letters. There is a scene she 
 describes, how she returned home after some 
 long and serious bout of illness, when her cook 
 and housemaid rushed into the street, kissed 
 her, and wept on her neck ; while two of her 
 men friends, Mr. Cooke and Lord Houghton, 
 who called in the course of the evening, to her 
 surprise and obvious pleasure, did the very same. 
 The result on myself, after reading the books, is 
 to feel myself one of the circle, to want to do 
 something for them, to wring the necks of the 
 cocks who disturbed Carlyle's sleep ; and some- 
 times, alas, to rap the old man's fingers for his 
 blind inconsiderateness and selfishness. I came 
 the other day upon a passage in a former book 
 of my own, where I said something sneering 
 and derisive about the pair, and I felt deep 
 shame and contrition for having written it — 
 and, more than that, I felt a sort of disgust 
 for the fact that I have spent so much time in 
 writing fiction. Books like the Life of Carlyle 
 and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters take the wind out of 
 one's imaginative faculties altogether, because 
 one is confronted with the real stuff of life in 
 them. Life, that hard, stubborn, inconclusive, 
 inconsistent, terrible thing ! It is, of course, that 
 very hardness and inconclusiveness that makes 
 one turn to fiction. In fiction, one can round 
 off the corners, repair mistakes, comfort, idealise, 
 smooth things down, make error and weakness
 
 FICTION AND FACT 117 
 
 bear good fruit, choose, develop as one pleases. 
 Not so with life, where things go from bad to 
 worse, misunderstandings grow and multiply, 
 suffering does not purge, sorrow does not uplift. 
 That is the worst of fiction, that it deludes one 
 into thinking that one can deal gently with life, 
 finish off the picture, arrange things on one's 
 own little principles ; and then, as in my own 
 case, life brings one up against some monstrous, 
 grievous, intolerable fact, that one can neither 
 look round or over, and the scales fall from 
 one's eyes. With what courage, tranquillity or 
 joy is one to meet a thoroughly disagreeable 
 situation ? The more one leans on the hope 
 that it may amend, the weaker one grows ; the 
 thing to realise is that it is bad, that it is in- 
 evitable, that it has arrived, and to let the 
 terror and misery do their worst, soak into the 
 soul and not run off it. Only then can one 
 hope to be different ; only so can one climb the 
 weary ladder of patience and faith. 
 
 March 28, 1889. 
 
 Low-hung ragged grey skies, heaven smeared 
 with watery vapours fleeting, broken and mourn- 
 ful, from the west — these above me, as I stand by 
 the old lichened gate of the high wind-swept field 
 at the top of the wold. In front a stretch of 
 rough common, the dark - brown heather, the 
 young gorse, bluish - green, the rusty red of 
 soaked bracken, the pale ochre-coloured grass,
 
 n8 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 all blent into a rich tint that pleases the eye 
 with its wild freshness. To the left, the wide 
 flat level of the plain, with low hills rising on 
 its verge : to the right, a pale pool of water at the 
 bottom of a secret valley, reflecting the leafless 
 bushes that fringe it, catches the sunset gleam that 
 rises in the west ; and then range after range of 
 wolds, with pale-green pastures, dark copses, fawn- 
 coloured ploughland, here and there an emerald 
 patch of young wheat. The air is fresh, soft and 
 fragrant, laden with rain ; the earth smells sweet ; 
 and the wild woodland scent comes blowing to 
 me out of the heart of the spinney. In front of 
 me glimmer the rough wheel-tracks of a grassy 
 road that lead out on to the heath, and two ob- 
 scure figures move slowly nearer among the tufted 
 gorse. They seem to me, those two figures, 
 charged with a grave significance, as though 
 they came to bear me tidings, messengers bidden 
 to seek and find me, like the men who visited 
 Abraham at the close of the day. 
 
 As I linger, the day grows darker, the colour 
 fading from leaf and blade ; bright points of light 
 flash out among the dark ridges from secluded 
 farms, where the evening lamp is lit. 
 
 Sometimes on days like this, when the moisture 
 hangs upon the hedges, when the streams talk 
 hoarsely to themselves in grassy channels, when 
 the road is full of pools, one is weary, unstrung 
 and dissatisfied, faint of purpose, tired of labour, 
 desiring neither activity nor rest; the soul sits brood- 
 ing, like the black crows that I see in the leafless
 
 THE PILGRIMAGE 119 
 
 wood beneath me, perched silent and draggled on 
 the tree-tops, just waiting for the sun and the dry 
 keen airs to return ; but to-day it is not so ; I am 
 full of a quiet hope, an acquiescent tranquillity. 
 My heart talks gently to itself, as to an unseen 
 friend, telling its designs, its wishes, its activities. I 
 think of those I hold dear, all the world over ; I am 
 glad that they are alive, and believe that they think 
 of me. All the air seems full of messages, thoughts 
 and confidences and welcomes passing to and 
 fro, binding souls to each other, and all to God. 
 There seems to be nothing that one needs to do 
 to-day except to live one's daily life ; to be kind 
 and joyful. To-day the road of pilgrimage lies 
 very straight and clear between its fences, in an 
 open ground, with neither valley nor hill, no 
 by-path, no turning. One can even see the gables 
 and chimneys of some grave house of welcome, 
 " a roof for when the dark hours begin," full of 
 pious company and smiling maidens. And not, it 
 seems, a false security ; one is not elated, confi- 
 dent, strong ; one knows one's weakness ; but I 
 think that the Lord of the land has lately passed 
 by with a smile, and given command that the 
 pilgrims shall have a space of quiet. These birds, 
 these branching trees, have not yet lost the joy of 
 His passing. There, along the grassy tracks, His 
 patient footsteps went, how short a time ago ! 
 One does not hope that all the journey will be 
 easy and untroubled ; there will be fresh burdens 
 to be borne, dim valleys full of sighs to creep 
 through, dark waters to wade across ; these feet
 
 120 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 will stumble and bleed ; these knees will be weary 
 before the end ; but to-day there is no doubt 
 about the pilgrimage, no question of the far-off 
 goal. The world is sad, perhaps, but sweet ; sad 
 as the homeless clouds that drift endlessly across 
 the sky from marge to marge ; sweet as the note 
 of the hidden bird, that rises from moment to 
 moment from the copse beside me, again and yet 
 again, telling of a little heart that is content to 
 wait, and not ill-pleased to be alone with its own 
 soft thoughts. 
 
 April 4, 1889. 
 
 Down in the valley which runs below the house 
 is a mill. I passed it to-day at dusk, and I thought 
 I had never seen so characteristically English a 
 scene. The wheel was silent, and the big boarded 
 walls, dusted with flour, loomed up solemnly in 
 the evening light. The full leat dashed merrily 
 through the sluice, making holiday, like a child 
 released from school. Behind was the stack-yard, 
 for it is a farm as well as a mill ; and in the byre 
 I heard the grunting of comfortable pigs, and the 
 soft pulling of the hay from the big racks by the 
 bullocks. The fowls were going to roost, fluttering 
 up every now and then into the big elder-bushes ; 
 while high above, in the apple-trees, I saw great 
 turkeys settled precariously for the night. The 
 orchard was silent, except for the murmur of the 
 stream that bounds it. In the mill-house itself 
 lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a
 
 THE MILLER 121 
 
 pleasant family-party gathered at their evening 
 meal. The whole scene with its background of 
 sloping meadows and budding woods so tranquil 
 and contented — a scene which William Morris 
 would have loved — for there is a pleasant grace 
 of antiquity about the old house, a sense of 
 homely and solid life, and of all the family 
 associations that have gone to the making of it, 
 generation after generation leaving its mark in the 
 little alterations and additions that have met a need, 
 or even satisfied a pleasant fancy. 
 
 The miller is an elderly man now, fond of work, 
 prosperous, good-humoured. His son lives with 
 him, and the house is full of grandchildren. I do 
 not say that it puzzles me to divine what is the 
 miller's view of life, because I think I know it. It 
 is to make money honestly, to bring up his grand- 
 children virtuously and comfortably, to enjoy his 
 daily work and his evening leisure. He is never 
 idle, never preoccupied. He enjoys getting the 
 mill started, seeing the flour stream into the sacks, 
 he enjoys going to market, he enjoys going pros- 
 perously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his 
 paper and his pipe. He has no exalted ideas, 
 and he could not put a single emotion into words, 
 but he is thoroughly honest, upright, manly, kind, 
 sensible. A perfect life in many ways ; and yet it 
 is inconceivable to me that a man should live thus, 
 without an aim, without a hope, without an object. 
 He would think my own life even more inconceiv- 
 able — that a man could deliberately sit down day 
 after day to construct a story about imaginary
 
 122 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 people ; and such respect as he feels for me, is 
 mainly due to the fact that my writings bring me 
 in a larger income than he could ever make from 
 his mill. But of course he is a man who is 
 normally healthy, and such men as he are the 
 props of rural life. He is a good master, he sees 
 that his men do their work, and are well housed. 
 He is not generous exactly, but he is neighbourly. 
 The question is whether such as he is the proper 
 type of humanity. He represents the simple 
 virtues at their high-water mark. He is entirely 
 contented, and his desires are perfectly propor- 
 tioned to their surroundings. He seems indeed 
 to be exactly what the human creature ought to be. 
 And yet his very virtues, his sense of justice and 
 honesty, his sensible kindliness, are the outcome 
 of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in reality, of 
 the dreams of saints and sages and idealists — the 
 men who felt that things could be better, and who 
 were made miserable by the imperfections of the 
 world. I cannot help wondering, in a whimsical 
 moment, what would have been the miller's 
 thoughts of Christ, if he had been confronted 
 with Him in the flesh. He would have thought 
 of Him rather contemptuously, I think, as a 
 bewildering, unpractical, emotional man. The 
 miller would not have felt the appeal of unselfish- 
 ness and unworldliness, because his ideal of life 
 is tranquil prosperity. He would have merely 
 wondered why people could not hold their tongues 
 and mind their business : and yet he is a model 
 citizen, and would be deeply annoyed if he were
 
 A PROVISIONAL FAITH 123 
 
 told he were not a sincere Christian. He accepts 
 doctrinal statements as he would accept mathe- 
 matical formulae, and he takes exactly as much 
 of the Christian doctrine as suits him. Now when 
 I compare myself with the miller, I feel that, as far 
 as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the 
 scale. I am, when all is said and done, a drone in 
 the hive, eating the honey I did not make. I do 
 not take my share in the necessary labour of the 
 world, I do not regulate a little community of 
 labourers with uprightness and kindness, as he 
 does. But still I suppose that my more sensitive 
 organisation has a meaning in the scale of things. 
 I cannot have been made and developed as I am, 
 outside of the purpose of God. And yet my work 
 in the world is not that of the passionate idealist, 
 that kindles men with the hope of bettering and 
 amending the world. What is it that my work 
 does ? It fills a vacant hour for leisurely people, 
 it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes some 
 pleasant dreams. The most that I can say is that 
 I have a wife whom I desire to make happy, and 
 children whom I desire to bring up innocently, 
 purely, vigorously. 
 
 Must one's hopes and beliefs be thus tentative 
 and provisional ? Must one walk through life, 
 never fathoming the secret ? I have myself abun- 
 dance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know 
 that for one like myself, there are hundreds less 
 fortunate. Yet happiness in this world depends 
 very little upon circumstances ; it depends far 
 more upon a certain mixture of selfishness,
 
 124 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 tranquillity, temperance, bodily vigour, and un- 
 imaginativeness. To be happy, one must be 
 good-humouredly indifferent to the sufferings of 
 others, and indisposed to forecast the possibilities 
 of disaster. The sadness which must shadow the 
 path of such as myself, is the sadness which comes 
 of the power to see clearly the imperfections of the 
 world, coupled with the inability to see through it, 
 to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts 
 oneself by the dim hope that the desire will be 
 satisfied and the dream fulfilled ; but has one any 
 certainty of that ? The temptation is to acquiesce 
 in a sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one 
 can get, to avoid as far as possible all deep 
 attachments, all profound hopes, to steel oneself 
 in indifference. That is what such men as my 
 miller do instinctively ; meanwhile one tries to 
 believe that the melancholy that comes to such 
 as Hamlet, the sadness of finding the world un- 
 intelligible, and painful, and full of shadows, is a 
 noble melancholy, a superior sort of madness. 
 Yet one is not content to bear, to suffer, to wait ; 
 one clutches desperately at light and warmth and 
 joy, and alas, in joy and sorrow alike, one is ever 
 and insupportably alone. 
 
 April 9, 1889. 
 
 I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find 
 him a very incomprehensible figure. The Con- 
 fessions, it must be said, is a dingy and sordid 
 book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which
 
 ROUSSEAU 125 
 
 induced him to write them. It cannot have been 
 pure vanity, because he does not spare himself ; 
 he might have made himself out a far more 
 romantic and attractive character, if he had sup- 
 pressed the shadows and heightened the lights. I 
 am inclined to think that it was partly vanity and 
 partly honesty. Vanity was the motive force, and 
 honesty the accompanying mood. I do not sup- 
 pose there is any document so transparently true 
 in existence, and we ought to be thankful for that. 
 It is customary to say that Rousseau had the soul 
 of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant that he 
 had a gross and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for 
 low pleasures, and an ill-bred absence of con- 
 sideration for others. He had all these qualities 
 certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was 
 upright and disinterested. He had a noble dis- 
 regard of material advantages ; he had an enthu- 
 siasm for virtue, a passionate love of humanity, a 
 deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual 
 man nor a philosopher ; and yet what a ridiculous 
 criticism is that which is generally made upon 
 him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge 
 scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes ! 
 The very reason which made Rousseau so tre- 
 mendous an influence was that his point of view 
 was poetical rather than philosophical ; he was 
 not too far removed from the souls to which 
 he prophesied. What they needed was inspira- 
 tion, emotion, and sentimental dogma ; these he 
 could give, and so he saved Europe from the 
 philosophers and the cynics. Of course it is a
 
 126 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion, 
 ill-health, insanity ; but one tends to forget the 
 prevalent coarseness of social tone at that date, 
 not because Rousseau made any secret of it, but 
 because none of his contemporaries dared to be 
 so frank. If Rousseau had struck out a dozen 
 episodes from the Confessions the result would 
 have been a highly poetical, reflective, charming 
 book. I can easily conceive that it might have a 
 very bad effect upon an ingenuous mind, because 
 it might be argued from what he says that moral 
 lapses do not very much matter, and that emotional 
 experience is worth the price of some animalism. 
 Still more perniciously it might induce one to 
 believe that a man may have a deep sense of reli- 
 gion side by side with an unbridled sensuality, 
 and that one whose life is morally infamous may 
 yet be able to quicken the moral temperature of 
 great nations. 
 
 Some of the critics of Rousseau speak as though 
 a man whose moral code was so loose, and whose 
 practice was so libidinous, ought almost to have 
 held his tongue on matters of high moral import. 
 But this is a very false line of argument. A man 
 may see a truth clearly, even if he cannot practise 
 it ; and an affirmation of a passionate belief in 
 virtue is emphasised and accentuated when it 
 comes from the lips of one who might be tempted 
 rather to excuse his faults by preaching the irre- 
 sistible character of evil. 
 
 To any one who reads wisely, and not in a 
 censorious and Pharisaical spirit, this sordid record,
 
 ROUSSEAU 
 
 127 
 
 which is yet interspersed with things so fragrant 
 and beautiful, may have a sobering and uplifting 
 effect. One sees a man hampered by ill-health, by 
 a temperament childishly greedy of momentary 
 pleasure, by irritability, suspicion, vanity and 
 luxuriousness, again and again expressing a deep 
 belief in unselfish emotion, a passionate desire to 
 help struggling humanity onward, a child-like con- 
 fidence in the goodness and tenderness of the 
 Father of all. Disgust and admiration struggle 
 strangely together. One cannot sympathise and 
 yet one dare not condemn. One feels a horrible 
 suspicion that there are dark and slimy corners, 
 vile secrets, ugly memories, in the minds of 
 hundreds of seemingly respectable people ; the 
 book brings one face to face with the mystery of 
 evil ; and yet through the gloom there steals a 
 silvery radiance, a far-off hope, an infinite com- 
 passion or all weakness and imperfection. One 
 can hardly love Rousseau, though one does not 
 wonder that there were many found to do so ; and 
 instead of judging him, one cries out with horror 
 at the slime of the pit where he lay bound. 
 
 April 14, 1889. 
 
 A delusion of which we must beware is the 
 delusion that we can have a precise and accurate 
 knowledge of spiritual things. This is a delusion 
 into which the exponents of settled religions are 
 apt to fall. The Roman Catholic, with his belief 
 in the infallible Church, as the interpreter of
 
 128 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 God's spirit, which is nothing more than a belief 
 in the inspiration of the majority, or even a belief 
 in the inspiration of a bureaucracy, is the prey 
 of this delusion. The Protestant, too, with his 
 legal creed, built up of texts and precedents, in 
 which the argumentative dicta of Apostles and 
 Evangelists are as weighty and important as the 
 words of the Saviour Himself, falls under this 
 delusion. I read the other day a passage from 
 a printed sermon of an orthodox type, an acrid 
 outcry against Liberalism in religion, which may 
 illustrate what I mean. 
 
 "To St. Paul and St. John," said the preacher, 
 "the natural or carnal man is hopelessly remote 
 from God ; the same Lord who came to make 
 possible for man this intimate communion with 
 God is careful to make it clear that this com- 
 munion is only possible to redeemed, regenerate 
 man; prior to new birth into the Kingdom of God, 
 far from being a son of God, man is, according 
 to the Lord Himself, a child of the devil, however 
 potentially capable of being translated from death 
 into life." 
 
 Such teaching is so horrible and abominable 
 that it is hard to find words to express one's sense 
 of its shamefulness. To attribute it to the Christ, 
 who came to seek and save what is lost, is an act 
 of traitorous wickedness. If Christ had made it 
 His business to thunder into the ears of the out- 
 casts, whom He preferred to the Scribes and 
 Pharisees this appalling message, where would 
 His teaching be ? What message of hope would
 
 A PERVERTED FAITH 129 
 
 it hold for the soul ? Such a view of Christianity 
 as this insults alike the soul and the mind and 
 the heart ; it deliberately insults God ; the message 
 of Christ to the vilest human spirit is that it is 
 indeed, in spite of all its corruption, its falls, its 
 shame, in very truth God's own child ; it calls 
 upon the sinner to recognise it, it takes for 
 granted that he feels it. The people whom 
 Christ denounced with indignation so fiery, so 
 blasting, that it even seems inconsistent with His 
 perfect gentleness, were the people who thus pro- 
 fessed to know and interpret the mind of God, 
 who bade the sinner believe that He was a 
 merciless judge, extreme to mark what is done 
 amiss, when the one secret was that He was the 
 tenderest and most loving of Fathers. But ac- 
 cording to this preacher's terrible doctrine God 
 pours into the world a stream of millions of human 
 beings, all children of the devil, with instincts of a 
 corrupt kind, hampered by dreadful inheritances, 
 doomed, from their helpless and reluctant birth, 
 to be sinful here and lost hereafter, and then 
 prescribes to them a hard and difficult path, 
 beset by clamorous guides, pointing in a hundred 
 different directions, bidding them find the intricate 
 way to His Heart, or perish. The truth is the 
 precise opposite. The divine voice says to every 
 man : " Hampered and sore hindered as you are, 
 you are yet My dearly beloved son and child ; 
 only turn to Me, only open your heart to Me, 
 only struggle, however faintly, to be what you 
 can desire to be, and I will guide and lead you 
 
 I
 
 130 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 to Myself ; all that is needed is that your heart 
 should be on My side in the battle. Even your 
 sins matter little, provided that you can say 
 sincerely, ' If it were mine to choose and ordain, 
 I would never willingly do evil again.' I know, 
 better even than you yourself know, your diffi- 
 culties, your temptations, your weaknesses ; the 
 sorrow they bring upon you is no dreary and 
 vindictive punishment, it is the loving correction 
 of My hand, and will bring you into peace yet, if 
 only you will trust Me, and not despair." 
 
 The world is full of dreadful things, pains and 
 sorrow and miseries, but the worst of all are the 
 dreary wretchednesses of our own devising. The 
 old detestable doctrine of Hell, the idea that the 
 stubborn and perverse spirit can defy God, and 
 make its black choice, is simply an attempt to 
 glorify the strength of the human spirit and to 
 belittle the Love of God. It denies the truth that 
 God, if He chose, could show the darkest soul the 
 beauty of holiness in so constraining a way that 
 the frail nature must yield to the appeal. To 
 deny this, is to deny the omnipotence of the 
 Creator. No man would deliberately reject peace 
 and joy, if he could see how to find them, in 
 favour of feverish evil and ceaseless suffering. If 
 we believe that God is perfect love, it is incon- 
 ceivable that He should make a creature capable 
 of defying His utmost tenderness, unless He had 
 said to Himself, " I will make a poor wretch who 
 shall defy Me, and he shall suffer endlessly and 
 mercilessly in consequence." The truth is that
 
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES 131 
 
 God's Omnipotence is limited by His Omnipo- 
 tence ; He could not, for instance, abolish Him- 
 self, nor create a power that should be greater 
 than He. But if He indeed can give to evil such 
 vitality that it can defy Him for ever, then He is 
 creating a power that is stronger than Himself. 
 
 While the mystery of evil is unexplained, we 
 must all be content to know that we do not know; 
 for the thing is insoluble by human thought. If 
 God be all-pervading, all-in-all, it is impossible to 
 conceive anything coming into being alien to 
 Himself, within Himself. If He created spirits 
 able to choose evil, He must have created the 
 evil for them to choose, for a man could not 
 choose what did not exist ; if man can defy God, 
 God must have given him the thought of defiance, 
 for no thought can enter the mind of man not 
 permitted by God. 
 
 With this mystery unsolved, we cannot pretend 
 to any knowledge of spiritual things ; all that we 
 can do is to recognise that the principle of Love 
 is stronger than the principle of evil, and cling 
 so far as we can cling to the former. But to 
 set ourselves up to guide and direct other men, 
 as the preacher did whose words I have quoted, 
 is to set oneself in the place of God, and is a 
 detestable tyranny. Only by our innate sense 
 of Justice and Love can we apprehend God at 
 all ; and thus we are safe in this, that whenever 
 we find any doctrine preached by any human 
 being which insults our sense of justice and love, 
 we may gladly reject it, saying that at least we
 
 i 3 2 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 will not believe that God gives us the power, on 
 the one hand, to recognise our highest and truest 
 instincts, and on the other directs us to outrage 
 them. Such teaching as this we can infallibly 
 recognise as a human perversion and not as a 
 divine message ; and we may thankfully and 
 gratefully believe that the obstacles and diffi- 
 culties, the temptations and troubles, which seem 
 to be strewn so thickly in our path, are to de- 
 velop rather than to thwart our strivings after 
 good, and assuredly designed to minister to our 
 ultimate happiness, rather than to our ultimate 
 despair. 
 
 April i*„ 1889. 
 
 I found to-day on a shelf a Manual of Prepara- 
 tion for Holy Communion, which was given me 
 when I was confirmed. I stood a long time read- 
 ing it, and little ghosts seemed to rustle in its 
 pages. How well I remember using it, diligently 
 and carefully, trying to force myself into the atti- 
 tude of mind that it inculcated, and humbly and 
 sincerely believing myself wicked, reprobate, stony- 
 hearted, because I could not do it successfully. 
 Shall I make a curious confession ? From quite 
 early days, the time of first waking in the morning 
 has been apt to be for me a time of mental agita- 
 tion ; any unpleasant and humiliating incident, any 
 disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart 
 into my brain, which, unstrung and weakened by 
 sleep, has often been disposed to view things with
 
 THE MEANING OF SIN 133 
 
 a certain poignancy of distress at that hour — a 
 distress which I always knew would vanish the 
 moment I felt my feet on the carpet. I used to 
 take advantage of this to use my Manual at that 
 hour, because by that I secured a deeper intensity 
 of repentance, and I have often succeeded in in- 
 ducing a kind of tearful condition by those means, 
 which I knew perfectly well to be artificial, but 
 which yet seemed to comply with the rules of the 
 process. 
 
 The kind of repentance indicated in the book 
 as appropriate was a deep abasement, a horror 
 and hatred of one's sinful propensities ; and the 
 language used seems to me now not only hollow 
 and meaningless, but to insult the dignity of the 
 soul, and to be indeed a profound confession of a 
 want of confidence in the methods and purposes 
 of God. Surely the right attitude is rather a manly, 
 frank, and hopeful co-operation with God, than a 
 degraded kind of humiliation. One was invited 
 to contemplate God's detestation of sin, His awful 
 and stainless holiness. How unreal, how utterly 
 false ! It is no more reasonable than to inculcate 
 in human beings a sense of His hatred of weak- 
 ness, of imperfection, of disease, of suffering. One 
 might as well say that God's courage and beauty 
 were so perfect that He had an impatient loathing 
 for anything timid or ugly. If one said that being 
 perfect He had an infinite pity for imperfection, 
 that would be nearer the truth — but, even so, how 
 far away ! To believe in His perfect love and 
 benevolence, one must also believe that all short-
 
 134 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 comings, all temptations, all sufferings, somehow 
 emanate from Him ; that they are educative, and 
 have an intense and beautiful significance — that is 
 what one struggles, how hardly, to believe ! Those 
 childish sins, they were but the expression of the 
 nature one received from His hand, that wilful, 
 pleasure - loving, timid, fitful nature, which yet 
 always desired the better part, if only it could 
 compass it, choose it, love it. To hate one's 
 nature and temperament and disposition, how 
 impossible, unless one also hated the God who 
 had bestowed them ! And then, too, how in- 
 extricably intertwined ! The very part of one's 
 soul that made one peace - loving, affectionate, 
 trustful was the very thing that led one into 
 temptation. The very humility and diffidence that 
 made one hate to seem or to be superior to others 
 was the occasion of falling. The religion recom- 
 mended was a religion of scrupulous saints and 
 self-torturing ascetics ; and the result of it was to 
 make one, as experience widened and deepened, 
 mournfully indifferent to an ideal which seemed 
 so utterly out of one's reach. It is very difficult 
 to make the right compromise. On the one hand, 
 there is the sense of moral responsibility and effort, 
 which one desires to cultivate; on the other hand, 
 truth compels us to recognise our limitations, and 
 to confess boldly the fact that moral improvement 
 is a very difficult thing. The question is whether, 
 in dealing with other people, we will declare what 
 we believe to be the truth, or whether we will 
 tamper with the truth for a good motive. Ought
 
 THE DAILY PRAYER 135 
 
 we to pretend that we think a person morally 
 responsible and morally culpable, when we be- 
 lieve that he is neither, for the sake of trying to 
 improve him ? 
 
 My own practice now is to waste as little time 
 as possible in ineffectual regrets, but to keep alive 
 as far as I can in my heart a hope, a desire, that 
 God will help to bring me nearer to the ideal that 
 I can perceive and cannot reach. To-day, turning 
 over the pages of the old Manual, with its fantastic 
 strained phrases staring at me from the page, I 
 cannot help wishing that some wise and tender 
 person had been able to explain to me the con- 
 ditions as I now see them. Probably the thing 
 was incommunicable ; one must learn for oneself 
 both one's bitterness and one's joy. 
 
 May 2, 1889. 
 
 It sometimes happens to me — I suppose it hap- 
 pens to every one — to hear some well-meaning 
 person play or sing at a party. Last night, at 
 the Simpsons', a worthy young man, who was 
 staying there, sang some Schubert songs in a 
 perfectly correct, weak, inexpressive voice, ac- 
 companying himself in a wooden and inanimate 
 fashion — the whole thing might have been turned 
 out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful 
 mood. "Good God !" I thought to myself, "what 
 is the meaning of this woeful performance ? — a 
 party of absurd dressed-up people, who have 
 eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in
 
 136 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious 
 performance ! And this is the best that Schubert 
 can do ! This is the real Schubert ! Here have 
 I been all my life pouring pints of subjective 
 emotion into this dreary writer of songs, believ- 
 ing that I was stirred and moved, when it was 
 my own hopes and aspirations all along, which 
 I was stuffing into this conventional vehicle, just 
 as an ecclesiastical person puts his emotion into 
 the grotesque repetitions of a liturgy." I thought 
 to myself that I had made a discovery, and that 
 all was vanity. Well, we thanked the singer 
 gravely enough, and went on, smiling and grimac- 
 ing, to talk local gossip. A few minutes later, a 
 young girl, very shy and painfully ingenuous, was 
 hauled protesting to the piano. I could see her 
 hands tremble as she arranged her music, and the 
 first chords she struck were halting and timid. 
 Then she began to sing — it was some simple old- 
 fashioned song — what had happened ? the world 
 was somehow different ; she had one of those low 
 thrilling voices, charged with utterly inexplicable 
 emotion, haunted with old mysterious echoes out 
 of some region of dreams, so near and yet so far 
 away. I do not think that the girl had any great 
 intensity of mind, or even of soul, neither was she 
 a great performer ; but there was some strange 
 and beautiful quality about the voice, that now 
 rose clear and sustained, while the accompaniment 
 charged and tinged the pure notes with glad or 
 mournful visions, like wine poured into water ; 
 now the voice fell and lingered, like a clear stream
 
 THE SONG 137 
 
 among rocks, pathetic, appealing, stirring a deep 
 hunger of the spirit, and at the same time hinting 
 at a hope, at a secret almost within one's grasp. 
 How can one find words to express a thing so 
 magical, so inexpressible ? But it left me feeling 
 as though to sing thus was the one thing worth 
 doing in the world, because it seemed to interpret, 
 to reveal, to sustain, to console — it was as though 
 one opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and 
 saw through it a deep and silent glen, with wood- 
 lands stooping to a glimmering stream, with a 
 blue stretch of plain beyond, and an expanse of 
 sunny seas on the rim of the sky. 
 
 I have had similar experiences before. I have 
 looked in a gallery at picture after picture — bright, 
 soulless, accomplished things — and asked myself 
 how it was possible for men and women to spend 
 their time so elaborately to no purpose ; and then 
 one catches sight of some little sketch — a pool 
 in the silence of high summer, the hot sun blazing 
 on tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants, 
 with a single figure in a moored boat, musing 
 dreamily ; and at once one is transported into a 
 region of thrilled wonder. What is it all about ? 
 What is this sudden glimpse into a life so rich 
 and strange ? In what quiet country is it all 
 enacted, what land of sweet visions ? What do 
 the tall trees and the sleeping pool hide from me, 
 and in what romantic region of joy and sadness 
 does the dreamer muse for ever, in the long after- 
 noon, so full of warmth and fragrance and mur- 
 murous sound? That is the joy of art, of the
 
 138 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 symbol — that it remains and rests within itself, 
 in a world that seems, for a moment, more real 
 and true than the clamorous and obtrusive world 
 we move in. 
 
 It is so all along the line — the hard and soulless 
 art of technique and rule, of tradition and precept, 
 however accomplished, however perfect it is, is 
 worth nothing ; it is only another dreary form 
 of labour, unless through some faculty of the 
 spirit, some vital intensity, or even some inex- 
 plicable felicity, not comprehended, not designed, 
 not intended by the artist, it has this remote and 
 suggestive quality. And thus suddenly, in the 
 midst of this weary beating of instruments, this 
 dull laying of colour by colour, of word by word, 
 there breaks in the awful and holy presence ; and 
 then one feels, as I have said, that this thrill, this 
 message, this oracle, is the one thing in the world 
 worth striving after, and that indeed one may 
 forgive all the dull efforts of those who cannot 
 attain it, because perhaps they too have felt the 
 call, and have thrown themselves into the eternal 
 quest. 
 
 And it is true too of life ; one is brought near 
 to many people, and one asks oneself in a chilly 
 discomfort what is the use of it all, living thus 
 in hard and futile habits, on dull and conventional 
 lines ; and then again one is suddenly confronted 
 by some personality, rich in hope and greatness, 
 touching the simplest acts of life with an un- 
 earthly light, making them gracious and beautiful, 
 and revealing them as the symbols of some pure
 
 THE ART OF LIVING 139 
 
 and high mystery. Sometimes this is revealed by 
 a word, sometimes by a glance ; perfectly virtuous, 
 capable, successful people may miss it ; humble, 
 simple, quiet people may have it. One cannot 
 analyse it or describe it ; but one has instantane- 
 ously a sense that life is a thing of large issues 
 and great hopes ; that every action and thought, 
 however simple or commonplace, may be touched 
 with this large quality of interest, of significance. 
 It is a great happiness to meet such a person, 
 because one goes in the strength of that heavenly 
 meat many days and nights, knowing that life is 
 worth living to the uttermost, and that it can all 
 be beautiful and lofty and gracious ; but the way 
 to miss it, to lose that fine sense, is to have some 
 dull and definite design of one's own, which makes 
 one treat all the hours in which one cannot 
 pursue it, but as the dirt and debris of a quarry. 
 One must not, I see, wait for the golden moments 
 of life, because there are no moments that are 
 not golden, if one can but pierce into their 
 essence. Yet how is one to realise this, to put 
 it into practice ? I have of late, in my vacuous 
 mood, fallen into the dark error of thinking of the 
 weary hours as of things that must be just lived 
 through, and endured, and beguiled, if possible, 
 until the fire again fall. But life is a larger and 
 a nobler business than that ; and one learns the 
 lesson sooner, if one takes the suffering home to 
 one's soul, not as a tedious interlude, but as the 
 very melody and march of life itself, even though it 
 crash into discords, or falter in a sombre monotony.
 
 140 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 The point is that when one seems to be playing 
 a part to one's own satisfaction, when one appears 
 to oneself to be brilliant, suggestive, inspiriting, 
 and genial, one is not necessarily ministering to 
 other people ; while, on the other hand, when one 
 is dull, troubled, and anxious, out of heart and 
 discontented, one may have the chance of making 
 others happier. Here is a whimsical instance ; in 
 one of my dreariest days — I was in London on 
 business — I sate next to an old friend, generally a 
 very lively, brisk, and cheerful man, who appeared 
 to me strangely silent and depressed. I led him 
 on to talk freely, and he told me a long tale of 
 anxieties and cares ; his health was unsatisfactory, 
 his plans promised ill. In trying to paint a 
 brighter picture, to reassure and encourage him, 
 I not only forgot my own troubles, but put some 
 hope into him. We had met, two tired and 
 dispirited men, we went away cheered and 
 encouraged, aware that we were not each of us 
 the only sufferer in the world and that there were 
 possibilities still ahead of us all, nay, in our grip, if 
 we only were not blind and forgetful. 
 
 May 8, 1889. 
 
 I saw the other day a great artist working on a 
 picture in its initial stages. There were a few lines 
 of a design roughly traced, and there was a little 
 picture beside him, where the scheme was roughly 
 worked out ; but the design itself was covered with 
 strange wild smears of flaring, furious colour,
 
 THE DESIGN 141 
 
 flung crudely upon the canvas. " I find it im- 
 possible to believe," I said, — " forgive me for 
 speaking thus — that these ragged stains and 
 splashes of colour can ever be subdued and 
 harmonised and co-ordinated." The great man 
 smiled. " What would you have said, I wonder," 
 he replied, " if you had seen, as I did once, a 
 picture of Rossetti's in an early stage, with the 
 face and arms of one of his strange and mysterious 
 figures roughly painted in in the brightest ultra- 
 marine ? Many of these fantastic scraps of colour 
 will disappear altogether from the eye, just lend- 
 ing tone to something which is to be superimposed 
 upon them." 
 
 I have since reflected that this makes a beauti- 
 ful parable of our lives. Some element comes 
 into our experience, some suffering, some anxiety, 
 and we tend to say impatiently : " Well, whatever 
 happens, this at least can never appear just or 
 merciful." But God, like a wise and perfect 
 artist, foresees the end in the beginning. We, 
 who live in time and space, can merely see the 
 rough, crude tints flung fiercely down, till the 
 thing seems nothing but a frantic patchwork of 
 angry hues ; but God sees the blending and the 
 softening ; how the soft tints af face and hand, of 
 river and tree, will steal over the coarse back- 
 ground, and gain their strength and glory from 
 the hidden stains. Perhaps we have sometimes 
 the comfort of seeing how some old and ugly 
 experience melted into and strengthened some 
 soft, bright quality of heart or mind. Staring
 
 142 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 mournfully as we do upon the tiny circumscribed 
 space of life, we cannot conceive how the design 
 will work itself out ; but the day will come when 
 we shall see it too; and perhaps the best moments 
 of life are those when we have a secret inkling of 
 the process that is going so slowly and surely 
 forward, as the harsh lines and hues become the 
 gracious lineaments of some sweet face, and from 
 the glaring patch of hot colour is revealed the 
 remote and shining expanse of a sunlit sea. 
 
 May 14, 1889. 
 
 There used to be a favourite subject for 
 scholastic disputation whether Hercules is in the 
 marble. The image is that of the sculptor, who 
 sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the 
 marble block, and whose duty is so to carve it, 
 neither cutting too deep or too shallow, so that 
 the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the 
 disputation is the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. 
 That each man is, as it were, a block of marble in 
 which the ideal man is buried. The purpose of 
 the educator ought to be to cut the form out, 
 irepiKOTrreiv, as Plato has it. 
 
 What a lofty and beautiful thought ! To feel 
 about oneself that the perfect form is there, and 
 that the experience of life is the process of cutting 
 it out — a process full of pain, perhaps, as the great 
 splinters and flakes fly and drop — a rough, brutal 
 business it seems at first, the hewing off great 
 masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused and
 
 THE DIVINE SCULPTURE 143 
 
 concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible 
 enough ; but the dints become minuter and 
 minuter, here a grain and there an atom, till the 
 smooth and shapely limbs begin to take shape. 
 At first it seems a mere bewildered loss, a sharp 
 pang as one parts with what seems one's very self. 
 How long before the barest structure becomes 
 visible 1 but when one once gets a dim inkling of 
 what is going on, as the stubborn temper yields, 
 as the face takes on its noble frankness, and the 
 shapely limbs emerge in all the glory of free line 
 and curve, how gratefully and vehemently one 
 co-operates, how little a thing the endurance of 
 mere pain becomes by the side of the conscious- 
 ness that one is growing into the likeness of the 
 divine. 
 
 May 23, 1 8S9. 
 
 When Goethe was writing Werther he wrote to 
 his friend Kestner, " I am working out my own 
 situation in art, for the consolation of gods and 
 men." That is a fine thing to have said, proceed- 
 ing from so sublime an egoism, so transcendent 
 a pride, that it has hardly a disfiguring touch of 
 vanity about it. He did not add that he was also 
 working in the situation of his friend Kestner, 
 and Kestner's wife, Charlotte ; though when they 
 objected to having been thus used as material, 
 Goethe apologised profusely, and in the same 
 breath told them, somewhat royally, that they 
 ought to be proud to have been thus honoured.
 
 144 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 But that is the reason why one admires Goethe 
 so much and worships him so little. One admires 
 him for the way in which he strode ahead, turning 
 corner after corner in the untravelled road of art, 
 with such insight, such certainty, interpreting and 
 giving form to the thought of the world ; but one 
 does not worship him, because he had no tender- 
 ness or care for humanity. He knew whither he 
 was bound, but he did not trouble himself about 
 his companions. The great leaders of the world 
 are those who have said to others, " Come with 
 me — let us find light and peace together ! " — but 
 Goethe said, " Follow me if you can ! " Some one, 
 writing of that age, said that it was a time when 
 men had immense and far-reaching desires, but 
 feeble wills. They lost themselves in the melancholy 
 of Hamlet, and luxuriated in their own sorrows. 
 That was not the case with Goethe himself ; there 
 never was an artist who was less irresolute. 
 
 One of the reasons, I think, why we are weak 
 in art, at the present time, is because we refer 
 everything to conventional ethical standards. We 
 are always arraigning people at the bar of 
 morality, and what we judge them mainly by 
 is their strength or weakness of will. Blake 
 thought differently. He always maintained that 
 men would be judged for their intellectual and 
 artistic perception, by their good or bad taste. 
 
 But surely it is all a deep-seated mistake ; one 
 might as well judge people for being tall or short, 
 ugly or beautiful. The only thing for which I 
 think most people would consent to be judged,
 
 THE CRITERION 145 
 
 which is after all what matters, is whether they 
 have yielded consciously to mean, prudent, timid, 
 conventional motives in life. It is not a question 
 of success or failure ; it is rather whether one has 
 acted largely, freely, generously, or whether one 
 has acted politely, timidly, prudently. 
 
 In the Gospel, the two things for which it 
 seems to be indicated that men will be judged 
 are, whether they have been kind, and whether 
 they have improved upon what has been given 
 them. And therefore the judgment seems to 
 depend rather upon what men desire than upon 
 what they effect, upon attitude rather than upon 
 performance. But it is all a great mystery, be- 
 cause no amount of desiring seems to give us 
 what we desire. The two plain duties are to 
 commit ourselves to the Power that made us, 
 and to desire to become what He would have us 
 become ; and one must also abstain from any 
 attempt to judge other people — that is the un- 
 pardonable sin. 
 
 In art, then, a man does his best if, like Goethe, 
 he works his own situation into art for the con- 
 solation of gods and men. His own situation is 
 the only thing he can come near to perceiving ; 
 and if he draws it faithfully and beautifully, he 
 consoles and he encourages. That is the best 
 and noblest thing he can do, if he can express 
 or depict anything which may make other men 
 feel that they are not alone, that others are tread- 
 ing the same path, in sunshine or cloud ; anything 
 which may help others to persevere, to desire, to
 
 146 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 perceive. The worst sorrows in life are not its 
 losses and misfortunes, but its fears. And when 
 Goethe said that it was for the consolation of gods 
 as well as of men, he said a sublime thing, for if 
 we believe that God made and loved us, may we 
 not sympathise with Him for our blindness and 
 hopelessness, for all the sad sense of injustice and 
 perplexity that we feel as we stumble on our way; 
 all the accusing cries, all the despairing groans ? 
 Do not such things wound the heart of God ? 
 And if a man can be brave and patient, and trust 
 Him utterly, and bid others trust Him, is He not 
 thereby consoled ? 
 
 In these dark months, in which I have suffered 
 much, there rises at times in my heart a strong 
 intuition that it is not for nothing that I suffer. 
 I cannot divine whom it is to benefit, or how it is 
 to benefit any one. One thing indeed saddens me, 
 and that is to reflect that I have often allowed the 
 record of old sadnesses to heighten my own sense 
 of luxurious tranquillity and security. Not so will 
 I err again. I will rather believe that a mighty 
 price is being paid for a mightier joy, that we are 
 not astray in the wilderness out of the way, but 
 that we are rather a great and loving company, 
 guided onward to some far-off city of God, with 
 infinite tenderness, and a love so great that we can- 
 not even comprehend its depth and its intensity. 
 
 I sit, as I write, in my quiet room, the fragrant 
 evening air floating in, surrounded by all the 
 beloved familiar things that have made my life 
 sweet, easy, and delightful — books and pictures,
 
 CULTURE 147 
 
 that have brought me so many messages of 
 beauty. I hear the voice of Maud overhead — 
 she is telling the children a story, and I hear their 
 voices break out every now and then into eager 
 questions. Yet in the midst of all this peace and 
 sweetness, I walk in loneliness and gloom, hardly 
 daring, so faithless and despairing I am, to let my 
 heart go out to the love and goodness round me, 
 for fear of losing it all, for fear that those souls I 
 love may be withdrawn from me or I from them. 
 In this I know that I am sadly and darkly wrong — 
 the prudent coldness, the fear of sorrow pulls me 
 back ; irresolute, cowardly, base ! Yet even so 
 I must trust the Hand that moulded me, and the 
 Will that bade me be, just so and not otherwise. 
 
 June 4, 1889. 
 
 It is a melancholy reflection how very little the 
 highest and most elaborate culture effects in the 
 direction of producing creative and original writ- 
 ing. Very few indeed of our great writers have 
 been technically cultivated men. How little we 
 look to the Universities, where a lifetime devoted 
 to the study of the nuances of classical expression 
 is considered well spent, for any literature which 
 either raises the intellectual temperature or en- 
 riches the blood of the world ! The fact is that 
 the highly-cultivated man tends to find himself 
 mentally hampered by his cultivation, to wade in 
 a sea of glue, as Tennyson said. It is partly that 
 highly-cultivated minds grow to be subservient to
 
 148 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and 
 obstreperous. Partly also the least movement of 
 the mind dislodges such a pile of precedents and 
 phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by 
 diligent reading, that the mind is encumbered by 
 the thought that most things worth saying have 
 been so beautifully said that repetition is out of 
 the question. Partly, too, a false and fastidious 
 refinement lays hold of the mind ; and an intellect 
 trained in the fine perception of ancient expres- 
 sion is unable to pass through the earlier stages 
 through which a writer must pass, when the 
 stream flows broken and turbid, when it appears 
 impossible to capture and define the idea which 
 seems so intangible and indefinable. 
 
 What an original writer requires is to be able 
 to see a subject for himself, and then to express 
 it for himself. The only cultivation he needs 
 is just enough to realise that there are differ- 
 ences of subject and differences of expression, 
 just enough to discern the general lines upon 
 which subjects can be evolved, and to perceive 
 that lucidity, grace, and force of expression are 
 attainable. The overcultivated man, after reading 
 a masterpiece, is crushed and flattened under his 
 admiration ; but the effect of a masterpiece upon an 
 original spirit, is to make him desire to say some- 
 thing else that rises in his soul, and to say it in 
 his own words ; all he needs in the way of train- 
 ing is just enough for him to master technique. 
 The highly-cultivated man is as one dazzled by 
 gazing upon the sun ; he has no eyes for anything
 
 CULTURE AND IMAGINATION 149 
 
 else ; a bright disc, imprinted upon his eyes, floats 
 between him and every other object. 
 
 The best illustration of this is the case of the 
 great trio, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. 
 All three started as poets. Coleridge was dis- 
 tracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I 
 believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the tor- 
 turing contemplation of his own moral impotence. 
 He turned to philosophy to see if he could find 
 some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and 
 he lost his way among philosophical speculations. 
 Southey, on the other hand, a man of Spartan 
 virtue, became a highly - cultivated writer ; he 
 sate in his spacious library of well-selected books, 
 arranged with a finical preciseness, apportioning 
 his day between various literary pursuits. He 
 made an income ; he wrote excellent ephemeral 
 volumes ; he gained a somewhat dreary reputation. 
 But Wordsworth, with his tiny bookshelf of odd 
 tattered volumes, with pages of manuscript inter- 
 leaved to supply missing passages, alone kept his 
 heart and imagination active, by deliberate leisure, 
 elaborate sauntering, unashamed idleness. 
 
 The reason why very few uneducated persons 
 have been writers of note, is because they have 
 been unable to take up the problem at the right 
 point. A writer cannot start absolutely afresh ; 
 he must have the progress of thought behind him, 
 and he must join the procession in due order. 
 Therefore the best outfit for a writer is to have 
 just enough cultivation to enable him to apprehend 
 the drift and development of thought, to discern
 
 150 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 the social and emotional problems that are in the 
 air, so that he can interpret — that is the secret — 
 the thoughts that are astir, but which have not yet 
 been brought to the birth. He must know enough 
 and not too much ; he must not dim his percep- 
 tion by acquainting himself in detail with what 
 has been said or thought ; he must not take off 
 the freshness of his mind by too much intellectual 
 gymnastic. It is a race across country for which 
 he is preparing, and he will learn better what the 
 practical difficulties are by daring excursions of 
 his own, than by acquiring a formal suppleness in 
 prescribed exercises. 
 
 The originality and the output of the writer are 
 conditioned by his intellectual and vital energy. 
 Most men require all their energy for the ordinary 
 pursuits of life ; all creative work is the result of a 
 certain superabundance of mental force. If this 
 force is used up in social duties, in professional 
 business, even in the pursuit of a high degree of 
 mental cultivation, originality must suffer ; and 
 therefore a man whose aim is to write, ought 
 resolutely to limit his activities. What would be 
 idleness in another is for him a storing of forces ; 
 what in an ordinary man would be malingering 
 and procrastination, is for the writer the repose 
 necessary to allow his energies to concentrate 
 themselves upon his chosen work.
 
 ACCUMULATED LITERATURE 151 
 
 June 8, 1889. 
 
 I have been looking at a catalogue, this morning, 
 of the publications of a firm that is always bring- 
 ing out new editions of old writers. I suppose 
 they find a certain sale for these books, or they 
 would not issue them ; and yet I cannot conceive 
 who buys them in their thousands, and still less 
 who reads them. Teachers, perhaps, of literature; 
 or people who are inspired by local lectures to go 
 in search of culture ? It is a great problem, this 
 accumulation of literature ; and it seems to me a 
 very irrational thing to do to republish the com- 
 plete works of old authors, who perhaps, in the 
 midst of a large mass of essentially second-rate 
 work, added half-a-dozen lyrics to the literature of 
 the world. But surely it is time that we began to 
 select? Whatever else there is time for in this 
 world, there certainly is not time to read old 
 half-forgotten second-rate work. Of course people 
 who are making a special study of an age, a 
 period, a school of writers, have to plough through 
 a good deal that is not intrinsically worth reading; 
 but, as a rule, when a man has done this, instead of 
 saying boldly that the greater part of an author's 
 writings may be wisely neglected and left alone, 
 he loses himself in the critical discrimination and 
 the chronological arrangement of inferior composi- 
 tions ; perhaps he rescues a few lines of merit out 
 of a mass of writing; but there is hardly time 
 now to read long ponderous poems for the sake of 
 a few fine flashes of emotion and expression.
 
 152 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 What, as a rule, distinguishes the work of the 
 amateur from the work of the great writer is that 
 an amateur will retain a poem for the sake of a 
 few good lines, whereas a great writer will re- 
 lentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole 
 structure and texture of the poem is loose and 
 unsatisfactory. The only chance of writing some- 
 thing that will live is to be sure that the whole 
 thing — book, essay, poem — is perfectly pro- 
 portioned, firm, hammered, definite. The sign 
 and seal of a great writer is that he has either the 
 patience to improve loose work, or the courage to 
 sacrifice it. 
 
 But most readers are so irrational, so submissive, 
 so deferential, that they will swallow an author 
 whole. They think dimly that they can arrive 
 at a certain kind of culture by knowledge ; but 
 knowledge has nothing to do with it. The point is 
 to have perception, emotion, discrimination. This 
 is where education fails so grievously, that teachers 
 of this independent and perceptive process are so 
 rare, and that teaching too often falls into the 
 hands of conscientious people, with good memories, 
 who think that it benefits the mind to load it with 
 facts and dates, and forget, or do not know, that 
 what is needed is a sort of ardent inner fire, that 
 consumes the debris and fuses the ore. 
 
 In that dry, ugly, depressing book, Harry and 
 Lucy, which I used to read in my youth, there is a 
 terrible father, kind, virtuous, conscientious, whose 
 one idea seems to be to encourage the children to 
 amass correct information. The party is driving
 
 CORRECT INFORMATION 153 
 
 in a chaise together, and Lucy begins to tell a 
 story of a little girl, Kitty Maples by name, whom 
 she has met at her Aunt Pierrepoint's ; it seems as 
 if the conversation is for once to be enlightened by 
 a ray of human interest, but the name is hardly 
 out of her lips, when the father directs her at- 
 tention to a building beside the road, and adds, 
 " Let us talk of things rather than of people." 
 The building turns out to be a sugar-refinery, or 
 some equally depressing place, and the unhappy 
 children are initiated into its mysteries. What 
 could be more cheerless and dispiriting ? Lucy is 
 represented as a high-spirited and somewhat giddy 
 child, who is always being made aware of her 
 moral deficiencies. 
 
 One looks forward sadly to the time when 
 nature has been resolutely expelled by a know- 
 ledge of dynamics and statics, and when Lucy, 
 with children of her own, will be directing their 
 attention away from childish fancies, to the fact 
 that the poker is a lever, and that curly hair is a 
 good hygrometer. 
 
 Plenty of homely and simple virtues are in- 
 culcated in Harry and Lucy; but the attitude of 
 mind that must inevitably result from such an 
 education is hard, complacent, and superior. The 
 children are scolded out of superficial vanities, and 
 their place is occupied by a satanical sort of pride 
 — the pride of possessing correct information. 
 
 What does one want to make of one's own 
 children ? One wants them to be generous, 
 affectionate, simple-minded, just, temperate in the
 
 154 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 moral region. In the intellectual region, one 
 desires them to be alert, eager, independent, per- 
 ceptive, interested. I like them to ask a hundred 
 questions about what they see and hear. I want 
 them to be tender and compassionate to animals 
 and insects. As for books, I want them to follow 
 their own taste, but I surround them only with 
 the best ; but even so I wish them to have minds 
 of their own, to have preferences, and reasons 
 for their preferences. I do not want them to 
 follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do 
 not in the least care about their amassing cor- 
 rect information. It is much better that they 
 should learn how to use books. It is very 
 strange how theories of education remain im- 
 pervious to development. In the days when 
 books were scarce and expensive, when knowledge 
 was not formulated and summarised, men had to 
 depend largely on their own stores. But now, 
 what is the use of books, if one is still to load 
 one's memory with details ? The training of 
 memory is a very unimportant part of education 
 nowadays ; people with accurate memories are 
 far too apt to trust them, and to despise verifica- 
 tion. Indeed, a well-filled memory is a great 
 snare, because it leads the possessor of it to 
 believe, as I have said, that knowledge is culture. 
 A good digestion is more important to a man 
 than the possession of many sacks of corn ; and 
 what one ought rather to cultivate nowadays is 
 mental digestion.
 
 NEW HABITS 155 
 
 Julie 14, 1889. 
 
 It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to 
 abandon habits, and how soon a new habit takes 
 the place of the old. Some months ago I put 
 writing aside in despair, feeling that I was turning 
 away from the most stable thing in life ; yet even 
 now I have learned largely to acquiesce in silence; 
 the dreary and objectless mood visits me less 
 and less frequently. What have I found to fill 
 the place of the old habit ? I have begun to read 
 much more widely, and recognise how very ill- 
 educated I am. In my writing days, I used to 
 read mainly for the purposes of my books, or, if I 
 turned aside to general reading at all, it was to 
 personal, intime, subjective books that I turned, 
 books in which one could see the development of 
 character, analyse emotion, acquire psychological 
 experience ; but now I find a growing interest in 
 sociological and historical ideas ; a mist begins to 
 roll away from my mental horizon, and I realise 
 how small was the circle in which I was walking. 
 I sometimes find myself hoping that this may mean 
 the possibility of a wider flight ; but I do not, 
 strange to say, care very much about the prospect. 
 Just at present, I appear to myself to have been 
 like a botanist walking in a great forest, looking 
 out only for small typical specimens of certain 
 classes of ground-plants, without any eyes for 
 the luxurious vegetation, the beauty of the rich 
 opening glade, the fallen day of the dense under- 
 wood.
 
 156 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 Then too I have begun to read regularly with 
 
 the children ; I did it formerly, but only fitfully, 
 
 and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But now it 
 
 has become a matter of intense interest to me, to 
 
 see how thoughts strike on eager and ingenuous 
 
 minds. I find my trained imagination a great 
 
 help here, because it gives me the power of 
 
 clothing a bare scene with detail, and of giving 
 
 vitality to an austere figure. I have made all sorts 
 
 of discoveries, to me astonishing and delightful, 
 
 about my children. I recognise some of their 
 
 qualities and modes of thought ; but there are 
 
 whole ranges of qualities apparent, of which I 
 
 cannot even guess the origin. One thinks of a 
 
 child as deriving its nature from its parents, and 
 
 its experience from its surroundings ; but there 
 
 is much beside that, original views, unexpected 
 
 curiosities, and, strangest of all, things that seem 
 
 almost like dim reminiscences floated out of other 
 
 far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that 
 
 they have never heard, to perceive so much that 
 
 they have never seen, to know so much that they 
 
 have never been told. Bewildering as this is in 
 
 the intellectual region, it is still more marvellous 
 
 in the moral region. They scorn, they shudder 
 
 at, they approve, they love, as by some generous 
 
 instinct, qualities of which they have had no 
 
 experience. " I don't know what it is, but there 
 
 is something wrong about Cromwell," said Maggie 
 
 gravely, when we had been reading the history of 
 
 the Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one 
 
 of those characters which, as a rule, a child
 
 TEACHING 157 
 
 accepts as a model of rigid virtue and public 
 spirit. Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and 
 sailors just now, and who might, one would have 
 thought, have been dazzled by military glory, 
 pronounced Napoleon "rather a common man." 
 This arose purely in the boy's own mind, because 
 I am very careful not to anticipate any judgments ; 
 I think it of the highest importance that they 
 should learn to form their own opinions, so that 
 we never attempt to criticise a character until we 
 have mastered the facts of his life. 
 
 Another thing I am doing with them, which 
 seems to me to develop intelligence pleasurably 
 and rapidly, is to read them a passage or an 
 episode, and then to require them to relate it or 
 write it in their own words. I don't remember 
 that this was ever done for me in the whole 
 course of my elaborate education ; and the speed 
 with which they have acquired the art of seizing 
 on salient points is to me simply marvellous. I 
 have my reward in such remarks as these which 
 Maud repeated to me yesterday. " Lessons," said 
 Alec gravely, " have become ever so much more 
 fun since we began to do them with father." 
 " Fun 1 " said Maggie, with indignant emotion ; 
 " they are not lessons at all now ! " I certainly 
 do not observe any reluctance on their part to set 
 to work, and I do see a considerable reluctance to 
 stop ; yet I don't think there is the least strain 
 about it. But it is true that I save them all 
 the stupid and irksome work that made my own 
 acquisition of knowledge so bitter a thing. We
 
 158 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 read French together ; my own early French 
 lessons were positively disgusting, partly from the 
 abominable little books on dirty paper and in bad 
 type that we read, and partly from the absurd 
 character of the books chosen. The Cid and 
 Voltaire's Charles XII. I I used to wonder dimly 
 how it was ever worth any one's while to string 
 such ugly and meaningless sentences together. 
 Now I read with the children Satis Famille and 
 Colomba; and they acquire the language with 
 incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they 
 do not know ; and we have a simple system of 
 emulation, by which the one who recollects first 
 a word we have previously had, receives a mark ; 
 and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred 
 marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature of 
 women ! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excel- 
 lent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence 
 on a present to console Alec for the indignity of 
 having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters 
 in French to their mother, which are solemnly 
 sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, 
 but it is amazingly flexible ; and it is delicious to 
 see the children at breakfast watching Maud as she 
 opens the letters and smiles over them. 
 
 Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of 
 education ; it certainly seems to fulfil its purpose 
 very wonderfully in making them alert, inquisitive, 
 eager, and without any shadow of priggishness. 
 It is established as a principle that it is stupid not 
 to know things, and still more stupid to try and 
 make other people aware that you know them ;
 
 THE SYSTEM 159 
 
 and the apologies with which Maggie translated a 
 French menu at a house where we stayed with the 
 children the other day were delightful to behold. 
 
 I am very anxious that they should not be 
 priggish, and I do not think they are in any 
 danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather skim 
 the cream of their education, and leave the duller 
 part to the governess, a nice, tranquil person, who 
 lives in the village, the daughter of a previous 
 vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I don't 
 mean that their interest and alertness does not 
 vary, but they are obedient and active-minded 
 children, and they prefer their lessons with me 
 so much that it has not occurred to them to be 
 bored. If they flag, I don't press them. I tell 
 them a story, or show them pictures. While 
 I write these words in my armchair, they are 
 sitting at the table, writing an account of some- 
 thing I have told them. Maggie lays down her 
 pen with a sigh of satisfaction. " There, that is 
 beautiful ! But I dare say it is not as good as 
 yours, Alec." " Don't interrupt me," says Alec 
 sternly, " and don't push against me when I'm 
 busy." Maggie looks round and concludes that 
 I am busy too. In a minute, Alec will have 
 done, and then I shall read the two pieces aloud ; 
 then we shall criticise them respectfully. The 
 aim is to make them frankly recognise the good 
 points of each other's compositions as well as the 
 weak points, and this they are very ready to do. 
 
 In all this I do not neglect the physical side. 
 They can ride and swim. They go out in all
 
 160 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty, and 
 tired. Games are a difficulty, but I want them 
 to be able, if necessary, to do without games. 
 We botanise, we look for nests, we geologise, 
 we study birds through glasses, we garden. It 
 is all very unscientific, but they observe, they 
 perceive, they love the country. Moreover, Maud 
 has a passion for knowing all the village people, 
 and takes the children with her, so that they 
 really know the village-folk all round ; they are 
 certainly tremendously happy and interested in 
 everything. Of course they are volatile in their 
 tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that 
 in the little old moral books the idea was that 
 nothing should be taken up by children, unless 
 it was done thoroughly and perseveringly ; but 
 I had rather that they had a wide experience ; 
 the time to select and settle down upon a pursuit 
 is not yet, and I had rather that they found out 
 for themselves what they care about, than practise 
 them in a premature patience. The only thing I 
 object to is their taking up something which they 
 have tried and dropped ; then I do require a 
 pledge that they shall stick to it. I say to them, 
 " I don't mind how many things you try, and if 
 you find you don't care about one, you may give 
 it up when you have given it a trial ; but it is a 
 bad thing to be always changing, and everybody 
 can't do everything ; so don't take up this particular 
 thing again, unless you can give a good reason for 
 thinking you will keep to it." 
 
 One of the things I insist upon their doing,
 
 GEOGRAPHY 161 
 
 whether they like it or not, is learning to play the 
 piano. There are innumerable people, I find, who 
 regret not having been made to overcome the 
 initial difficulties of music ; and the only con- 
 dition I make is, that they shall be allowed to 
 stop when they can play a simple piece of music 
 at sight correctly, and when they have learnt the 
 simple rules of harmony. 
 
 For teaching them geography, I have a simple 
 plan ; my own early geography lessons were to 
 my recollection singularly dismal. I used, as far 
 as I can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers, 
 capes, and mountains. Then there were horrible 
 lists of exports and imports, such as hides, jute, 
 and hardware. I did not know what any of the 
 things were, and no one explained them to me. 
 What we do now is this. I read up a book of 
 travels, and then we travel in a country by means 
 of atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape 
 we should see, the inhabitants, their occupations, 
 their religion, and show the children pictures. 
 I can only say that it seems to be a success. 
 They learn arithmetic with their governess, and 
 what is aimed at is rapid and accurate calcula- 
 tions. As for religious instruction, we read por- 
 tions of the Bible, striking scenes and stories, 
 carefully selected, and the Gospel story, with 
 plenty of pictures. But here I own I find a 
 difficulty. With regard to the Old Testament, I 
 have frankly told them that many of the stories 
 are legends and exaggerations, like the legends 
 of other nations. That is not difficult ; I say 
 
 L
 
 162 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that in old days when people did not understand 
 science, many things seemed possible which we 
 know now to be impossible ; and that things 
 which happened naturally, were often thought to 
 have happened supernaturally ; moreover, that 
 both imagination and exaggeration crept in about 
 famous people. I am sure that there is a great 
 danger in teaching intelligent children that the 
 Bible is all literally true. And then the difficulty 
 comes in, that they ask artlessly whether such a 
 story as the miracle of Cana, or the feeding of 
 the five thousand, is true. I reply frankly that we 
 cannot be sure ; that the people who wrote it 
 down believed it to be true, but that it came to 
 them by hearsay ; and the children seem to have 
 no difficulty about the matter. Then, too, I do not 
 want them to be too familiar, as children, with 
 the words of Christ, because I am sure that it 
 is a fact that, for many people, a mechanical 
 familiarity with the Gospel language simply blurs 
 and weakens the marvellous significance and beauty 
 of the thought. It becomes so crystallised that 
 they cannot penetrate it. I have treated some 
 parts of the Gospel after the fashion of Philo- 
 christus, telling them a story, as though seen by 
 some earnest spectator. I find that they take the 
 deepest interest in these stories, and that the 
 figure of Christ is very real and august to them. 
 But I teach them no doctrine except the very 
 simplest — the Fatherhood of God, the Divinity of 
 Christ, the indwelling voice of the Spirit ; and I 
 am sure that religion is a pure, sweet, vital force 

 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHING 163 
 
 in their lives, not a harsh thing, a question of sin 
 and punishment, but a matter of Love, Strength, 
 Forgiveness, Holiness. The one thing I try to 
 show them is tb~* God was not, as I used to 
 think, the property, so to speak, of the Jews ; but 
 that He is behind and above every race and 
 nation, slowly leading them to the light. The two 
 things I will not allow them to think of are the 
 Doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement ; the 
 doctrine of the Fall is contrary to all true know- 
 ledge, the doctrine of the Atonement is incon- 
 sistent with every idea of Justice. But it is a 
 difficult matter. They will hear sermons, and 
 Alec, at school, may have dogmatic instruction 
 given him ; but I shall prepare him for Con- 
 firmation here, and have him confirmed at home, 
 and thus the main difficulty will be avoided ; 
 neither do I conceal from them that good people 
 think very differently on these points. It is curious 
 to remember that, brought up as I was on strict 
 Evangelical lines, I was early inculcated into the 
 sin of schism, with the result that I hurried with 
 my Puritan nurse swiftly and violently by a Roman 
 Catholic chapel and a Wesleyan meeting-house 
 which we used to pass in our walks, with a sense of 
 horror and wickedness in the air. Indeed, I remem- 
 ber once asking my mother why God did not rain 
 down fire and brimstone on these two places of 
 worship, and received a very unsatisfactory answer. 
 To develop such a spirit was, it seems to me, a 
 monstrous sin against Christian charity, and my 
 children shall be saved from that.
 
 164 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 Meantime my own hours are increasingly filled. 
 It takes me a long time to prepare for the chil- 
 dren's lessons ; and I have my reward abundantly 
 in the delight of seeing their intelligence, their 
 perception, their interest grow. I am determined 
 that the beginnings of knowledge shall be for 
 them a primrose path ; I suppose there will have 
 to be some stricter mental discipline later ; but 
 they shall begin by thinking and expecting things 
 to be interesting and delightful, before they realise 
 that things can also be hard and dull. 
 
 June 20, 1889. 
 
 When I read books on education, when I listen 
 to the talk of educational theorists, when I see 
 syllabuses and schedules, schemes and curricula, a 
 great depression settles on my mind ; I feel I have 
 no interest in education, and a deep distrust of 
 theoretical methods. These things seem to aim 
 at missing the very thing of which we are in 
 search, and to lose themselves in a sort of childish 
 game, a marshalling of processions, a lust for 
 organisation. I care so intensely for what it all 
 means, I loathe so deeply the motives that seem 
 at work. I suppose that the ordinary man con- 
 siders a species of success, a bettering of himself, 
 the acquisition of money and position and re- 
 spectability, to be the end of life ; and such as 
 these look upon education primarily as a means of 
 arriving at their object. Such was the old educa- 
 tion given by the sophists, which aimed at turning
 
 EDUCATION 165 
 
 out a well-balanced, effective man. But all this, 
 it seems to me, has the wrong end in view. The 
 success of it depends upon the fact that every one 
 is not so capable of rising, that the rank and file 
 must be in the background, forming the material 
 out of which the successful man makes his com- 
 binations, and whom he contrives to despoil. 
 
 The result of it is that the well-educated man 
 becomes hard, brisk, complacent, contemptuous, 
 knowing his own worth, using his equipment for 
 precise and definite ends. 
 
 My idea would rather be that education should 
 aim at teaching people how to be happy with- 
 out success ; because the shadow of success is 
 vulgarity, and vulgarity is the one thing which 
 education ought to extinguish. What I desire 
 is that men should learn to see what is beautiful, 
 to find pleasure in homely work, to fill leisure 
 with innocent enjoyment. If education, as the 
 term is generally used, were widely and uni- 
 versally successful, the whole fabric of a nation 
 would collapse, because no one thus educated 
 would acquiesce in the performance of humble 
 work. It is commonly said that education ought 
 to make men dissatisfied, and teach them to desire 
 to improve their position. It is a pestilent heresy. 
 It ought to teach them to be satisfied with simple 
 conditions, and to improve themselves rather than 
 their position — the end of it ought to be to pro- 
 duce content. Suppose, for an instant — it sounds 
 a fantastic hypothesis — that a man born in the 
 country, in the labouring class, were fond of field-
 
 i66 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 work, a lover of the sights of nature in all her 
 aspects, fond of good literature, why should he 
 seek to change his conditions ? But education 
 tends to make boys and girls fond of excitement, 
 fond of town sociabilities and amusements, till 
 only the dull and unambitious are content to 
 remain in the country. And yet the country 
 work will have to be done until the end of time. 
 
 It is a dark problem ; but it seems to me that 
 we are only saved from disaster, in our well-meant 
 efforts, by the simple fact that we cannot make 
 humanity what we so short-sightedly desire to 
 make it ; that the dull, uninspired, unambitious 
 element has an endurance and a permanence 
 which we cannot change if we would, and which 
 it is well for us that we cannot change ; and that 
 in spite of our curricula and schedules, mankind 
 marches quietly upon its way to its unknown goal. 
 
 June 28, 1889. 
 An old friend has been staying with us, a very 
 interesting man for many reasons, but principally 
 for the fact that he combines two sets of qualities 
 that are rarely found together. He has strong 
 artistic instincts ; he would like, I think, to have 
 been a painter ; he has a deep love of nature, 
 woodland places and quiet fields ; he loves old 
 and beautiful buildings with a tenderness that 
 makes it a real misery to him to think of their 
 destruction, and even their renovation ; and he 
 has, too, the poetic passion for flowers ; he is
 
 A BOOK OF LETTERS 167 
 
 happiest in his garden. But beside all this, he 
 has the Puritan virtues strongly developed ; he 
 loves work, and duty, and simplicity of life, with 
 all his heart ; he is an almost rigid judge of 
 conduct and character, and sometimes flashes 
 out in a half Pharisaical scorn against mean- 
 ness, selfishness, and weakness. He is naturally 
 a pure Ruskinian ; he would like to destroy 
 railways and machinery and manufactories ; he 
 would like working-men to enjoy their work, and 
 dance together on the village green in the even- 
 ings ; but he is not a faddist at all, and has the 
 healthiest and simplest power of enjoyment. His 
 severity has mellowed with age, while his love of 
 beauty has, I think, increased ; he does not care 
 for argument, and is apt to say pathetically that 
 he knows that his fellow-disputant is right, but 
 that he cannot change his opinions, and does not 
 desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a 
 very gracious and soft twilight of life ; he grows 
 more patient, more tender, more serene. His 
 face, always beautiful, has taken on an added 
 beauty of faithful service and gracious sweetness. 
 
 We began one evening to discuss a book that 
 has lately been published, a book of very sad, 
 beautiful, wise, intimate letters, written by a 
 woman of great perception, high intellectual 
 gifts and passionate affections. These letters 
 were published, not long after her death, by her 
 children, to whom many of them were addressed. 
 
 He had read the book, I found, with deep 
 emotion ; but he said very decidedly that it
 
 i68 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 ought not to have been published, at all events 
 so soon after the writer's death. I am inclined 
 to defer greatly to his judgment, and still more to 
 his taste, and I have therefore read the book again 
 to see if I am inclined to alter my mind. I find 
 that my feeling is the exact opposite of his in 
 every way. I feel humbly and deeply grateful 
 to the children who have given the letters to the 
 world. Of course if there had been any idea 
 in the mind of the writer that they would be 
 published, she would probably have been far 
 more reticent ; but, as it was, she spoke with a 
 perfect openness and simplicity of all that was in 
 her mind. It is curious to reflect that I met the 
 writer more than once, and thought her a cold, 
 hard, unsympathetic woman. She had to endure 
 many sorrows and bereavements, losing, by un- 
 timely death, those whom she most loved ; but 
 the revelation of her pain and bewilderment, and 
 the sublime and loving resignation with which she 
 bore it, has been to me a deep, holy, and reviving 
 experience. Here was one who felt grief acutely, 
 rebelliously, and passionately, yet whom sorrow 
 did not sear or harden, suffering did not make 
 self-absorbed or morbid, or pain make callous. 
 Her love flowed out more richly and tenderly 
 than ever to those who were left, even though the 
 loss of those whom she loved remained an un- 
 fading grief, an open wound. She did not even 
 shun the scenes and houses that reminded her of her 
 bereavements ; she did not withdraw from life, she 
 made no parade of her sorrows. The whole thing
 
 PRIVACY 169 
 
 is so wholesome, so patient, so devoted, that it has 
 shown me, I venture to say, a higher possibility 
 in human nature of bearing intolerable calamities 
 with sweetness and courage, than I had dared to 
 believe. It seems to me that nothing more wise 
 or brave could have been done by the survivors 
 than to make these letters accessible to others. 
 We English people make such a secret of our 
 feelings, are so stubbornly reticent about the 
 wrong things, have so false and stupid a sense 
 of decorum, that I am infinitely grateful for this 
 glimpse of a pure, patient, and devoted heart. It 
 seems to me that the one thing worth knowing in 
 this world is what other people think and feel 
 about the great experiences of life. The writers 
 who have helped the world most are those who 
 have gone deepest into the heart ; but the dullest 
 part of our conventionality is that when a man 
 disguises the secrets of his soul in a play, a novel, 
 a lyric, he is supposed to have helped us and 
 ministered to our deepest needs; but if he speaks 
 directly, in his own voice and person, of these 
 things, he is at once accused of egotism and 
 indecorum. It is not that we dislike sentiment 
 and feeling ; we value it as much as any nation ; 
 but we think that it must be spoken of symboli- 
 cally and indirectly. We do not consider a man 
 egotistical, if he will only give himself a feigned 
 name, and write of his experiences in the third 
 person. But if he uses the personal pronoun, he is 
 thought to be shameless. There are even people 
 who consider it more decent to say " one feels and
 
 170 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 one thinks," than to say " I feel and I think." The 
 thing that I most desire, in intercourse with other 
 men and women, is that they should talk frankly 
 of themselves, their hopes and fears, their beliefs 
 and uncertainties. Yet how many people can do 
 that ? Part of our English shyness is shown by 
 the fact that people are often curiously cautious 
 about what they say, but entirely indiscreet in 
 what they write. The only books which possess 
 a real and abiding vitality are those in which 
 personality is freely and frankly revealed. Of 
 course there are one or two authors like Shake- 
 speare who seem to have had a power of pene- 
 trating and getting inside any personality, but, 
 apart from them, the books that go on being read 
 and re-read are the books in which one seems to 
 clasp hands with a human soul. 
 
 I said many of these things to my friend, and 
 he replied that he thought I was probably right, 
 but that he could not change his opinion. He 
 would not have had these letters published until 
 all the survivors were dead. He did not think 
 that the people who liked the book were actuated 
 by good motives, but had merely a desire to 
 penetrate behind the due and decent privacies of 
 life ; and he would have stopped the publication 
 of such letters if he could, because even if people 
 liked them, it was not good for them to read them. 
 He said that he himself felt on reading the book as 
 if he had been listening at keyholes, or peeping 
 in at windows, and seeing the natural endearments 
 of husband and wife, mother and children.
 
 CONFIDENTIAL BOOKS 171 
 
 I said that what seemed to me to make a 
 difference was whether the people thus espied 
 were conscious of the espionage or not ; and 
 that it was no more improper to have such things 
 revealed in a book, than to have them described in 
 a novel or shown upon the stage. Moreover, it 
 seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such 
 things in a book was the perfect compromise. I 
 feel strongly that each home, each circle has a 
 right to its own privacy ; but I am not ashamed 
 of my natural feelings and affections, and, by 
 allowing them to appear in a book, I feel that I 
 am just speaking of them simply to those who 
 will understand. I desire communion with all 
 sympathetic and like-minded persons ; but one's 
 actual circle of friends is limited by time and 
 space and physical conditions. People talk of 
 books as if every one in the world was compelled 
 to read them. My own idea of a book is that it 
 provides a medium by which one may commune 
 confidentially with people whom one may never 
 see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. 
 One can make friends through one's books with 
 people with whom one agrees in spirit, but whose 
 bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, 
 would erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is 
 so much easier to love and understand people 
 through their books than through their conversa- 
 tion. In books they put down their best, truest, 
 most deliberate thoughts ; in talk, they are at the 
 mercy of a thousand accidents and sensations. 
 There were people who objected to the publica-
 
 172 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 tion of the Browning love-letters. To me they 
 were the sacred and beautiful record of an 
 intensely holy and passionate relation between 
 two great souls ; and I can afford to disregard 
 and to contemn the people who thought the book 
 strained, unconventional and shameless, for the 
 sake of those whose faith in love and beauty was 
 richly and generously nurtured by it. 
 
 It seems to me that the whole progress of 
 life and thought, of love and charity, depends 
 upon our coming to understand each other. The 
 hostile seclusion which some desire is really a 
 savage and almost animal inheritance ; and the 
 best part of civilisation has sprung from the 
 generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable 
 souls. 
 
 I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, 
 by wondering whether the person concerned 
 would have liked or disliked the publication of 
 these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far 
 as I am concerned, she would be only too willing 
 that I should thus have read and loved them, and 
 I cannot believe that the disapprobation of a few 
 austere people, or the curiosity of a few vulgar 
 people, would weigh in the balance for a moment 
 against the joy of like-minded spirits. 
 
 The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty 
 one has in drawing near to others, the foolish 
 hardness, often only superficial, which makes one 
 hold back from and repudiate intimacies. If I had 
 known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and 
 had been the recipient of his confidences, I should
 
 FRANKNESS 173 
 
 hold it a solemn duty to tell the world what 1 
 knew. I should care nothing for the carping of 
 the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my 
 decision on the approval of all loving and generous 
 souls. This seems to me the highest service that 
 art can render, and if it be said that no question 
 of art comes in, in the publication of such records 
 as these letters, I would reply that they are them- 
 selves works of the highest and most instinctive 
 art, because the world, its relations and affections, 
 its loss and grief, its pain and suffering, are here 
 seen patiently mirrored and perfectly expressed 
 by a most perceptive personality. The moment 
 that emotions are depicted and represented, that 
 moment they have felt the holy and transfiguring 
 power of art ; and then they pass out of the 
 region of stuffy conventions and commonplace 
 decorums into a finer and freer air. I do not 
 deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness 
 abroad, but that matters little ; and, for myself, 
 I am glad to think that the world is moving in the 
 direction of a greater frankness. I do not mean 
 that a man has not a right to live his life privately, 
 in his own house and his own circle, if he wills. 
 But if that life is lived simply, generously and 
 bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that 
 breaks in light and fragrance upon the harsher and 
 uglier world.
 
 174 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 July I, 1889. 
 
 I have just read an interesting sentence. I 
 don't know where it comes from — I saw it in 
 a book of extracts. 
 
 " I am more and more convinced that the 
 cure for sentiment, as for all weakened forms 
 of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but 
 to feel more in it. This seems to me to make 
 the whole difference between a true and a false 
 asceticism. The false goes for getting rid of 
 what it is afraid of ; the true goes for using 
 and making it serve, the one empties, the other 
 fills ; the one abstracts, the other concentrates." 
 
 There is a great deal of truth in this, and it 
 is manfully put. Where it fails is, I think, in 
 assuming an amount of will-power and resolu- 
 tion in human character, which I suspect is not 
 there. The system the writer recommends is a 
 system that a strong character instinctively prac- 
 tises, moving through sentiment to emotion, 
 naturally, and by a sturdy growth. But to tell 
 a man to feel more in a thing, is like telling a 
 man to be intelligent, benevolent, wise. It is 
 just what no one can do. The various grades 
 of emotion are not things like examinations, in 
 which one can successively graduate. They are 
 expressions of temperament. The sentimental 
 man is the man who can go thus far and no 
 farther. How shall one acquire vigour and 
 generosity ? By behaving as if one was vigorous 
 and generous, when one is neither ? I do not
 
 SENTIMENT 175 
 
 think it can be done in that way. One can do 
 something to check a tendency, very little to 
 deepen it. What the writer calls false asceticism 
 is the only brave and wholesome refuge of people, 
 who know themselves well enough to know that 
 they cannot trust themselves. Take the case of 
 one's relations with other people. If a man drifts 
 into sentimental relations with other people, 
 attracted by charm of any kind, and knowing 
 quite well that the relation is built on charm, 
 and that he will not be able to follow it into 
 truer regions, I think he had probably better 
 try to keep himself in check, not embrace a senti- 
 mental relation with a mild hope that it may 
 develop into a real devotion. The strong man 
 may try experiments, even though he burns his 
 ringers. The weak man had better not meddle 
 with the instruments and fiery fluids at all. 
 
 I am myself just strong enough to dislike 
 sentiment, to turn faint in the sickly, mawkish 
 air. But I am not strong enough to charge it 
 with vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong 
 character taking up the anti-ascetic position is that 
 he is apt to degenerate into a man like Goethe, 
 who plucked the fragrant blooms on every side, 
 and threw them relentlessly away when he had 
 inhaled their sweetness. That is a cruel business, 
 unless there is a very wise and tender heart behind. 
 
 Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I 
 am not sure that the whole suggestion, taken as 
 advice, is not at fault. I think it is making a 
 melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of
 
 176 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 what ought to be a natural process. I think it 
 is vitiated by a principle which vitiates so much 
 of the advice of moralists, the principle that 
 one ought to aim at completeness and perfection. 
 I don't believe that is the secret of life — indeed 
 I think it is all the other way. One must of 
 course do one's best to resist immoral, low, 
 sensuous tendencies ; but otherwise I believe 
 that one ought to drink as much as one's glass 
 can hold of pure and beautiful influences. If 
 sentiment is the nearest that a man can come 
 to emotion, I think he had better take it thank- 
 fully. It is this ethical prudence which is always 
 weighing issues, and pulling up the plant to see 
 how it grows, which is the weakening and the 
 stunting thing. Of course any principle can be 
 used sophistically ; but I think that many people 
 commit a kind of idolatry by worshipping their 
 rules and principles rather than by trusting God. 
 It develops a larger and freer life, if one is 
 not too cautious, too precise. Of course one 
 must follow what light one has, and all lights 
 are lit from God ; but if one watches the lanterns 
 of moralists too anxiously, one may forget the 
 stars. 
 
 July 8, 1889. 
 
 I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery 
 in thinking of the baseness and meanness and 
 squalor that condition the lives of so many of the 
 poor. Not that it is not possible under those con- 
 ditions to live lives of simplicity and dignity and
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 177 
 
 beauty. It is perfectly possible, but only, I think, 
 for strong natures possessing a combination of 
 qualities — virtue, industry, sense, prudence, and 
 above all good physical health. There must still 
 be thousands of lives which could be happy and 
 simple and virtuous under more secure conditions, 
 which are marred and degraded by the influences 
 under which they are nurtured. Yet what can 
 the more fortunate individual do in the matter ? 
 If all the rich men in England were to resign 
 to-morrow all the wealth they possessed, reserving 
 only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter 
 could not be amended. Even that wealth could 
 not be wisely applied ; and, if equally divided, it 
 would hardly make any appreciable difference. 
 What is worse, it would not alter the baneful 
 influences in the least ; it would give no increased 
 security of material conditions, and it would not 
 affect the point at issue, namely, the tone and 
 quality of thought and feeling, where the only 
 hope of real amelioration lies, and which is really 
 the source and root of our social evils. 
 
 Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what 
 the classes on whom the problem presses most 
 grimly need, but what they want. It is no use 
 theorising about it, and providing elegant remedies 
 which will not touch the evil. What one requires 
 to know is what those natures, who lie buried in 
 this weltering tide, and are dissatisfied and tor- 
 mented by it, really desire. It is no use trying 
 to provide a paradise on the farther bank of the 
 river, till we have constructed bridges to cross the 
 
 M
 
 178 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 gulf. What one wants is that some one from the 
 darkness of the other side should speak articulately 
 and boldly what they claim, what they could use. 
 It is not enough to have a wistful cry for help 
 ringing in our ears ; one wants a philosophical or 
 statesmanlike demand — just the very thing which 
 from the nature of the case we cannot get. It 
 may be that education will make this possible ; 
 but at present education seems merely to be a 
 ladder let down into the abyss, by which a few 
 stronger natures can climb out of it, with horror 
 and contempt in their hearts of what they have 
 left behind. The question that stares one in the 
 face is, is there honest work for all to do, if all 
 were strong and virtuous ? The answer at present 
 seems to be in the negative ; and the problem 
 seems to be solved only by the fact that all are 
 not capable of honest work, and that the weaklings 
 give the strong their opportunity. What, again, 
 one asks oneself, is the use of contriving more 
 leisure for those who could not use it well ? 
 Then, too, under present conditions, the survival 
 of the unfittest seems to be assured. Those breed 
 most freely and recklessly of whom it may be said 
 that, for the interests of civilisation, it is least 
 desirable that they should perpetuate their kind. 
 The problem too is so complicated, that it requires 
 a gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing 
 of seed of which he can never hope to see the 
 fruit. The situation is one which tends to de- 
 velop vehement and passionate prophets, dealing in 
 vague and remote generalisations, when what one
 
 SELF-IMPROVEMENT 179 
 
 needs is practical prudence, and the effective power 
 of foreseeing contingencies. One who like myself 
 loves security, leisure, beauty and peace, and is 
 actuated by a vague and benevolent wish that all 
 should have the same opportunities as myself, 
 feels himself a mere sentimentalist in the matter, 
 without a single effective quality. I can see the 
 problem, I can grieve over it, I can feel my faith in 
 God totter under the weight of it, but that is all. 
 
 July 15, 1889. 
 
 One of the hardest things to face in the world is 
 the grim fact that our power of self-improvement 
 is limited. Of some qualities we do not even 
 possess the germs. Some qualities we have in 
 minute quantities, but hardly capable of develop- 
 ment ; some few qualities we possess in fuller 
 measure, and they are capable of development ; 
 but even so, our total capacity of growth is 
 limited, conditioned by our vital energy, and we 
 have to face the fact that if we develop one set of 
 qualities we must neglect another set. 
 
 I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, 
 the best I can find. Imagine a box in which there 
 are a number of objects like puff-balls, each with 
 a certain life of its own, half-filling the box. Some 
 of the puff-balls are small, hard, sterile ; others 
 are soft and expansive ; some grow quickly in 
 warmth and light, others fare better in cold and 
 darkness. The process of growth begins : some 
 of them increase in size and press themselves into
 
 i8o THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 every crevice, enclosing and enfolding the others ; 
 even so the growth of the whole mass is conditioned 
 by the size of the box, and when the box is full, 
 the power of increase is at an end. 
 
 The box, to interpret the fable, is our character 
 with its possibilities. The conditions which de- 
 velop the various qualities are the conditions of 
 our lives, our health, our income, our education, the 
 people who surround us ; but even the qualities 
 themselves have their limitations. Two people 
 may grow up under almost precisely similar in- 
 fluences, and yet remain different to the end ; 
 two characters may be placed in difficult and 
 bracing circumstances ; the effect upon one char- 
 acter is to train the quality of self-reliance, on the 
 other to produce a moral collapse. Some people 
 do their growing early and then stop altogether, 
 becoming impervious to new opinions and new 
 influences. Some people go on growing to the 
 end. 
 
 If one develops one side of one's nature, as the 
 intellectual or artistic, one probably suffers on the 
 emotional or moral side. The pain which the per- 
 ceptive man feels in surveying this process is apt 
 to be very acute. He may see that he lacks certain 
 qualities altogether and yet be unable to develop 
 them. He may find in himself some patent and 
 even gross fault, and be unable to cure it. The only 
 hope for any of us is that we do not know the ex- 
 pansive force of our qualities, nor the size of the 
 box ; and therefore it is reasonable to go on trying 
 and desiring ; and as long as one can do that, it is
 
 INFLUENCES 181 
 
 clear that there is still room for growth. The 
 worst shadow of all is to find, as one goes on, 
 a certain indifference creeping over one. One 
 accepts a fault as a part of one's nature ; one 
 ceases to care about what appears unattainable. 
 It may be said that this is a fatalistic theory, and 
 leads to a mild inactivity ; but the question rather 
 is whether it is true, whether it is attested by ex- 
 perience. One improves, not by overlooking facts, 
 in however generous and enthusiastic a spirit, but 
 by facing facts, and making the best use one can 
 of them. One must resolutely try to submit one- 
 self to favourable conditions, fertilising influences. 
 And much more must one do that in the case of 
 those for whom one is responsible. In the case of 
 my own two children, for instance, my one desire 
 is to surround them with the best influences I can. 
 Even there one makes mistakes, no doubt, because 
 one cannot test the expansive power of their 
 qualities ; but one can observe the conditions 
 under which they seem to develop best, and apply 
 them. To lavish love and tenderness on some 
 children serves to concentrate their thoughts upon 
 themselves, and makes them expect to find all diffi- 
 culties smoothed away ; on other more generous 
 natures, it produces a glow of responsive gratitude 
 and affection, a desire to fulfil the hopes formed of 
 them by those who love them. The most difficult 
 cases of all are the cases of temperaments without 
 loyal affection, but with much natural charm. 
 Those are the people who get what is called 
 ' spoilt,' because it is so much easier to believe in
 
 182 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 the existence of qualities which are superficially 
 displayed than in qualities which lie too deep for 
 facile expression. One comes across cases of 
 children of intense emotional natures, and very 
 little power of expressing their feelings, or of 
 showing their affection. Of course, too, example 
 is far more potent than precept, and it is very dim- 
 cult for parents to simulate a high-mindedness and 
 an affectionateness that they do not themselves 
 possess, even if they are sincerely anxious that 
 their children should grow up high-minded and 
 affectionate. One of the darkest shadows of my 
 present condition is the fear that any revelation of 
 my own weakness and emptiness may discourage 
 and distort my children's characters ; and the 
 watchfulness which this requires increases the 
 strain under which I suffer, because it is a hard 
 fact that an example set for a noble and an 
 unselfish motive is not nearly so potent as an 
 example set naturally, sweetly, and generously, 
 with no particular consciousness of motive behind 
 it at all. 
 
 July 1 8, 1889. 
 
 I have just heard of the sudden death of an 
 old friend. Francis Willett was a writer of some 
 distinction, whose acquaintance I made in my first 
 years in London. He was a tall, slim man, dark of 
 complexion, who would have been called very 
 handsome, if it had not been for a rather 
 burdened air that he wore. As it was, people
 
 FRANCIS WILLETT 183 
 
 tended rather to pity him, and to speak of him 
 as somewhat of a mystery. I never knew any- 
 thing about the background of his life. He must 
 have had some small means of his own, and 
 he lived in rooms, in rather an out-of-the-way 
 street near Regent's Park. One used to see him 
 occasionally in London, walking rapidly, almost 
 always alone, and very rarely I encountered him 
 at parties, always wearing a slightly regretful 
 air, as though he were wishing himself away. He 
 wrote a good deal, reviewed books, and, I suppose, 
 contrived to make enough to live on by his pen. 
 He once spoke of himself as being in the happy 
 position of being able to exist without writing, 
 but forced to purchase all small luxuries by work. 
 He published two or three books of short stories 
 and sketches of travel, delicate pieces of work, 
 which had no great sale, but gave him a recognised 
 position among men of letters. I drifted into a 
 kind of friendship with him ; we were members 
 of the same club, and he sometimes used to 
 flutter shyly into my rooms like a great moth ; 
 but he never asked me to his quarters. 
 
 I discovered that he had done well at Oxford, 
 and also that he had once, at all events, had con- 
 siderable ambitions ; but his health was not 
 strong, he was extremely sensitive, and very 
 fastidious about the quality of his work. I 
 realised this on an occasion when he once en- 
 trusted me with a MS., and asked me if I would 
 give him an opinion, as it was an experiment, and 
 he did not feel sure of his ground ; he added
 
 184 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that there was no hurry about it. I put the 
 MS. away in a despatch-box, and having at the 
 time a press of work, I forgot about it. He 
 never asked me for it, and I did not happen to 
 open the box where it lay. Some months after 
 I came upon it. I read it through, and thought 
 it a fine and delicate piece of work. I wrote to 
 him, apologising for my delay and speaking 
 warmly of the piece, which was one of those 
 rather uncomfortable stories, which is not quite 
 long enough to make a book, and yet rather 
 too long to put in a volume with other pieces. 
 He wrote at once, thanking me for my opinion, 
 and it was only by accident at a later date, when 
 I happened to ask him what he was doing with 
 the story, that he told me he had destroyed 
 it. I expressed deep regret that he had done so ; 
 and he said with a smile that it was probably 
 rather a foolish impulse that had decided him 
 to make away with it. "The fact is," he said, 
 " that you wrote very kindly about it, but you 
 had had it in your hands so long, that I felt 
 somehow that it could not have interested you — 
 it really doesn't matter," he added, " I don't think 
 it was at all successful." I apologised very humbly, 
 and explained the circumstances. u Oh, please 
 don't blame yourself in any way," he said, " I 
 have not the least shadow of resentment in my 
 mind about it. There is something wrong about 
 my work ; it doesn't interest people. I suppose 
 it is that I can't let myself go." An interesting 
 conversation followed, and he told me more than
 
 FRANCIS WILLETT 185 
 
 he ever told me before or since about himself. 
 He confessed to being so critical of his own 
 work, that his table-drawers were full of unfinished 
 MSS. His usual experience was to begin a piece 
 of work enthusiastically ; to plan it all out, and to 
 work at first with zest. " Then it begins to get 
 all out of shape," he said, " there is no go about 
 it ; it all loses itself in subtleties and complexities 
 of motive ; one thing trips up another, and at last 
 it all gets so tangled that I put it aside ; if I 
 could follow the track of one strong and definite 
 emotion, it would be all right — but I am like the 
 man in the story who changes the cow for the 
 horse, and the horse for the pig, and the pig for 
 the grindstone ; and then the grindstone rolls 
 into the river." He seemed to take it all very 
 philosophically, and I ventured to say so. " Yes," 
 he said, " I have learnt at last that that is how I 
 am made ; but I have been through a good many 
 agonies of disgust and discouragement about it in 
 old days — it is the same with everything I have 
 touched. The bits of work that I have completed 
 have all been done in a rush — if the mood lasts 
 long enough, I am all right — and once or twice 
 it has just lasted. I am like a swimmer," he went 
 on, " who can only swim a certain distance ; and 
 if I judge the distance rightly, I can reach the 
 point I desire to reach ; but I generally judge 
 the distance wrong ; and half-way across I am 
 seized with a sudden fright, and struggle back 
 in terror." 
 
 By one of the strange coincidences that some-
 
 1 86 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 times happen in this world, I took an unknown 
 lady in to dinner a few days afterwards, and 
 happened to mention Willett's name. " Do you 
 know him ? " she said. " Oh yes, of course you 
 
 do!" she went on; "you are the Mr. S of 
 
 whom he has spoken to me." I found that my 
 neighbour was a distant relation of Willett's, and 
 she told me a good deal about him. He was 
 absolutely alone in the world ; he had been left 
 an orphan at an early age, and had spent his holi- 
 days with guardians and relations, with any one 
 who would take pity on him. " He was a clever 
 kind of boy," she said, "melancholy and diffident, 
 always thinking that people disliked him. He used 
 to give me the air of a person who was trying 
 to[ find something, and who did not quite know 
 where to look for it. He had a time of expan- 
 sion at Oxford, where he made friends and did 
 well ; and then he came to London, and began 
 to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this," 
 she said. " He really fell in love, or as nearly 
 as he could, with a very pretty and high-spirited 
 girl, who took a great fancy to him, and pitied 
 him from the bottom of her heart. For five 
 years the thing went on. She would have married 
 him at any time if he had asked her. But he 
 did not. I suppose he could not face the idea 
 of being married. He always seemed to be on 
 the point of proposing to her, and then he would 
 lose heart at the last minute. At last she got 
 tired of waiting, and, I suppose, began to care for 
 some one else ; but she was very good to Francis,
 
 FRANCIS WILLETT 187 
 
 and never lost patience with him. At last she 
 told him one day quietly that she was engaged, 
 and hoped that they would always remain friends. 
 I think, do you know, that it was almost a relief 
 to him than otherwise. I did my best to help 
 him — marriage was the one thing he wanted ; if 
 he could only have been pushed into it, he would 
 have made a perfect husband, because not only 
 is he very much of a gentleman, but he could 
 never bear to fail any one who depended on him ; 
 but he has got the unhappiest mind I know ; the 
 moment that he has formed a plan, and sees his 
 way clear, he at once begins to think of all the 
 reasons against it — not the selfish reasons, by any 
 means ; in this case he reflected, I am sure, how 
 little he had to offer ; he could not bring himself 
 to feel that any one could really care for him ; 
 and then, too, he never really cared for anything 
 quite enough himself. Or if he did, he found all 
 sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do 
 so. If only he had been a little more selfish, it 
 would have been all right. Indeed," said Mrs. 
 
 T , with a smile, " he is the only person of 
 
 whom I could truthfully say that if he had only 
 been a little more vulgar, he would have been a 
 much happier person." 
 
 I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and he 
 
 interested me increasingly. I verified Mrs. T 's 
 
 judgment about him, and found it true in every 
 particular. I suppose there was some lack of 
 vitality about him, because the more I knew of 
 him the more I found to admire. He was an
 
 t88 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 exquisitely delicate person, affectionate, respon- 
 sive, with a fine sense of humour — indeed, the 
 most disconcerting thing was that he saw to the 
 full the humour of his own position. But none 
 of the robust motives that spur men to action 
 affected him. He was ambitious, but he would 
 not make any sacrifices to gain the objects of his 
 ambition. He could not use his powers on con- 
 ventional lines. He was, I think, deeply desirous 
 of confidence and affection, but he could never 
 believe that he deserved either, or that it was 
 possible for him to be interesting to others. He 
 was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, 
 and had a shrewd and penetrating judgment of 
 other people ; but he seemed to labour under a 
 sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to feel that 
 he had no claims or rights in the world. He 
 existed on sufferance. The smallest shadow of 
 disapproval caused him to abandon any design, 
 not resentfully but eagerly, as though he was 
 fully aware of his own incompetence. 
 
 I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and 
 tried in many ways to help and encourage him. 
 But he always discounted encouragement, and it 
 is a clumsy business trying to help a man who 
 does not demand or desire help. 
 
 He seemed to me to have schooled himself into 
 a kind of tender patience ; and this attitude, I am 
 ashamed to say, used to irritate me considerably, 
 because it seemed to me to be so much power 
 wasted on accepting defeat, which might have 
 ensured victory.
 
 FRANCIS WILLETT 189 
 
 He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up 
 in town, and he dined with me by appointment. 
 He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a story 
 which made my blood boil. He had been asked 
 to write a book by a publisher, and the lines had 
 been laid clown for him. " It was such a comfort 
 to me," he said, "because it supplied just the 
 stimulus I could not myself originate. My book 
 was really rather a good piece of work ; but a week 
 ago I sent it to the publisher, and he returned it, 
 saying it was not the least what he wanted — he 
 suggested my retaining about a third of it, and re- 
 writing the rest. Of course I could do nothing of 
 the kind." " What have you done with it ? " I asked. 
 " Oh, I have destroyed it." " But didn't you see 
 him," I said, " or do something — or at all events 
 insist on payment ? " u Oh no," he said, " I could 
 not do that — the man was probably right — he 
 wanted a particular kind of book, and mine was 
 not what he wanted. I did say that I wished he 
 had explained to me more clearly what he wanted 
 — but after all it doesn't very much matter. I 
 can get along all right, if I am careful." 
 
 "Well," I said, "you are really a very aggra- 
 vating person. If I could not have got my book 
 published elsewhere, I would certainly have had 
 a row — I would have taken out my money's 
 worth in vituperation." 
 
 Willett smiled ; " I dare say you would have had 
 some fun," he said, "but that is not my line. I 
 have told you before that I can't interest people — 
 I don't think it is wholly my fault."
 
 190 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 We sate late, talking ; and for the only time in 
 his life he spoke to me, with a depth of emotion 
 of which I should hardly have suspected him, of 
 the value he set upon my friendship, and his 
 gratitude for my sympathy. 
 
 And now this morning I have heard of his 
 sudden death. He was found dead in his room, 
 bent over his papers. He must have been writing 
 late at night, as his custom was ; and it proved on 
 examination that he must have long suffered from 
 an unsuspected disease of the heart. Perhaps that 
 may explain his failure, if it can be called a failure. 
 There is something to me almost insupportably 
 pathetic to think of his lonely and uncomforted 
 life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. And yet I do 
 not feel sure that it is pathetic, because his life 
 somehow seems to me to have been one of the 
 most beautiful I have ever known. He did nothing 
 much for others, he achieved nothing for himself ; 
 but it is only our miserable habit of weighing every 
 one's life, in a hard way, by a standard of per- 
 formance and success, which makes one sigh over 
 Francis Willett's life. It is very difficult at times 
 to see what it is that life is exactly meant to do 
 for us. Most of the men and women I know — I 
 say this sadly but frankly — seem to me to leave 
 the world worse, in essential respects, than they 
 entered it. There is generally something ingenuous, 
 responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful about a child — 
 but though I admit that one does encounter beauti- 
 ful natures that seem to flower very generously in 
 the light of experience, yet most people grow dull,
 
 FRANCIS WILLETT 191 
 
 dreary, conventional, grasping, commonplace — 
 they grow to think rather contemptuously of 
 emotion and generosity — they think it weak to 
 be amiable, unselfish, kind. They become fond 
 of comfort and position and respect and money. 
 They think such things the serious concerns of 
 life, and sentiment a kind of relaxation. But with 
 Willett it was the precise reverse. He claimed 
 nothing for himself, he never profited at the ex- 
 pense of another ; he was utterly humble, gentle, 
 unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I should 
 have called him " poor fellow," and wished that 
 he had had a more robust kind of fibre ; now that 
 I know he is dead, I cannot find it in my heart to 
 wish him any such qualities. His life appears to 
 me utterly beautiful and fragrant. He never in- 
 curred any taint of grossness from prosperity or 
 success ; he never grew indifferent or hard ; and 
 in the light of his last passage, such a failure 
 seems the one thing worth achieving, and to carry 
 with it a hope all alive and rich with possibilities 
 of blessing and glory. He would hardly have 
 called himself a Christian, I think ; he would have 
 said that he could not have attained to anything 
 like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty ; but the 
 only words and thoughts that haunt my mind 
 about him, echoing sweetly and softly through 
 the ages, are the words in which Christ described 
 the tender spirits of those who were nearest to 
 the Father's heart, and to whom it is given to 
 see God.
 
 i 9 2 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 July 28, 1889. 
 
 Health of body and mind return to me, slowly 
 but surely. I have given up all attempt at writ- 
 ing ; I rack my brain no longer for plots or situa- 
 tions. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects 
 beside me, and occasionally jot clown a point ; 
 but I feel entirely indifferent to the whole thing. 
 Meanwhile the flood of letters about my book, 
 invitations from editors, offers from publishers, 
 continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly 
 and courteously, but undertake nothing, promise 
 nothing. I seem to have recovered my balance. 
 I think no more about my bodily complaints, and 
 my nerves no longer sting and thrill. The day is 
 hardly long enough for all I have to do. It may 
 be that when the novelty of the experiment in 
 education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after 
 authorship again. Alec will have to go to school 
 in a year or two, I suppose ; but it shall be a day- 
 school at first, if I can find one. As to the ques- 
 tion of a public school, I am much exercised. Of 
 course there are nightmare terrors about tone and 
 morals ; but I am not really very anxious about the 
 boy, because he is sensible and independent, and 
 has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous 
 barrack-life is good for a boy, the give-and-take, 
 the splendid equality, the manly code, the absence 
 of affectation. But the intellectual tone of schools 
 is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't 
 want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I 
 want him to accept current conventions instinc-
 
 THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL TYPE 193 
 
 tively about matters of indifference. I have a 
 horror of the sporting public-school type, the 
 good-humoured, robust fellow, who does his work 
 and fills his spare time with games, and thinks 
 intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emo- 
 tion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such 
 people live a wholesome enough life ; they make 
 good soldiers, good officials, good men of busi- 
 ness. But they are woefully complacent and self- 
 satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, 
 and I want Alec to be an Athenian. But the 
 experiment will have to be made, because a man 
 is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not 
 the public school bonhomie, courtesy, and common 
 sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, and 
 I don't despair of doing it. 
 
 Meantime we are a very contented household, 
 in spite of the fact that now, if ever, is the time 
 for me to make my mark as a writer, and I have 
 to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the 
 other hand, this is the point at which one sees, 
 in the history of letters, so many writers go to 
 pieces. They suddenly find, after their first great 
 success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous and 
 secret path, at being a sort of public man. They 
 are dazzled by contact with the world. They 
 go into society, they make speeches, they write 
 twaddle, they drain their energy, already depleted 
 by creation, in fifty different ways. Now I am 
 strongly of Ruskin's opinion that the duty of the 
 artist is to make himself fit for the best society, 
 and then to abstain from it. Very fortunately I 
 
 N
 
 194 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 have no sort of taste for these things, beyond the 
 simple human satisfaction in enjoying considera- 
 tion. That is natural and inevitable. But I don't 
 value it unduly, and I dislike its penalties more 
 than I love its rewards. 
 
 And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life 
 that we are here to taste, and life that so many of 
 us pass by. Work is a part of life, perhaps the 
 essence of life ; but to be absorbed in work is to 
 be like a man who is absorbed in collecting speci- 
 mens, and never has time to sort them. I knew 
 of a man who determined, early in life, to write 
 the history of political institutions. He had a 
 great library, and he devoted himself to study. 
 He put in his books, as he read them, slips of 
 paper to indicate passages and chapters that he 
 would have to consult, and as he finished with 
 a book, he put it in a certain place on a certain 
 shelf. He made no other notes or references — 
 he was a man with a colossal memory, and he 
 knew exactly what his markers meant. In the 
 middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored 
 like a worm in a cheese, he died. His library 
 was sold. The markers meant nothing to any 
 one else ; and the book-buyers merely took the 
 markers out and threw them away, and that was 
 the end of the history of political institutions. 
 
 I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to 
 try and arrive at some solution, to draw some 
 sort of conclusions — to reflect, to theorise ; we 
 may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only 
 hope of doing so, the only hope that humanity
 
 THE LESSON OF LIFE 195 
 
 will do so, is for some at least to try. And thus I 
 think that I have perhaps been saved from a great 
 delusion. I was spending my time in spinning 
 romances, in elaborating plots, in manoeuvring 
 life as I would ; and it is not like that ! Life is 
 not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor 
 social, nor even moral lines. It is not managed in 
 the least as we should manage it ; it is a resultant 
 of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force 
 running in intricate currents. Of course the 
 strange thing is that we men should find ourselves 
 thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement 
 preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed ; 
 our happiness seems to depend upon our being, 
 or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles 
 us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to 
 the end ; sometimes it crushes us ; and yet we 
 believe that it means good ; and even if we do not 
 so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure ; 
 and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the 
 lesson of life by practising indifference or stoical 
 fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair ; 
 only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, 
 our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our 
 sorrows gracious, can we hope to triumph. We 
 go on, many of us, relying on useless defences, 
 beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions, over- 
 looking, as far as we can, stern realities ; stopping 
 our ears, turning away our gaze, shrinking and 
 crying out like children at the prospect of ex- 
 periences to which we are led by loving presences, 
 that smile as they draw us to the wholesome and
 
 196 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 bracing incidents that we so weakly dread. We 
 pray for courage, but we know in our souls that 
 courage can only be won by enduring what we 
 fear ; and thus preoccupied by hopes and plans 
 and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and 
 simple stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its 
 tranquil occupations, its beautiful and tender sur- 
 prises. 
 
 And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a 
 deep and splendid flash of insight, when we can 
 thank God that things have not been as we should 
 have willed and ordered them. We should have 
 lingered, perhaps, in the low rich meadows, the 
 sheltered woodlands of our desire ; we should 
 never have set our feet to the hill. In terror and 
 reluctance we have wandered upwards among the 
 steep mountain tracks, by high green slopes, by 
 grim crag-buttresses, through fields of desolate 
 stones. Yet we are aware of a finer, purer air, 
 of wide prospects of hill and plain ; we feel that 
 we have gained in strength and vigour, that 
 our perceptions are keener, our very enjoyment 
 nobler ; and at last, it may be, we have sight, 
 from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands 
 yet to which we are surely bound. And then, 
 too, though we have fared on in loneliness and 
 isolation, we see moving forms of friends and 
 comrades converging on our track. It is no 
 dream ; it is but a parable of what has happened 
 to many a soul, what is daily happening. What 
 does the sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern 
 us at such a moment as this ? It concerns us
 
 A SHADOW OF FEAR 197 
 
 nothing, save that only through its pains and 
 shadows was it possible for us to climb where we 
 have climbed. 
 
 To-day it seems that I have been blessed with 
 such a vision. The mist will close in again, 
 doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad 
 with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have 
 seen ! I shall be weary and regretful and de- 
 spairing many times ; but I shall never wholly 
 doubt again. 
 
 Augusts, 1889. 
 
 Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, 
 feverish, yesterday evening, and I thought he must 
 have caught cold ; we put him to bed, and this 
 morning we sent for the doctor. He says there 
 is no need for anxiety, but he does not know as 
 yet what is the matter ; his temperature is high, 
 and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and 
 wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, 
 but I cannot keep a certain dread out of my 
 mind ; there is a weight upon my heart, which 
 seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it 
 seems unusual, for he has never had an illness 
 of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, and 
 Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate 
 with him this morning, and he slept most of the 
 time. I looked in once or twice, but people 
 coming and going tend to make him restless. 
 Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be 
 even more anxious than I am, but she is serene,
 
 io8 the altar fire 
 
 smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that has no 
 effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, 
 and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear 
 I was a gloomy companion. In the evening I 
 went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, 
 large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of 
 stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, 
 in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, 
 which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He 
 wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him 
 a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. 
 He lay musing, his head on his hand ; then he 
 seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, 
 watching and wondering at the nearness and the 
 dearness of the child to me, almost amazed at 
 the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me 
 of the place which he fills in my heart and life. 
 He tossed about for some time, and when I asked 
 him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand 
 in mine ; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a 
 boy who is averse to personal caresses or signs of 
 emotion. So I drew my chair up to the bed, 
 and sate there with the little hot hand in my own. 
 Maud came up presently ; but as he now seemed 
 sound asleep, we left him in the care of the old 
 nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only 
 knew what was the matter ! I argue with myself 
 how much unnecessary misery I give myself by 
 anticipating evil ; but I cannot help it ; and the 
 weight on my mind grew heavier ; half the night 
 I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I 
 fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled
 
 ALEC'S ILLNESS 199 
 
 from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning 
 hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a 
 beast leaping upon its prey. 
 
 August 11, 1889. 
 
 I cannot and dare not write of these days. 
 The child is very ill ; it is some obscure inflam- 
 mation of the brain-tissue. I had an insupportable 
 fear that it might have resulted in some way from 
 being over-pressed in the matter of work, over- 
 stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to me, 
 and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, or 
 an angel. " Not in the least," he said, " it is a 
 constitutional thing ; in fact, I may say that the 
 rational and healthy life the child has lived will 
 help more than anything to pull him through." 
 
 But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half- 
 conscious of my misery. I suppose I eat, walk, 
 read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner 
 who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears 
 doors open and feet approach, and sickens with 
 dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon me 
 day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or 
 out of it, can obliterate the memory of this 
 suffering ; perhaps, if Alec is given back to us, 
 I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if 
 not 
 
 August 12, 1889. 
 
 He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious 
 now ; he sleeps a good deal, but often he talks
 
 200 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 quietly to himself of all that we have done and 
 said ; he often supposes himself to be with me, 
 and, thank God, he never says a word to show 
 that he has ever feared or misunderstood me. I 
 could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with 
 him, he opened his eyes on me ; I could see 
 that he knew me, and that he was frightened. I 
 could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, 
 just took his hand and with her own tranquil 
 smile, said, " It is all right, Alec ; there is nothing 
 to be frightened about ; we are here, and you 
 will soon be well again." The child closed his 
 eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not 
 have done that. 
 
 August 13, 1889. 
 
 He died this morning, just at the dawn. I 
 knew last night that •'all hope was over. I was 
 with him half the night, and prayed, knowing 
 my prayers were in vain. That I could save him 
 no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw 
 him back. Maud took my place at midnight ; I 
 slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her 
 standing with a candle by my bed ; I knew in a 
 moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No 
 word passed between us ; I found Maggie by the 
 bed ; and we three together waited for the end. 
 I had never seen any one die. He was quite 
 unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like 
 himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last 
 he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle
 
 MY SON, MY SON 201 
 
 himself for the last sleep. I do not know when 
 he died, but I became aware that life had passed, 
 and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, 
 God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand 
 in mine ; and in my dumb and frozen grief, almost 
 without a thought of anything but a deep and cold 
 resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of 
 love and death alike, I became aware that both 
 she and Maud had me in their thoughts, that my 
 sorrow was even more to them than their own — 
 while I was cut off from them ; from life and 
 hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the 
 deep. 
 
 August 19, 1889. 
 
 I saw Alec no more ; I would remember him 
 as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask 
 of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor 
 of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly 
 greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded 
 the depths of pain ! I could not realise it, could 
 not believe that all would not somehow be as 
 before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each 
 other and to me ... it is inconceivable. With 
 a dull heartache I have collected and put away- 
 all the child's things — his books, his toys, his little 
 possessions. I followed the little coffin to the 
 grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion 
 came over me at the words, " I am the resur- 
 rection and the life." It was a grey, gusty day ; 
 a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great 
 churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found
 
 202 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 myself watching idly how the clergyman's hood 
 was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into 
 the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin 
 lying there, all in a dumb dream. The holy 
 words fell vacuously on my ears. " Man walketh 
 in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in 
 vain " — that was all I felt. I seem to believe 
 nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall 
 ever see or draw near to the child again, and 
 yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, 
 lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me ; 
 her love does not seem to suffer eclipse ; she does 
 everything, she smiles, she speaks ; she feels, she 
 says, the presence of the child near her and about 
 her ; that means nothing to me ; the soul appears 
 to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, 
 mingling with the unseen life, as the little body 
 we loved will be mingled with the dust. 
 
 I cannot say that I endure agony ; it is rather 
 as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove 
 sensation away ; I seem to see the bruise, watch 
 the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. 
 The suffering will come, I doubt not ; but mean- 
 while I am only mutely grateful that I do not 
 feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem 
 to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to 
 Maggie ; my power of loving seems extin- 
 guished, like my power of suffering. I do not 
 know why I write in this book, why I record my 
 blank apathy. It is a habit, it passes the time ; 
 the only thing that gives me any comfort is the 
 thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes
 
 BEREAVEMENT 203 
 
 at last upon this terrible world, made so sweet 
 and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across 
 with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous 
 a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found 
 consolation " when he sorrowed most." But I say 
 deliberately that I would rather not have loved 
 my child, than lose him thus. 
 
 August 28, 1889. 
 
 We are to go away. Maggie droops like a 
 faded flower, and for the first time I realise, in 
 trying to comfort and distract her, that I have 
 not lost everything. We are much together, and 
 seeing her thus pine and fade stirs a dread, in the 
 heart that had been so cold, that I may lose her 
 too. At last we are drawn together. She came 
 to say good-night to me last night, and a gush of 
 love passed through me, like the wind stirring 
 the strings of a harp to music. u My precious 
 darling, my comfort," I said ; the words put, it 
 seemed, on my lips, by some deeper power. She 
 clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to 
 say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have 
 revived her, to have given her pride and courage ? 
 But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who 
 can tell how she suffers — I cannot — it seems to 
 have quickened and enriched her love and tender- 
 ness ; she seems to have a secret that I cannot 
 come near to sharing ; she does not repine, rebel, 
 resist ; she lives in some region of unapproachable 
 patience and love. She goes daily to the grave,
 
 204 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of 
 the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb of 
 dismay. But now we are going away. We have 
 been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place ; 
 I suppose I am ill — at least, I am aware of a deep 
 and unutterable fatigue at times, when I can rouse 
 myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied, musing, 
 glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest 
 interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some 
 subtle sense that I am seldom absent from Maud's 
 thoughts ; but, with her incredible courage and 
 patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. 
 She is absolutely patient, entirely self-forgetful ; 
 she quietly relieves me of anything I have to do ; 
 she alters arrangements a dozen times a day, with 
 a ready smile ; and yet it almost seems to me as 
 if I had lost her too. 
 
 August $0, 1889. 
 Our route lay through Cambridge ; we had to 
 change there and wait ; so we drove down to 
 the town to look at my old college. There it 
 lay, the charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking 
 lazily out of its deep-set barred windows in the 
 bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever, 
 though perhaps a touch more mellow and more 
 settled ; every corner and staircase haunted with 
 old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every 
 set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and 
 window. In my heavy, apathetic mood the memory 
 of my life there seemed like a memory of some
 
 OLD HAUNTS 205 
 
 one else, moving in golden light, talking and 
 laughing in firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit 
 nights by the bridge, wondering what life was 
 going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages 
 of some old illuminated book with bright pictures, 
 where the very sunlight is the purest and stiffest 
 gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with, 
 admired, loved — where are they ? scattered to all 
 parts of the earth, parted utterly from me, some 
 of them dead, alas ! and silent. It came over me 
 with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had 
 pictured Alec here, living the same free and beauti- 
 ful life, tasting the same innocent pleasures, with 
 the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In 
 that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange 
 phantasmal business, and I myself a revenant from 
 some thin, unsubstantial world. A door opened, 
 and an old Don, well known to me in those days, 
 hardly altered, it seemed, came out and trotted 
 across the court, looking suspiciously to left and 
 right as he used to do. Had he been doing the 
 same thing ever since, reading the same books, 
 talking the same innocent gossip ? I had not the 
 heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecog- 
 nising. We peeped into the hall through the 
 screen. I could see where I used to sit, the same 
 dark pictures looking down. We went to the 
 chapel, with its noble classical woodwork, the great 
 carved panels, the angels' heads, the huge, stately 
 reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing softly 
 on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet 
 music flowed over my sad heart in a healing tide.
 
 206 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 Yes, it was not meaningless, after all, this strange 
 life, with the good years shining in their rainbow 
 halo, even though the path led into darkness and 
 formless shadow. I seemed to look back on it 
 all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the 
 skirts of the cloud upon the sunny valley beneath 
 him. It all worked together, said the delicate 
 rising strain, outlining itself above the soft thunder 
 of the pedals, into something high and grave and 
 beautiful ; it all ended in the peace of God. I 
 sate there, with wife and child, a pilgrim faring 
 onwards, tasting of love and life and sorrow, weary 
 of the way, but still — yes, I could say that — still 
 hopeful. In that moment even my bitter loss had 
 something beautiful about it. It was there, the 
 bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the memory 
 of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing 
 something in my face that she was glad to see, 
 put her hand in mine, and the tears rose to my 
 eyes, while I smiled at Maud ; the burden fell off 
 my shoulder for a moment, and something seemed 
 as it were to touch me and point onwards. The 
 music with a dying fall came to a soft close ; the 
 rich light fell on desk and canopy ; the old tombs 
 glimmered in the dusty air. We went out in 
 silence ; and then there came back to me, in the 
 old dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim 
 grass plots, the sense that I was still a part of 
 it all, that the old life was not dead, but stored 
 up like a garnered treasure in the rich and guarded 
 past. Not by detachment or aloofness from hap- 
 piness and warmth and life are our victories won.
 
 THE LAST HOPE 207 
 
 That had been the dark temptation, the shadow 
 of my loss, to believe that in so sad and strange 
 an existence the only hope was to stand apart 
 from it all, not to care too much, not to love too 
 closely. That was false, utterly false ; a bare 
 and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering. Rather 
 it was better to clasp all things close, to love 
 passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself 
 gladly and joyfully to every deep and true emotion ; 
 not greedily and luxuriously, flinging aside the 
 crumpled husk that had given up its sweetness ; 
 but tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms 
 to everything pure and noble, trusting that behind 
 all there did indeed beat a great and fatherly heart, 
 that loved one better than one dreamed. 
 
 That was a strange experience, that sunlit after- 
 noon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest hope, 
 a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, linking 
 the beautiful past with the dark present, and show- 
 ing me that the future held a promise of perfect 
 graciousness and radiant strength. Did other 
 lives hold the same rich secrets ? I felt that they 
 did ; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and 
 old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters. 
 In the young men that went lightly in and out, 
 finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so 
 interesting and wonderful ; in the tired face of the 
 old Professor, limping along the street ; in the 
 prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust 
 men, full of little affairs and schemes — I saw in 
 all of them the same hope, the same unity of 
 purpose, the same significance ; and we three in
 
 208 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were 
 at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life 
 and love, in which even death could only shift the 
 scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope. 
 
 September 5, 1889. 
 
 The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away 
 from Cambridge could not last ; I did not hope 
 that it could. We have had a dark and sad time, 
 yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we 
 have realised how closely we are drawn together, 
 how much we depend on each other. Maud's 
 brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly ; 
 and this has done more than anything to bring us 
 nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising 
 how much she leant upon me. She has been 
 filled with self-reproach, I know not for what 
 shadowy causes. She blames herself for a thou- 
 sand things, for not having been more to Alec, for 
 having followed her own interests and activities, 
 for not having understood him better. It is all 
 unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none 
 the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade 
 her that it is but weariness and grief trying to 
 attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be 
 comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, 
 read, and talk together — mostly of him, for I can 
 do that now ; we can even smile together over 
 little memories, though it is perilous walking, and 
 a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank 
 God, there is not a single painful memory, not
 
 LOVE AND GRIEF 209 
 
 a thing we would have had otherwise in the whole 
 of that little beautiful life ; and I wonder now 
 wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness 
 ought not to have prepared me more to lose him ; 
 it was too good to be true, too perfectly pure and 
 brave. Yet I never even dreamed that he would 
 leave us ; I should have treasured the bright days 
 better if I had. There are times of sharpest sorrow, 
 days when I wake and have forgotten ; when I 
 think of him as with us, and then the horror of 
 my loss comes curdling and weltering back upon 
 me ; when I thrill from head to foot with hopeless 
 agony, rebelling, desiring, hating the death that 
 parts us. 
 
 Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child 
 accepts a changed condition with perhaps a sharper 
 pang, but with a swift accustoming to what irre- 
 parably is. She weeps at the thought of him 
 sometimes, but without the bitter resistance, the 
 futile despair which makes me agonise. That she 
 can be interested, distracted, amused, is a great 
 help to me ; but nothing seems to minister to my 
 dear Maud, except the impassioned revival, for it 
 is so, of our earliest first love. It has come back 
 to bless us, that deep and intimate absorption 
 that had moved into a gentler comradeship. The 
 old mysterious yearning to mingle life and dreams, 
 and almost identities, has returned in fullest force ; 
 the years have rolled away, and in the loss of her 
 calm strength and patience, we are as lovers again. 
 The touch of her hand, the glance of her eye, 
 thrill through me as of old. It is a devout service, 
 

 
 210 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 an eager anticipation of her lightest wish that pos- 
 sesses me. I am no longer tended ; I tend and 
 serve. There is something soft, appealing, wist- 
 ful about her that seems to give her back an almost 
 childlike dependence, till my grief almost goes 
 from me in joy that I can sustain and aid her. 
 
 September 7 , 1889. 
 
 Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have had 
 a very grievous letter from my cousin, who suc- 
 ceeded by arrangement, on my father's death, to 
 the business. He has been unfortunate in his 
 affairs ; he has thrown money away in speculation. 
 The greater part of my income came from the 
 business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad 
 one, but the practice was so sound and secure in 
 my father's life that it never occurred to me to 
 doubt its stability. The chief part of my in- 
 come, some nine hundred a year, came to me 
 from this source. Apart from that, I have some 
 three or four hundreds from invested money 
 of my own, and Maud has upwards of two 
 hundred a year. I am going off to-morrow to 
 
 L to meet my cousin, and go into the 
 
 matter. I don't at present understand how things 
 are. His letter is full of protestations and self- 
 recrimination. We can live, I suppose, if the 
 worst comes to the worst, but in a very different 
 way. Perhaps we may even have to sell our 
 pleasant house. The strange thing is that I don't 
 feel this all more acutely, but I seem to have lost
 
 BUSINESS TROUBLES 211 
 
 the power of suffering for any other reason than 
 because Alec is dead. 
 
 September 12, 1889. 
 
 I have come back to-night from some weary 
 nightmare days with my poor cousin. The thing 
 is as bad as it can be. The business will be 
 
 acquired by Messrs. F , the next most leading 
 
 solicitors. With the price they will give, and with 
 the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and the assets 
 of the firm, the money can just be paid. We 
 shall have some six hundred a year to live upon ; 
 
 my cousin is to enter the office of the F 
 
 firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of the 
 disaster is a melancholy one ; it was not that he 
 himself might profit, but to increase the income 
 of some clients who had lost money and desired 
 a higher rate of interest for funds left in the 
 hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted 
 the demand, there would have been some unplea- 
 santness, because the money lost had been invested 
 on his advice ; he could not face this, and pro- 
 ceeded to speculate with other money, of which 
 he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good-nature, 
 imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the 
 conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have 
 been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to 
 him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmar- 
 ried ; I have urged him to try and get employment 
 elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation 
 in the place where he is known, with a fantastic
 
 212 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 idea, which is at the same time noble and chival- 
 rous, of doing penance. Of course he has no 
 prospects whatever ; but I am sure of this, that 
 he grieves over my lost inheritance far more than 
 he grieves over his own ruin. His great misery is 
 that some years ago he refused an offer from 
 
 Messrs. F to amalgamate the two firms. 
 
 I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice 
 the rest of my money as well — money slowly 
 accumulated out of my own labours. And the 
 relief of finding that this will not be necessary is 
 immense. We must sell our house at once, and 
 find a smaller one. At present I am not afraid 
 of the changed circumstances ; indeed, if I could 
 only recover my power of writing, we need not 
 leave our home. The temptation is to get a book 
 written somehow, because I could make money by 
 any stuff just now. On the other hand, it will 
 almost be to me a relief to part from the home so 
 haunted with the memory of Alec — though that 
 will be a dreadful pain to Maud and Maggie. As 
 far as living more simply goes, that does not trouble 
 me in the least. I have always been slightly 
 uncomfortable about the ease and luxury in which 
 we lived. I only wish we had lived more simply 
 all along, so that I could have put by a little more. 
 I have told Maud exactly how matters stand, and 
 she acquiesces, though I can see that, just at this 
 time, the thought of handing over to strangers the 
 house where we have lived all our married life, 
 the rooms where Alec and the baby died, is a deep 
 grief to her. To me that is almost a relief. 1
 
 MEMORIES 213 
 
 have dreaded going back there. To-night I told 
 Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping. But 
 even so there is something about the idea of being 
 poor, strange to say, which touches a sense of 
 romance in the child. She does not realise the 
 poky restrictions of the new life. 
 
 And still stranger to me is the way in which this 
 solid, tangible trouble seems to have restored my 
 energy and calm. I found myself clear-headed, 
 able to grasp the business questions which arose, 
 gifted with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not 
 know I possessed. It is a relief to get one's teeth 
 into something, to have hard, definite occupation to 
 distract one ; indeed, it hardly seems to me in the 
 light of a misfortune at present, so much as a 
 blessed tangible problem to be grappled with and 
 solved. What I should have felt if all had been 
 lost, and if I had had to resign my liberty, and 
 take up some practical occupation, I hardly know. 
 I do not think I should even have dreaded that in 
 my present frame of mind. 
 
 September 15, 1S89. 
 
 I have been thinking all clay long of my last walk 
 with Alec, the day before he was taken ill. Maud 
 had gone out with Maggie ; and the little sturdy 
 figure came to my room to ask if I was going out. 
 I was finishing a book that I was reading for the 
 evening's work; I had been out in the morning, 
 and I had not intended to go out again, as it was 
 cold and drizzling. I very nearly said that I could
 
 214 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 not go, and I had a shadow of vexation at being 
 interrupted. But I looked up at him, as he stood 
 by the door, and there was a tiny shadow of loneli- 
 ness upon his face ; and I thank God now that I 
 put my book down at once, and consented cheer- 
 fully. He brightened up at this ; he fetched my 
 cap and stick, and we went off together. I am 
 glad to think that I had him to myself that day. 
 He was in a more confidential mood than usual. 
 Perhaps — who knows ? — there was some shadow 
 of death upon him, some instinct to clasp hands 
 closer before the end. He asked me to tell him 
 some stories of my schooldays, and what I used to 
 do as a boy — but he was full of alertness and 
 life, breaking into my narratives to point out a 
 nest that we had seen in the spring, and that 
 now hung, wind-dried and ruinous, among the 
 boughs. Coming back, he flagged a little, and did 
 what he seldom did, put his arm in my own ; how 
 tenderly the touch of the little hand, the restless 
 ringers on my arm thrilled me — the hand that lies 
 cold and folded and shrivelled in the dark ground! 
 He was proud that evening of having had me all 
 to himself, and said to Maggie that we had talked 
 secrets, " such as men talk when there are no 
 women to ask questions." But thinking that this 
 had wounded Maggie a little, he went and put his 
 arm round her, and I heard him say something 
 about its being all nonsense, and that we had 
 wished for her all the time. . . . 
 
 Ah, how can I endure it, the silence, the absence, 
 the lost smile, the child of my own whom I loved
 
 DESOLATION 215 
 
 from head to foot, body soul and spirit all alike ! 
 I keep coming across signs of his presence every- 
 where, his books, his garden tools in the summer- 
 house, the little presents he gave me, on my study 
 chimney-piece, his cap and coat hanging in the cup- 
 board — it is these little trifling things, signs of life 
 and joyful days, that sting the heart and pierce the 
 brain with sorrow. If I could but have one sight 
 of him, one word with him, one smile, to show 
 that he is, that he remembers, that he waits for 
 us, I could endure it ; but I look into the dark and 
 no answer comes ; I send my wild entreaties pul- 
 sating through the worlds of space, crying, "Are 
 you there, my child?" That his life is there, 
 hidden with God, I do not doubt ; but is it he 
 himself, or has he fallen back, like the drop of 
 water in the fountain, into the great tide of life ? 
 That is no comfort to me ; it is he that I want, 
 that union of body and mind, of life and love, that 
 was called my child and is mine no more. 
 
 September 20, 1 889. 
 
 Such a loss as mine passes over the soul like a 
 plough cleaving a pasture line by line. The true 
 stuff of the spirit is revealed and laid out in all its 
 bareness. That customary outline, that surface 
 growth of herb and blade, is all pared away. I 
 have been accustomed to think myself a religious 
 man — I have never been without the sense of God 
 over and about me. But when an experience like 
 this comes, it shows me what my religion is worth.
 
 216 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 I do not turn to God in love and hope ; I do not 
 know Him, I do not understand Him. I feel 
 that He must have forgotten me, or that He is 
 indifferent to me, or that He is incapable of love, 
 and works blindly and sternly. My reason in vain 
 says that the great and beautiful gift itself of the 
 child's life and the child's love came from Him. I 
 do not question His power or His right to take 
 my child from me. But I endure only because I 
 must, not willingly or loyally or lovingly. It is 
 not that I feel the injustice of His taking the boy 
 away ; it is a far deeper sense of injustice than 
 that. The injustice lies in the fact that He made 
 the child so utterly dear and desired ; that He set 
 him so firmly in my heart ; this on the one hand ; 
 and on the other, that He does not, if He must 
 rend the little life away and leave the bleeding 
 gap, send at the same time some love, some 
 strength, some patience to make the pain bear- 
 able. I cannot believe that the love I bore my 
 boy was anything but a sweet and holy influence. 
 It gave me the one thing of which 1 am in hourly 
 need — something outside of myself and my own 
 interests, to love better than I loved even myself. 
 It seems indeed a pure and simple loss, unless the 
 lesson God would have us learn is the stoical lesson 
 of detachment, indifference, cold self-sufficiency. 
 It is like taking the crutches away from a lame 
 man, knocking the props away from a tottering 
 building. An optimistic moralist would say that I 
 loved Alec too selfishly, and even that the love of 
 the child turned away my heart from the jealous
 
 THE DARKENED HEART iij 
 
 Heart of God, who demands a perfect surrender, 
 a perfect love. But how can one love that which 
 one does not know or understand, a Power that 
 walks in darkness and that gives us on the one 
 hand sweet, beautiful, and desirable things, and on 
 the other strikes them from us when we need 
 them most ? It is not as if I did not desire to 
 trust and love God utterly. I should think even 
 this sorrow a light price to pay, if it gave me a 
 pure and deep trust in the mercy and goodness of 
 God. But instead of that it fills me with dismay, 
 blank suspicion, fretful resistance. I do not feel 
 that there is anything which God could send me 
 or reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit 
 Him of hardness or injustice. I will not, though 
 He slay me, say that I trust Him and love Him 
 when I do not. He may crush me with repeated 
 blows of His hand, but He has given me the 
 divine power of judging, of testing, of balancing ; 
 and I must use it even in His despite. He does 
 not require, I think, a dull and broken submissive - 
 ness, the submissiveness of the creature that is 
 ready to admit anything, if only he can be spared 
 another blow. What He requires, so my spirit 
 tells me, is an eager co-operation, a brave 
 approval, a generous belief in His goodness and 
 His justice ; and this I cannot give, and it is He 
 that has made me unable to give it. The wound 
 may heal, the dull pain may die away, I may 
 forget, the child may become a golden memory — 
 but I cannot again believe that this is the surrender 
 God desires. What I think He must desire, is that
 
 218 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 I should love the child, miss him as bitterly as 
 ever, feel my day darkened by his loss, and yet 
 turn to Him gratefully and bravely in perfect love 
 and trust. It may be that I may be drawn closer 
 to those whom I love, but the loss must still 
 remain irreparable, because I might have learned 
 to love my dear ones better through Alec's 
 presence, and not through his absence. It is 
 His will, I do not doubt it ; but I cannot see 
 the goodness or the justice of the act, and I will 
 not pretend to myself that I acquiesce. 
 
 September 25, 1889. 
 
 Yesterday was a warm, delicious, soft day, 
 full of a gentle languor, the air balmy and sweet, 
 the sunshine like the purest gold ; we sate out 
 all the morning under the cliff, in the warm dry 
 sand. To the right and left of us lay the blue 
 bay, the waves breaking with short, crisp sparkles 
 on the shore. We saw headland after headland 
 sinking into the haze ; a few fishing-boats moved 
 slowly about, and far down on the horizon we 
 watched the smoke of a great ocean-steamer. We 
 talked, Maud and I, for the first time, I think, 
 without reserve, without bitterness, almost without 
 grief, of Alec. What sustains her is the certainty 
 that he is as he was, somewhere, far off, as brave 
 and loving as ever, waiting for us, but waiting with 
 a perfect understanding and knowledge of why we 
 are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking 
 down upon her, and seeming, in her dream, to
 
 A MOTHER'S LOVE 219 
 
 wonder what there can be to grieve about. I 
 suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with 
 a child that a father cannot have. It is a deep 
 and marvellous faith, an intuition that transcends 
 all reason, a radiant certainty. I cannot attain to 
 it. But in the warmth and light of her belief, I 
 grew to feel that at least there was some explana- 
 tion of it all. Not by chance is the dear gift sent 
 us, not by chance do we learn to love it, not by 
 chance is it rent from us. Lying thus, talking 
 softly, in so gracious a world, a world that satisfied 
 every craving of the senses, I came to realise that 
 the Father must wish us well, and that if the 
 shadow fell upon our path, it was not to make us 
 cold and bitter-hearted. Infinite Love ! it came 
 near to me in that hour, and clasped me to a 
 sorrowful, tender, beating Heart. I read Maud, 
 at her request, " Evelyn Hope," and the strong and 
 patient love, that dwells so serenely and softly 
 upon the incidents of death, yet without the least 
 touch of morbidity and gloom, treating death itself 
 as a quiet slumber of the soul, taught me for a 
 moment how to be brave. 
 
 " You will wake and remember, and under- 
 stand," — my voice broke and tears came, un- 
 bidden tears which I did not even desire to 
 conceal — and in that moment the spirit of my 
 wife came near to me, and soul looked into the 
 eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy, 
 the very joy of God.
 
 220 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 October 10, 1889. 
 
 We have had the kindest, dearest letters from 
 our neighbours about our last misfortune. But 
 no one seems to anticipate that we shall be 
 obliged to leave the place. They naturally sup- 
 pose that I shall be able to make as large an 
 income as I want by writing. And so I suppose I 
 could. I talked the whole matter over with Maud, 
 and said I would abide by her decision. I con- 
 fessed that I had an extreme repugnance to the 
 thought of turning out books for money, books 
 which I knew to be inferior ; but I also said that 
 if she could not bear to leave the place, I had 
 little doubt that I could, for the present at all 
 events, make enough money to render it possible 
 for us to continue to live there. I said frankly 
 that it would be a relief to me to leave a house so 
 sadly haunted by memory, and that I should my- 
 self prefer to live elsewhere, framing our house- 
 hold on very simple lines — and to let the power of 
 writing come back if it would, not to try and force 
 it. It would be a dreadful prospect to me to live 
 thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dis- 
 mally for money ; but I suppose it would be 
 possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate : 
 she spoke quite frankly ; on the one hand the 
 very associations, which I dread most, were 
 evidently to her a source of sad delight ; and the 
 thought of strangers living in rooms so hallowed 
 by grief was like a profanation. Then there was 
 the fact of all her relations with our friends and
 
 UPROOTING 221 
 
 neighbours ; but she said quite simply that my 
 feeling outweighed it all, and that she would far 
 rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put 
 me in the position I described. We determined 
 to try and find a small house in the neighbour- 
 hood of her own old home in Gloucestershire ; 
 and this thought, I am sure, gave her real happi- 
 ness. We determined at once what we would 
 do ; we would let our house for a term of years, 
 take what furniture we needed, and dispose of the 
 rest ; we arranged to go off to Gloucestershire, as 
 soon as possible, to look for a house. We both 
 realise that we must learn to retrench at once. 
 We shall have less than half our former income, 
 counting in what we hope to get from the old 
 house. I am not at all afraid of that. I always 
 vaguely disliked living as comfortably as we did — 
 but it will not be agreeable to have to calculate all 
 our expenses — that may perhaps mend itself, if I 
 can but begin my writing again. 
 
 All this helps me — I am ashamed to say how 
 much — though sometimes the thought of all the 
 necessary arrangements weighs on me like a 
 leaden weight, on days when I fall back into a 
 sad, idle, hopeless repining. Sometimes it seems 
 as if the old happy life was all broken up and 
 gone for ever ; and, so strange a thing is memory 
 and imagination, that even the months over- 
 shadowed by the loss of my faculty of work seem 
 to me now impossibly fragrant and beautiful, my 
 sufferings unreal and unsubstantial. Real trouble, 
 real grief, have at least the bracing force of
 
 222 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 actuality, and sweep aside with a strong hand all 
 artificial self-made miseries and glooms. 
 
 December 15, 1889. 
 
 I have kept no record of these weeks. They 
 have been full of business, sadness, and yet of 
 hope. We went back home for a time ; we 
 made our farewells, and it moved me strangely to 
 see that our departure was viewed almost with 
 consternation. It is Maud's loss that will be felt. 
 I have lived very selfishly and dully myself, but 
 even so I was half-glad to find that even I should 
 be missed. At such a time everything is forgotten 
 and forgiven, and such grudging, peaceful neigh- 
 bourliness as even I have shown seems appre- 
 ciated and valued. It was a heartrending business 
 reviving our sorrow, and it plunged me for a 
 time into my old dry bitterness of spirit. But I 
 hardened my heart as best I could, and felt more 
 deeply than ever, how far beyond my powers of 
 endurance it would have been to have taken up 
 the old life, and Alec not there. Again and again 
 it was like a knife plunged into my heart with an 
 almost physical pain. Not so with Maud and 
 Maggie — it was to them a treasure of precious 
 memories, and they could dare to indulge their 
 grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of it. 
 Wherever I turned, I saw him in a hundred 
 guises — as a tiny child, as a small, sturdy boy, 
 as the son we lost. 
 
 We have let the house to some very kind and
 
 THE OLD HOME 223 
 
 reasonable people, who have made things very 
 easy to us ; and to me at least it was a sort of 
 heavy joy to take the last meal in the old home, 
 to drive away, to see the landscape fade from 
 sight. I shall never willingly return. It would 
 seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns 
 of life, a gathering-in of spears into one's breast. 
 I seemed like a naked creature that had, lost its 
 skin, that shrank and bled at every touch. 
 
 February 10, 1890. 
 
 I have been house-hunting, and I do not pre- 
 tend to dislike it. The sight of unknown houses, 
 high garden walls, windows looking into blind 
 courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, 
 old lumber, has a very stimulating effect on my 
 imagination. Perhaps, too, I sometimes think, 
 these old places are full of haunting spiritual 
 presences, clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to 
 the familiar scenes, half sad, perhaps, that they 
 did not make a finer thing of the little confined 
 life ; half glad to be free — as a man, strong and 
 well, might look with a sense of security into a 
 room where he had borne an operation. But I 
 have never believed much in haunted rooms. 
 The Father's many mansions can be hardly worth 
 deserting for the little, dark houses of our tiny 
 life. 
 
 I disliked some of the houses intensely — so ugly 
 and pretentious, so inconvenient and dull ; but 
 even so it is pleasant in fancy to plan the life
 
 224 TH E ALTAR FIRE 
 
 one would live there, the rooms one would use. 
 One house touched me inexpressibly. It was a 
 house I knew from the outside in a little town 
 where I used to go and spend a few weeks every 
 year with an old aunt of mine. The name of the 
 little town — I saw it in an agent's list — had a sort 
 of enchantment for me, a golden haze of memory. 
 I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed 
 nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, 
 and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering 
 about, just looking, watching, scrutinising things, 
 with the hard and uncritical observation of child- 
 hood. When I got to the place, I was surprised to 
 find that I knew well the look of the house I went to 
 see, though I had not ever entered it. Two neat, 
 contented, slightly absurd old maiden ladies had 
 lived there, who used to walk out together, dressed 
 exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels 
 and yews still grew thickly in the shrubbery, and 
 shaded the windows of the ugly little parlours. 
 An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me 
 round ; she had been in service there for twenty 
 years, and she was tearfully lamenting over the 
 break-up of the home. The old ladies had lived 
 there for sixty years. One of them had died ten 
 years before, the other had lingered on to extreme 
 old age. The house was like a museum, a speci- 
 men of a house of the thirties, in which nothing 
 had ever been touched or changed. The strange 
 wall-papers and chintzes, the crewel-work chairs, 
 the mirrors, the light maple furniture, the case 
 of moth-eaten humming-birds, the dull engravings
 
 AN OLD HOUSE 225 
 
 of historical pictures, the old books — the drawing- 
 room table was covered with annuals and keep- 
 sakes, Moore's poems, Mrs. Barbauld's works — all 
 had a pathetic ugliness, redeemed by a certain 
 consistency of quality. And then the poky, com- 
 fortable arrangements, the bath-chair in the coach- 
 house, the four-post bedsteads, the hand-rail on 
 the stairs, the sandbags for the doors, all spoke 
 of a timid, invalid life, a dim backwater in the 
 tide of things. There had been children there 
 at some time, for there were broken toys, 
 collections of dried plants, curious stones, in 
 an attic. The little drama of the house shaped 
 itself for me, as I walked through the frowsy, 
 faded rooms, with a touching insistence. This 
 bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor 
 died — and I could fancy the poor, little, timid, 
 precise life flitting away among the well-known 
 surroundings. This had been Miss Jackson's 
 favourite room — it was so quiet — she had died 
 there, sitting in her chair, a few weeks before. 
 The leisurely, harmless routine of the quiet house- 
 hold rose before me. I could imagine Miss 
 Jackson writing her letters, reading her book, 
 eating her small meals, making the same humble 
 and grateful remarks, entertaining her old friends. 
 Year after year it had gone on, just the same, the 
 clock ticking loud in the hall, the sun creeping 
 round the old rooms, the birds singing in the 
 garden, the faint footsteps in the road. It had 
 begun, that gentle routine, long before I had 
 been born into the world ; and it was strange 
 
 P
 
 226 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 to me to think that, as I passed through the most 
 stirring experiences of my life, nothing ever stirred 
 or moved or altered here. Miss Jackson had felt 
 Miss Eleanor's death very much ; she had hardly 
 ever left the house since, and they had had no 
 company. Yes, what a woefully bewildering 
 thing death swooping down into that quiet house- 
 hold, with all its tranquil security, must have 
 been ! One wondered what Miss Eleanor had 
 felt, when she knew she had to die, to pass out 
 into the unknown dark out of a world so tender, 
 so familiar, so peaceful ; and what had poor Miss 
 Jackson made of it, when she was left alone ? 
 She must have found it all very puzzling, very 
 dreary. And yet, in the dim past, perhaps one 
 or both of them, had had dreams of a fuller 
 life, had fancied that something more than tender- 
 ness had looked out of the eyes of a man ; well, 
 it had come to nothing, whatever it might have 
 been ; and the two old ladies had settled down, 
 perhaps with some natural repining, to their 
 unexciting, contented life, the day filled with 
 little duties and pleasures, the nights with innocent 
 sleep. It had not been a selfish life — they had 
 been good to the poor, the maid told me ; and 
 in old days they had often had their nephews and 
 nieces to stay with them. But those children had 
 grown up and gone out into the world, and no 
 longer cared to return to the dull little house 
 with its precise ways, and the fidgety love that 
 had once embraced them. 
 
 The whole thing seemed a mysterious mixture
 
 AN OLD HOUSE 227 
 
 of purposelessness and contentment. Rumours 
 of wars, social convulsions, patriotic hopes, great 
 ideas, had swept on their course outside, and had 
 never stirred the drowsy current of life behind the 
 garden walls. The sisters had lived, sweetly, 
 perhaps, and softly, like trees in some sequestered 
 woodland, hardly recognising their own gentle 
 lapse of strength and activity. 
 
 And now the whole thing was over for good. 
 Curious and indifferent people came, tramped 
 about the house, pronounced it old-fashioned and 
 inconvenient. I could not do that myself ; the 
 place was brimful of the pathetic evidences of what 
 had been. Soon, no doubt, the old house would 
 wear a different guise — it would be renovated and 
 restored, the furniture would drift away to second- 
 hand shops, the litter would be thrown out upon 
 the rubbish-heap. New lives, new relationships 
 would spring up ; children would be born, boys 
 would play, lovers would embrace, sufferers would 
 lie musing, men and women would die in those 
 refurbished rooms. Everything would drift on- 
 wards, and the lives to whom each corner, each 
 stair, each piece of furniture had meant so much, 
 would become a memory first, and then fade into 
 nothingness. Where and what were the two old 
 ladies now ? Were they gone out utterly, like an 
 extinguished flame ? were they in some new home 
 of tranquil peace ? Were they adjusting them- 
 selves with a sense of timid impotence — those 
 slender, tired spirits — to new and bewildering 
 conditions ?
 
 228 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 The old, dull house called to me that day with 
 a hundred faint voices and tremulous echoes. I 
 could make nothing of it ; for though it swept 
 the strings of my heart with a ghostly music, it 
 seemed to have no certain message for me, but 
 the message of oblivion and silence. 
 
 I was sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor 
 maidservant to her lonely and desolate memories. 
 She had to leave her comfortable kitchen and her 
 easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I 
 could see that she anticipated the change with sad 
 dismay. 
 
 It seemed to me in that hour as though the 
 cruelty and the tenderness of the world were very 
 mysteriously blended — there was no lack of tender- 
 ness in the old house with its innumerable small 
 associations, its sheltered calm. And then suddenly 
 the stroke must fall, and fall upon lives whose very 
 security and gentleness seemed to have been so ill 
 a preparation for sterner and darker things. It 
 would have been more loving, one thought, either 
 to have made the whole fabric more austere, more 
 precarious from the first ; or else to have bestowed 
 a deep courage and a fertile hope, a firmer endur- 
 ance, rather than to have confronted lives so frail 
 and delicate with the terrors of the vast unknown. 
 
 April '8, 1890. 
 
 Our new house is charming, beautiful, homelike. 
 It is an old stone building, formerly a farm; it has 
 a quaint garden and orchard, and the wooded hill
 
 OUR NEW HOME 229 
 
 runs up steeply behind, with a stream in front. It 
 is on the outskirts of a village, and we are within 
 three miles of Maud's old home, so that she knows 
 all the country round. We have got two of our 
 old servants, and a solid comfortable gardener, a 
 native of the place. The house within is quaint and 
 comfortable. We have a spare bedroom ; I have 
 no study, but shall use the little panelled dining- 
 room. We have had much to do in settling in, 
 and I have done a great deal of hard physical work 
 myself, in the way of moving furniture and hang- 
 ing pictures, inducing much wholesome fatigue. 
 Maggie, who broke down dreadfully on leaving the 
 old home, with the wonderful spring that children 
 have, is full of excitement and even delight in the 
 new house. I rather dread the time when all our 
 occupations shall be over, and when we shall settle 
 down to the routine of life. I begin to wonder 
 how I shall occupy myself. I mean to do a good 
 many odd jobs — we have no trap, and there will be 
 a good deal of fetching and carrying to be done. 
 We shall resume our lessons, Maggie and I ; there 
 will be reading, gardening, walking. One ought 
 to be able to live philosophically enough. What 
 would I not give to be able to write now ! but the 
 instinct seems wholly and utterly dead and gone. 
 I cannot even conceive that I ever used, solemnly 
 and gravely, to write about imaginary people, their 
 jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. Life 
 and Art ! I used to suppose that it was all a softly 
 moulded, rhythmic, sonorous affair, strophe and 
 antistrophe ; but the griefs and sorrows of art are
 
 230 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 so much nearer each other, like major and minor 
 keys, than the griefs and sorrows of life. In art, 
 the musician smiles and sighs alternately, but his 
 sighing is a balanced, an ordered mood ; the inner 
 heart is content, as the pool is content, whether it 
 mirrors the sunlight or the lonely star; but in life, 
 joy is to grief what music is to aching silence, 
 dumbness, inarticulate pain — though perhaps in 
 that silence one hears a deeper, stranger sound, the 
 buzz of the whirring atom, the soft thunder of 
 worlds plunging through the void, joyless, gigantic, 
 oblivious forces. 
 
 Is it good thus to have the veils of life rent 
 asunder ? If life, the world's life, activity, work, 
 be the end of existence, then it is not good. It 
 breaks the spring of energy, so that one goes 
 heavily and sorely. But what if that be not 
 the end ? What then ? 
 
 May 1 6, 1890. 
 
 At present the new countryside is a great 
 resource. I walk far among the wolds ; I find 
 exquisite villages, where every stone-built house 
 seems to have style and quality ; I come down 
 upon green water-meadows, with clear streams 
 flowing by banks set with thorn-bushes and alders. 
 The churches, the manor-houses, of grey rubble 
 smeared with plaster, with stone roof-tiles, are a 
 feast for eye and heart. Long days in the open 
 air bring me a dull equable health of body, a 
 pleasant weariness, a good-humoured indifference.
 
 THE NEW LIFE 231 
 
 My mind becomes grass-grown, full of weeds, 
 ruinous ; but I welcome it as at least a respite 
 from suffering. It is strange to think of myself 
 at what ought, I suppose, to be the busiest and 
 fullest time of my life, living here like a tree in 
 lonely fields. What would be the normal life ? 
 A little house in a London street, I suppose, with 
 a lot of white paint and bookshelves. Luncheons, 
 dinners, plays, music, clubs, week-end visits to 
 lively houses, a rush abroad, a few country visits 
 in the winter. Very harmless and pleasant if one 
 enjoyed it, but to me inconceivable and insupport- 
 able. Perhaps I should be happier and brisker, 
 perhaps the time would go quicker. Ought one 
 to make up one's mind that this would be the 
 normal life, and that therefore one had better 
 learn to accommodate oneself to it ? Does one 
 pay penalties for not submitting oneself to the 
 ordinary laws of human intercourse ? Doubtless 
 one does. But then, made as I am, I should 
 have to pay penalties which would seem to be 
 even heavier for the submission. It is there that 
 the puzzle lies; that a man should be created with 
 the strong instinct that I feel for liberty and inde- 
 pendence and solitude and the quiet of the country, 
 and then that he should discover that the life he 
 so desires should be the one that develops all the 
 worst side of him — morbidity, fastidiousness, gloom, 
 discontent. This is the shadow of civilisation ; that 
 it makes people intellectual, alert, craving for 
 stimulus, and yet sucks their nerves dry of the 
 strength that makes such things enjoyable.
 
 232 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 And still, as I go in and out, the death of Alec 
 seems the one absolutely unintelligible and inex- 
 plicable thing, a gloom penetrated by no star. It 
 was the one thing that might have made me un- 
 selfish, tender-hearted, the anxious care of some 
 other than myself. tl Perhaps," says an old friend 
 writing to me with a clumsy attempt at comfort, 
 "perhaps he was taken mercifully away from some 
 evil to come." A good many people say that, and 
 feel it quite honestly. But what an insupportable 
 idea of the ways of Providence, that God had 
 planned a prospect for the child so dreadful that 
 even his swift removal should be tolerable by com- 
 parison ! What a helpless, hopeless confession of 
 failure ! No; either the whole short life, closed by 
 the premature death, must have been designed, 
 planned, executed deliberately ; or else God is at 
 the mercy of blank cross-currents, opposing forces, 
 tendencies even stronger than Himself ; and then 
 the very idea of God crumbles away, and God 
 becomes the blank and inscrutable force working 
 behind a gentle, good-humoured will, which would 
 be kind and gracious if it could, but is trammelled 
 and bound by something stronger ; that was the 
 Greek view, of course — God above man, and Fate 
 above God. The worst of it is that it has a 
 horrible vraisemblance, and seems to lie even nearer 
 to the facts of life than our own tender-hearted 
 and sentimental theories and schemes of religion. 
 
 But whether it be God or fate, the burden has 
 to be borne. And my one endeavour must be to 
 bear it myself, consciously and courageously, and
 
 ROUTINE 233 
 
 to shift it so far as I can from the gentler 
 and tenderer shoulders of those whose life is so 
 strangely linked with mine. 
 
 May 25, 1890. 
 
 One sees a house, like the house we now live 
 in, from a road as one passes, from the windows 
 of a train. It seems to be set at the end of the 
 world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it — 
 it seems a fortress of quiet, a place of infinite 
 peace ; and then one lives in it, and behold, it 
 is a centre of a little active life, with all sorts of 
 cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it. 
 
 Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house 
 in passing, that there at least one could live in 
 meditation and cloistered calm ; that there would 
 be neither cares nor anxieties ; that one would be 
 content to sit, just looking out at the quiet fields, 
 pacing to and fro, receiving impressions, musing, 
 selecting, apprehending — and then one lives there, 
 and the stream of life is as turbid, as fretful as ever. 
 The strange thing is that such delusions survive 
 any amount of experience ; that one cannot read 
 into other lives the things that trouble one's own. 
 
 A little definite scheme opens before us here ; 
 old friends of Maud's find us out, simple, kindly, 
 tiresome people. There is an exchange of small 
 civilities, there are duties, activities, relationships. 
 To Maud these things come by the light of nature ; 
 to her the simplest interchange of definite thoughts 
 is as natural as to breathe. I hear her calm,
 
 234 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 sweet, full voice answering, asking. To me these 
 things are utterly wearisome and profitless. I 
 want only to speak of the things for which I 
 care, and to people attuned to the same key of 
 thought ; a basis of sympathy and temperamental 
 differences — that is the perfect union of qualities 
 for a friend. But these stolid, kindly parsons, 
 with brisk, active wives, ingenuous daughters, 
 heavy sons — I want either to know them better, 
 or not to know them at all. I want to enter the 
 house, the furnished chambers of people's minds ; 
 and I am willing enough to throw my own open 
 to a cordial guest ; but I do not want to stand 
 and chatter in some debatable land of social 
 conventionality. I have no store of simple 
 geniality. The other night we went to dine 
 quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, 
 happy and useful. Afterwards, in the drawing- 
 room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud listen- 
 ing, with rapt interest, to the chronicles of all 
 the village families, robustly and unimaginatively 
 told by the parson's wife ; meanwhile I, tortured 
 by intolerable ennui } pumped up questions, tried a 
 hundred subjects with my worthy host. He told 
 me long and prolix stories, he discoursed on rural 
 needs. At last I said that we must be going ; 
 he replied with genuine disappointment that the 
 night was still young, and that it was a pity to 
 break up our pleasant confabulation. I saw with 
 a shock of wonder that he had evidently been 
 enjoying himself hugely ; that it was a pleasure 
 to him, for some unaccountable reason, not to
 
 MONOTONY 235 
 
 hear a new person talk, but to say the same 
 things that he had said for years, to a new 
 person. It is not ideas that most people want ; 
 they are satisfied with mere gregariousness, the 
 sight and sound of other figures. They like to 
 produce the same stock of ideas, the same con- 
 clusions. " As I always say," was a phrase that 
 was for ever on my entertainer's lips. I suppose 
 that probably my own range is just as limited, 
 but I have an Athenian hankering after novelty 
 of thought, the new mintage of the mind. I 
 loathe the old obliterated coinage, with the stamp 
 all rounded and faint. Dulness, sameness, trite- 
 ness, are they essential parts of life ? I suppose 
 it is really that my nervous energy is low, and 
 requires stimulus : if it were strong and full, 
 the current would flow into the trivial things. 
 I derive a certain pleasure from the sight of 
 other people's rooms, the familiar, uncomfortable, 
 shabby furniture, the drift of pictures, the debris 
 of ornament — all that stands for difference and 
 individuality. But one can't get inside most 
 people's minds ; they only admit one to the 
 public rooms. A crushing fatigue and depression 
 settles down upon me in such hours, and then 
 the old blank sense of grief and loss comes flow- 
 ing back — it is old already, because it seems to 
 have stained all the backward pages of life ; then 
 follows the weary, restless night ; and the break- 
 ing of the grey, pitiless dawn.
 
 236 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 June 3, 1 890. 
 I do not want, even in my thoughts, to put the 
 contemplative life above the practical life. Highest 
 of all I would put a combination of the two — a 
 man of high and clear ideals, in a position where 
 he was able to give them shape — a great construc- 
 tive statesman, a great educator, a great man of 
 business, who was also keenly alive to social prob- 
 lems, a great philanthropist. Next to these I 
 would put great thinkers, moralists, poets — all who 
 inspire. Then I would put the absolutely effective 
 instruments of great designs — legislators, lawyers, 
 teachers, priests, doctors, writers — men without 
 originality, but with a firm conception of civic and 
 human duty. And then I would put all those who, 
 in a small sphere, exercise a direct, quiet, simple 
 influence — and then come the large mass of man- 
 kind ; people who work faithfully, from instinct 
 and necessity, but without any particular design or 
 desire, except to live honestly, honourably, and 
 respectably, with no urgent sense of the duty of 
 serving others, taking life as it comes, practical 
 individualists, in fact. No higher than these, but 
 certainly no lower, I should put quiet, contem- 
 plative, reflective people, who are theoretical in- 
 dividualists. They are not very effective people 
 generally, and they have a certain poetical quality; 
 they cannot originate, but they can appreciate. I 
 look upon all these individualists, whether practical 
 or theoretical, as the average mass of humanity, 
 the common soldiers, so to speak, as distinguished
 
 CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 237 
 
 from the officers. Life is for them a discipline, 
 and their raison d'etre is that of the learner, as 
 opposed to that of the teacher. To all of them, 
 experience is the main point ; they are all in the 
 school of God ; they are being prepared for some- 
 thing. The object is that they should apprehend 
 something, and the channel through which it 
 comes matters little. They do the necessary work 
 of the world; they support themselves, and they 
 support those who from infirmity, weakness, age, or 
 youth cannot support themselves. There is room, 
 I think, in the world for both kinds of individualist, 
 though the contemplative individualists are in the 
 minority ; and perhaps it must be so, because 
 a certain lassitude is characteristic of them. If 
 they were in the majority in any nation, one would 
 have a simple, patient, unambitious race, who 
 would tend to become the subjects of other more 
 vigorous nations : our Indian empire is a case in 
 point. Probably China is a similar nation, pre- 
 served from conquest by its inaccessibility and its 
 numerical force. Japan is an instance of the 
 strange process of a contemplative nation becom- 
 ing a practical one. The curious thing is that 
 Christianity, which is essentially a contemplative, 
 unmilitant, unpatriotic, unambitious force, de- 
 cidedly oriental in type, should have become, by a 
 mysterious transmutation, the religion of active, 
 inventive, conquering nations. I have no doubt 
 that the essence of Christianity lies in a contem- 
 plative simplicity, and that it is in strong opposition 
 to what is commonly called civilisation. It aims
 
 238 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 at improving society through the uplifting of the 
 individual, not at uplifting the individual through 
 social agencies. We have improved upon that in 
 our latter-day wisdom, for the Christian ought to 
 be inherently unpatriotic, or rather his patriotism 
 ought to be of an all-embracing rather than of an 
 antagonistic kind. I do not want to make lofty 
 excuses for myself ; my own unworldliness is not 
 an abnegation at all, but a deliberate preference for 
 obscurity. Still I should maintain that the vital 
 and spiritual strength of a nation is measured, not 
 by the activity of its organisations, but by the num- 
 ber of quiet, simple, virtuous, and high-minded per- 
 sons that it contains. And thus, in my own case, 
 though the choice is made for me by temperament 
 and circumstances, I have no pricking of con- 
 science on the subject of my scanty activities. It 
 is not mere activity that makes the difference. The 
 danger of mere activity is that it tends to make 
 men complacent, to lead them to think that they 
 are following the paths of virtue, when they are 
 only enmeshed in conventionality. The dangers 
 of the quiet life are indolence, morbidity, sloth, de- 
 pression, unmanliness ; but I think that it develops 
 humility, and allows the daily and hourly message 
 of God to sink into the soul. After all, the one 
 supreme peril is that of self-satisfaction and finality. 
 If a man is content with what he is, there is nothing 
 to make him long for what is higher. Any one 
 who looks around him with a candid gaze, be- 
 comes aware that our life is and must be a 
 provisional one, that it has somehow fallen short
 
 A NEW FRIEND 239 
 
 of its possibilities. To better it is the best of all 
 courses ; but next to that it is more desirable that 
 men should hope for and desire a greater harmony 
 of things, than that they should acquiesce in what 
 is so strangely and sadly amiss. 
 
 June 18, 1890. 
 
 I have made a new friend, whose contact and 
 example help me so strangely and mysteriously, 
 that it seems to me almost as though I had been 
 led hither that I might know him. He is an old 
 and lonely man, a great invalid, who lives at a 
 little manor-house a mile or two away. Maud 
 knew him by name, but had never seen him. 
 He wrote me a courtly kind of note, apologising 
 for being unable to call, and expressing a hope 
 that we might be able to go and see him. The 
 house stands on the edge of the village, looking 
 out on the churchyard, a many-gabled building 
 of grey stone, a long flagged terrace in front of 
 it, terminated by posts with big stone balls ; a 
 garden behind, and a wood behind that — the 
 whole scene unutterably peaceful and beautiful. 
 We entered by a little hall, and a kindly, plain, 
 middle-aged woman, with a Quaker-like precision 
 of mien and dress, came out to greet us, with 
 a fresh kindliness that had nothing conventional 
 about it. She said that her uncle was not very 
 well, but she thought he would be able to see us. 
 She left us for a moment. There was a cleanness 
 and a fragrance about the old house that was very
 
 240 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 characteristic. It was most simply, even barely 
 furnished, but with a settled, ancient look about 
 it, that gave one a sense of long association. She 
 presently returned, and said, smiling, that her uncle 
 would like to see us, but separately, as he was very 
 far from strong. She took Maud away, and re- 
 turning, walked with me round the garden, which 
 had the same dainty and simple perfection about 
 it. I could see that my hostess had the poetical 
 passion for flowers ; she knew the names of 
 all, and spoke of them almost as one might of 
 children. This was very wilful and impatient, 
 and had to be kept in good order ; that one re- 
 quired coaxing and tender usage. We went on 
 to the wood, in all its summer foliage, and she 
 showed us a little arbour where her uncle loved 
 to sit, and where the birds would come at his 
 whistle. "They are looking at us out of the 
 trees everywhere," she said, " but they are shy 
 of strangers " — and indeed we heard soft chirping 
 and rustling everywhere. An old dog and a cat 
 accompanied us. She drew my attention to the 
 latter. " Look at Pippa," she said, " she is de- 
 termined to walk with us, and equally determined 
 not to seem to need our company, as if she had 
 come out of her own accord, and was surprised to 
 find us in her garden." Pippa, hearing her name 
 mentioned, stalked off with an air of mystery and 
 dignity into the bushes, and we could see her look- 
 ing out at us ; but when we continued our stroll, she 
 flew out past us, and walked on stiffly ahead. u She 
 gets a great deal of fun out of her little dramas/'
 
 THE SQUIRE 241 
 
 said Miss . " Now poor old Rufus has no 
 
 sense of drama or mystery — he is frankly glad of 
 our company in a very low and common way 
 — there is nothing aristocratic about him." Old 
 Rufus looked up and wagged his tail humbly. 
 Presently she went on to talk about her uncle, 
 and contrived to tell me a great deal in a very 
 few words. I learnt that he was the last male 
 representative of an old family, who had long 
 held the small estate here ; that after a distin- 
 guished Oxford career, he had met with a serious 
 accident that had made him a permanent invalid. 
 That he had settled down here, not expecting 
 to live more than a few years, and that he was 
 now over seventy ; it had been the quietest of 
 lives, she said, and a very happy one, too, in spite 
 of his disabilities. He read a great deal, and in- 
 terested himself in local affairs, but sometimes for 
 weeks together could do nothing. I gathered that 
 she was his only surviving relation, and had lived 
 with him from her childhood. " You will think," 
 she added, laughing, " that he is the kind of person 
 who is shown by his friends as a wonderful old 
 man, and who turns out to be a person like the 
 patriarch Casby, in Little Dorrit, whose sanctity, 
 like Samson's, depended entirely upon the length of 
 his hair. But he is not in the least like that, and 
 I will leave you to find out for yourself whether 
 he is wonderful or not." 
 
 There was a touch of masculine irony and 
 humour about this that took my fancy ; and we 
 went to the house, Miss saying that two new 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 persons in one afternoon would be rather a strain 
 for her uncle, much as he would enjoy it, and that 
 his enjoyment must be severely limited. " His ill- 
 ness," she said, li is an obscure one ; it is a want 
 of adequate nervous force : the doctors give it 
 names, but don't seem to be able to cure or re- 
 lieve it ; he is strong, physically and mentally, but 
 the least over-exertion or over-strain knocks him 
 up ; it is as if virtue went out of him ; though a 
 partial niece may say that he has a plentiful stock 
 of the material." 
 
 We went in, and proceeded to a small library, 
 full of books, with a big writing-table in the 
 window. The room was somewhat dark, and the 
 feet fell softly on a thick carpet. There was no 
 sort of luxury about the room ; a single portrait 
 hung over the mantelpiece, and there was no trace 
 of ornament anywhere, except a big bowl of roses 
 on a table. 
 
 Here, with a low table beside him covered with 
 books, and a little reading-desk pushed aside, I 
 
 found Mr. sitting. He was leaning forwards 
 
 in his chair, and Maud was sitting opposite him. 
 They appeared to be silent, but with the natural 
 silence that comes of reflection, not the silence of 
 embarrassment. Maud, I could see, was strangely 
 moved. He rose up to greet me, a tall, thin figure, 
 dressed in a rough grey suit. There was little sign 
 of physical ill-health about him. He had a shock 
 of thick, strong hair, perfectly white. His face was 
 that of a man who lived much in the open air, 
 clear and ascetic of complexion. He was not at
 
 A CONVERSATION 243 
 
 all what would be called handsome ; he had rather 
 heavy features, big, white eyebrows, and a white 
 moustache. His manner was sedate and extremely 
 unaffected, not hearty, but kindly, and he gave 
 me a quick glance, out of his blue eyes, which 
 seemed to take swift stock of me. " It is very 
 kind of you to come and see me," he said in a 
 measured tone. " Of course I ought to have 
 paid my respects first, but I ventured to take the 
 privilege of age ; and moreover I am the obedient 
 property of a very vigilant guardian, whose orders 
 I implicitly obey — ' Do this, and he doeth it.' " He 
 smiled at his niece as he said it, and she said, " Yes, 
 you would hardly believe how peremptory I can 
 
 be ; and I am going to show it by taking Mrs. 
 
 away, to show her the garden ; and in twenty 
 
 minutes I must take Mr. away too, if he will 
 
 be so kind as help me to sustain my authority." 
 
 The old man sate down again, smiling, and 
 pointed me to a chair. The other two left us ; 
 and there followed what was to me a very memor- 
 able conversation. " We must make the best use 
 of our time, you see," he said, " though I hope 
 that this will not be the last time we shall meet. 
 You will confer a very great obligation on me, if 
 you can sometimes come to see me — and perhaps 
 we may get a walk together occasionally. So we 
 won't waste our time in conventional remarks," he 
 added ; " I will only say that I am heartily glad 
 you have come to live here, and I am sure you 
 will find it a beautiful place — you are wise enough 
 to prefer the country to the town, I gather." Then
 
 244 TH E ALTAR FIRE 
 
 he went on : "I have read all your books — I did 
 not read them," he added with a smile, " that I 
 might talk to you about them, but because they 
 have interested me. May I say that each book 
 has been stronger and better than the last, except 
 in one case " — he mentioned the name of a book of 
 mine — " in which you seemed to me to be repub- 
 lishing earlier work." " Yes," I said, " you are 
 quite right ; -I was tempted by a publisher and I 
 fell." " Well," he said, " the book was a good 
 one — and there is something that we lose as we 
 grow older, a sort of youthfulness, a courageous 
 indiscretion, a beautiful freedom of thought ; but 
 we can't have everything, and one's books must 
 take their appropriate colours from the mind. 
 May I say that I think your books have grown 
 more and more mature, tolerant, artistic, wise ? 
 — and the last was simply admirable. It entirely 
 engrossed me, and for a blessed day or two I 
 lived in your mind, and saw out of your eyes. I 
 am sure it was a great book — a noble and a large- 
 hearted book, full of insight and faith — the best 
 kind of book." I murmured something ; and he 
 said, " You may think it is arrogant of me to 
 speak like this ; but I have lived among books, and 
 I 'am sure that I have a critical gift, mainly because 
 I have no power of expression. You know the 
 best kind of critics are the men who have tried 
 to write books, and have failed, as long as their 
 failure does not make them envious and un- 
 generous ; I have failed many times, but I think 
 I admire good work all the more for that. You
 
 A CONFESSION 245 
 
 are writing now ? " " No," I said, " I am writing 
 nothing." " Well, I am sorry to hear it," he said, 
 "and may I venture to ask why? " "Simply because 
 I cannot," I said ; and now there came upon me 
 a strange feeling, the same sort of feeling that one 
 has in answering the questions of a great and 
 compassionate physician, who assumes the respon- 
 sibility of one's case. Not only did I not resent 
 these questions, as I should often have resented 
 them, but it seemed to give me a sense of luxury 
 and security to give an account of myself to this 
 wise and unaffected old man. He bent his brows 
 upon me: " You have had a great sorrow lately ? " 
 he said. " Yes," I said, " we have lost our only 
 boy, nine years old." " Ah," he said, " a sore 
 stroke, a sore stroke ! " and there was a deep 
 tenderness in his voice that made me feel that 
 I should have liked to kneel down before him, 
 and weep at his knee, with his hand laid in bless- 
 ing on my head. We sate in silence for a few 
 moments. " Is it this that has stopped your writ- 
 ing ? " he said. « No," I said, " the power had 
 gone from me before — I could not originate, I 
 could only do the same sort of work, and of 
 weaker quality than before." " Well," he said, 
 " I don't wonder ; the last book must have been 
 a great strain, though I am sure you were happy 
 when you wrote it. I remember a friend of mine, 
 a great Alpine climber, who did a marvellous feat 
 of climbing some unapproachable peak — without 
 any sense of fatigue, he told me, all pure enjoy- 
 ment — but he had a heart-attack the next day, and
 
 246 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 paid the penalty of his enjoyment. He could not 
 climb for some years after that." " Yes," I said, " I 
 think that has been my case — but my fear is that 
 if I lose the habit — and I seem to have lost it — I 
 shall never be able to take it up again." " No, 
 you need not fear that," he replied ; " if something 
 is given you to say, you will be able to say it, and 
 say it better than ever — but no doubt you feel 
 very much lost without it. How do you fill the 
 time ? " ''I hardly know," I said, " not very pro- 
 fitably — I read, I teach my daughter, I muddle 
 along." " Well," he said, smiling, " the hours in 
 which we muddle along are not our worst hours. 
 You believe in God ? " The suddenness of this 
 question surprised me. " Yes," I said, " I believe 
 in God. I cannot disbelieve. Something has 
 placed me where I am, something urges me along ; 
 there is a will behind me, I am sure of that. But 
 I do not know whether that will is just or unjust, 
 kind or unkind, benevolent or indifferent. I have 
 had much happiness and great prosperity, but I 
 have had to bear also things which are inconceiv- 
 ably repugnant to me, things which seem almost 
 satanically adapted to hurt and wound me in my 
 tenderest and innermost feelings, trials which seem 
 to be concocted with an almost infernal appro- 
 priateness, not things which I could hope to bear 
 with courage and faith, but things which I can 
 only endure with rebellious resistance." " Yes," 
 he said, " I understand you perfectly ; but does 
 not their very appropriateness, the satanical in- 
 genuity of which you speak, help you to feel that
 
 THE SQUIRE'S STORY 247 
 
 they are not fortuitous, but sent deliberately to 
 you yourself and to none other?" "Yes," I said, 
 " I see that ; but how can I believe in the justice 
 of a discipline which I could not inflict, I will not 
 say upon a dearly loved child, but upon the most 
 relentless and stubborn foe." " Ah," said he, 
 " now I see your heart bare, the very palpitating 
 beat of the blood. Do you think you are alone 
 in this ? Let me tell you my own story. Over 
 fifty years ago I left Oxford with, I really think I 
 may say, almost everything before me — everything, 
 that is, which is open to an instinctively cheerful, 
 temperate, capable, active man — I was not rich, 
 but I could afford to wait to earn money. I was 
 sociable and popular ; I was endowed with an 
 immense appetite for variety of experience ; I 
 don't think that there was anything which appeared 
 to me to be uninteresting. But I could persevere 
 too, I could stick to work, I had taken a good 
 degree. Then an accidental fall off a chair, on 
 which I was standing to get a book, laid me on 
 my back for a time. I fretted over it at first, but 
 when I got about again, I found that I was a man 
 maimed for life. I don't know what the injury 
 was — some obscure lesion of the spinal marrow 
 or brain, I believe — some flaw about the size of a 
 pin's head — the doctors have never made out. 
 But every time that I plunged into work, I broke 
 down ; for a long time I thought I should struggle 
 through ; but at last I became aware that I was on 
 the shelf, with other cracked jars, for life — I can't 
 tell you what I went through, what agonies of
 
 248 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 despair and rebellion. I thought that at least 
 literature was left me. I had always been fond 
 of books, and was a good scholar, as it is called ; 
 but I soon became aware that I had no gift of 
 expression, and moreover that I could not hope 
 to acquire it, because any concentrated effort 
 threw me into illness. I was an ambitious fellow, 
 and success was closed to me — I could not even 
 hope to be useful. I tried several things, but 
 always with the same result ; and at last I fell 
 into absolute despair, and just lived on, praying 
 daily and even hourly that I might die. But I 
 did not die, and then at last it dawned upon me, 
 like a lightening sunrise, that this was life for me ; 
 this was my problem, these my limitations ; that I 
 was to make the best I could out of a dulled and 
 shattered life ; that I was to learn to be happy, 
 even useful, in spite of it — that just as other people 
 were given activity, practical energy, success, to 
 learn from them the right balance, the true pro- 
 portion of life, and not to be submerged and 
 absorbed in them, so to me was given a simpler 
 problem still, to have all the temptations of activity 
 removed — temptations to which with my zest for 
 experience I might have fallen an easy victim — 
 and to keep my courage high, my spirit pure and 
 expectant, if I could, waiting upon God. This 
 little estate fell to me soon afterwards, and I soon 
 saw what a tender gift it was, because it gave me 
 a home ; every other source of interest and plea- 
 sure was removed, because the simplest visits, the 
 mildest distractions were too much for me — the
 
 DETACHMENT 249 
 
 jarring of any kind of vehicle upset me. By what 
 slow degrees I attained happiness I can hardly 
 say. But now, looking back, I see this — that 
 whereas others have to learn by hard experience, 
 that detachment, self-purification, self-control are 
 the only conditions of happiness on earth, I was 
 detached, purified, controlled by God Himself. I 
 was detached, because my life was utterly pre- 
 carious, I was taught purification and control, 
 because whereas more robust people can defer 
 and even defy the penalties of luxury, comfort, 
 gross desires, material pleasures, I was forced, 
 every day and hour, to deny myself the smallest 
 freedom — I was made ascetic by necessity. Then 
 came a greater happiness still ; for years I was 
 lost in a sort of individualistic self-absorption, with 
 no thoughts of anything but God and His concern 
 with myself — often hopeful and beautiful enough 
 — when I found myself drawn into nearer and 
 dearer relationships with those' around me. That 
 came through my niece, whom I adopted as an 
 orphan child, and who is one of those people who 
 live naturally and instinctively in the lives of other 
 people. I got to know all the inhabitants of this 
 little place — simple country people, you will say 
 — but as interesting, as complex in emotion and 
 intellect, as any other circle in the world. The 
 only reason why one ever thinks people dull and 
 limited, is because one does not know them ; if 
 one talks directly and frankly to people, one passes 
 through the closed doors at once. Looking back, 
 I can see that I have been used by God, not with
 
 250 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 mere compassion and careless tenderness, but with 
 an intent, exacting, momentary love, of an almost 
 awful intensity and intimacy. It is the same with 
 all of us, if we can only see it. Our faults, our 
 weaknesses, our qualities good or bad, are all 
 bestowed with an anxious and deliberate care. 
 The reason why some of us make shipwreck — 
 and even that is mercifully and lovingly dispensed 
 to us — is because we will not throw ourselves on 
 the side of God at every moment. Every time 
 that the voice says ' Do this,' or * Leave that 
 undone,' and we reply fretfully, ' Ah, but I have 
 arranged otherwise,' we take a step backwards. 
 He knocks daily, hourly, momently, at the door, 
 and when we have once opened, and He is entered, 
 we have no desire again but to do His will to the 
 uttermost." He was silent for a moment, his 
 eyes in-dwelling upon some secret thought ; then 
 he said, " Everything about you, your books, your 
 dear wife, your words, your face, tell me that you 
 are very near indeed to the way — a step or two, 
 and you are free ! " He sate back for a moment, 
 as though exhausted, and then said : u You will 
 forgive me for speaking so frankly, but I feel from 
 hour to hour how short my time may be ; and I 
 had no doubt when I saw you, even before I saw 
 you, that I should have some message to give you, 
 some tidings of hope and patience." 
 
 I despair, as I write, of giving any idea of the 
 impressiveness of the old man ; now that I have 
 written down his talk, it seems abrupt and even 
 strained. It was neither. The perfect naturalness
 
 ENLIGHTENMENT 251 
 
 and tranquillity of it all, the fatherly smile, the 
 little gestures of his frail hand, interpreted and 
 rilled up the gaps, till I felt as though I had 
 known him all my life, and that he was to me as 
 a dear father, who saw my needs, and even loved 
 me for what I was not and for what I might be. 
 
 At this point Miss came in, and led me 
 
 away. As Maud and I walked back, we spoke to 
 each other of what we had seen and heard. He 
 had talked to her, she said, very simply about 
 Alec. " I don't know how it was," she added, " but 
 I found myself telling him everything that was in 
 my mind and heart, and it seemed as though he 
 knew it all before." " Yes, indeed," I said, " he 
 made me desire with all my heart to be different — 
 and yet that is not true either, because he made 
 me wish not to be something outside of myself, 
 but something inside, something that was there 
 all the time : I seem never to have suspected what 
 religion was before ; it had always seemed to me 
 a thing that one put on and wore, like a garment ; 
 but now it seems to me to be the most natural, 
 simple, and beautiful thing in the world ; to con- 
 sist in being oneself, in fact." " Yes, that is 
 exactly it," said Maud, " I could not have put it 
 into words, but that is how I feel." " Yes," I said, 
 u I saw, in a flash, that life is not a series of 
 things that happen to us, but our very selves. It 
 is not a question of obeying, and doing, and 
 acting, but a question of being. Well, it has 
 been a wonderful experience ; and yet he told me 
 nothing that I did not know. God in us, not God
 
 252 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 with us." And presently I added : "If I were 
 
 never to see Mr again, I should feel he had 
 
 somehow done more for me than a hundred 
 conversations and a thousand books. It was like 
 the falling of the spirit at Pentecost." 
 
 That strange sense of an uplifted freedom, of 
 willing co-operation has dwelt with me, with us 
 both, for many days. I dare not say that life has 
 become easy ; that the cloud has rolled away ; that 
 there have not been hours of dismay and dreari- 
 ness and sorrow. But it is, I am sure, a turning- 
 point of my life ; the way which has led me 
 downwards, deepening and darkening, seems to 
 have reached its lowest point, and to be ascending 
 from the gloom ; and all from the words of a 
 simple, frail old man, sitting among his books in 
 a panelled parlour, in a soft, summer afternoon. 
 
 July 10, 1890. 
 
 I have been sitting out, this hot, still afternoon, 
 upon the lawn, under the shade of an old lime- 
 tree, with its sweet scent coming and going in 
 wafts, with the ceaseless murmur of the bees all 
 about it ; but for that slumberous sound, the place 
 was utterly still ; the sun lay warm on the old 
 house, on the box hedges of the garden, on the 
 rich foliage of the orchard. I have been lost in 
 a strange dream of peace and thankfulness, only 
 wishing the sweet hours could stay their course, 
 and abide with me thus for ever. Part of the 
 time Maggie sate with me, reading. We were
 
 THE NEW LIFE 253 
 
 both silent, but glad to be together ; every now 
 and then she looked up and smiled at me. I was 
 not even visited by the sense that used to haunt 
 me, that I must bestir myself, do something, think 
 of something. It is not that I am less active than 
 formerly ; it is the reverse. I do a number of 
 little things here, trifling things they would seem, 
 not worth mentioning, mostly connected with the 
 village or the parish. My writing has retired far 
 into the past, like a sort of dream. I never even 
 plan to begin again. I teach a little, not Maggie 
 only, but some boys and girls of the place, who 
 have left school, but are glad to be taught in the 
 evenings. I have plenty of good easy friends here, 
 and have the blessed sense of feeling myself wanted. 
 Best of all, a sense of poisonous hurry seems to 
 have gone out of my life. In the old days I was 
 always stretching on to something, the end of 
 my book, the next book — never content with the 
 present, always hoping that the future would bring 
 me the satisfaction I seemed to miss. I did not 
 always know it at the time, for I was often happy 
 when I was writing a book — but it was, at best, 
 a rushing, tortured sort of happiness. My great 
 sorrow — what has that become to me ? A beauti- 
 ful thing, full of patience and hope. What but 
 that has taught me to learn to live for the moment, 
 to take the bitter experiences of life as they come, 
 not crushing out the sweetness and flinging the 
 rind aside, but soberly, desirously, only eager to 
 get from the moment what it is meant to bring. 
 Even the very shrinking back from a bitter duty,
 
 254 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 the indolent rejection of the thought that touches 
 one's elbow, bidding one again and again arise and 
 go, means something ; to defer one's pleasure, to 
 break the languid dream, to take up the tiny task, 
 what strength is there ! Thus no burden seems 
 too heavy, too awkward, too slippery, too ill- 
 shaped, but one can lift it. The yoke is easy, 
 because one bears it in quiet confidence, not 
 overtaxing ability or straining hope. Instead of 
 watching life, as from high castle windows, feeling 
 it common and unclean, not to be mingled with, 
 I am in it and of it. And what is become of all 
 my old dreams of art, of the secluded worship, the 
 lonely rapture ! Well, it is all there, somehow, 
 flowing inside life, like a stream that is added to a 
 river, not like a leat drawn aside from the current. 
 The force I spent on art has gone to swell life and 
 augment it ; it heightens perception, it intensifies 
 joy — it was the fevered lust of expression that 
 drained the vigour of my days and hours. 
 
 But am I then satisfied with the part I play ? 
 Do I feel that my faculties are being used, that I 
 am lending a hand to the great sum of toil ? I used 
 to feel that, or thought I felt it, in the old days, 
 but now I see that I walked in a vain delusion, 
 serving my own joy, my own self-importance. 
 Not that I think my old toil all ill-spent ; that was 
 my work before, as surely as it is not now ; but 
 the old intentness, the old watching for tone and 
 gesture, for action and situation, that has all shifted 
 its gaze, and waits upon God. It may be, nay it 
 is certain, that I have far to go, much to learn ;
 
 THE SOUL'S GROWTH 255 
 
 but now that I may perhaps recover my strength, 
 life spreads out into sunny shallows, moving slow 
 and clear. It is like a soft sweet interlude between 
 two movements of fire and glow ; for I see now, 
 what then I could not see, that something in my 
 life was burnt and shrivelled up in my enforced 
 silence and in my bitter loss — then, when I felt 
 my energies at their lowest, when mind and bodily 
 frame alike flapped loose, like a flag of smut upon 
 the bars of a grate, I was living most intensely, and 
 the soul's wings grew fast, unfolding plume and 
 feather. It was then that life burnt with its 
 fiercest heat, when it withdrew me, faintly struggling, 
 away from all that pleased and caressed the mind 
 and the body, into the silent glow of the furnace. 
 Strange that I should not have perceived it ! But 
 now I see in all maimed and broken lives, the 
 lives that seem most idle and helpless, most futile 
 and vain, that the same fierce flame is burning 
 bright about them ; that the reason why they 
 cannot spread and flourish, like flowers, into the 
 free air, is because the strong roots are piercing 
 deep, entwining themselves firmly among the 
 stones, piercing the cold silent crevices of the 
 earth. Ay, indeed ! The coal in the furnace, 
 burning passively and hotly, is as much a force, 
 though it but lies and suffers, as the energy that 
 throbs in the leaping piston-rod or the rushing 
 wheel. Not in success and noise and triumph 
 does the soul grow ; when the body rejoices, when 
 the mind is prodigal of seed, the spirit sits within 
 in a darkened chamber, like a folded chrysalis,
 
 256 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 stiff as a corpse, in a faint dream. But when 
 triumphs have no savour, when the cheek grows 
 pale and the eye darkens, then the dark chrysalis 
 opens, and the rainbow wings begin to spread and 
 glow, uncrumpling to the suns of paradise. My 
 soul has taken wings, and sits poised and delicate, 
 faint with long travail, perhaps to hover awhile 
 about the garden blooms and the chalices of 
 honied flowers, perhaps to take her flight beyond 
 the glade, over the forest, to the home of her de- 
 sirous heart. I know not ! Yet in these sunlit 
 hours, with the slow, strong pulse of life beating 
 round me, it seems that something is preparing 
 for one struck dumb and crushed with sorrow to 
 the earth. How soft a thrill of hope throbs in the 
 summer air ! How the bird-voices in the thicket, 
 and the rustle of burnished leaves, and the hum of 
 insects, blend into a secret harmony, a cadence 
 half-heard ! I wait in love and confidence ; and 
 through the trees of the garden One seems ever to 
 draw nearer, walking in the cool of the day, at 
 whose bright coming the flowers look upwards 
 unashamed. Shall I be bidden to meet Him ! 
 Will He call me loud or low ? 
 
 August 25, 1890. 
 
 Maud has been ailing of late — how much it is 
 impossible to say, because she is always cheerful 
 and indomitable. She never complains, she never 
 neglects a duty ; but I have found her, several 
 times of late, sitting alone, unoccupied, musing —
 
 MAUD 257 
 
 that is unlike her — and with a certain shadow 
 upon her face that I do not recognise ; but the 
 strange, new, sweet companionship in which we 
 live seems at the same time to have heightened 
 and deepened. I seem to have lived so close to 
 her all these years, and yet of late to have found 
 a new and different personality in her, which I 
 never suspected. Perhaps we have both changed 
 somewhat ; I do not feel the difference in myself. 
 But there is something larger, stronger, deeper 
 about Maud now, as if she had ascended into a 
 purer air, and caught sight of some unexpected, 
 undreamed-of distance ; but instead of giving her 
 remoteness, she seems to be sharing her wider 
 outlook with me ; she was never a great talker — 
 perhaps it was that in old days my own mind 
 ran like an ebullient fountain, evoking no definite 
 response, needing no interchange ; but she was 
 always a sayer of penetrating things. She has 
 a wonderful gift of seeing the firm issue through 
 a cloud of mixed suggestions ; but of late there 
 has been a richness, a generosity, a wisdom about 
 her which I have never recognised before. I 
 think, with contrition, that I under-estimated, not 
 her judgment or instinct, but her intellect. I am 
 sure I lived too much in the intellectual region, 
 and did not guess how little it really solves, in 
 what a limited region it disports itself. I see that 
 this wisdom was hers all along, and that I have 
 been blind to it ; but now that I have travelled 
 out of the intellectual region, I perceive what a 
 much greater thing that further wisdom is than 
 
 R
 
 258 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 I had thought. Living in art and for art, I used 
 to believe that the intellectual structure was the 
 one thing that mattered, but now I perceive dimly 
 that the mind is but on the threshold of the soul ; 
 and that the artist may, nay does, often perceive, 
 by virtue of his trained perception, what is going 
 on in the sanctuary ; but he is as one who kneels 
 in a church at some great solemnity — he sees the 
 movements and gestures of the priests ; he sees 
 the holy rite proceeding, he hears the sacred words ; 
 something of the inner spirit of it all flows out to 
 him ; but the viewless current of prayer, the fiery 
 ray streaming down from God, that smites itself 
 into the earthly symbol — all this is hidden from 
 him. Those priests, intent upon the sacred work, 
 feel something that they not only do not care to 
 express, but which they would not if they could ; 
 it would be a profanation of the awful mystery. 
 The artist is not profane in expressing what he 
 perceives, because he can be the interpreter of the 
 symbol to others more remote ; but he is not a 
 real partaker of the mystery ; he is a seer of the 
 word and not a doer. What now amazes me is 
 that Maud, to whom the heart of the matter, the 
 inner emotion, has always been so real, could fling 
 herself, and all for love of me, into the outer work 
 of intellectual expression. I have always, God 
 forgive me, believed my work to be in some way 
 superior to hers. I loved her truly, but with a 
 certain condescension of mind, as one loves a 
 child or a flower ; and now I see that she has 
 been serenely ahead of me all the time, and it has
 
 A SHADOW 259 
 
 been she that has helped me along ; I have been 
 as the spoilt and wilful child, and she as the sweet 
 and wise mother, who has listened to its prattle, 
 and thrown herself, with all the infinite patience 
 of love, into the tiny bounded dreams. I have 
 told her all this as simply as I could, and though 
 she deprecated it all generously and humbly, I feel 
 the blessed sense of having caught her up upon 
 the way, of seeing — how dimly and imperfectly ! 
 — what I have owed her all along. I am over- 
 whelmed with a shame which it is a sweet pleasure 
 to confess to her ; and now that I can spare her 
 a little, anticipate her wishes, save her trouble, it 
 is an added joy ; a service that I can render and 
 which she loves to receive. I never thought of 
 these things in the old days; she had always 
 planned everything, arranged everything, fore- 
 stalled everything. 
 
 I have at last persuaded her to come up to town 
 and see a doctor. We plan to go abroad for a 
 time. I would earn the means if I could, but, if 
 not, we will sacrifice a little of our capital, and 
 I will replace it, if I can, by some hack-work ; 
 though I have a dislike of being paid for my name 
 and reputation, and not for my best work. 
 
 I am not exactly anxious ; it is all so slight, 
 what they call a want of tone, and she has been 
 through so much ; even so, my anxiety is con- 
 quered by the joy of being able to serve her a 
 little ; and that joy brings us together, hour by 
 hour.
 
 260 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 September 6, 1890. 
 
 Again the shadow comes down over my life. 
 The doctor says plainly that Maud's heart is weak ; 
 but he adds that there is nothing organically wrong, 
 though she must be content to live the life of an 
 invalid for a time ; he was reassuring and quiet ; 
 but I cannot keep a dread out of my mind, though 
 Maud herself is more serene than she has been for 
 a long time ; she says that she was aware that she 
 was somehow overtaxing herself, and it is a com- 
 fort to be forbidden, in so many words, to abstain 
 a little. We are to live quietly at home for a 
 while, until she is stronger, and then we shall go 
 abroad. 
 
 Maud does not come down in the mornings 
 now, and she is forbidden to do more than take 
 the shortest stroll. I read to her a good deal in 
 the mornings ; Maggie has proudly assumed the 
 functions of housekeeper ; the womanly instinct 
 for these things is astonishing. A man would far 
 sooner not have things comfortable, than have 
 the trouble of providing them and seeing about 
 them. Women do not care about comforts for 
 themselves ; they prefer haphazard meals, trays 
 brought into rooms, vague arrangements ; and 
 yet they seem to know by instinct what a man 
 likes, even though he does not express it, and 
 though he would not take any trouble to secure 
 it. What centuries of trained instincts must have 
 gone to produce this. The new order has given 
 me a great deal more of Maggie's society. We are
 
 MAGGIE 261 
 
 sent out in the afternoon, because Maud likes to 
 be quite alone to receive the neighbours, small and 
 great, that come to see her, now that she cannot 
 go to see them. She tells me frankly that my 
 presence only embarrasses them. And thus another 
 joy has come to me, one of the most beautiful 
 things that has ever happened to me in my life, 
 and which I can hardly find words to express — 
 the contact with, the free sight of the mind and 
 soul of an absolutely pure, simple and ingenuous 
 girl. Maggie's mind has opened like a flower. She 
 talks to me with perfect openness of all she feels 
 and thinks ; to walk thus, hour by hour, with my 
 child's arm through my own, her wide-opened, 
 beautiful eyes looking in mine, her light step be- 
 side me, with all her pretty caressing ways — it 
 seems to me a taste of the purest and sweetest 
 love I have ever felt. It is like the rapture of 
 a lover, but without any shadow of the desirous 
 element that mingles so fiercely and thirstily with 
 our mortal loves, to find myself dear to her. I 
 have a poignant hunger of the heart to save her 
 from any touch of pain, to smooth her path for 
 her, to surround her with beauty and sweetness. 
 I did not guess that the world held any love quite 
 like this ; there seems no touch of selfishness 
 about it ; my love lavishes itself, asking for nothing 
 in return, except that I may be dear to her as she 
 to me. 
 
 Her fancies, her hopes, her dreams — how in- 
 explicable, how adorable 1 She said to me to-day 
 that she could never marry, and that it was a real
 
 262 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 pity that she could not have children of her own 
 without. " We don't want any one else, do we, 
 except just some little children to amuse us." 
 She is a highly imaginative child, and one of 
 our amusements is to tell each other long, inter- 
 minable tales of the adventures of a family we call 
 the Pickfords. I have lost all count of their 
 names and ages, their comings and goings ; but 
 Maggie never makes a mistake about them, and 
 they seem to her like real people ; and when I 
 sometimes plunge them into disaster, she is so 
 deeply affected that the disasters have all to be 
 softly repaired. The Pickfords must have had a 
 very happy life ; the kind of life that people 
 created and watched over by a tender, patient and 
 detailed Providence might live. How different 
 from the real world ! 
 
 But I don't want Maggie to live in the real 
 world yet awhile. It will all come pouring in 
 upon her, sorrow, anxiety, weariness, no doubt — 
 alas that it should be so ! Perhaps some people 
 would blame me, would say that more discipline 
 would be bracing, wholesome, preparatory. But 
 I don't believe that. I had far rather that she 
 learnt that life was tender, gentle and sweet — and 
 then if she has to face trouble, she will have the 
 strength of feeling that the tenderness, gentleness 
 and sweetness are the real stuff of life, waiting for 
 her behind the cloud. I don't want to disillusion 
 her ■; I want to establish her faith in happiness 
 and love, so that it cannot be shaken. That is 
 a better philosophy, when all is said and done,
 
 STROKE UPON STROKE 263 
 
 than the stoical fortitude that anticipates dreari- 
 ness, that draws the shadow over the sun, that 
 overvalues endurance. One endures by instinct ; 
 but one must be trained to love. 
 
 February 6, 1891. 
 
 It is months since I have opened this book ; it 
 has lain on my table all through the dreadful 
 hours — I write the word down conventionally, 
 and yet it is not the right word at all, because I 
 have merely been stunned and numbed. I simply 
 could not suffer any more. I smiled to myself, as 
 the man in the story, who was broken on the 
 wheel, smiled when they struck the second and 
 the third blow. I knew why he smiled ; it was 
 because he had dreaded it so much, and when it 
 came there was nothing to dread, because he 
 simply did not feel it. 
 
 To-night I just pick up idly the dropped thread. 
 Perhaps it is a sign, this faint desire to make a 
 little record, of the first tingling of returning life. 
 Something stirs in me, and I will not resist it ; it 
 may be read by some one that comes after me, by 
 some one perhaps who feels that his own grief is 
 supreme and unique, and that no one has ever 
 suffered so before. He may learn that there 
 have been others in the dark valley before him, 
 that the mist is full of pilgrims stumbling on, 
 falling, rising again, falling again, lying stupefied 
 in a silence which is neither endurance nor 
 patience.
 
 264 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 Maud was taken from me first ; she went with- 
 out a word or a sign. She was better that day, 
 she declared, than she had felt for some time ; 
 she was on the upward grade. She walked a few 
 hundred yards with Maggie and myself, and then 
 she went back ; the last sight I had of her alive 
 was when she stood at the corner and waved her 
 hand to us as we went out of sight. I am glad 
 I looked round and saw her smile. I had not 
 the smallest or faintest premonition of what was 
 coming; indeed, I was lighter of mood than I 
 had been for some time. We came in ; we were 
 told that she was tired and had gone up to lie 
 down. As she did not come down to tea, I went 
 up and found her lying on her bed, her head 
 upon her hand — dead. The absolute peace and 
 stillness of her attitude showed us that she had 
 herself felt no access of pain. She had lain down 
 to rest, and she had rested indeed. Even at my 
 worst and loneliest, I have been able to be glad 
 that it was even so. If I could know that I should 
 die thus in joy and tranquillity, it would be a great 
 load off my mind. 
 
 But the grief, the shock to Maggie was too much 
 for my dear, love-nurtured child. A sort of awful 
 and desperate strength came on me after that ; I 
 felt somehow, day by day, that I must just put 
 away my own grief till a quiet hour, in order that 
 I might sustain and guard the child ; but her 
 heart was broken, I think, though they say that no 
 one dies of sorrow. She lay long ill — so utterly 
 frail, so appealing in her grief, that I could think
 
 ALONE 265 
 
 of nothing but saving her. Was it a kind of 
 selfishness that needed to be broken down in 
 me ? Perhaps it was ! Every single tendril of 
 my heart seemed to grow round the child and 
 clasp her close ; she was all that I had left, and in 
 some strange way she seemed to be all that I had 
 lost too. And then she faded out of life, not 
 knowing that she was fading, but simply too tired 
 to live ; and my desire alone seemed to keep her 
 with me. Till at last, seeing her weariness and 
 weakness, I let my desire go ; I yielded, I gave 
 her to God, and He took her, as though He 
 had waited for my consent. 
 
 And now that I am alone, I will say, with such 
 honesty as I can muster, that I have no touch of 
 self-pity, no rebellion. It is all too deep and dark 
 for that. I am not strong enough even to wish to 
 die ; I have no wishes, no desires at all. The 
 three seem for ever about me, in my thoughts 
 and in my dreams. When Alec died, I used to 
 wake up to the fact, day after day, with a trem- 
 bling dismay. Now it is not like that. I can give 
 no account of what I do. The smallest things 
 about me seem to take up my mind. I can sit for 
 an hour by the hearth, neither reading nor think- 
 ing, just watching the flame flicker over the coals, 
 or the red heart of the fire eating its way upwards 
 and outwards. I can sit on a sunshiny morning 
 in the garden, merely watching with a strange 
 intentness what goes on about me, the uncrum- 
 pling leaf, the snowdrop pushing from the mould, 
 the thrush searching the lawn, the robin slipping
 
 266 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 from bough to bough, the shapes of the clouds, the 
 dying ray. I seem to have no motive either to 
 live or to die. I retrace in memory my walks 
 with Maggie, I can see her floating hair, and how 
 she leaned to me ; I can sit, as I used to sit read- 
 ing, by Maud's side, and see her face changing as 
 the book's mood changed, her clear eye, her strong 
 delicate hands. I seem as if I had awaked from 
 a long and beautiful dream. People sometimes 
 come and see me, and I can see the pity in their 
 faces and voices ; I can see it in the anxious care 
 with which my good servants surround me ; but I 
 feel that it is half disingenuous in me to accept it, 
 because I need no pity. Perhaps there is some- 
 thing left for me to do in the world : there seems 
 no reason otherwise why I should linger here. 
 
 Mr. has been very good to me ; I have 
 
 seen him almost daily. He seems the only person 
 who perfectly understands. He has hardly said 
 a word to me about my sorrow. He said once 
 that he should not speak of it ; before, he said, I 
 was like a boy learning a lesson with the help of 
 another boy, but that now I was being taught by 
 the Master Himself. That may be so ; but the 
 Master has a very scared and dull pupil, alas, 
 who cannot even discern the letters. I care 
 nothing whether God be pleased or displeased ; 
 I bear His will, without either pain or resistance. 
 I simply feel as if there had been some vast and 
 overwhelming mistake somewhere ; a mistake so 
 incredible and inconceivable that nothing else 
 mattered ; as if — I do not speak profanely — God
 
 WAITING 267 
 
 Himself were appalled at what He had done, and 
 dared not smite further one whom He had stunned 
 into silence and apathy. 
 
 With Mr. I talk ; he talks of simple, quiet 
 
 things, of old books and thoughts. He tells me, 
 sometimes, when I am too weary to speak, long, 
 beautiful, quiet stories of his younger days, and 
 I listen like a child to his grave voice, only sorry 
 when it comes to an end. So the days pass, and 
 I will not say I have no pleasure in them, because 
 I have won back a sort of odd childish pleasure 
 in small incidents, sights, and sounds. The part 
 of me that can feel seems to have been simply cut 
 gently away, and I live in the hour, just glad when 
 the sun is out, sorry when it is dull and cheerless. 
 
 I read the other day one of my old books, and 
 I could not believe it was mine. It seemed like 
 the voice of some one I had once known long 
 ago, in a golden hour. I was amused and sur- 
 prised at my own quickness and inventiveness, at 
 the confidence with which I interpreted everything 
 so glibly and easily. I cannot interpret any more, 
 and I do not seem to desire to do so. I seem to 
 wait, with a half-amused smile, to see if God can 
 make anything out of the strange tangle of things, 
 as a child peers in within a scaffolding, and sees 
 nothing but a forest of poles, little rising walls of 
 chambers, a crane swinging weights to and fro. 
 What can ever come, he thinks, out of such strange 
 confusion, such fruitless hurry ? 
 
 Well, I will not write any more ; a sense of 
 weariness and futility comes over me. I will go
 
 268 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 back to my garden to see what I can see, only 
 dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required 
 of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, 
 which would interrupt my idle dreams. 
 
 February 8, 1891. 
 I tried this morning to look through some of 
 the old letters and papers in Maud's cabinet. 
 There were my own letters, carefully tied up with 
 a ribbon ; letters from her mother and father ; 
 from the children when we were away from them. 
 I began to read, and was seized with a sharp, 
 unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears. I 
 seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all 
 away again. Why should I disturb myself to no 
 purpose ? " There shall be no more sorrow nor 
 crying, for the former things are passed away " — 
 so runs the old verse, and I had almost grown to 
 feel like that. Why distrust it ? Yet I could not 
 forbear. I got the papers out again, and read 
 late into the night, like one reading an old and 
 beautiful story. Suddenly the curtain lifted, and 
 I saw myself alone, I saw what I had lost. The 
 ineffectual agony I endured, crying out for very 
 loneliness 1 " That was all mine," said the melt- 
 ing heart, so long frozen and dumb. Grief, in 
 waves and billows, began to beat upon me like 
 breakers on a rock-bound shore. A strange fever 
 of the spirit came on me, scenes and figures out 
 of the years floating fiercely and boldly past me. 
 Was my strength and life sustained for this, that
 
 A VISION 269 
 
 I should just sleep awhile, and wake to fall into 
 the pit of suffering, far deeper than before ? 
 
 If they could but come back to me for a 
 moment ; if I could feel Maud's cheek by mine, 
 or Maggie's arms round my neck ; if they could 
 but stand by me smiling, in robes of light ! Yet 
 as in a vision I seem to see them leaning from a 
 window, in a blank castle-wall rising from a misty 
 abyss, scanning a little stairway that rises out of 
 the clinging fog, built up through the rocks and 
 ending in a postern gate in the castle-wall. Upon 
 that stairway, one by one emerging from the mist, 
 seem to stagger and climb the figures of men, 
 entering in, one by one, and the three, with smiles 
 and arms interlaced, are watching eagerly. Can- 
 not I climb the stair ? Perhaps even now I am 
 close below them, where the mist hangs damp on 
 rock and blade ? Cannot I set myself free ? No, 
 I could not look them in the face, they would hide 
 their eyes from me, if I came in hurried flight, in 
 passionate cowardice. Not so must I come before 
 them, if indeed they wait for me. 
 
 The morning was coming in about the dewy 
 garden, the birds piping faint in thicket and bush, 
 when I stumbled slowly, dizzied and helpless, to 
 my bed. Then a troubled sleep ; and ah, the 
 bitter waking ; for at last I knew what I had lost. 
 
 February 10, 1891. 
 
 " All things become plain to us," said the good 
 vicar, pulling on his gloves, " when we once realise
 
 270 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that God is love — Perfect Love ! " He said good- 
 bye ; he trudged off to his tea, a trying visit man- 
 fully accomplished, leaving me alone. 
 
 He had sate with me, good, kindly man, for 
 twenty minutes. There were tears in his eyes, 
 and I valued that little sign of human fellowship 
 more than all the commonplaces he courageously 
 enunciated. He talked in a soft, low tone, as if 
 I was ill. He made no allusions to mundane 
 things ; and I am grateful to him for coming. 
 He had dreaded his call, I am sure, and he had 
 done it from a mixture of affection and duty, both 
 good things. 
 
 " Perfect Love, yes — if we could feel that ! " . I 
 sate musing in my chair. 
 
 I saw, as in a picture, a child brought up in a 
 beautiful and stately house by a grave strong man, 
 who lavished at first love and tenderness, ease and 
 beauty, on the child, laughing with him, and making 
 much of him ; all of which the child took uncon- 
 sciously, unthinkingly, knowing nothing different ; 
 running to meet his guardian, glad to be with him, 
 sorry to leave him. 
 
 Then I saw in my parable that one day, when 
 the child played in the garden, as he had often 
 played before, he noticed a little green alley, with 
 a pleasant arch of foliage, that he had never seen 
 before, leading to some secluded place. The child 
 was dimly aware that there were parts of the 
 garden where he was supposed not to go ; he had 
 been told he must not go too far from the house, 
 but it was all vague and indistinct in his mind ;
 
 A PARABLE 271 
 
 he had never been shown anything precisely, or 
 told the limits of his wanderings. So he went 
 in joy, with a sense of a sweet mystery, down 
 the alley, and presently found himself in a still 
 brighter and more beautiful garden, full of fruits 
 growing on the ground and on the trees, which 
 he plucked and ate. There was a building, like 
 a pavilion, at the end, of two storeys ; and while 
 he wandered thither with his hands full of fruits, 
 he suddenly saw his guardian watching him, with 
 a look he had never seen on his face before, from 
 the upper windows of the garden-house. His 
 first impulse was to run to him, share his joy with 
 him, and ask him why he had not been shown 
 the delicious place ; but the fixed and inscrutable 
 look on his guardian's face, neither smiling nor 
 frowning, the stillness of his attitude, first chilled 
 the child and then dismayed him ; he flung the 
 fruits on the ground and shivered, and then ran 
 out of the garden. In the evening, when he was 
 with his guardian, he found him as kind and 
 tender as ever. But his guardian said nothing 
 to him about the inner garden of fruits, and the 
 child feared to ask him. 
 
 But the next day he felt as though the fruits 
 had given him a new eagerness, a new strength ; 
 he hankered after them long, and at last went 
 down the green path again ; this time the summer- 
 house seemed empty. So he ate his fill, and this 
 he did for many days. Then one day, when he 
 was bending down to pluck a golden fruit, that 
 lay gem-like on the ground among green leaves,
 
 272 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 he heard a sudden step behind him, and turning, 
 saw his guardian draw swiftly near, with a look 
 of anger on his face ; the next instant he was 
 struck down, again and again ; lifted from the 
 ground at last, as in a passion of rage, and flung 
 down bleeding on the earth ; and then, without a 
 word, his guardian left him ; at first he lay and 
 moaned, but then he crawled away, and back to 
 the house. And there he found the old nurse 
 that tended him, who greeted him with tears and 
 words of comfort, and cared for his hurts. And 
 he asked her the reason of his hard usage, but she 
 could tell him nothing, only saying that it was 
 the master's will, and that he sometimes did thus, 
 though she thought he was merciful at heart. 
 
 The child lay sick many days, his guardian still 
 coming to him and sitting with him, with gentle 
 talk and tender offices, till the scene in the garden 
 was like an evil dream ; but as his guardian spoke 
 no word of displeasure to the child, the child still 
 feared to ask him, and only strove to forget. And 
 then at last he was well enough to go out a little ; 
 but a few days after — he avoided the inner garden 
 now out of a sort of horror — he was sitting in the 
 sun, near the house, feebly trying to amuse himself 
 with one of his old games — how poor they seemed 
 after the fruits of the inner paradise, how he 
 hankered desirously after the further place, with 
 its hot, sweet, fragrant scents, its rich juices I — 
 when again his guardian came upon him in a 
 sudden wrath, and struck him many times, dash- 
 ing him down to the ground ; and again he crept
 
 THE CHILD AND THE GARDEN 273 
 
 home, and lay long ill, and again his guardian 
 was unwearingly kind ; but now a sort of horror 
 of the man grew up in the mind of the child, and 
 he feared that his strange anger might break out 
 at any moment in a storm of blows. 
 
 And at last he was well again; and had half 
 forgotten, in the constant kindness, and even 
 merriment, of his guardian, the horror of the 
 two assaults. He was out and about again ; he 
 still shunned the paradise of fruits, but wearying 
 of the accustomed pleasaunce, he went further 
 and passed into the wood ; how cool and mys- 
 terious it was among the great branching trees ! 
 the forest led him onwards ; now the sun lay 
 softly upon it, and a stream bickered through a 
 glade, and now the path lay through thickets, 
 which hid the further woodland from view ; and 
 now passing out into a more open space, he had 
 a thrill of joy and excitement ; there was a herd 
 of strange living creatures grazing there, great 
 deer with branching horns ; they moved slowly 
 forwards, cropping the grass, and the child was 
 lost in wonder at the sight. Presently one of 
 them stopped feeding, began to sniff the air, and 
 then looking round, espied the child, and began 
 slowly to approach him. The child had no terror 
 of the great dappled stag, and held out his hand 
 to him, when the great beast suddenly bent his 
 head down, and was upon him with one bound, 
 striking him with his horns, lifting him up, smiting 
 him with his pointed hooves. Presently the child, 
 in his terror and faintness, became aware that 
 
 S
 
 274 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 the beast had left him, and he began to drag 
 himself, all bruised as he was, along the glade ; 
 then he suddenly saw his guardian approaching, 
 and cried out to him, holding out his hands for 
 help and comfort — and his guardian strode 
 straight up to him, and, with the same fierce 
 anger in his face, struck at him again and again, 
 and spurned him with his feet. And then, when 
 he left him, the child at last, with accesses of 
 deadly faintness and pain, crept back home, to 
 be again tended by the old nurse, who wept over 
 him ; and the child found that his guardian came 
 to visit him, as kind and gentle as ever. And at 
 last one day when he sate beside the child, hold- 
 ing his hand, stroking his hair, and telling him an 
 old tale to comfort him, the child summoned up 
 courage to ask him a question about the garden 
 and the wood ; but at the first word his guardian 
 dropped his hand, and left him without a word. 
 
 And then the child lay and mused with fierce 
 and rebellious thoughts. He said to himself, " If 
 my guardian had told me where I might not go ; 
 if he had said to me, ' in the inner garden are 
 unwholesome fruits, and in the wood are savage 
 beasts ; and though I am strong and powerful, 
 yet I have not strength to root up the poisonous 
 plants and make the place a wilderness ; and I 
 cannot put a fence about it, or a fence about the 
 wood, that no one should enter ; but I warn you 
 that you must not enter, and I entreat you for the 
 love I bear you not to go thither,' " then the child 
 thought that he would not have made question,
 
 THE CHILD 275 
 
 but would have obeyed him willingly ; and again 
 he thought that, if he had indeed ventured in, and 
 had eaten of the evil fruits, and been wounded by 
 the savage stag, yet if his guardian had comforted 
 him, and prayed him lovingly not to enter to his 
 hurt, that then he would have loved his guardian 
 more abundantly and carefully. And he thought 
 too that, if his guardian had ever smitten him in 
 wrath, and had then said to him with tears that it 
 had grieved him bitterly to hurt him, but that thus 
 and thus only could he learn the vileness of the 
 place, then he would have not only forgiven the 
 ill-usage, but would even have loved to endure it 
 patiently. But what the child could not under- 
 stand was that his guardian should now be tender 
 and gracious, and at another time hard and cruel, 
 explaining nothing to him. And thus the child 
 said in himself, " I am in his power, and he must 
 do his will upon me ; but I neither trust nor love 
 him, for I cannot see the reason of what he does ; 
 though if he would but tell me the reason, I could 
 obey him and submit to him joyfully." These 
 hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon ; and 
 his guardian came no more to him for good 
 or for evil ; and the child, much broken by his 
 hard usage and his angry thoughts, crept about 
 neglected and spiritless, with nothing but fear and 
 dismay in his heart. 
 
 So the imagination shaped itself in my mind, a 
 parable of the sad, strange life of man. 
 
 « Perfect Love ! " If it were indeed that ? Yet 
 God does many things to His frail children, which
 
 276 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 if a man did, I could not believe him to be loving ; 
 though if He would but give us the assurance that 
 it was all leading us to happiness, we could endure 
 His fiercest stroke, His bitterest decree. But He 
 smites us, and departs ; He turns away in a rage, 
 because we have broken a law that we knew not 
 of. And again, when we seem most tranquil and 
 blest, most inclined to trust Him utterly, He smites 
 us down again without a word. I hope, I yearn 
 to see that it all comes from some great and per- 
 fect will, a will with qualities of which what we 
 know as mercy, justice, and love are but faint 
 shadows — but that is hidden from me. We can- 
 not escape, we must bear what God lays upon 
 us. We may fling ourselves into bitter and dark 
 rebellion ; still He spares us or strikes us, gives 
 us sorrow or delight. My one hope is to co- 
 operate with Him, to accept the chastening joyfully 
 and courageously. Then He takes from me joy, 
 and courage alike, till I know not whom I serve, 
 a Father or a tyrant. Can it indeed help us to 
 doubt whether He be tyrant or no ? Again I 
 know not, and again I sicken in fruitless despair, 
 like one caught in a great labyrinth of crags and 
 precipices. 
 
 February 14, 1891. 
 
 Then the Christian teacher says : " God has 
 given you a will, an independent will to act and 
 choose ; put it in unison with His will." Alas, I 
 know not how much of my seeming liberty is His
 
 THE FAILING WILL 277 
 
 or mine. He seems to make me able to exert my 
 will in some directions, able to make it effective ; 
 and yet in other matters, even though I see that a 
 course is holy and beautiful, I have no power to 
 follow it at all. I see men some more, some less 
 hampered than myself. Some seem to have no 
 desire for good, no dim perception of it. The 
 outcast child, brought up cruelly and foully, with 
 vile inheritances, he is not free, as I use the word; 
 sometimes, by some inner purity and strength, he 
 struggles upwards ; most often he is engulfed ; yet 
 it is all a free gift, to me much, to another little, 
 to some nothing at all. With all my heart do I 
 wish my will to be in harmony with His. I yield 
 it up utterly to Him. I have no strength or force, 
 and He withholds them from me. I do not blame, 
 I only ask to understand ; He has given me under- 
 standing, and has put in my heart a high dream of 
 justice and love ; why will He not show me that 
 He satisfies the dream? I say with the old Psalmist, 
 " Lo, I come," but He comes not forth to meet 
 me ; He does not even seem to discern me when 
 I am yet a long way off, as the father in the par- 
 able discerned his erring son. 
 
 Then the Christian teacher says to me that all 
 is revealed in Christ ; that He reconciles, not an 
 angry God to a wilful world, but a grieved and 
 outraged world to a God who cannot show them 
 He is love. 
 
 Yet Christ said that God was all-merciful and 
 all-loving, and that He ordered the very falling of 
 a single hair of our heads. But if God ordered
 
 278 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that, then He did not leave unordered the qualities 
 of our hearts and wills, and our very sins are of 
 His devising. 
 
 No, it is all dark and desperate ; I do not know, 
 I cannot know ; I shall stumble to my end in 
 ignorance ; sometimes glad when a gleam of 
 sunshine falls on my wearied limbs, sometimes 
 wrapping my garments around me in cold and 
 drenching rain. I am in the hand of God ; I 
 know that ; and I hope that I may dare to trust 
 Him ; but my confidence is shaken as He passes 
 over me, as the reed in the river shakes in the 
 wind. 
 
 February 18, 1891. 
 
 A still February day, with a warm, steady sun, 
 which stole in and caressed me, enveloping me in 
 light and warmth, as I sate reading this morning. 
 If I could be ashamed of anything, I should be 
 ashamed of the fact that my body has all day long 
 surprised me by a sort of indolent contentment, 
 repeating over and over that it is glad to be alive. 
 The mind and soul crave for death and silence. 
 Yet all the while my faithful and useful friend, the 
 body, seems to croon a low song of delight. That 
 is the worst of it, that I seem built for many years 
 of life. Shall I learn to forget ? 
 
 I walked long and far among the fields, in the 
 fresh, sun-warmed air. Ah ! the sweet world ! 
 Everything was at its barest and austerest — the 
 grass thin in the pastures, the copses leafless.
 
 THE LAMBING-FOLD 279 
 
 But such a sense of hidden life everywhere ! I 
 stood long beside the gate to watch the new-born 
 lambs, whose cries thrilled plaintively on the air, 
 like the notes of a violin. Little black-faced 
 grey creatures, on their high, stilt-like legs — a week 
 or two old, and yet able to walk, to gambol, to 
 rejoice, in their way, to reflect. The bleating 
 mothers moved about, divided between a deep 
 desire to eat, and the anxious care of their young- 
 lings. One of them stood over her sleeping lamb, 
 stamping her feet, to dismay me, no doubt, while 
 the little creature lay like a folded door-mat on the 
 pasture. Another brutally repelled the advances 
 of a strange lamb, butting it over whenever it drew 
 near ; another chewed the cud, while its lamb 
 sucked, its eyes half closed in contented joy, just 
 turning from time to time to sniff at the little 
 creature pressed close to its side. I felt as if I had 
 never seen the sight before, this wonderful and 
 amazing drama of life, beginning again year after 
 year, the same, yet not the same. 
 
 The old shepherd came out with his crook, said 
 a few words to me, and moved off, the ewes 
 following him, the lambs skipping behind. " He 
 shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth 
 beside the waters of comfort." How perfectly 
 beautiful and tender the image, a thing seen how 
 many hundred years ago on the hills of Bethlehem, 
 and touching the old heart just as it touches me 
 to-day ! 
 
 And yet, alas, to me to-day the image seems to 
 miss the one thing needful ; how all the images of
 
 280 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 guide and guardian and shepherd fail when applied 
 to God ! For here the shepherd is but a little 
 wiser, a little stronger than his flock. He sees 
 their difficulties, he feels them himself. But with 
 God, He is at once the Guide, and the Creator of 
 the very dangers past which He would lead us. If 
 we felt that God Himself were dismayed and sad 
 in the presence of evils that He could not touch or 
 remedy, we should turn to Him to help us as He 
 best could. But while we feel that the very per- 
 plexities and sufferings come from His hand, how 
 can we sincerely ask Him to guard us from things 
 which He originates, or at least permits ? Why 
 should they be there at all, if His concern is to 
 help us past them ; or how can we think that He 
 will lead us past them, when they are part of His 
 wise and awful design ? 
 
 And thus one plunges again into the darkness. 
 Can it indeed be that God, if He be all-embracing, 
 all-loving, all-powerful, can create or allow to 
 arise within Himself something that is not Him- 
 self, alien to Him, hostile to Him ? How can we 
 believe in Him and trust Him, if this indeed 
 be so ? 
 
 And yet, looking upon that little flock to-day, I 
 did indeed feel the presence of a kind and fatherly 
 heart, of something that grieved for my pain, and 
 that laid a hand upon my shoulder, saying, " Son, 
 endure for a little ; be not so disquieted 1"
 
 A FAR-OFF HOPE 281 
 
 March 8, 1891. 
 
 Something — far-off, faint, joyful — cried out sud- 
 denly in the depths of my spirit to-day. I felt — 
 I can but express it by images, for it was too 
 intangible for direct utterance — as a woman feels 
 when her child's life quickens within her ; as a 
 traveller's heart leaps up when, lost among inter- 
 minable hills, he is hailed by a friendly voice ; as 
 the river-water, thrust up into creeks and estuaries 
 by the incoming tide, is suddenly freed by the 
 ebb from that stealthy pressure, and flows gladly 
 downwards ; as the dark garden-ground may feel 
 when the frozen soil melts under warm winds of 
 spring, and the flower-roots begin to swell and 
 shoot. 
 
 Some such thrill it was that moved in the 
 silence of the soul, showing that the darkness 
 was alive. 
 
 It came upon me as I walked among soft airs 
 to-day. It was no bodily lightness that moved 
 me, for I was unstrung, listless, indolent ; but it 
 was a sense that it was good to live, lonely and 
 crushed as I was ; that there was something wait- 
 ing for me which deserved to be approached with a 
 patient expectation — that life was enriched, rather 
 than made desolate by my grief and losses ; that 
 I had treasure laid up in heaven. It came upon 
 me as a fancy, but it was something better than 
 that, that one or other of my dear ones had 
 perhaps awaked in the other world, and had sent 
 out a thought in search of me. I had often
 
 282 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 thought that if, when we are born into this world 
 of ours, our first years are so dumb and unper- 
 ceptive, it might be even so in the world beyond ; 
 that we are there allowed to rest a little, to sleep ; 
 and that has seemed to me to be perhaps the 
 explanation why, in those first sad days of grief, 
 when the mourner aches to have some communi- 
 cation with the vanished soul, and when the soul 
 that has passed the bounds of life would be 
 desiring too, one would think, to send some 
 message back, why, I say, there is no voice nor 
 hint nor sign. Perhaps the reason why our grief 
 loses its sting after a season is that the soul we 
 have loved does contrive to send some healing 
 influence into the desolate heart. 
 
 I know not ; but as I stood upon the hill-top 
 to-day at evening, the setting sun gilding the 
 cloud-edges, and touching the horizon with a 
 delicate misty azure, my spirit did indeed awake 
 with a smile, with a murmured word of hope. 
 
 If I, who have lost everything that can enrich 
 and gladden life, can yet feel that inalienable 
 residue of hope, which just turns the balance on 
 the side of desiring still to live, it must be that 
 life has something yet in store for me — I do not 
 hope for love, I do not desire the old gift of 
 expression again ; but there is something to learn, 
 to apprehend, to understand. I have learnt, I 
 think, not to grasp at anything, not to clasp any- 
 thing close to my heart ; the dream of possession 
 has fled from me ; it will be enough if, as I learn 
 the lesson, I can ease a few burdens and help
 
 THE SHRINE OF SORROW 283 
 
 frail feet along the road. Duty, pleasure, work 
 — strange names which we give to life, perversely 
 separating the strands of the woven thread, they 
 hold no meaning for me now — I do not expect 
 to be free from suffering or from grief ; but I 
 will no more distinguish them from other ex- 
 periences saying, this is joyful, and I will take all 1 
 can, or this is sad, and I will fly from it. I will take 
 life whole, not divide it into pieces and choose. 
 My grief shall be like a silent chapel, lit with 
 holy light, into which I shall often enter, and 
 bend, not to frame mechanical prayers, but to 
 submit myself to the still influence of the shrine. 
 It is all my own now, a place into which no other 
 curious eye can penetrate, a guarded sanctuary. 
 My sorrow seems to have plucked me with a 
 strong hand out of the swirling drift of cares, 
 anxieties, ambitions, hopes ; and I see now that 
 I could not have rescued myself ; that I should 
 have gone on battling with the current, catching at 
 the river wrack, in the hopes of saving something 
 from the stream. Now I am face to face with 
 God ; He saves me from myself, He strips my 
 ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He 
 made me, unashamed, nestling close to His heart. 
 
 April 3, 1 89 1. 
 
 A truth which has come home to me of late 
 with a growing intensity is that we are sent into 
 the world for the sake of experience, not neces- 
 sarily for the sake of immediate happiness. I feel
 
 284 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 that the mistake we most of us make is in reach- 
 ing out after a sense of satisfaction ; and even if 
 we learn to do without that, we find it very diffi- 
 cult to do without the sense of conscious growth. 
 I say again that what we need and profit by is 
 experience, and sometimes that comes by suffering, 
 helpless, dreary, apparently meaningless suffering. 
 Yet when pain subsides, do we ever, does any one 
 ever wish the suffering had not befallen us ? I 
 think not. We feel better, stronger, more pure, 
 more serene for it. Sometimes we get experience 
 by living what seems to be an uncongenial life. 
 One cannot solve the problem of happiness by 
 simply trying to turn out of one's life whatever 
 is uncongenial. Life cannot be made into an 
 Earthly Paradise, and it injures one's soul even to 
 try. What we can turn out of our lives are the 
 unfruitful, wasteful, conventional things ; and one 
 can follow what seems the true life, though one 
 may mistake even that sometimes. One of the 
 commonest mistakes nowadays is that so many 
 people are haunted with a vague sense that they 
 ought to do good, as they say. The best that most 
 people can do is to perform their work and their 
 obvious duties well and conscientiously. 
 
 If we realise that experience is what we need, 
 and not necessarily happiness or contentment, the 
 whole value of life is altered. We see then that 
 we can get as much or even more out of the futile 
 hour when we are held back from our chosen de- 
 lightful work, even out of the dreary or terrified 
 hour, when the sense of some irrevocable neglect,
 
 EXPERIENCE 285 
 
 some base surrender that has marred our life, 
 sinks burning into the soul, as a hot ember sinks 
 smoking into a carpet. Those are the hours of 
 life when we move and climb ; not the hours 
 when we work, and eat, and laugh, and chat, and 
 dine out with a sense of well-merited content. 
 
 The value of life is not to be measured by 
 length of days or success or tranquillity, but by 
 the quality of our experience, and the degree in 
 which we have profited by it. In the light of 
 such a truth as this, art seems to fade away as 
 just a pleasant amusement contrived by leisurely 
 men for leisurely men. 
 
 Then, further, one grows to feel that such easy 
 happiness as comes to us may be little more than 
 the sweetening of the bitter medicine, just enough 
 to give us courage and heart to live on ; that 
 applies, of course, only to the commoner sorts of 
 happiness, when one is busy and merry and self- 
 satisfied. Some sorts of happiness, such as the 
 best kind of affection, are parts of the larger ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Then, if we take hold of such experience in the 
 right way, welcoming it as far as possible, not 
 resisting it or trying to beguile it or forget it, we 
 can get to the end of our probation quicker ; if, 
 that is, we let the truth burn into us, instead of 
 timidly shrinking away from it. 
 
 This seems to me the essence of true religion ; 
 the people who cling very close to particular 
 creeds and particular beliefs seem to me to lose 
 robustness ; it is like trying to go to heaven in a
 
 286 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 bath-chair ! It retards rather than hastens the 
 apprehension of the truth. Here lies, to my mind, 
 the unreality of mystical books of devotion and 
 piety, where one is instructed to practise a servile 
 sort of abasement, and to beg forgiveness for all 
 one's noblest efforts and aspirations. Neither can 
 I believe that the mystical absorption, inculcated 
 by such books, in the human personality, the 
 human sufferings of Christ, is wholesome, or 
 natural, or even Christian. I cannot imagine 
 that Christ Himself ever recommended such a 
 frame of mind for an instant. What we want 
 is a much simpler sort of Christianity. If a man 
 had gone to Christ and expressed a desire to 
 follow Him, Christ, I believe, would have wanted 
 to know whether he loved others, whether he 
 hated sin, whether he trusted God. He would 
 not have asked him to recite the articles of his 
 belief, and still less have suggested a mystical and 
 emotional sort of passion for His own Person. 
 As least I cannot believe it, and I see nothing in 
 the Gospels which would lead me to believe it. 
 
 In any case this belief in our experience being 
 sent us for our far-off ultimate benefit has helped 
 me greatly of late, and will, I am sure, help me 
 still more. I do not practise it as I should, but 
 I believe with all my heart that the truth lies 
 there. 
 
 After all, the truth is there ; it matters little 
 that we should know it; it is just so and not 
 otherwise, and what we believe or do not believe 
 about it, will not alter it ; and that is a comfort too.
 
 LIMITATIONS 287 
 
 Afiril 24, 1 89 1. 
 
 After I had gone upstairs to bed last night, I 
 found I had left a book downstairs which I was 
 reading, and I went down again to recover it. 
 I could not find any matches, and had some diffi- 
 culty in getting hold of the book ; it is humiliating 
 to think how much one depends on sight. 
 
 A whimsical idea struck me. Imagine a crea- 
 ture, highly intellectual, but without the power of 
 sight, brought up in darkness, receiving impres- 
 sions solely by hearing and touch. Suppose him 
 introduced into a room such as mine, and endea- 
 vouring to form an impression of the kind of 
 creature who inhabited it. Chairs, tables, even 
 a musical instrument he could interpret ; but 
 what would he make of a writing-table and its 
 apparatus ? How would he guess at the use of a 
 picture ? Strangest of all, what would he think of 
 books ? He would find in my room hundreds of 
 curious oblong objects, opening with a sort of 
 hinge, and containing a series of lamina of paper, 
 which he would discern by his delicacy of touch 
 to be oddly and obscurely dinted. Yet he would 
 probably never be able to frame a guess that such 
 objects could be used for the communication of 
 intellectual ideas. What would he suppose them 
 to be? 
 
 The thought expanded before me. What if we 
 ourselves, in this world of ours, which seems to us 
 so complete, may really be creatures lacking some 
 further sense, which would make all our difficul-
 
 288 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 ties plain ? We knock up against all sorts of 
 unintelligible and inexplicable things, injustice, 
 disease, pain, evil, of which we cannot divine the 
 meaning or the use. Yet they are undoubtedly 
 there 1 Perhaps it is only that we cannot discern 
 the simplicity and the completeness of the heavenly 
 house of which they are the furniture. Fanciful, 
 of course ; but I am inclined to think not wholly 
 fanciful. 
 
 May 10, 1 891. 
 
 The question is this : Is there a kind of peace, 
 of tranquillity, attainable in this world, which is 
 proof against all calamities, sufferings, sorrows, 
 losses, doubts ? Is it attainable for one like 
 myself, who is sensitive, apprehensive, highly 
 strung, at once confident and timid, alive to 
 impressions, liable to swift changes of mood ? 
 Or is it a mere matter of mental, moral, and 
 physical health, depending on some balance of 
 qualities, which may or may not belong to a man, 
 a balance which hundreds cannot attain to ? 
 
 By this peace, I do not mean a chilly in- 
 difference, or a stoical fortitude. I do not mean 
 the religious peace, such as I see in some people, 
 which consists in holding as a certainty a scheme 
 of things which I believe to be either untrue or 
 uncertain — and about which, at all events, no 
 certainty is logically and rationally possible. 
 
 The peace I mean is a frame of mind which 
 a man would have, who loved passionately, who
 
 THE PEACE OF GOD 289 
 
 suffered acutely, who desired intensely, who feared 
 greatly ; and yet for whom, behind love and pain, 
 desire and fear, there existed a sort of inner 
 citadel, in which his soul was entrenched and 
 impregnable. 
 
 Such a security could not be a wholly rational 
 thing, because reason cannot solve the enigmas 
 with which we are confronted j but it must not 
 be an irrational intuition either, because then it 
 would be unattainable by a man of high intel- 
 lectual gifts ; and the peace that I speak of ought 
 to be consistent with any and every constitution 
 — physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent 
 with physical weakness, with liability to strong 
 temptations, with an incisive and penetrating in- 
 tellectual quality ; its essence would be a sort of 
 vital faith, a unity of the individual heart with the 
 heart of the world. It would rise like a rock 
 above the sea, like a lighthouse, where a guarded 
 flame would burn high and steady, however loudly 
 the surges thundered below upon the reefs, how- 
 ever fiercely the spray was dashed against the 
 glasses of the casements. 
 
 If it is attainable, then it is worth while to do 
 and to suffer anything to attain it ; if it is not 
 attainable, then the best thing is simply to be as 
 insensible as possible, not to love, not to admire, 
 not to desire ; for all these emotions are 
 channels along which the bitter streams of suffer- 
 ing can flow. 
 
 Prudence bids one close these channels ; mean- 
 while a fainter and remoter voice, with sweet and 
 
 T
 
 290 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 thrilling accents, seems to cry to one not to be 
 afraid, urges one to fling open every avenue by 
 which impassioned experiences, uplifting thoughts, 
 noble hopes, unselfish desires, may flow into the 
 soul. 
 
 This peace I have seen, or dream that I have 
 seen, in the faces and voices of certain gracious 
 spirits whom I have known. It seemed to consist 
 in an unbounded natural gratitude, a sweet sim- 
 plicity, a childlike affectionateness, that recognised 
 in suffering the joy of which it was the shadow, 
 and in desperate catastrophes the hope that lay 
 behind them. 
 
 Such a peace must not be a surrender of any- 
 thing, a feeble acquiescence ; it must be a strong 
 and eager energy, a thirst for experience, a large 
 tolerance, a desire to be convinced, a resolute 
 patience. 
 
 It is this and no less that I ask of God. 
 
 June 6, 1 89 1. 
 
 I had a beautiful walk to-day. I went a short 
 way by train, and descending at a wayside station, 
 found a little field-path, that led me past an old, 
 high-gabled, mullioned farmhouse, with all the 
 pleasant litter of country life about it. Then I 
 passed along some low-lying meadows, deep in 
 grass, where the birds sang sweetly, muffled in 
 leaves. The fields there were all full of orchids, 
 purple as wine, and the gold of buttercups floated 
 on the top of the rich meadow-grass. Then I
 
 THE TRACK 291 
 
 passed into a wood, and for a long time I walked 
 in the green glooms of copses, in a forest still- 
 ness, only the tall trees rustling softly overhead, 
 with doves cooing deep in the wood. Only once 
 I passed a house, a little cottage of grey stone, 
 in a clearing, with an air of settled peace about 
 it, that reminded me of an old sweet book that 
 I used to read as a child, Phantasies, full of 
 the mysterious romance of deep forests and 
 haunted glades. I was overshadowed that after- 
 noon with a sense of the ineffectiveness, the 
 loneliness of my life, walking in a vain shadow ; 
 but it melted out of my mind in the delicate 
 beauty of the woodland, with its wild fragrances 
 and cool airs, as when one chafes one's frozen 
 hands before a leaping flame. They told me, 
 those whispering groves, of the patient and tender 
 love of the Father, and I drew very near His 
 inmost heart in that gentle hour. The secret was 
 to bear, to endure, not stoically nor stolidly, but 
 with a quiet inclination of the will to sorrow and 
 pain, that were not so bitter after all, when one 
 abode faithfully in them. I became aware, as 
 I walked, that my heart was with the future 
 after all. The beautiful dead past, I could be 
 grateful for it, and not desire that it were mine 
 again. I felt as a man might feel who is making 
 his way across a wide moor. " Surely," he says 
 to himself, " the way lies here ; this ridge, that 
 dingle mark the track ; it lies there by the rushy 
 pool, and shows greener among the heather." 
 So he says, persuading himself in vain that he has
 
 292 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 found the way ; but at last the track, plain and un- 
 mistakable, lies before him, and he loses no more 
 time in imaginings, but goes straight forward. It 
 was my sorrow, after all, that had shown me that 
 I was in the true path. I had tried, in the old 
 days, to fancy that I was homeward bound ; 
 sometimes it was in the love of my dear ones, 
 sometimes in the joy of art, sometimes in my 
 chosen work ; and yet I knew in my heart all the 
 time that I was but a leisurely wanderer ; but 
 now at last the destined road was clear ; I was no 
 longer astray ; I was no longer inventing duties 
 and acts for myself, but I had in very truth a 
 note of the way. It was not the path I should 
 have chosen in my blindness and easiness. But 
 there could no longer be any doubt about it. 
 How the false ambitions, the comfortable schemes, 
 the trivial hopes melted away for me in that 
 serene certainty ! What I had pursued before 
 was the phantom of delight ; and though I still 
 desired delight, with all the passion of my poor 
 frail nature, yet I saw that not thus could the real 
 joy of God be won. It was no longer a question 
 of hope and disappointment, of sin and punish- 
 ment. It was something truer and stronger than 
 that. The sin and the suffering alike had been 
 the Will of God for me. I had never desired evil, 
 though I had often fallen into it ; but there was 
 never a moment when, if I could, I would not 
 have been pure and unselfish and strong. That 
 was a blessed hour for me, when, in place of the 
 old luxurious delight, there came, flooding my
 
 THE HEAVENLY WISDOM 293 
 
 heart, an intense and passionate desire that I 
 might accept with a loving confidence whatever 
 God might send ; my wearied body, my tired, 
 anxious mind, were but a slender veil, rent and 
 ruinous, that hung between God and my soul, 
 through which I could discern the glory of His 
 love. 
 
 June 20, 1 89 1. 
 
 It was on a warm, bright summer afternoon 
 that I woke to the sense both of what I had lost 
 and what I had gained. I had wandered out into 
 the country, for in those days I had a great 
 desire to be alone. I stood long beside a stile 
 in the pastures, a little village below me, and the 
 gables and chimneys of an old farmhouse stood 
 up over wide fields of young waving wheat. A 
 cuckoo fluted in an elm close by, and at the 
 sound there darted into my mind the memory, 
 seen in an airy perspective, of innumerable happy 
 and careless days, spent in years long past, with 
 eager and light-hearted companions, in whose 
 smiling eyes and caressing motions was reflected 
 one's own secret happiness. How full the world 
 seemed of sweet surprises then ! To sit in an 
 evening hour in some quiet, scented garden in 
 the gathering dusk, with the sense of a delicious 
 mystery flashing from the light movements, the 
 pensive eyes, the curve of arm or cheek of one's 
 companion, how beautiful that was ! And yet 
 how simple and natural it seemed. That was all
 
 294 TH E ALTAR FIRE 
 
 over and gone, and a gulf seemed fixed between 
 those days and these. And then there came 
 first that sad and sweet regret, u the passion of 
 the past," as Tennyson called it, that suddenly 
 brimmed the eyes at the thought of the vanished 
 days ; and there followed an intense desire to live 
 in it once again, to have made more of it, a 
 rebellious longing to abandon oneself with a care- 
 less disregard to the old rapture. 
 
 Then on that mood, rising like a star into the 
 blue spaces of the evening, came the thought that 
 the old days were not dead after all. That they 
 were assuredly there, just as the future was there, 
 a true part of oneself, ineffaceable, eternal. And 
 hard on the heels of that came another and a 
 deeper intuition still, that not in such delights 
 did the secret really rest ; what then was the 
 secret ? It was surely this : that one must advance, 
 led onward like a tottering child by the strong 
 arm of God. That the new knowledge of suffer- 
 ing and sorrow was as beautiful as the old, and 
 more so, and that instead of repining over the 
 vanished joys, one might continue to rejoice in 
 them and even rejoice in having lost them, for 
 I seemed to perceive that one's aim was not, after 
 all, to be lively, and joyful, and strong, but to be 
 wiser, and larger-minded, and more hopeful, even 
 at the expense of delight. And then I saw that 
 I would not really for any price part with the 
 sad wisdom that I had reluctantly learnt, but that 
 though the burden galled my shoulder, it held within 
 it precious things which I could not throw away.
 
 WINGED FLOWERS 295 
 
 And I had, too, the glad sense that even if in a 
 childish petulance I would have laid my burden 
 down and run off among the flowers, God was 
 stronger than I, and would not suffer me to lose 
 what I had gained. I might, I assuredly should, 
 wish to be more free, more light of heart. But 
 I seemed to myself like a woman that had borne 
 a child in suffering, and that no matter how rest- 
 less and vexatious a care that child might prove 
 to be, under no conceivable circumstances could 
 she wish that she were barren and without the ex- 
 perience of love. I felt indeed that I had fulfilled 
 a part of my destiny, and that I might be glad 
 that the suffering was behind me, even though it 
 separated me from the careless days. 
 
 I hope that in after days I may sometimes make 
 a pilgrimage to the place where that wonderful 
 truth thus dawned upon me. I have made a 
 tabernacle there in my spirit, like the saints who 
 saw the Lord transfigured before their eyes ; and 
 to me it had been indeed a transfiguration, in 
 which Love and sorrow and hope had been 
 touched with an unearthly light of God. 
 
 June 24, 1 891. 
 
 Yesterday I was walking in a field-path through 
 the meadows ; it was just that time in early summer 
 when the grass is rising, when flowers appear in 
 little groups and bevies. There was a patch of 
 speedwell, like a handful of sapphires cast down. 
 Why does one's heart go out to certain flowers,
 
 296 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 flowers which seem to have some message for us 
 if we could but read it ? A little way from the 
 path I saw a group of absolutely unknown flower- 
 buds ; they were big, pale things, looking more 
 like pods than flowers, growing on tall stems. I 
 hate crushing down meadow-grass, but I could 
 not resist my impulse of curiosity. I walked up 
 to them, and just as I was going to bend down 
 and look at them, lo and behold, all my flowers 
 opened before my eyes as by a concerted signal, 
 spread wings of the richest blue, and fluttered 
 away before my eyes. They were nothing more 
 than a company of butterflies who, tired of play, 
 had fallen asleep together with closed wings on 
 the high grass-stems. 
 
 There they had sate, like folded promises, 
 hiding their azure sheen. Perhaps even now 
 my hopes sit motionless and lifeless, in russet 
 robes. Perhaps as I draw dully near, they may 
 spring suddenly to life, and dance away in the 
 sunshine, like fragments of the crystalline sky. 
 
 July 8, 1 89 1. 
 I was in town last week for a few days on some 
 necessary business, staying with old friends. Two 
 or three people came in to dine one night, and 
 afterwards, I hardly know how, I found myself 
 talking with a curious openness to one of the 
 guests, a woman whom I only slightly knew. 
 She is a very able and cultivated woman indeed, 
 and it was a surprise to her friends when she
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 297 
 
 lately became a Christian Scientist. When I have 
 met her before, I have thought her a curiously 
 guarded personality, appearing to live a secret and 
 absorbing life of her own, impenetrable, and hold- 
 ing up a shield of conventionality against the 
 world. To-night she laid down her shield, and I 
 saw the beating of a very pure and loving heart. 
 The text of her talk was that we should never 
 allow ourselves to believe in our limitations, 
 because they did not really exist. I found her, to 
 my surprise, intensely emotional, with a passionate 
 disbelief in and yet pity for all sorrow and suffer- 
 ing. She appealed to me to take up Christian 
 Science — "not to read or talk about it," she said ; 
 "that is no use: it is a life, not a theory; just 
 accept it, and live by it, and you will find it 
 true." 
 
 But there is one part of me that rebels against 
 the whole idea of Christian Science — my reason. 
 I found, or thought I found, this woman to be 
 wise both in head and heart, but not wise in mind. 
 It seems to me that pain and sorrow and suffering 
 are phenomena, just as real as other phenomena ; 
 and that one does no good by denying them, but 
 only by accepting them, and living in them and 
 through them. One might as truly, it seems, take 
 upon oneself to deny that there was any such 
 colour as red in the world, and tell people that 
 whenever they saw or discerned any tinge of red, 
 it was a delusion ; one can only use one's faculty 
 of perception ; and if sorrow and suffering are a 
 delusion, how do I know that love and joy are
 
 298 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 not delusions too ? They must stand and fall 
 together. The reason why I believe that joy and 
 love will in the end triumph, is because I have, 
 because we all have, an instinctive desire for them, 
 and a no less instinctive fear and dread of pain 
 and sorrow. We may, indeed I believe with all 
 my heart that we shall, emerge from them, but 
 they are no less assuredly there. We triumph 
 over them, when we learn to live bravely and 
 courageously in them, when we do not seek to 
 evade them or to hasten incredulously away from 
 them. We fail, if we spend our time in repining, 
 in regretting, in wishing the sweet and tranquil 
 hours of untroubled joy back. We are not strong 
 enough to desire the cup of suffering, even though 
 we may know that we must drink it before we can 
 discern the truth. But we may rejoice with a 
 deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand 
 of God is heavy upon us. When our vital 
 energies flag, when what we thought were our 
 effective powers languish and grow faint, then we 
 may be glad because the Father is showing us His 
 Will ; and then our sorrow is a fruitful sorrow, 
 and labours, as the swelling seed labours in the 
 sombre earth to thrust her slender hands up to 
 the sun and air. . . . 
 
 We two sate long in a corner of the quiet lamp- 
 lit room, talking like old friends — once or twice 
 our conversation was suspended by music, which 
 fell like dew upon my parched heart ; and though 
 I could not accept my fellow-pilgrim's thought, I 
 could see in the glance of her eyes, full of pity
 
 THE SORROW OF REUBEN 299 
 
 and wonder, that we were indeed faring along the 
 same strange road to the paradise of God. It did 
 me good, that talk ; it helped me with a sense of 
 sweet and tender fellowship ; and I had no doubt 
 that God was teaching my friend in His own 
 fatherly way, even as He was teaching me, and 
 all of us. 
 
 July 19, 1891. 
 
 In one of the great windows of King's College 
 Chapel, Cambridge, there is a panel the beauty of 
 which used to strike me even as a boy. I used to 
 wonder what further thing it meant. 
 
 It was, I believe — I may be wholly wrong — a 
 picture of Reuben, looking in an agony of unavail- 
 ing sorrow into the pit from which his brothers 
 had drawn the boy they hated to sell him to the 
 Midianites. I cannot recollect the details plainly, 
 and little remains but a memory of dim-lit azure 
 and glowing scarlet. Even though the pit was 
 quaintly depicted as a draw-well, with a solid stone 
 coping, the pretty absurdity of the thought only 
 made one love the fancy better. But the figure of 
 Reuben 1 — even through an obscuring mist of 
 crossing leads and window-bars and weather stains, 
 there was a poignant agony wrought into the pose 
 of the figure, with its clasped hands and strained 
 gaze. 
 
 I used to wonder, I say, what further thing 
 it meant. For the deep spell of art is that it 
 holds an intenser, a wider significance beneath
 
 300 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 its symbols than the mere figure, the mere action 
 displays. 
 
 What was the remorse of Reuben ? It was that 
 through his weakness, his complaisance, he had 
 missed his chance of protecting what was secretly 
 dear to him. He loved the boy, I think, or at all 
 events he loved his father, and would not willingly 
 have hurt the old man. And now, even in his 
 moment of yielding, of temporising, the worst had 
 happened, the child was gone, delivered over to 
 what baseness of usage he could not bear to 
 think. He himself had been a traitor to love and 
 justice and light ; and yet, in the fruitful designs 
 of God, that very traitorous deed was to blossom 
 into the hope and glory of the race ; the deed 
 itself was to be tenderly forgiven, and it was to 
 open up, in the fulness of days, a prospect of great- 
 ness and prosperity to the tribe, to fling the seed 
 of that mighty family in soil where it was to be 
 infinitely enriched ; it was to open the door at 
 last to a whole troop of great influences, marvel- 
 lous events, large manifestations of God. 
 
 Even so, in a parable, the figure came insistently 
 before me all day, shining and fading upon the 
 dark background of the mind. 
 
 It was at the loss of my own soul that I had 
 connived ; not at its death indeed — I had not 
 plotted for that — but I had betrayed myself, I saw, 
 year by year. I had despised the dreams and 
 visions of the frail and ingenuous spirit ; and when 
 it had come out trustfully to me in the wilderness, 
 I had let it fall into the hands of the Midianites,
 
 THE SURRENDER 301 
 
 the purloining band that trafficked in all things, 
 great and small, from the beast of the desert to 
 the bodies and souls of men. 
 
 My soul had thus lain expiring before my eyes, 
 and now God had taken it away from my faithless 
 hands ; I saw at last that to save the soul one 
 must assuredly lose it ; that if it was to grow 
 strong and joyful and wise, it must be sold into 
 servitude and dark afflictions. I saw that when I 
 was too weak to save it, God had rent it from me, 
 but that from the darkness of the pit it should fare 
 forth upon a mighty voyage, and be made pure 
 and faithful in a region undreamed of. 
 
 To Reuben was left nothing but shame and 
 sorrow of heart and deceit to hide his sin ; unlike 
 him, to me was given to see, beyond the desert 
 and the dwindling line of camels, the groves and 
 palaces of the land of wisdom, whither my sad 
 soul was bound, lonely and dismayed. My heart 
 went out to the day of reconciliation, when I 
 should be forgiven with tears of joy for my own 
 faltering treachery, when my soul should be even 
 grateful for my weakness, because from that very 
 faithlessness, and from no other, should the new 
 life be born. 
 
 And thus with a peaceful hope that lay beyond 
 shame and sorrow alike, as the shining plain lies 
 out beyond the broken crags of the weary moun- 
 tain, I gave myself utterly into the Hands of the 
 Father of All. He was close beside me that day, 
 upholding, comforting, enriching me. Not hidden 
 in clouds from which the wrathful trumpet pealed,
 
 302 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 but walking with a tender joy, in a fragrance of 
 love, in the garden, at the cool of the day. 
 
 August 1 8, 1 89 1. 
 
 Mr. is dead. He died yesterday, holding 
 
 my hand. The end was quite sudden, though not 
 unexpected. He had been much weaker of late, 
 and he knew he could only live a short time. I 
 have been much with him these last few days. 
 He could not talk much, but there was a peaceful 
 glory on his face which made me think of the 
 Pilgrims in the Pilgrim's Progress whose call was 
 so joyful. I never suspected how little desire 
 he had to live ; but when he knew that his days 
 were numbered, he allowed something of his de- 
 light to escape him, as a prisoner might who has 
 borne his imprisonment bravely and sees his release 
 draw nigh. He suffered a good deal, but each 
 pang was to him only like the smiting off of chains. 
 " I have had a very happy life," he said to me once 
 with a smile. " Looking back, it seems as though 
 my later happiness had soaked backwards through 
 the whole fabric, so that my joy in age has linked 
 itself as by a golden bridge to the old childish 
 raptures." Then he looked curiously at me, with 
 a half-smile, and added, " But happy as I have 
 been, I find it in my heart to envy you. You 
 hardly know how much you are to be envied. 
 You have no more partings to fear ; your beautiful 
 past is all folded up, to be creased and tarnished 
 no more. You have had the love of wife and
 
 A DEATH-BED 303 
 
 child — the one thing that I have missed. You 
 have had fame too ; and you have drunk far 
 deeper of the cup of suffering than I. I look 
 upon you," he said laughingly, " as an old home- 
 keeping captain, who has never done anything but 
 garrison duty, might look upon a young general 
 who has carried through a great campaign and is 
 covered with signs of honour." 
 
 A little while after he roused himself from a 
 slumber to say, " You will be surprised to find 
 yourself named in my will ; please don't have any 
 scruples about accepting the inheritance. I want 
 my niece, of course, to reign in my stead ; but if 
 you outlive her, all is to go to you. I want you 
 to live on in this place, to stand by her in her 
 loneliness, as a brother by a sister. I want you to 
 help and work for my dear people here, to be 
 tender and careful for them. There are many 
 things that a man can do which a woman cannot ; 
 and your difficulty will be to find a hem for your 
 life. Remember that there is no one who is 
 injured by this — my niece is my only living rela- 
 tion ; so accept this as your post in life ; it will not 
 be a hard one. It is strange," he added, " that 
 one should cling to such trifles ; but I should like 
 you to take my name, if you will ; and you must 
 find some one to succeed you ; I wish it could 
 have been your own boy, whom I have learnt to 
 love." 
 
 Miss came in shortly after, and Mr. 
 
 said to her, " Yes, I have told him, and he con- 
 sents. You do consent, do you not?" I said,
 
 304 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 " Yes, dear friend, of course I consent ; and con- 
 sent gratefully, for you have given me a work in 
 
 the world." And then I took Miss 's hand 
 
 across the bed and kissed it ; the old man laid his 
 hands upon our heads very tenderly and said, 
 " Brother and sister to the end." 
 
 I thought he was tired then, and made as if to 
 leave him, but he said, " Do not go, my son." 
 He lay smiling to himself, as if well pleased. 
 Then a sudden change came over his face, and I 
 saw that he was going ; we knelt beside him, and 
 his last words were words of blessing. 
 
 October 12, 1891. 
 
 This book has been my companion through 
 some very strange, sad, terrible, and joyful hours ; 
 my faithful companion, my silent friend, my true 
 confessor. I have felt the need of utterance, 
 the imperative instinct — the most primitive, the 
 most childish of instincts — to tell my pains and 
 hoptes and dreams. I could not utter them, at 
 the time, to another. I could not let the voice 
 of my groaning reach the ears of any human 
 being. Perhaps it would have been better for 
 us both, if I could have said it all to my dearest 
 Maud. But a sort of courtesy forbade my re- 
 doubling my monotonous lamentations ; her bur- 
 den was heavy enough without that. I can hardly 
 dignify it with the name of manliness or chivalry, 
 because my frame of mind during those first 
 months, when I lost the power of writing, was
 
 THE RECORD 305 
 
 purely despicable ; and then, too, I did not want 
 sympathy ; I wanted help ; and help no one 
 but God could give me ; half my time was 
 spent in a kind of dumb prayer to Him, that 
 He would give me some sort of strength, some 
 touch of courage ; for a helpless cowardice was 
 the note of my frame of mind. Well, He has 
 sent me strength — I recognise that now — not 
 by lightening the load, but by making it in- 
 supportably heavy and yet showing me that 
 I had the strength to carry it ; I am still in 
 the dark as to why I deserved so sore a punish- 
 ment, and I cannot yet see that the loneliness 
 to which He has condemned me is the help 
 that is proportioned to my need. But I walk 
 no longer in a vain shadow. I have known 
 affliction by the rod of His wrath. But the 
 darkness in which I walk is not the darkness of 
 thickening gloom, but the darkness of the break- 
 ing day. 
 
 And then, too, I suppose that writing down 
 my thoughts from day to day just eased the 
 dumb pain of inaction, as the sick man shifts 
 himself in his bed. Anyhow it is written, and 
 it shall stand as a record. 
 
 But now I shall write no more. I shall slip 
 gratefully and securely into the crowd of in- 
 articulate and silent men and women, the vast 
 majority, after all, of humanity. One who like 
 myself has the consciousness of receiving from 
 moment to moment sharp and clear impressions 
 from everything on earth, people, houses, fields, 
 
 u
 
 306 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 trees, clouds, is beset by a kind of torturing 
 desire to shape it all in words and phrases. 
 Why, I know not ! It is the desire, I suppose, 
 to make some record of what seems so clear, 
 so distinct, so beautiful, so interesting. One 
 cannot bear that one impression that seems so 
 vivid and strange should be lost and perish. 
 It is the artistic instinct, no doubt. And then 
 one passes through the streets of a great city, 
 and one becomes aware that of the thousands 
 that pass one by, perhaps only one or two have 
 the same instinct, and even they are bound to 
 silence by circumstance, by lack of opportunity. 
 The rest — life is enough for them ; hunger and 
 thirst, love and strife, hope and fear, that is 
 their daily meat. And life, I doubt not, is what 
 we are set to taste. Of all those thousands, 
 some few have the desire, and fewer still the 
 power, to stand apart from the throng. These 
 are not content with the humdrum life of earning 
 a livelihood, of forming ties, of passing the time 
 as pleasantly as they can. They desire rather 
 to be felt, to exercise influence, to mould others 
 to their will, to use them for their convenience. 
 I have had little temptation to do that, but my 
 life has been poisoned at its source, I now dis- 
 cern, by the desire to differentiate myself from 
 others. I could not walk faithfully in the pro- 
 cession ; I was as one who likes to sit securely 
 in his window above the street, noting all that 
 he sees, sketching all that strikes his fancy, 
 hugging his pleasure at being apart from and
 
 THE WAY OF PEACE 307 
 
 superior to the ordinary run of mortals. Here 
 lay my chiefest fault, that I could not bear a 
 humble hand, but looked upon my wealth, my 
 loving circle, as things that should fence me 
 from the throng. I lived in a paradise of my 
 own devising. 
 
 But now I have put that all aside for ever. 
 I will live the life of a learner ; I will be docile 
 if I can. I might indeed have been stripped 
 of everything, bidden to join the humblest tribe 
 of workers for daily bread. But God has spared 
 my weakness, and I should be faithless indeed, 
 if, seeing how intently His will has dealt with 
 me, I did not recognise the clear guiding of 
 His hand. He has given me a place and a 
 quiet work to do ; these strange bereavements, 
 one after another, have not hardened me. I 
 feel the bonds of love for those whom I have 
 lost drawn closer every hour. They are waiting 
 for me, I am sure of that. It is not reason, 
 it is not faith which prompts me ; it is a far 
 deeper and stronger instinct, which I could not 
 doubt if I would. What wonder if I look for- 
 ward with an eager and an ardent hope to death. 
 I can conceive no more welcome tidings than 
 the tidings that death was at hand. But I do 
 not expect to die. My health of body is almost 
 miraculously preserved. What I dare to hope 
 is that I may learn by slow degrees to set the 
 happiness of others above my own. I will listen 
 for any sound of grief or discontent, and I will 
 try to quiet it. I will spend my time and strength
 
 3 o8 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 as freely as I can. That is a far-off hope. One 
 cannot in a moment break through the self- 
 consideration of a lifetime. But whereas, before, 
 my dim sense that happiness could not be found 
 by deliberately searching for ease made me half 
 rebellious, half uncomfortable, I know now that 
 it is true, and I will turn my back if I can 
 upon that lonely and unsatisfied quest. I did 
 indeed — I can honestly say that — desire with a 
 passionate intentness the happiness of Maud and 
 the children ; but I think I desired it most in 
 order that the sunshine of their happiness should 
 break in warmth and light upon myself. It will 
 be hard enough — I can see that — not to labour 
 still for the sake of the ultimate results upon 
 my own peace of mind. But in my deepest 
 heart I do not desire to do that, and I will 
 not, God helping me. 
 
 And so to-day, having read the whole record 
 once again, with blinding tears, tears of love, 
 I think, not tears of self-pity, I will close the 
 book and write no more. But I will not destroy 
 it, because it may help some soul that may 
 come after me, into whose hands it may fall, 
 to struggle on in the middle of sorrow and 
 darkness. To him will I gladly reveal all that 
 God has done for my soul. That poor, pitiful, 
 shrinking soul, with all its faint desires after 
 purity and nobleness and peace, all its self- 
 wrought misery, all its unhappy failures, all its 
 secret faults, its undiscerned weaknesses, I put 
 humbly and confidently in the hands of the
 
 THE NEAREST WAY 309 
 
 God who made me. I cannot amend myself, 
 but I can at least co-operate with His loving 
 Will. I can stumble onwards, with my hand 
 in His, like a timid child with a strong and 
 loving father. I may wish to be lifted in His 
 arms, I may wonder why He does not have 
 more pity on my frailty. But I can believe 
 that He is leading me home, and that His way 
 is the best and nearest. 
 
 THE END 
 
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