UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 3^^ 5b? 
 
 Thoughts in 
 Middle Life 
 
 By 
 
 Godfrey Locker Lampson 
 
BFRKELEY^v 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE 
 
THOUGHTS IN 
 MIDDLE LIFE 
 
 Sy Godfrey Locker Lampson 
 
 ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS 
 
 187 Piccadilly, W. 
 
 1919 
 
Second Impression. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ^5^ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THREE STAGES OF LIFE 1 
 
 DEATH 2 
 
 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS ...... 3 
 
 ENJOYMENT OF THE PRESENT 6 
 
 FAVOURS 7 
 
 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 9 
 
 PRAYER 11 
 
 the fear of death ....... 14 
 
 the mainspring of conduct 16 
 
 one's own company 18 
 
 SELF-KNOWLEDGE 20 
 
 THE BLAMING OF FORTUNE 25 
 
 SELF-EXPRESSION 26 
 
 SELF-JUSTIFICATION 28 
 
 THORNS IN THE FLESH . . 30 
 
 GOOD COMPANY 32 
 
 ON REVISITING PLACES 36 
 
 SUMMER WOODS 41 
 
 COURAGE 48 
 
 THE SPHINX OF PERSONALITY 52 
 
 POETRY AND PROSE 56 
 
 CONFIDANTS 63 
 
 I, 527 
 
CONTENTS— continued. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 STYLE 70 
 
 THE PEOPLE 74 
 
 THE CLASSIC IN LITERATURE 78 
 
 GREED 84 
 
 OLD LETTERS 88 
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THOUGHT 93 
 
 SIN AND VIRTUE 98 
 
 SUCCESS ... 104 
 
 LEISURE 107 
 
 POLITICIANS - . . . 110 
 
 GENIUS 116 
 
 THE ART OF LIVING 120 
 
 IMAGINATION 124 
 
 THE FAMILY CLOCK 130 
 
 CELESTIAL BODIES 138 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Three Stages of Life. 
 
 ' I ""HE difference between youth, middle-age, 
 and old-age, is this : 
 
 The first lives in the future, the second in 
 the present, and the third in the past. 
 
 If youth lived in the present, it would have 
 no ambition ; if old-age hved in the future, it 
 would have no hope ; it is only the middle- 
 aged who can afford to live in all three. 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Death. 
 
 TT is good at times to reflect upon death, 
 for he who does so may avoid some 
 disappointments, and gain a truer prospect 
 of the hfe in which he is. 
 
 He will picture himself lying helpless upon 
 the bed of his last sickness, when nothing 
 matters but that he should die with a quiet 
 conscience. His possessions already belong 
 almost to another, who will die like himself. 
 His hatreds, vanities, jealousies, malice, he 
 sees to be but smoke ; his ambition, worthless 
 effort ; his lusts, ashes ; the sum-total of all 
 worldly interests, next to nothing. If this be 
 not enough to humble false pride and quench 
 a ravening appetite for transitory, unsubstan- 
 tial shadows, nothing will be. For the 
 majority it will suffice to cool their passions 
 and tame their proud ambitions, making 
 them better citizens and humbler men. 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Secret of Happiness. 
 
 np^O aim at a full rather than a long life is 
 the ambition of the wise, for it is no 
 satisfaction in a world where happiness is so 
 thinly spread upon the bread of experience to 
 drag out a trivial or unoccupied existence. 
 A carp at the bottom of a stew-pond, or one 
 of the giant tortoises, may keep alive for 
 several hundred years, and save the wear and 
 tear of nerve and tissue by remaining motion- 
 less for eight out of twelve months in the 
 year. But unless we are content to imitate 
 the lower vertebrates, or pass our time like 
 the vegetable kingdom in unintelligent growth 
 and decay, our aim should be to crowd as 
 many lifelike hours as possible into our poor, 
 chequered chronicles. His Grace of Grouse- 
 moor may find himself almost as poor as 
 Lazarus when, among the dust and ashes of 
 the past, he hunts for the glowing moments 
 
 3 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 that made his life richer and his usefulness 
 more blest ; while some half-starved writer in 
 a Fleet Street attic can hardly calculate his 
 wealth. 
 
 The true secret of a contented life is not 
 to squeeze as much out of it, but to pay as 
 much into it as possible ; to contribute the 
 sum of one's powers to the common stock ; 
 since, if that be the primary purpose — the 
 genuine, altruistic endeavour — the crop will 
 not fail to be in generous proportion to the 
 sacrifice and outlay. 
 
 Every man is the tenant of an allotment, 
 of a small patch of opportunity, and his duty 
 is the intensive cultivation of the little hold- 
 ing — an expenditure of care, and honest, 
 cheerful labour which will be reaped in har- 
 vests of wealth and happiness. For just as 
 a piece of derelict ground, rank and stony 
 and unpromising, can be transformed into a 
 garden plot with its flowers and roots for 
 human sustenance, so too can the dingiest 
 and most unlikely prospect, the most meagre 
 of footholds, the humblest of stations, be 
 
 4 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 converted to a bower that even princes would 
 be glad to dwell in. 
 
 This, then, is the duty of man — to give 
 and to take, but rather to give ; to labour 
 and to rest, but rather to labour ; to construct 
 and appreciate, but rather to construct ; to act 
 and reflect, but rather to act ; to work upon 
 the tapestry of life and finish his share of the 
 picture, if he can ; but so to leave it, that, if 
 unfinished, it can be completed by other hands 
 and ultimately included among the trophies 
 of the world. This is the secret of a happy 
 life, and requires no alchemy for its solution. 
 It is not buried in the darkness of metaphysics, 
 nor in the stone age, nor in future discoveries. 
 It is enthroned in the present moment. It is 
 within call for you and me throughout our 
 mortal voyage, and, until the shadows of night 
 descend upon our histories, will never fail us 
 when we seek its help. 
 
THOUGHTS m MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Enjoyment of the Present. 
 
 TT is a mistake to live too much in the 
 future ; for the future of yesterday is the 
 present of to-day, and to-day's future will 
 soon be nothing more than the present in its 
 turn. To enjoy, to appreciate, to realise the 
 existing hour is one of the arts of life. 
 
 To-day I am healthful and solvent, but 
 next week I may be mortally sick or a bank- 
 rupt debtor. To-day I have youth, and am 
 free from the terrors of poverty or disgrace. 
 Let me enjoy these irrecoverable hours while 
 I can. How do I know what twelve more 
 months will do to me ? Then, perhaps, I shall 
 look back with longing to these happy days, 
 and lament my unconsciousness of, my almost 
 wilful blindness to the peace and sweet security 
 of this golden time. 
 
 6 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Favours. 
 
 'TpO confer a favour upon any one is almost 
 to put him in the wrong, for you place 
 him under an obligation which he cannot but 
 feel, and, if of an ungenerous disposition, may 
 soon be apt to resent. It is a debt which 
 ought to be paid, and you are his creditor. 
 To that extent he is insolvent until his re- 
 turn is made. The favour, therefore, if he is 
 reminded of it, tends in time to become a 
 positive grievance, which only some further 
 favour can assuage ; and, instead of gratitude, 
 the original kindness breeds an oppressive 
 feeling of liability, and in the end, maybe, of 
 actual unreasoning dislike. 
 
 But he who does you a favour takes you 
 to that extent under his protection. He is 
 the patron of your fortunes. He enlists you 
 under his banner against the strokes of Fate. 
 Yours is the debt, his the pleasant expectation 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 of gratitude for his kindness. You have called 
 out the better part of him — his charity — and 
 it fills him with a sense of well-doing, and he 
 loves you for it. 
 
 The lesson, therefore, to be drawn is this : 
 That if you wish to knit a man's heartstrings 
 to yourself, accept and seek his favours rather 
 than do him any ; for the greater your debt to 
 him, the more he will affect you ; the heavier 
 your obligation, the more he will endeavour to 
 advance your interests. Moreover, no man 
 cares to make a bad debt, and he may deem 
 that a little further and yet a little further 
 credit may avail to secure it. 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Historical Perspective. 
 
 npO extol the great personalities of the past 
 at the expense of those of the present, 
 is a common and incurable habit in mankind. 
 No man is a hero to his own valet, and the 
 same principle may be applied as in part the 
 cause of our invidious comparisons between 
 the men of yesterday and those of to-day. 
 The great actors of a bygone age stand out 
 against the background of history, purged of 
 their parasites and purified from trivial cir- 
 cumstance — their great qualities, their supreme 
 achievements framed in isolation, liberated 
 from the mass of vulgar encumbrance and 
 paltry incident that loaded them in their own 
 day. 
 
 The same good fortune will attend our con- 
 temporaries, when our descendants look back 
 and view them stripped of all but the ulti- 
 mate results. They will then in their turn 
 magnify these players of ours to the disparage- 
 ment of their own, and reckon that mankind is 
 
 9 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 gradually losing the power of reproducing the 
 stature of a former time. 
 
 At this very hour, we, this present age, 
 have living in our midst our own illustrious 
 company, the little band that young and old 
 will laud and reverence, and celebrate and try 
 to imitate, when we, poor critics, have been 
 dust in the churchyard for many a long year. 
 Who are they ? Not those, possibly, who are 
 now held in the highest honour ; some of them, 
 maybe, even ignored. It requires distance, 
 apparently, to pick out the grandest peaks. 
 At the foot of the range it is impossible ; 
 just as you cannot mark who is the tallest 
 man if you are wedged in a crowd. We may 
 be choosing our inferior summits for this 
 exacting comparison with the past. Indeed, 
 it is because, as a rule, we are not comparing 
 like with like ; in other words, because of our 
 uncritical selection, combined with too close a 
 familiarity with the meaner details and petty 
 incidental mechanism of a modern career, as 
 we see it, that we are such poor judges of our 
 own times. 
 
 10 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 IITERE I a disbeliever in a personal, 
 omniscient, all-powerful God, I would 
 still make supplication in the privacy of my 
 chamber to an imaginary, invisible Disposer 
 of events ; choosing, maybe, ' The Future,' or 
 some other such abstraction, to apostrophise. 
 I would not pray that my country should be 
 spared the convulsions of an earthquake ; that 
 the weather in August should be favourable 
 to the harvest ; or that the infant heir to the 
 throne should grow into a tall, handsome man. 
 These are beside human powers, and would 
 require, as a result of prayer, the particular 
 intervention of an individual, omnipotent, and 
 indulgent Deity. But I would pray for those 
 things over which I had myself some measure 
 of control — fortitude in adversity, humility in 
 triumph, high ideals, integrity, patience, deter- 
 
 11 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 mination, sobriety, vigilance in making use 
 of opportunities, courage, cheerfulness, per- 
 severance, industry. Over these and other 
 qualities of the kind man has a large share 
 of influence, and it needs no miraculous in- 
 tervention to acquire or develop them. The 
 very act of supplication, whether to an in- 
 visible Power imagined for the purpose, or to 
 a Deity in whom full confidence is felt, gives 
 support to the will that wants ; and reiteration 
 and concentration, whatever be one's views of 
 the unseen world, have a cumulative effect in 
 strengthening that support and weakening 
 any adverse impulse that may be present, 
 and cannot fail in the long run to convert 
 the wished-for state almost into a habit, 
 making the will paramount in the direction 
 desired. 
 
 Success in prayer, to whatsoever other cause 
 its various votaries may assign it, can there- 
 fore be proved to result from this empirical 
 agency also, which any one with sufficient 
 goodwill may test for himself In other words, 
 it need not be regarded as a supernatural 
 
 12 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 secret only, dependent on what is termed a 
 miracle ; but may be considered also as an 
 outcome, when the method is tried, of wholly 
 natural means, available to every sect, and 
 responsive to any one who makes good use 
 of them. 
 
 13 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Fear of Death. 
 
 TT is not the bare thought of death, the 
 escape of the spirit from exhausted flesh, 
 nor even the doubt about the morrow, that 
 fills the mind with dread. It is death's pre- 
 liminaries — ugly, creeping disease ; protracted 
 suffering; long, harrowing scenes for beloved 
 witnesses ; helpless, crippled, senile hours 
 with youth around one ; the final struggle ; 
 the shocking remains that have to be quickly 
 buried — that make us craven when we think 
 of our end. There is nothing to terrify in the 
 mere thought of the spirit's flight, for that 
 is one of release ; and as to fears about an 
 after-life, how do we know that what is 
 called ' personality ' will accompany us ? We 
 may be reasonably confident that memory 
 will not. 
 
 If our spirit, indeed, had no beginning 
 and is to have no end ; if this life be but a 
 
 14 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 moment in its infinite existence, certain is it 
 that it has no memory of the last or of any 
 of the preceding stages. Why, then, in its 
 next stage should it have any memory of 
 the present? The analogy is all against the 
 supposition. But if there be no memory, 
 there can be no comparison either with a 
 better or a worse state, and therefore no 
 regrets. 
 
 Sweep away the corridors to Death's 
 chamber, the ante-rooms of pain, the dark 
 passages where men are tortured, the intro- 
 ductory horrors of dissolution, and, lastly, the 
 final struggle — and, at its worst, the thought 
 of death can then only cause grief at parting 
 with the happiness of life. 
 
 15 
 
THOUGHTS m MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Mainspring of Conduct. 
 
 TF we could have a man's career, with the 
 motives for all his actions, traced before 
 us, we should be surprised to find how many 
 of his most important decisions had rested 
 upon purely personal grounds. A slight, real 
 or imagined, has frequently caused a man to 
 change his political party, and for the rest of 
 his public life to support with all the means 
 at his disposal measures which he would 
 otherwise have as strenuously opposed. Or 
 a despised and rejected lover, from being 
 indolent and unambitious, may, out of a kind 
 of revenge upon his mistress, by revealing 
 qualities which she had never guessed, trans- 
 form the whole tenor of his life, and wrest 
 from Fortune some of the world's great 
 prizes. 
 
 So, if you desire a man's support for a 
 cause which you have at heart, wound his 
 
 16 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 pride before advocating its merits, and you 
 will have less chance of success than with 
 a much inferior case, if you please him a 
 little. 
 
 In truth, nearly all our chief determina- 
 tions are the result of our feelings rather 
 than our judgment; and it is, therefore, a 
 prudent rule of life to study the sensibilities 
 of men rather than their intellects. He who 
 does so is the man of tact, the scientist of 
 the feelings, who often prevails over the man 
 of greater intellectual ability, when both are 
 after the same game. 
 
 17 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 One's own Company. 
 
 (\F all company our own is the best. Of 
 all our acquaintances we are fondest of 
 ourselves, for we make allowances where they 
 do not. We know ourselves better than they 
 know us or than we can know them. There 
 is also more liberty where our own society 
 is concerned. We can get away from it on 
 the instant by taking up a book or talking 
 to a stranger ; but sometimes, for long hours 
 together, we are unable to escape from our 
 kind. No man, then, need ever be bored 
 by himself, although he cannot avoid being 
 bored by others. He is monarch of his 
 little kingdom, and can create imaginary 
 subjects and slaves to adore him. Here are 
 no hard facts, but dreams only ; no brutal dis- 
 appointments ; no irreversible decisions. He 
 turns his own wheel of Fortune and leaves 
 Fate outside on the mat. 
 
 18 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Solitude is medicine for grief, and for 
 world-weariness and bitterness of spirit a 
 sweet repairer. Away from the noise of the 
 crowd things fall again into their proper pro- 
 portion ; perspective resumes its lawful sway, 
 and peace reigns over all. The hills melt 
 into the horizon ; we view great distances ; 
 we see vast natural forces at work, calm, 
 eternal, irresistible ; we are witness to the 
 beauty of Nature's ordering, the grandeur of 
 the solar system, the wonders of plant and 
 insect life ; and the world of men, with their 
 miniature interests, small ambitions, and mean 
 satisfactions, sinks into insignificance and frets 
 us no longer. 
 
 It is, therefore, no bad habit to spend a 
 part of every year in solitude. Go into the 
 desert, and there you will find a restorer for 
 every weakness, a salve for every sorrow, an 
 antidote for every fever, and a lesson for all 
 presumptuous desires. 
 
 19 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 A 
 
 Self-knowledge. 
 
 LT HOUGH we know ourselves in some 
 respects more intimately than others 
 can ever know us, we are generally very 
 ignorant as to the actual figure which we cut 
 before the world. A man may have some 
 physical or other peculiarity that he is almost 
 unconscious of, but which may be the salient 
 feature of his personality, the one dominant 
 circumstance which will be remembered of 
 him by those he loves and by the rest of his 
 acquaintance, when everything he did for 
 them or said to them has long been for- 
 gotten. 
 
 I know, for instance, the father of a 
 family, honourable and upright — a pillar of 
 the Church, the State, and of Society ; and, 
 what is more, a man of the world and in 
 affluent circumstances. Yet, if he can save 
 half-a-crown when he is entertaining a friend, 
 
 20 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 he will be sure to do so. Is he conscious 
 of the impression that is left by this habit 
 upon all his neighbours, a relatively un- 
 important trait that colours their opinion 
 of him, first and last, whatever sphere of his 
 activities be under discussion, and whenever 
 his name is spoken? 
 
 I have in mind another individual, kind- 
 hearted, well-intentioned, a staunch friend, 
 and an able man ; but, unfortunately, a prig 
 without any humour or tact — and men fly 
 from him. Is he, again, aware of these 
 handicaps in life's race that affect funda- 
 mentally the feelings of all who come in 
 contact with him? 
 
 But, just as it is possible to survey any 
 one in this manner, dispassionately and de- 
 liberately — to mark his characteristics, to note 
 his peculiarities, to weigh his defects, to assess 
 his value, to see him and to estimate him as 
 a whole, and to assign him his place in the 
 order of things — so is it possible, with a slight 
 effort, to step outside oneself, to stand away 
 for a time from one's own conscious indi- 
 
 21 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 viduality, and to take a long look at the 
 fellow whom we call '1.' It may humble 
 our pride and humiliate some dear delusions, 
 but it teaches us a knowledge of self that 
 we can never attain so long as we jealously 
 lock ourselves up in the closet of our own 
 personality. 
 
 We must regard ourselves as objects, not 
 merely as subjects. Stand, therefore, away 
 from yourself, you who desire a more intimate 
 knowledge of what you are. Free yourself 
 from the subjective network in which you 
 are entangled, and scan yourself as the world 
 scans you. All your spiritual struggles, your 
 temptations and ideals, all that passionate 
 inner history that makes you of such absorbing 
 interest to yourself, is nothing to them. The 
 great canvas, which you have so devotedly 
 painted in with your own portrait, they cannot 
 see ; your good resolutions they are unaware 
 of ; those little achievements that you hug to 
 yourself when you ask your own spirit whether 
 you have been a success or a failure in life, 
 they have never heard of, or have forgotten. 
 
 22 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Therefore, throw open these prison-doors of 
 your Holy of Holies, and stand outside in the 
 hght of day with them, and look upon your- 
 self — the handiwork of a lifetime. Of the 
 flattering portrait which you drew there is 
 scarcely anything to be seen. The brilliant 
 colours have faded, and in their place there 
 are others of soberer hue. The beauty of the 
 outlines has almost disappeared. It is now 
 quite a different figure, plainer, less noticeable, 
 smaller, perhaps coarser. Defects that you 
 were almost unconscious of disfigure the pic- 
 ture like blots of ink ; and certain redeeming 
 qualities, that you had always held cheap, are 
 the only relief to what, on the whole, to the 
 eye of the impartial observer, is a common- 
 place, imperfect, and depressing composition. 
 
 When you re-enter your little temple, 
 where then will all your pride be, and the 
 comforting vanities and satisfactions of many 
 a long year past? You will have taken the 
 world's measure of yourself. But, if former 
 hallucinations have melted away; if your 
 pride is bruised and self-importance abated, 
 
 23 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 you will have gained a fuller knowledge of 
 what you are. You will also have a deeper 
 insight into the world of men about you. 
 You will know that you are not the only 
 victim of self-ignorance. You will be sure 
 that they too are packed with self-delusions. 
 You will know, in spite of the actual figure 
 they cut, what elegant raiment of self-appre- 
 ciation and appraisement they are weaving, 
 what rare visions of themselves they are be- 
 holding, what pride they are taking in their 
 fictitious treasures. This you may be sure 
 they will be doing at the very moment that 
 you are seeing them as they really are. 
 
 24 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Blaming of Fortune. 
 
 T TOW ready are we to blame Fortune for 
 our own failures ! Yet every man is 
 the builder of his life, the architect of his own 
 monument, the writer of his own epitaph. 
 He may grieve to-day on account of the 
 world's neglect, the loss of old regard, disgrace, 
 disaster, destitution — what not ; but if he 
 look back upon the long chain of his actions, 
 somewhere among the links he will find the 
 one forged by himself — the initial flaw that 
 weakened irremediably all the rest. There is 
 no one who does not know this, and few who 
 will admit it. The spite of Fortune is what we 
 rage against amid the consequences of our 
 follies, and so we apply balm to the remorse 
 which otherwise might be too hard for us 
 to bear. 
 
 25 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Self-expression. 
 
 ^T^HE most desirable achievement in a man's 
 life is not so much happiness as ade- 
 quate self-expression, and this can sometimes 
 only be attained in agony or in sorrow, as by 
 a Christ or Joan of Arc, and other martyrs to 
 ideals. But to be a cobbler, or financier, or 
 attorney, when you have the divine gift of 
 vision, of conjuring the spirit of beauty from a 
 block of marble, or creating other loveliness 
 for the world's perpetual delight, is to be a 
 failure, whatever content and material pros- 
 perity may be yours. Complete self-expression 
 is the ideal destiny of each of us, as in the case 
 of every other natural thing. A rose may 
 grow to perfection in a deserted garden, and 
 never be seen by human eye, yet being perfect 
 in its development it can do no more, whereas 
 another, that buds in the pubhc view and rots 
 when it should bloom, can scarce do less. 
 Recognition of achievement is a reward some- 
 
 26 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 times withheld, or late in coming, or only 
 partial in the end, but this for the individual 
 is of no concern. As with him, so is it with 
 nations. As the demands of the family have 
 to submit at times to his ideals, so do weaker 
 races have to submit to the ideals of a stronger 
 one. The man obeys his genius, and domestic 
 conventions and the claims of family life go 
 by the board, just as a nation obeys its par- 
 ticular genius and the wills of its weaker 
 neighbours bend to its power. 
 
 The doctrine of self-expression is therefore 
 ruthless, just as Nature herself is ruthless ; 
 and a man must determine for himself, and at 
 the outset, whether he will seek the fullest 
 development of the best that is in him, at the 
 sacrifice of other things, and at the price, 
 maybe, of affronting jealous and vengeful 
 opinion, or be satisfied with a crippled, in- 
 complete self-expression, or, perchance even, 
 with none at all. That he should be born into 
 this dilemma is one of the jests of Fate. 
 
 27 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Self-justification, 
 
 npHERE come periods in some men s lives 
 when all things turn to gall and worm- 
 wood. It is then that the courageous spirit 
 tries to divert this bitter force from self- 
 destruction, or revenge upon the world, into 
 some achievement that will justify the ex- 
 istence of Fate's poor victim. That a Hfe of 
 trial and mortification should end in naught 
 but a handful of grey ash is intolerable to a 
 brave and rational being. He must leave 
 behind some memorial of himself, some small 
 but genuine fragment of abiding value, not 
 so much for his own glorification, as to re- 
 deem his suffering — the crucifying hours of 
 hatred and despair — to compensate him for 
 what otherwise would be but a cruel and 
 merciless experience. 
 
 This burning of the body, of the heart, 
 of self-consciousness, in the furnace of life, 
 
 28 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 with nothing to show for it but a Httle heap 
 of cinders, is an unendurable thought. And 
 therefore it is that many a kingly achievement 
 has been wrought in pain, that might never 
 have been accomplished if effort had had a 
 gentler nurse. 
 
 29 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Thorns in the Flesh. 
 
 IT VERY man, you may be sure, whose 
 instincts on the whole are not anti- 
 social, has a thorn in the flesh. In some it 
 may be a disgraceful sexual impulse, in others 
 an ungovernable craving for strong drink, or, 
 again, a treacherous temper, jealousy, coward- 
 ice, deceit, a stirring to revenge. These are 
 but a few, for the catalogue of mortal in- 
 firmities is beyond all human ken. Pity these 
 men who are sometimes tortured their lives 
 through by their frailties, and escape from 
 their torment only by death. It is often 
 agony when with these thorns they stab their 
 own quivering flesh, and afterwards when in 
 bitterness of spirit they strive to pluck them 
 out. There are long, cruel spikes as well as 
 smaller ones, jagged, ugly, poisoned, some of 
 them piercing into the very vitals, the heart, the 
 brain, all that makes life otherwise endurable. 
 
 30 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Learn to be sorry for these poor, self- 
 tortured victims, as you are sorry for yourself 
 under like conditions, and you will have learnt 
 much humanity. For they are victims first 
 and evildoers afterwards, just as you were a 
 short while since and may be again ; and the 
 greater your knowledge of the circumstances 
 of each, the deeper will be your pity. Hatred, 
 contempt, disgust, derision will melt away and 
 compassion will take their place. For this 
 reason, because of the pitifulness and pathos, 
 the indwelling sadness of our human lot, the 
 wisest men have not been the merriest, and 
 all the world's greatest work has been serious. 
 
 If you can feel compassion in your heart 
 for him who has wronged you from malice, 
 or pride, or personal ambition, or some other 
 poisoned motive ; if your own hurt seem 
 after all to be secondary ; if pity for him, 
 self-wounded as he is, overbears your natural 
 anger at the harm which he may have done 
 you, you will have learnt some of the wisdom 
 of the ages and shall live in greater peace. 
 
 31 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Good Company. 
 
 TT is a greater service to amuse than to 
 instruct people. They are always grate- 
 ful for the one, and generally impatient of the 
 other. And their instinct is a sound one ; for 
 the man who is full of information and anxious 
 to impart it is not infrequently a public 
 nuisance, and there are few inflictions that 
 human flesh can less easily endure than a 
 w^ell-informed and conscientious bore. In fact, 
 any one of us would as soon have a burglar to 
 stay in the house. You would only have to 
 keep an eye on the plate in the one case, but 
 in the other there would be no hope for you ; 
 nothing but laceration of nerves and increasing 
 paralysis of every moral instinct so long as 
 he remained under your roof. But how our 
 hearts warm to some one who can entertain 
 us with his company, whether he be an author 
 long since dead or a man in the flesh ! He 
 
 32 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 refuses to take the world as it is. He moulds 
 it anew in front of us, and if he mingles a 
 little precept with his entertainment on the 
 sly, as though he were doing it unconsciously 
 or by inadvertence, we readily forgive him. 
 But with what a chilling contraction of our 
 very marrow do we regard the man who is 
 always unloading his mental lumber for our 
 benefit ! We would rather he sunk the whole 
 of it in mid-ocean. It might be the wisdom 
 of Solomon, but we would sooner lose it than 
 listen to him. 
 
 On the other hand, he who entertains 
 us by the quality of his wit is a friend 
 indeed. We treasure the small change of 
 his conversation as a miser his gold. We 
 gather him to our bosom almost as a saviour, 
 for he can cure us of our maladies when half 
 the medicos in Harley Street have given us 
 up ; and his way of putting things and looking 
 at them, his quips and his humour, are a 
 better preservative of health than the whole 
 of the British pharmacopoeia. 
 
 Let us then be grateful to those who are 
 
 33 D 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 good company, for that kind of company is 
 ' good ' indeed. It humanises the feelings, 
 uplifts the heart, makes life worth living at 
 moments even when the fiend of care is 
 prowling in the background. Let us be grate- 
 ful to those who can amuse us, for it is all 
 that many of us can render in the way of 
 reciprocity. They set not out to preach, or 
 at least their pulpits are invisible and their 
 texts unspoken, but they are natural philoso- 
 phers and exponents of the art of life. Though 
 some of them may be over the border-line of 
 respectability or decorum, they belong to a 
 fraternity as select as that of the Academy of 
 France. They are a perpetual reminder of 
 one of the world's eternal truths — that our 
 circumstances after all do not really so much 
 matter; that in the same way that a potter 
 can fashion his clay, so can we, with the help 
 of these genii of the spirit, whatever be our 
 fortune, transform the little world in which 
 our daily activities revolve. It is our own 
 fault if we seize not the occasion when the 
 chance is ours ; for as we while away the 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 hours with some one who is good com- 
 pany, who groups the kaleidoscopic particles 
 of experience in the way we like to see 
 them, this is the lesson that we are being 
 taught under the guise of amusement all 
 the time. 
 
 35 
 
THOUGHTS I:N MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 On Revisiting Places. 
 
 TF a man desires a clear perspective of the 
 result of his life's journey, he can employ 
 a method which will hardly fail, if not to give 
 satisfaction, at least to establish a basis for 
 truth. Let him revisit some well-known spot 
 after a long absence — the busy little market- 
 town or quiet country village with which he 
 was so familiar, and where he was so intimately 
 known, perhaps twenty years ago. Let him 
 stay there for a while, lingering amid well- 
 remembered scenes and scanning familiar faces, 
 and when he retires occasionally into himself 
 in some secluded corner of its neighbour- 
 hood, he will obtain a juster perspective of 
 the past and present than in almost any other 
 fashion. 
 
 For he will then be able to discern how 
 far his earlier expectations have materialised, 
 dreams become realities, resolutions and am- 
 
 36 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 bitions facts, and promise fulfilment. He will 
 read in the faces of his old acquaintances 
 (that mirror of his reputation) whether he 
 has climbed the ladder of success or remained 
 at the foot of it ; and when, in this solitary 
 contemplation, he bridges the gulf of years, 
 recollecting the surge of his youthful ambition 
 and those pent-up energies that he yearned to 
 loose, he will be able to calculate, as against 
 the fair promise of the past, the amount of 
 realisation that there has been on the whole. 
 It may be that he has leapt even beyond 
 his wildest hopes ; that he is richer, more 
 honoured, more powerful, happier, more useful 
 than he or any one else dreamed he ever would 
 be. His former comrades may be flattered by 
 their old connection with their distinguished 
 friend and flock to pay him court, and hh 
 heart may swell when he thinks of the many 
 obstacles surmounted, of the esteem of the 
 world gradually won, of the favours that 
 Fortune has lavished upon him, of the crest 
 of the wave that has borne him thus safely 
 and victoriously to shore. 
 
 37 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 This, indeed, is an exhilarating experience, 
 and as he stands alone and views the familiar 
 spire, or ancient tree, or crowded street, a 
 sense of gratitude steals upon him and of 
 goodwill. The pictures of the past and 
 present are complete. They are before him 
 in panorama, with every detail of shadow, 
 background, figures, colouring, and grouping 
 clearly defined, and with no interposed land- 
 scape or portraiture to interfere with the 
 contrast and distract attention. 
 
 But it well may be that the contrast is 
 of a different character. The last time he 
 was here, he swam in hope. The ball of the 
 future lay at his feet. There was nothing, 
 he believed, that, given the chance, he could 
 not achieve. Pride, confidence, the splendid 
 opportunities of youth, a fair and fortunate 
 start, and an engaging personality made him 
 a little centre of admiration, almost of romance, 
 for himself and others. Everything pointed 
 to a prosperous — indeed, brilliant future, to 
 progressive and honourable success. In secret 
 he even cherished thoughts of imperishable 
 
 38 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 fame. He was prepared to climb rugged 
 paths to win it, to toil unweariedly to deserve 
 it, and was intolerant of inferior and common- 
 place aspirations. 
 
 And what about it all now, after twenty- 
 years, as his eyes rest upon the landmarks of 
 that glorious fairy- time ? The dreams of 
 renown and all the other visions are dying, 
 if not already dead. He is like a lark caught 
 in a snare. He is up against realities, and 
 they are brutal and stark naked. The broad 
 river that floated his great vessel of ambition 
 has dwindled to a trickling rivulet. Most of 
 his ideals are destroyed, some by his own hand. 
 His resolutions have long since gone to pieces, 
 deserted in despair ; first of all been cracked, 
 then repaired ; then broken and mended again ; 
 then shattered and once more reunited ; then 
 finally shivered into atoms and abandoned 
 for ever. The enchanted palace that he built, 
 the gorgeous robes, the triumphant career have 
 turned out to be the most ordinary bricks and 
 mortar, the plainest homespun, and a daily, 
 unnoticed, uninteresting round of events. He 
 
 89 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 would not have believed in the possibility of 
 it a score of years ago, and could not have 
 borne the revelation. 
 
 To-day he is face to face with the visions 
 of his youth and the accomplished anti-climax, 
 and although he has learnt in the interval that 
 too much is not to be expected of life, the two 
 pictures are side by side and hurt him all the 
 same. He gazes at the chasm between what 
 is and what might have been. He can measure 
 to a nicety the desert that stretches between 
 the promise and the performance, the assurance 
 of success and the reality of failure ; and — 
 what makes his trial the more bitter — while 
 he can now calmly estimate how many of his 
 former expectations were pitched too high for 
 all human probability, he also knows how 
 much of the actual disillusionment has been 
 his own fault. 
 
 40 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Summer Woods. 
 
 nr^HE charm of the woods has never been 
 adequately sung. The flashing rivers, 
 the meadows, the waterfalls, the sublime 
 mountain ranges, the rolling downs, the 
 changing heavens, the wheat-fields, the un- 
 resting sea — have all had their chroniclers 
 and devotees. Every aspect of their loveli- 
 ness has been limned a thousand times, in 
 poetry and prose, and their beauty consecrated 
 in unnumbered hearts. But the quiet, retired 
 recesses of the woods have been comparatively 
 neglected, as though a certain measure of self- 
 advertisement were necessary, even in Nature, 
 for due recognition. Yet amid the stillness 
 and peace of a wood there may be more magic 
 than in any fountain, or lake, or hill, or golden 
 corn. 
 
 There is a little sandy path in one of the 
 southern counties of our own England — a 
 
 41 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 winding, sheltered, unfrequented track, that 
 alternately gently climbs and as gently drops 
 for about a mile and a half through a fairy 
 scene of woodland. A few farm cottages, 
 sparsely sprinkled on the outskirts, alone pro- 
 claim the settled neighbourhood of man, and 
 all about lies a smiling landscape of waving 
 crops and purple heather. It is not as some 
 woods are, all of one grain and growth, planted 
 by the same hands at about the same time, 
 with a view to profitable felling after a lapse 
 of years. But it is as various and uncom- 
 mercial as the shifting clouds, and yet, with 
 all its changefulness and diverse beauty, en- 
 folds a personality which is indivisible and 
 never alters with its moods. 
 
 In this short mile and a half of unpre- 
 tentious pathway, over-arched here and there 
 by the foliage of the higher trees so as to form 
 roofed and pillared aisles with vistas opening 
 into vivid greenery, all that is lovely in wood- 
 land scenery is spread before the eye. A deli- 
 cate hazel coppice of a few years' growth ; 
 then a sweep of heather fringed with gorse 
 
 42 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 and yellow tormentil, and dignified by some 
 birch saplings that stand in it ankle-deep, like 
 knights in silver armour ; then a plantation 
 of dark-stemmed chestnut. Further on there 
 is a clearing where the charcoal-burners have 
 been at work and left their hut of turf and 
 boughs behind them, and here, in the open, 
 are a few Scotch firs with blood-stained bark, 
 silhouetted against the sky, and an ancient 
 beech, blasted, without a leaf. 
 
 Then we cross a tiny stream with two 
 giant fungi growing at its edge, pink and 
 lovely, yet poisonous ; and then a piece of 
 marshy ground w4th its bed of reeds and 
 alder ; and on and up under some mighty 
 monarchs of the wood, vast, black, twisted 
 oaks and sombre, immemorial yews, older and 
 blacker still, among them. After this, in wild, 
 natural sequence, as it were, some low brush- 
 wood and coarse shrub, a birch covert, thick- 
 set oak stubs, graceful larch, tall, brittle spruce, 
 impenetrable thickets of thorn and briar, yet 
 another little singing rivulet, and forests of 
 fairy bracken. And amid all these the dance 
 
 43 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 of jewelled butterflies, the murmur of in- 
 numerable bees, the pipe of invisible birds, 
 the tinkle of unseen waters, the scent of 
 honeysuckle, the breath of the wind in the 
 tree-tops, the deep blue of the sky between 
 the branches, the shafts of light upon the 
 moss, and the dead leaves of yester-year. 
 
 But a summer's night is the time to drink 
 the full magic of the wood. Let us go there 
 together. It may be one of our last oppor- 
 tunities, and the chance may not come again. 
 Here is the clearing, with the charcoal-burner's 
 hut. There is a large patch of heather and 
 bracken on one side and some ash underwood 
 on the other. For concealment's sake we will 
 sit on a log by the pile of faggots w^hich are to 
 be taken later on for winter firing. The dead 
 beech under the moon looks gaunt and ghastly 
 as it holds out its withered arms, and the 
 night air is stirring in the pines. This is the 
 hour of the bat and owl, of moths, mice, rats, 
 weazels, and other sleepless things. A white 
 owl floated past us, only a few feet from the 
 ground, as we were coming here — soundlessly, 
 
 44 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE, 
 
 like a spirit, disembodied and companionless ; 
 and small inky bats flitted round us in the 
 gloom of the yews. 
 
 But, above all, this is the hour of the 
 night-jar ; the goat- sucker they also call him, 
 and the churn-owl. He it is who, with his 
 consort, is the true magician of this summer 
 night. We must be as still as though 
 carved out of ebony, or they will see us. 
 There are a pair of them ; one is wheeling 
 over some undergrowth and among the larger 
 trees. Sometimes he ghdes into the open and 
 hovers, fluttering noiselessly, over the heather 
 bloom. Surely it can be no bird. It is a 
 spectre, some poor human soul, released for 
 a space from its imprisonment to fly among 
 the woods at night. The trees, too, are be- 
 coming phantasmal and the ferns are shivering. 
 See ! he has suddenly settled upon the path- — 
 black, immobile, watchful — but we must have 
 breathed or stirred an eyelid, for he is off* again 
 in a flash. A glade on the right has swallowed 
 him up. Hist ! there is his mate calling to 
 him from a limb of the stricken beech, crouch- 
 
 45 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 ing along it, motionless, like a piece of the 
 sapless stick itself. Did you ever hear a sound 
 like it ? The bubbling of water is more com- 
 parable to the peculiar vibrant note than any 
 other sound in Nature that I can think of, 
 and yet how weak the comparison is. Un- 
 heard, it is incommunicable. There is an 
 occasional change of pitch, a drop to a lower 
 key, but otherwise it is continuous and tire- 
 less throughout these peaceful hours of the 
 cloudless summer night, except when it is 
 broken in upon suddenly by a short, pas- 
 sionate, guttural call beyond all mortal power 
 to interpret. 
 
 What does it signify — this mysterious, 
 persistent soliloquy, this echo of rippling, 
 trilling, bubbling, gurgling water in the moon- 
 lit watches of the night ? Whatever secret 
 it may hold, it is the wood's chief spell at 
 such a time, and, with the other mystic 
 influences of the hour, produces a feeling of 
 enchantment indescribable. 
 
 The hoot of the owl is a weird and melan- 
 choly cry ; the nightingale pierces the heart 
 
 46 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 with a pang, when with that haunting, long- 
 drawn plaint, she seems to sing of lost loves 
 and perished hope ; round the bat and the 
 great moths cling the romantic secrecy of all 
 nocturnal things ; but beneath the moon, on 
 a still and radiant night, in a clearing of the 
 summer woods, the master-wizard is the 
 night-jar. There is no enchantment like his, 
 as you watch him wheeling and hovering in 
 the shadows and listen to the mystery of 
 his unearthly song. 
 
 47 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Courage. 
 
 /^ OUR AGE is the noblest of all the virtues. 
 ^^ The condemned murderer, who mounts 
 the scaffold with firm and fearless mien, 
 becomes almost a hero to the rabble who have 
 gathered to see him die. The spy, who after 
 running fearful risks is discovered and tried, 
 and faces the shooting-party with a calm 
 indifference to death, compels the admiration 
 even of his enemies. And countless instances 
 might be given where the badness of a deed 
 or individual is almost purged of its evil when 
 combined with a contempt for consequences 
 and a brave, unfaltering heart. 
 
 Whence comes it that even the worst of 
 crimes, if accompanied by great courage, loses 
 in so large a measure the aspect of guilt? 
 For this reason, that every man is superior to 
 his circumstances, his spirit mightier than the 
 chance that hems it in. It is not every one 
 
 48 
 
THOUGHTS m MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 who is conscious of this ascendancy and able 
 to exercise it; but he who does is of heroic 
 mould and master of his fate. For courage 
 is nought else but a contempt for the mock 
 reality of circumstances. It is the spirit free- 
 ing itself from things material and despising 
 the laws of cause and effect. There is no 
 other human impulse so unpolluted by carnal 
 considerations, so devoid of any idea of profit, 
 so completely barren of an end in view. 
 Although vice may make use of it, it is itself 
 above reproach. With those emotional, vmi- 
 versal appeals, worthy and unworthy, by which 
 all humanity are from time to time affected, 
 it has nothing in common. It is uninfluenced 
 by thoughts of material gain, social duty, the 
 pleasures of mutual affection, or bliss in 
 a future life. The husk of mortal desires 
 slips altogether from it ; the laws of the 
 understanding cease to apply ; it has no ex- 
 planation to offer itself ; it does not reason ; 
 and therefore of ail others it is the purest, 
 least objective, and most spiritual. This has 
 been unconsciously recognised in all ages, and, 
 
 49 E 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 consequently, more unqualified honour is ren- 
 dered to courage, and a richer meed of 
 ungrudging admiration bestowed upon it than 
 in the case of any other quality vouchsafed 
 to man. 
 
 Courage inspires emulation, reconciles foes, 
 redeems error, dignifies insignificance. It is a 
 password in every clime for young and old. 
 When the world was in her infancy it was the 
 gold of her standard currency, and it remains 
 so now that she is middle-aged. And when 
 the race are nearing their end, it will still 
 be their chiefest treasure, the coveted posses- 
 sion of a minority, among whom will be 
 counted both good and bad, rich and poor, 
 strong and weak, happy and afflicted — a rare 
 and precious jewel that the destitute never 
 part with nor the wealthy buy. A man may 
 smirch his honour, desert his family, sell his 
 country, betray his Church, rob his master, 
 ruin his own peace, mutilate his talents, 
 abandon his ideals and convictions — aye, lose 
 all that he has — but if he has an intrepid heart, 
 fortitude, courage, they will abide with him 
 
 50 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 still, an inalienable heritage, unimpaired and 
 unspotted amid every circumstance of shame 
 or disaster. 
 
 Courage is of the fiery essence of the soul, 
 immaterial and godlike, beyond vicissitude, 
 untameable by temporal events, indifferent to 
 Fortune and to Fate. This is why it is held 
 in such especial honour, esteemed beyond all 
 price, glorious above all other gifts that are 
 given to the sons of men. 
 
 51 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Sphinx of Personality. 
 
 T TOW little do we know those whom we 
 know best ! Does a mother know her 
 son, or a servant his master, or a husband 
 his wife, or a man his nearest friend ? And 
 why should we expect to know them, when 
 so often we know not even ourselves ? Your 
 little boy, who is saying his prayers so charm- 
 ingly at your knee, may be going to be a 
 poisoner one of these days ; who, after tortur- 
 ing his wife through months of protracted, 
 dreadful pain, will watch her last struggles 
 without a particle of feeUng for her heart- 
 rending agony. Your trusted legal adviser, 
 the staid and reputable man of business, to 
 whom you were half ashamed to confess the 
 little temptations to speculative investment 
 that sometimes assailed you, is found one 
 morning in his office with half his face blown 
 away — a suicide, having gambled with and 
 
 52 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 lost the securities of his clients. Your young 
 wife, to whom you confided your inmost 
 thoughts, who sat by the fire with you only 
 a week since with her baby in her arms — 
 an ideal picture, so you thought, of domestic 
 feUcity and innocence — leaves you for another 
 man. Or, lastly, your next-door neighbour, 
 whom you so heartily despised for a wastrel, 
 a good-for-nothing, self-indulgent failure and 
 hanger-on, who could scarce look you in the 
 eye, saves a poor servant-girl from a burning 
 house just as the roof is falling, and is dis- 
 figured and maimed for life— an unexpected 
 
 hero. 
 
 These are no extravagant cases. We are 
 all of us in the last resort enigmas to the 
 rest of the world, for until usage, convention- 
 alities, the apparel of our upbringing, are 
 peeled from us, we are enigmas even to 
 ourselves. A friend, whom I had always re- 
 garded as a wise and amiable fellow-creature, 
 once told me with considerable concern the 
 following tale. He had an old serving-man, 
 who had worked in his house for forty years. 
 
 58 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 There had never been a bitter or reproachful 
 word between them. To all outward appear- 
 ance, the relations between master and servant 
 were perfect. No jar during all that long 
 period had hazarded what apparently had been 
 a complete union of interests and hearts. By 
 the merest chance, a few casual sentences 
 inadvertently overheard, he discovers one day 
 that the old retainer for many years had hated 
 and despised him. Which of us three was 
 right in our estimate of my friend ? He 
 himself, or 1, or the time-worn servant ? Was 
 the servant to blame or mistaken in his judg- 
 ment ? Did the master know that the anti- 
 pathy was justified, or was he frankly deceived 
 and taken by surprise ? Or was I right in 
 suspecting that the underlying cause must 
 be some transitory misunderstanding — the 
 employer, maybe, a little hasty or wanting in 
 tact, or the employed a trifle over-sensitive ? 
 
 It is this uncertainty, clouding all our ex- 
 perience of mankind, Which should make us 
 hesitate in our judgment of other people. 
 They may be heroes when we think them 
 
 54 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 craven, or vile when we respect them. For 
 sometimes they know not even themselves. 
 The occasion perhaps has not yet arisen for 
 their genuine personality to assert or reveal 
 itself, and until then they are mere pictures, 
 daubed by other hands than theirs, tricked 
 out by education, by tradition, by environ- 
 ment — selfless, and without a will. So that 
 when the hour strikes at last for their truer 
 revelation, we are puzzled by what we regard 
 as the sphinx of their personality, which may 
 have been comparatively simple all along, but 
 overlaid by those ulterior, artificial, contra- 
 dictory assemblages, which, for them as well 
 as for us, hid it for the time from view. 
 
 55 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Poetry and Prose. 
 
 npHE difference between Poetry and Prose 
 is as the difference between Youth and 
 Age, or the bubbling of a spring and the 
 progress of a river, or between intuition and 
 reflection. Poetry is the play of the intuitive ; 
 prose, of the reflective powers of man. The 
 former, therefore, is of the very fountain of 
 our intellectual faculties, while the latter is 
 part of their later life, when, in comparative 
 repose, they broaden into lakes or sweep 
 majestically to the sea. It is a difference, 
 therefore, not of origin or matter, but of 
 mood — the one impulsive, youthful, unself- 
 conscious, pure ; the other sedater, more ex- 
 perienced and older, less unself-conscious ; also 
 less pure, because carrying with its currents 
 the debris of hfe. Poetry is thus the higher 
 art, because the more original, the least pol- 
 luted expression of the soul ; and it is also 
 
 56 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 the rarer of the two, for the moments it can 
 seize on are confined to the birth of the 
 waters, as they well up from the spirit to 
 start upon their downward history. Prose 
 may almost be refined into poetry ; the waters 
 purged of the drift that they have gathered 
 on the way, and the more like poetry it 
 becomes the better is it as prose. But poetry 
 can never be improved by an admixture ot 
 the other. Once allow an infusion into poetry 
 of these later scourings, and poetry it ceases 
 to be. Some of Ruskin's passages may almost 
 be read as poetry, and these are the best of 
 all his writings. He set out to write prose, 
 and all but wrote in the form of poetry, suc- 
 ceeding all the better in his original purpose. 
 On the other hand, some of Wordsworth's 
 pages, if written at all, should have been in 
 the form of prose, and they are his worst 
 work. He set out to write poetry, and prac- 
 tically wrote prose, and so failed altogether in 
 his primary object. 
 
 Prose, again — and splendid, scholarly prose 
 — can be written to order. A man with 
 
 57 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 sufficient stores of information, who is per- 
 petually practising his art, may sit at his desk 
 and paint a brilliant portrait of Alexander the 
 Great for an historical magazine. He may 
 write without emotion and against time, but 
 the result may be a picture that will live in 
 literature. With poetry it is otherwise. More 
 than in any other art you must wait upon the 
 muse. It is no use to importune her. She 
 will visit you, if at all, in her own hour, as 
 unexpectedly as she deserts you, without 
 warning, and often at seemingly unfavourable 
 moments. No man ever wrote a lyric worthy 
 of the name with the publisher waiting on 
 the doorstep. And the reason is that the 
 workings of Nature and the spirit are in their 
 beginnings hidden from us. You feel the first 
 sweet breath of Spring, and cannot account 
 for it or recall it, but had you not been watch- 
 ing and waiting, you might not have felt it 
 at all. It is gone ; and though the subsequent 
 procession of the seasons is proud and lovely, 
 they are but a calculable and commonplace 
 succession in comparison with that first inde- 
 
 58 
 
THOUGHTS m MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 scribable birth which has departed for ever. 
 In young blood this ferment of the spirit 
 occurs oftener than when the years recede, 
 just as a volcano throws up its flaming lava 
 with less frequency as the centuries roll by, 
 until the grey and lifeless scoria about it is 
 the only witness to its vanished power. 
 Indeed, nearly all the highest poetical efforts 
 have been those of the comparatively young. 
 And this is but natural, for they are closer to 
 the source of life, to the vibrating, vital heart 
 of things. They can feel the throb of its 
 pulse and its fire in their veins. Soon the 
 current of their days will cool, and become 
 sluggish and contaminated, or choked with 
 the traffic of cares and experience, and they 
 will then stand upon the bank and contem- 
 plate it rather than feel it. In other words, 
 they will think in prose rather than in poetry. 
 This is why philosophy — a task for the reflec- 
 tive understanding — is no subject-matter for 
 the poet ; and why love, that ceases to be 
 love when we reflect upon it, is the best of all. 
 As it is the highest art, so also is it the 
 
 59 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 least remunerative. The market is so re- 
 stricted, the recognition often so slow, that 
 he would be a bold man to reckon on a crust 
 of bread for every sonnet or lyric that he 
 could write, however fine in quality they 
 might prove to be. For since poetry is a 
 spiritual birth, every true poem is a new 
 venture from the hidden deeps of life. Its 
 unheralded and spontaneous origin is one of 
 the features that constitute it poetry, and as 
 it has issued from the unseen, and its advent 
 is inexplicable and, maybe, unexpected, there 
 is no rough and ready standard by which to 
 judge it. Indeed, its novelty, its spiritual 
 individuality, is a hindrance to its ready ac- 
 ceptance ; and years may pass before the 
 flickering radiance in the heavens is recognised 
 as a new star. But what is this to the man 
 who can create — whose living offspring in 
 their beauty and perfection are dearer to 
 him by far than the breath of popular ap- 
 plause ? He is speaking by the mouth of a 
 divine revelation. For the moment he is 
 inspired ; he is a seer ; the vision is upon him, 
 
 60 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 and all earthly things are of no account. 
 What does it matter if he dies neglected ? 
 The universal has issued through him, and 
 sublimed him, and turned his dross to gold. 
 In this rapture of expression he has found 
 exaltation rarer than any that the world can 
 give or take away. He is independent of 
 reputation, of fate or fortune ; for he has 
 drunk the cup of ecstasy and his heart is full 
 of music. 
 
 Lastly, and following from this, poetry, 
 having no material aim in view, is despised in 
 general by the world at large. The journalist, 
 the critic, the historian, even the novehst, 
 are recognised components of an organized 
 society, participants in its life, beneficiaries of 
 its advantages. They are paid for their peri- 
 odic output as a matter of business and 
 deliver the dish demanded at the moment. 
 But the poet has no such unchallenged and 
 allotted place. He has no niche in the temple 
 of worldliness. The city man ignores him, 
 the countryman does not understand him, the 
 politician smiles at him as crazy, the busy 
 
 01 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 crowd has no time for him. Outside a small 
 and esoteric company, he is looked upon as 
 something astray from the healthy and normal, 
 almost as though he had been born a cripple, 
 as out of relation with sublunary interests, a 
 star-gazer and useless visionary. His virility 
 is questioned, his sanity a matter of suspicion, 
 his want of common-sense taken for granted. 
 
 But let not these things discourage you, 
 dreamer of dreams ! for poetry is its own 
 reward, and, like the cardinal virtues, an end 
 in itself. You stand at the fountain-head of 
 all our longings, of all our passions, of all our 
 imaginings. You alone can feel them in their 
 purity and express them for us in the fulness 
 of love. 
 
 62 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Confidants. 
 
 A DMIT no confidants to the secret ambi- 
 tions of your life, though confederates 
 may be employed on contributory enterprises 
 to pave the way to the main goal. For, 
 although it is possible that they may help you 
 even in the principal venture, they will be 
 more likely to hazard your chances. If you 
 want to be Prime Minister, keep it to yourself. 
 There are treacherous, indiscreet, and over- 
 zealous associates — all equally dangerous to 
 the ambitious man. In fact, the golden rule 
 is to trust no one too much, for human nature 
 can scarcely support a complete surrender of 
 another's confidence. The time may come 
 when temper or interest will overbear loyalty, 
 and the whole fabric of years will tumble to 
 the ground. If, however, you are obliged to 
 have accomplices, then cherish them that they 
 may cherish you. If you are forced to bare 
 
 63 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 yourself to them, let them see themselves in 
 the very fibre of your loving thoughts, so that 
 they may be assured that you would rather 
 fail in your attempt than lose their friendship 
 or their dear society. Or, as an alternative, so 
 entwine their interests with yours that, if you 
 fall, they must go with you. There is no 
 other security than these. 
 
 Good faith, loyalty, gratitude, duty are 
 apt to be mere catch -words, void of any 
 substance, when the pressure of interest or 
 temper is brought to bear against them. We 
 see good faith give way to wounded feelings, 
 loyalty to bribes, gratitude to a prospect of 
 richer favours elsewhere, while duty has the 
 weakest hold of all. Flattery may succeed 
 in binding associates to you for a time, but 
 the hour comes when it stales, or when a 
 more cunning flatterer appears upon the scene. 
 As for services, they are often forgotten when 
 a few hours old, or, as they gradually come to 
 be piled up, each new one appears but insig- 
 nificant beside the mountain of your previous 
 ones, of which it forms so small a part. 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Therefore, whether your associate be a greater 
 or a lesser man than yourself, expect not too 
 much from human nature. A word, a look, a 
 letter may destroy in a moment the labours 
 of a lifetime. Wounded vanity remembers 
 no debt. An error in tact may blast the 
 virtue of a thousand claims. A single fault, 
 venial, indiscernible almost in its effect, may 
 discount all the successes, all the sacrifices, all 
 the co-operation of a dozen years. He, there- 
 fore, is more likely to be happy who is without 
 any great personal ambition, neither standing 
 alone with it, mistrustful of his kind, nor con- 
 fiding his secret to the care of others. 
 
 As in great ambitions, so is it in the ulti- 
 mate peace of one's own mind. 
 
 The man most to be envied at the moment 
 is the lucky one ; the most successful over a 
 longer period, he who can forecast the chances 
 of the future ; but the happiest in the end 
 is the possessor of a wise philosophy. The 
 iirst escapes accidents, just as one man out of 
 a regiment may be sole survivor of a bloody 
 fight. The second calculates probabilities and 
 
 65 F 
 
THOUGHTS m MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 lays his plans accordingly. He is of those 
 who are ' the lords and owners of their faces.' 
 The last takes life as he finds it. He gains 
 more than he expected, and loses less than 
 he feared. To him ambition is the emptiest 
 of bubbles, and disappointment a natural 
 contingency ; life but a brief, inexplicable 
 span, a few racing hours of duty, pain, and 
 pleasure, where nothing sufficiently matters to 
 grieve over for long. It is a morning, midday, 
 and evening shut in by darkness at either 
 end ; the same for all humanity, for kings and 
 beggars, where repining is out of place when 
 the moments fly so swiftly. 
 
 But the greater part of humanity are out- 
 side these three categories, being either un- 
 fortunate, or wanting in foresight, or without 
 the consolations of a calm philosophy. They 
 are born perhaps in poverty, or with some 
 hereditary taint, or thrown when callow into 
 vicious company ; or they may have no sense 
 of their own interests. Thev can advise a 
 friend and make his fortune, but so mis- 
 manage their own that the day will come 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 when he will be ashamed to be seen abroad 
 with them. Or, lastly, they have no philo- 
 sophy, and fret against fate, until those about 
 them — their dear ones, their very selves — 
 are worn past endurance and yearn for a 
 release. 
 
 It is, therefore, partly a matter of tem- 
 perament, partly also of circumstances over 
 which we may have no control, which decides 
 whether comparative happiness and success, or 
 their dark opposites, are to be our lot in life. 
 It holds good of all professions and all ranks, 
 from that of a royal duke to a rag-and-bone 
 picker. Accomplices can do nothing for us 
 here. We are as isolated in this last resort as 
 we are upon our death-beds, when the room 
 is crowded with those who have gathered to 
 see us off; when our last and lonely journey 
 is about to begin ; when nothing can be done 
 for us, and none can accompany us across 
 the frontier. 
 
 This being so, it is well for those of us 
 who are able, to learn to walk alone ; to 
 admit confederates neither to the secret of 
 
 67 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 one's chief ambitions nor to the inner sanc- 
 tuary of one's peace of mind. They may fail 
 you in the first case from one cause or 
 another, and leave you to find your own 
 salvation if you can ; but in the second they 
 cannot help but disappoint you, hov^^ever good 
 their will. For, while material ends may be 
 achieved for you by the collaboration and 
 interest of others, happiness is your own 
 creation — a flower that springs from your 
 own breast, which is fed by your own heart's 
 sap, and blossoms in spite of every apparent 
 disadvantage. Of this none can rob you. 
 No traitor can betray you unawares ; no alien 
 interference can mar the bloom of the plant, 
 for its roots are in your very life and its buds 
 are everlastingly opening to view. 
 
 The moral, then, is this : that, since self- 
 consciousness makes man a rational subject, 
 a personality, and in large measure, therefore, 
 a lonely animal, he should train himself in 
 matters relating to his ultimate happiness to 
 rely upon himself. For in these success will 
 be more likely to crown his wishes if, as in 
 
 68 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 those pertaining to worldly ambition, he keeps 
 his own counsel, and so orders his secret 
 scheme of life that no vicissitude can rob him 
 of his treasure or violate the sanctuary of his 
 inward peace. 
 
 69 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Style. 
 
 ^T^HE difference between first-rate and in- 
 ferior composition is this: in the one, 
 the words cUng to the thought, as a well- 
 fitting garment clothes the body. In the 
 other, there is either the strain of the thought 
 to avoid exclusion from the utterance, or it 
 is overshadowed by it and more or less lost 
 to view. In other words, a writer of genius 
 expresses what he has to say with complete 
 exactness ; while a craftsman of second-rate 
 talent, though his feelings may be equally 
 alive, makes use of an agent unsuited to their 
 content, and, the reader being aware of a lack 
 of correspondence, aesthetic disappointment is 
 a sure result. In the first case, the frame- 
 work is so adapted that the writer's emotions 
 can be incorporated so as to inform every 
 part ; whereas, in the second, it is either too 
 constricted or has more capacity than they 
 
 70 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 can make use of. That is, either it embodies 
 a portion only of his message, and the re- 
 mainder is left outside and missed by the 
 reader, or what he wants to say vivifies but 
 a part of the fabric of the language, and is 
 lost in the interior which it fails to fill. 
 
 For just as it is bad art to overcrowd the 
 chambers that you have prepared for your 
 thought, so it is even worse to leave them 
 half-empty. For insignificant authorship is 
 nothing but the introduction of trifling matter 
 into a mansion designed for the reception of 
 an honoured guest. Futility, insincerity, vul- 
 garity take up but little room in a building 
 destined for noble uses, and the palace and the 
 temple are left for the eye of the reader 
 almost tenantless— robbed, as they are, of the 
 pulsing fife that should have been theirs. 
 
 But the author himself, composing in the 
 flush of feeling, is often unaware of this. 
 His emotion, so real to himself, is his first 
 interest, the suitability of its articulated form 
 too apt to be neglected. He is inclined to 
 attribute to the framework the precise capa- 
 
 71 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 city and shape required, and years may elapse 
 before he recognises either the voids he has 
 left or the insufficiency of scope with which 
 he started. Indeed, it is not what he says 
 and feels that so much matters. What 
 matters is that they should coincide and be 
 in harmony ; that all he wants to say should 
 be found perfectly fitting into the receptacle 
 of language, his own mould fashioned by his 
 own pen. A simple conception, simply but 
 exactly housed, is beyond compare better 
 than a finer one, half of which is left on the 
 doorstep ; better also than a finer one which 
 is dwarfed by surroundings that are too big 
 for it. 
 
 This is the secret of style, from Sophocles 
 to Shakespeare, to Goethe, and others. A 
 wise author decides with what scheme of 
 architecture he can most closely assimilate 
 his thought. It may be a cathedral, castle, 
 manor house, or cottage, or a mere shanty or 
 lean-to ; or it may include them all. But his 
 primary business is to make up his mind, 
 whatever be the volume of his consciousness 
 
 72 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 at the moment, not so much to try to 
 express it to the full, as to accommodate it 
 to the particular mould of which he is a 
 master. If he succeeds in this, he is perfect 
 in his art; and this very perfection, this fit- 
 ness, will at once raise him above all those 
 who are second-rate in every art and every 
 age, and place him, according to his stature, 
 among the chief literary craftsmen of the 
 world — will raise, too, by reason of this per- 
 fection, the simplicity of a humble theme to 
 a rank far beyond its own. 
 
 73 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The People. 
 
 TN studying the forces of life as applied to 
 mankind, the great body of the world's 
 poor afford a wider field for investigation, 
 because a broader canvas for the hand of 
 Nature to work upon, than the narrow^er 
 dimensions of those other orders which, from 
 various causes, have been raised to the upper 
 levels of the human family. As this first great 
 class preponderates in numbers so immeasur- 
 ably above the others, it is from it that the 
 averages and extremes of intellectual and 
 moral range should be taken. It is in this 
 majority, in the main bulk of the people, that 
 the strongest impulses are to be found. It is 
 here that the voice of Nature is loudest, the 
 passions more vehement, and the spirit of life 
 intenser than in any of the lesser distributions 
 of society. In this vast community the 
 shallowest and profoundest intellects, the most 
 
 74 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 abandoned wretches and the noblest heroes 
 have their home. Where the battle for exist- 
 ence proceeds in all its fierceness day by day, 
 talents are more exercised and natural parts 
 provided with a stronger incentive than in 
 the circles of the unemployed. Indeed, the 
 struggle of exalted minds after noble, and 
 that of base minds after unworthy ends, this 
 great contest for bread and glory that never 
 ceases among the people, forms a picture by 
 a master-hand to which all the galleries of 
 luxury have nothing comparable to display. 
 As the whole energy of the poor is directed 
 to maintaining their very existence, and that 
 of the rich to exploiting their possessions with 
 prestige, the mass of the people can appreciate 
 their own interests more clearly than those 
 can do it for them upon whom Fortune has 
 lavished her gifts. The workers have their 
 lives to fight for, others frequently little else 
 than their pleasures to pursue. The former, 
 consequently, have a deeper stake in restrain- 
 ing their own passions, while custom and 
 growing hardihood more easily reconcile them 
 
 75 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 to their lot. Although, therefore, the greatest 
 extremes of impulse are seen in the majority 
 of the common people, it is in that class that 
 we find, on the whole, a more complete har- 
 mony between the passions on one side and 
 destiny on the other than in any other of the 
 world's groups. In order to study the even 
 balancing of these two forces, it is thus to the 
 poor rather than the rich that we should turn. 
 For the mass of the people are more or less 
 unconsciously constrained to moderate the 
 violence of their desires in face of a destiny 
 that would crush them if it were too recklessly 
 opposed. For these reasons, the voice of the 
 people is generally the voice of truth, and their 
 instinct a sounder standard for the guidance 
 of statesmen than all the sagacity of philo- 
 sophers and wise men. There is hence the 
 imprint of simple greatness upon the faces of 
 the common people, and a stamp of natural 
 genius in the rugged lines of poverty, marks 
 which, in the bulk, gradually disappear from 
 the lineaments of those who live at their ease. 
 Like all prudent husbandmen, Nature puts 
 
 76 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 her greatest faith in the greatest labour, and 
 entrusts her vital interests to the producers 
 rather than the consumers of the world's 
 wealth. But men labour in order to win the 
 object of their affections, and indulge those 
 affections in order to alleviate their toil. The 
 destiny of the people, therefore, is to labour, 
 and one of their affections an ultimate release 
 from that toil. In this principle is hidden the 
 fountain of all the other affections of man- 
 kind. They are continually looking forward 
 to an eventual release from the various trials 
 of their existence. To-day they are restless, 
 that to-morrow they may win repose; and, 
 just as the scheme of life is being carried on 
 for some secret purpose under the direction 
 of an unknown force, so does every man 
 devote all the energy of his being towards the 
 attainment of a quiet liberty, and the con- 
 struction of the temple of his peace. 
 
 77 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Classic in Literature. 
 
 A S the Essay takes the place of honour in 
 '^ the field of prose, so does the Lyric 
 hold it in that of poetry. The diamond, the 
 most brilliant of gems, is distinguished above 
 all others because, within so small a compass, 
 it imprisons so great a store of imperishable 
 and concentrated fire. So does the Essay like- 
 wise, at its best, enfold a treasury of riches in a 
 little boundary, more wealth and Hght in pro- 
 portion to its size than in the case of any other 
 form of prose composition ; for every word 
 sparkles like a facet with its own fire and 
 brilliance. This is its chief quality and claim 
 to immortality. Its capacity, seemingly so 
 slight, is packed and loaded with value. It is 
 like a gem sculptured by a loving artist, 
 lasting, graceful, of masterly workmanship ; 
 or a mosaic so exquisitely compacted and 
 
 designed that the parts are lost in the picture 
 
 78 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 of the whole ; or one of those Greek intaglios, 
 graven as by the hand of Nature, and as though 
 of inevitable birth, created, like Athene, from 
 the brain of Zeus. 
 
 It is different with its companion star. 
 The I^yric, at its best, contains as its primary 
 distinction a wealth of music in a little body, 
 more of this magical accompaniment in pro- 
 portion to its size than in the case of any 
 other kind of versification. This is not to say 
 that the Essay can afford to be inharmonious 
 or the Lyric without matter or meaning. But 
 a concentration, as opposed to a diffusion, of 
 significance in the Essay, of music in the 
 Lyric, are the indispensable features of these 
 two modes of artistic expression. 
 
 It is these requirements that make a 
 perfect essay or lyric of the rarest occurrence 
 in the world of letters, and, when satisfied, 
 ensure them a better chance of survival than 
 any other type of literary endeavour. Some of 
 Bacon's Essays, for instance, and a lyric or two 
 of that time, will, in all probability, outlive the 
 best specimens of all the remaining forms of 
 
 79 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 prose and poetry with which the last four 
 centuries have been crowded. For they will 
 be read and quoted. What profit is there 
 in being hall-marked as a classic, if you 
 are never opened from one year's end to 
 another ; if you merely repose with decorum 
 upon a bookshelf, catalogued but cobwebbed, 
 honoured but untouched? Who now reads 
 the Ecclesiastical Polity or Novum Organuin, 
 or fifty other so-called classics ? To live in 
 any sense at all, you must do more than wrap 
 yourself in leather with your face to a wall. 
 You must be in men's hands and on their 
 tongues. You must live in their hearts. 
 But to live in their hearts, you must be 
 present to their minds, and to be there, you 
 must be quotable. There must be a concen- 
 tration of truth or harmony in you, for that 
 will be remembered when an equivalent 
 volume of either of those precious qualities, 
 distributed intermittently over a larger area, 
 will have long been forgotten. 
 
 This, then, is the ultimate test of a * classic ' 
 — its universal and permanent adaptability for 
 
 80 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 quotation. And, if we come to think of it, 
 that is as it should be. For the great gift 
 which has been allotted to man, which exalts 
 him above the brutes, is the gift of speech. 
 It is that which makes him human, enables 
 him to reason, to concert schemes for develop- 
 ing new powers and improving his condition, 
 to effect far-reaching and novel changes, to 
 step outside instinct, habit, and tradition. It 
 is that which makes it possible for him to 
 afford and to attract consolation, to convey 
 the secret of his ideals, to focus his personality, 
 to persuade, to record, to instruct, to com- 
 mand. 
 
 This is the possession of humanity which 
 lifts us out of the dust and turns our faces to 
 the stars ; which, in its result, makes us god- 
 like, rather than animal, of the order of spirits, 
 rather than of beasts. For language is the 
 tapestry into which the ideas are worked. 
 Without it, they would be discontinuous as 
 well as incommunicable. They could not be 
 arrested or fixed in the mind. There would 
 be no medium in which to knit them into a 
 
 81 G 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 picture, no stepping-places from one to ano- 
 ther, and therefore no reasoning. They would 
 merely jostle without coherence or relation, 
 and lacking these there could be no reflection, 
 and consequently, as we understand it, no 
 self-consciousness. Language, indeed, is the 
 vital principle of intelligent thinking, as dis- 
 tinguished from that consciousness which never 
 rises superior to a mere agglomeration of im- 
 pressions of sense. 
 
 Is it not, then, fitting — nay, in the natural 
 order of things — that wheresoever speech is 
 well-nigh perfect, clothing a subject worthy 
 of its beautiful form, and being, as it then is, 
 the highest example of that noblest gift which 
 constitutes man a human being, it should abide 
 in the heart and memory of humanity as an 
 expression of its very self? The Lyric and 
 the Essay are the only two forms of literary 
 invention where language can attain, and 
 throughout them maintain, its utmost per- 
 fection. But whenever the essential charac- 
 teristics of these twin achievements make 
 their appearance, whether in the epic, the 
 
 82 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 drama, the history, the novel, or the public 
 speech, comparatively dispersed and atten- 
 uated though they then must be, the com- 
 position proportionately assumes the dignity 
 of a * classic ' and takes up its home in the 
 remembrance of men. 
 
 As the Earth grows older, the test will 
 become more and more exacting. Unable, 
 as in the days of Scaliger, to exhaust the 
 world's literature, the discriminating public 
 of 2500 Anno Domini will be constrained to 
 pass over much that is admirable, and to deal 
 with the very finest only of the productions 
 of each century. There will be an increasing 
 massacre of all the remainder, or rather an 
 enforced neglect, followed by gradual oblivion 
 and ultimate death. The only chance of life 
 will be for the perfect form of words, enclosing 
 its maximum of meaning or sweet sound. 
 
 83 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Greed. 
 
 T>EWARE of the love of money. Beware 
 of the harpy, Greed. For if she fastens 
 on you, she will drain your blood of its warmth, 
 your heart of its sympathies, your mind of 
 every interest but her own. At first, she will 
 but raise her head at your feet, modestly, in- 
 conspicuously, a tiny root of ivy sending forth 
 its delicate tendril that clings to your great 
 bole for shelter and support. Her innocent 
 leaves, scarce above the soil, will sparkle 
 against your rude bark like emeralds in the 
 sun. This is the beginning — a prudent thrift, 
 forethought for dependents, a nest-egg for a 
 hungry day. 
 
 But gradually she creeps up and on. Her 
 lithe and sinuous stem swells and throws out 
 feelers of its own. She spreads higher and 
 higher, and round and about, exploring all 
 the ramifications of your growth, until your 
 
 84 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 foliage and hers seem to spring from the same 
 wood and become inextricably mingled and 
 interlaced. But your leaves wither and fall 
 away, while hers are ever green, and in the 
 winter of your days the only verdure about 
 you is the rank vigour of the plant that is 
 grappling with your life. 
 
 She is now a tree herself, with loins almost 
 as thick as your own, and is crushing the sap 
 out of you. Your top, that drank the fra- 
 grance of the summer breeze, is slowly dying, 
 atrophied, starved of its vital current. Soon 
 you are a dead encumbrance, only kept upright 
 by the terrible embrace of those vampire arms. 
 At length you fall, carrying all with you, 
 having lost your value long ago, fit only for 
 the fire, a shredded, rotten, worthless trunk. 
 
 Beware, therefore, of the lust of gold. For 
 it is fatal, and in the end will stifle all the 
 finer feehngs of which humanity are the heirs. 
 Gold is a loyal servant, but a treacherous, 
 cruel mistress. She will change your very 
 character, and, while preying upon your own 
 life, will make you prey even upon those 
 
 85 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 whom you loved best. There will be no loop- 
 hole of escape for you. No appeal will soften 
 your heart, no outrage will wound your sense 
 of honour or love of country. Even faith will 
 have to go. She will drive it out with all the 
 other affections that swayed you before, until 
 she reigns supreme, your only passion and your 
 only thought. 
 
 A sufficiency of means is the best — a roof 
 of one's own for shelter, wholesome food, warm 
 clothing, and enough coin of the realm to 
 ensure a decent proportion of leisure for the 
 gratification of honest tastes. More than this 
 is unnecessary for a happy life. Much more 
 is injurious, in nine hundred and ninety -nine 
 cases out of a thousand, for mind and character. 
 This may be armchair philosophy. For though 
 the summum bonum is a contented spirit, who 
 is there among the many myriads of human 
 beings who is completely satisfied with his 
 competence, and does not yearn for a trifle 
 more ? Who is there with an income adequate 
 to meet all reasonable needs, who does not 
 want to see it doubled, and doubled again ? 
 
 86 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 And so the ivy grows. The infant shoot 
 thickens to the girth of a man's thigh, and, 
 unless some arrest is made in its progress, 
 strangles the tree of happiness, and finally 
 brings it to the ground, a leafless and dis- 
 honoured ruin. 
 
 87 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Old Letters. 
 
 ^TpHERE are voices from the grave that 
 soften the stoniest heart, when Hving 
 hands stretch out in vain for sympathy. 
 Steahng out of the past, these memories of 
 irrecoverable days have a sadness and sacred- 
 ness which the present moment rarely has. As 
 we grow older, our homes become peopled with 
 ghosts, ghosts of dear dead men and women, 
 dead ambitions, dead longings and illusions; 
 until, when we are very old and nearing our 
 end, these spectral visitants, so great in num- 
 ber, become almost our only companions ; and 
 the flesh and blood around us, their doings 
 and sayings, assume an air of comparative 
 unreality, with but a slight hold on our 
 interest and memory. It is in middle life, 
 however, that these recollections affect us 
 most, whilst we are still strong, looking 
 forward to generous years of health and 
 
 88 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 usefulness ; but when, at the same time, the 
 spirits of the departed begin to gather about 
 us in increasing numbers, and the transitori- 
 ness of all things earthly is more often brought 
 to our minds. 
 
 So there comes a day when the accumula- 
 tions of years in long-unopened drawers have 
 of a necessity to be reduced, to yield the space 
 required by a newer generation. Common- 
 sense demands it, and compunction reluctantly 
 agrees. So huge a store, if left undiminished 
 and added to in the same proportion in the 
 years to come, would, in course of time, 
 become such an encumbrance to its custodians 
 that the feeling of affection and reverence for 
 these relics of the past would gradually give 
 place to one of oppression. They have, there- 
 fore, at intervals, to be sifted and thinned. A 
 choice has to be made, what to destroy and 
 what to save ; whether to consign the records 
 of a dearer, rather than those of a more 
 distinguished, kinsman to the flames. In cer- 
 tain cases there is no choice. Some among 
 us have held a precious packet of letters with 
 
 89 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 a prayer on the wrapper, written perhaps with 
 a faltering hand, to burn them unread. Who 
 may guess their contents ? Love-letters may- 
 be ; letters before marriage ; letters in which 
 there have been an outpouring of the soul, 
 cries of distress, longings, hopes, fears, griefs, 
 anxieties, long since dead. How slowly they 
 burn in their faded covers as we watch their 
 destruction, indulging in these imaginings ! — 
 the tender emotions of departed days, pathetic 
 efforts to persuade, eloquent vows, pain from 
 disappointment, self-revelation, passion, doubt. 
 They seem so loth to die. Gradually the 
 flames seize them — those wisps of yellowed 
 paper, those cares now finally at rest, the 
 secret confession, the autobiography of those 
 vanished times. Soon there is nothing left 
 but a waste of ashes. The flame has died 
 away; one more link has snapped with the 
 past ; and the consciousness of mortality, of 
 the fleeting nature of human interests, of the 
 extinction of all this passionate emotion for 
 ever, of our own similar and inevitable destiny, 
 sweeps over us like a wave. 
 
 90 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The spirits of the dead may be watching 
 us the while. We, poor wights, will shortly 
 have to join them and witness the conflagra- 
 tion of our own hearts' messages. But as we 
 think of these — our own aspirations and ideals 
 — how dead they appear, even now ! We 
 hardly feel them to be a part of us. We seem 
 for the moment to be dweUing in futurity, with 
 our present far behind us. The burning of the 
 letters was not only the destruction of the 
 past. Our own passions now seem unreal, or 
 of an earlier date than that of to-day. We 
 feel almost as if we were a bygone chapter, 
 with others contemplating our loves, our 
 anxieties, and our fortunes. We have a vision 
 of our descendants, when we ourselves shall 
 have quitted the stage ; and we catch a 
 glimpse of the endless repetition of the same 
 human story and the same circumstances, 
 often so poignant to the individual, but so 
 famihar to the eternal procession of the years. 
 What value has ambition now ? 
 
 As we sit by the fire, even the ashes of 
 the paper are disappearing. Some have floated 
 
 91 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 up the chimney, and the rest are being con- 
 sumed and pulverised by the heat. In a Uttle, 
 nothing will be left of them. We shall be 
 back once more in the present moment, and 
 our dream will have vanished with the dust 
 of long ago. 
 
 92 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Sovereignty of Thought. 
 
 A S Christ revolutionised the ideal of con- 
 -^ ^ duct, and Shakespeare that of language, 
 so did Immanuel Kant effect a transformation 
 in the fairy realm of thought. Many efforts have 
 been made in the last hundred and forty years 
 to shake the pillars of his doctrine, but nothing 
 that has been written during all that period 
 has substantially or permanently affected his 
 position. In fact, his main article of faith is 
 more securely rooted to-day than at any time 
 since his death. Just as our social system 
 And literature are deeply coloured by the in- 
 fluence of the Christian founder and that of 
 the great poet-dramatist, so is modern thought 
 profoundly influenced, though many of us are 
 unaware of it, by the blaze of light let in upon 
 the machinery of intellect by the little wizened 
 thinker of Konigsberg nearly a century and 
 ^ half ago. Goethe, no mean philosopher 
 
 93 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 himself, said that after finishing the Critique 
 of Pure Reason, he felt as though he had 
 stepped into a lighted room, and the same 
 kind of feehng must have been experienced 
 by many a reader who has taken the trouble 
 to study it with care. 
 
 Kant's chief handicap is the novel and 
 difficult nomenclature which he had to create 
 to demonstrate his propositions and convey 
 his meaning. In addition to this, he exacts 
 the closest attention, for there is no verbiage 
 about him to eke out a poverty of pith and 
 argument. Every word, the most inconsider- 
 able, is an indispensable link, and once the 
 continuity of the chain is lost, even momen- 
 tarily, the reader has to return upon his tracks 
 to pick it up as best he can. For more than 
 a quarter of a century he lectured and pon- 
 dered before putting pen to paper to write his 
 masterpiece ; but then he wrote it at a gallop, 
 as his other duties permitted. It was com- 
 plete in his head before he settled to the task, 
 and as there were no literary embellishments 
 to this mighty intellectual achievement, given 
 
 94 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 the leisure and physical strength, he could 
 have composed the whole great treatise at a 
 sitting, without the slightest hesitation or 
 mental strain. 
 
 What, then, is this doctrine that has been 
 garbed in as many languages as Hamlet, and 
 concerning which, if we take account of the 
 relative dates of their appearance, as many 
 criticisms have been published as in the case 
 of the Scriptures ? Compendiously, it is this 
 — that the spatial and temporal form which 
 objects take for us is that imposed upon them 
 by the laws of our own thought, and that the 
 world, as we know it, is therefore our world, 
 unconsciously fashioned and correlated by 
 ourselves. A man's world is what he makes 
 it. This, then, is literally true ; not a mere 
 formula from the schools of morality, nor even 
 a half-truth, but a living fact of every instant 
 of our waking lives, and to which there are 
 no exceptions. Where now are the * eternal ' 
 hills, the * everlasting ' sea, ' infinite ' Time ? 
 Their everlastingness is in us. The human 
 spirit outdwells them all, since they, in their 
 
 95 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 manifold forms, issue alone from it. It is 
 above them and yet of them, and they of it. 
 On every one of them is the ineffaceable stamp 
 of origin. They can only exist by reason of 
 a thinking faculty. Is not this a stupendous, 
 an ennobling thought ? Instead of the im- 
 prisonment of the spirit amid material things 
 that enchain it when it would be free, it is 
 rather the consummate magician, weaving a 
 universe out of invisible materials, master of 
 sublime faculties, without whom, indeed, even 
 the vision of a universe would cease to be. 
 
 This, stripped of technicalities and secon- 
 dary issues, was Kant's thesis, proved to the 
 satisfaction of generations of illustrious dis- 
 ciples ; and which, in its main features, still 
 holds the field among the foremost pioneers 
 of modern speculation. That what is known 
 as religious faith will ultimately suffer by this 
 doctrine cannot be supposed, since one truth 
 never destroyed another. As the years go by, 
 rather ought it to have a contrary effect in 
 discouraging the materialism which is at grips 
 with society to-day, and in strengthening our 
 
 96 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 faith in the immortality of the spirit, of which, 
 from the pulpit, we are told we are the heirs, 
 but which, in the absence of stronger proof, 
 so many have found it so difficult to believe. 
 
 On the 12th of February, 1804, Immanuel 
 Kant died, a little shrivelled mummy of a 
 fellow, who for fifty years had never slept 
 beyond the walls of the town where he was 
 born ; who, to all outward appearances, was a 
 pedagogue of pedagogues, as mechanical in 
 his studies as he was precise and meticulous in 
 all other relations and habits of life ; but who, 
 from his modest quarters in his old-fashioned 
 native city, quietly demoUshed the philosophic 
 systems of the past and laid a lasting basis for 
 succeeding thought. 
 
 97 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Sin and Virtue. 
 
 ^T^HERE is a passion for self-revelation in 
 human nature, but no one dares lay 
 himself quite bare. A man will unbosom 
 himself to a stranger, entrusting him with 
 some cherished secret of his heart, and from 
 that moment will feel towards him as a friend, 
 although they were unknown to each other 
 yesterday, and will be parted to-morrow for 
 ever. This yearning, which steals upon the 
 coldest, most selfish of men, some time or 
 another in their lives : this impulse to rip 
 open that outer casing — the surface they 
 exhibit to the world — is born of a conscious- 
 ness of submerged fellowship, of ultimate 
 comradeship with the rest of their kind, which 
 they do not want to see perish altogether with 
 the decay of their bodies and die unsuspected 
 and unknown. And they are right in this, 
 for the social instinct predominates in the 
 
 98 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 majority over that which is in them of anti- 
 social, or society would go to pieces. It is 
 the feeling of this communal tie — a mystery 
 they cannot fathom — which is always strain- 
 ing at the leash, and makes man on the whole 
 a fretful and infelicitous creature amid the 
 varieties of experience that beset him on 
 earth. He is pulled one way and then 
 another, and longs to justify himself before 
 the tribunal of his own heart and some 
 member of his kind. For let him but reveal 
 to another this buried stirring of altruistic 
 impulse, and he will have made a proclama- 
 tion of faith, and can go before his conscience, 
 not merely with a personal affidavit, but with 
 a testimonial to character vouched by some 
 one else. 
 
 This is the little store of merit of which 
 he is conscious ; the precious impulse that he 
 yearns to reveal, but which can only be com- 
 pletely disclosed by discovering also all the 
 accompanying counter-forces by which he is 
 besieged, preventing him from ever publish- 
 ing his confidences so as to give a genuine 
 
 99 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 picture of the man as a whole. It is the 
 instinct of unity implanted in all of us, the 
 self-subordinating as against the individual 
 impulse, which furnishes the standard of 
 * good ' as distinguished from ' evil,' and in its 
 warfare with the other constitutes the dif- 
 ference in conduct between what are known 
 as ' sin ' and * virtue.' 
 
 For a man cannot isolate himself in spirit 
 from the rest of the world. Nothing that he 
 can do can fail to affect some one else in some 
 remote or near degree. The whole of his 
 personality is a texture of relationships, and 
 if these were to cease, he also would cease 
 with them as a self-conscious subject. In fact, 
 ignore any one of them, and to that extent 
 the law of his life is infringed, an attempt 
 being made to mutilate the architecture of 
 his very being. The more, therefore, of these 
 relationships that he sees, the wiser will he 
 be ; the more he plans his conduct in obedi- 
 ence to them — acting, that is, less as an un- 
 related individual merely than as a member of 
 a body corporate, as a part in indissoluble 
 
 100 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 connection with the rest, the more will he be 
 acting in accordance with truth. In short, he 
 will be acting * virtuously.' If, on the other 
 hand, he wilfully ignores this aspect of him- 
 self, living as though he were an individual 
 only, capable of standing outside these re- 
 lationships, he will be acting in opposition to 
 truth, and therefore ' sinfully.' 
 
 The first course is * virtue,' and the other 
 *sin,' and although a man may pursue the 
 latter over many years, he will know that he 
 is out of tune with the scheme of things, in 
 contradiction with the very machinery of his 
 conscious life. He will feel the antagonism, 
 and the time will come when he will long to 
 reveal the basis common to all humanity, and 
 confess the relationship denied for so long. 
 It will be the social instinct crying for recog- 
 nition. For wherever man is found, there is 
 this eternal warfare between the individual 
 and the race, and on the varying fortunes 
 of the conflict depends the whole scale of 
 conduct from 'good' to * bad.' The last is 
 perpetually trying to ignore the inter-relation - 
 
 101 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 ship between all existing things ; the former, 
 ever fighting to keep it in view. This struggle 
 is at the root of all human action, and 
 therefore, from time to time, when men are 
 moved to lift the veil and reveal some of the 
 impulses that hunt them down the paths of 
 life, they dare not strip themselves too naked 
 to the world — no, not the best of them. 
 
 For this reason autobiographies are of 
 little value in estimating the personality of 
 their authors. We may get an occasional 
 peep below the surface, but the waters are 
 generally agitated by all kinds of subsidiary 
 motive, and the eye cannot pierce them. 
 Complete revelation there will never be ; inti- 
 mate revelations there sometimes are, but so 
 fleeting, so partial, that the world in general 
 can only obtain a glimpse of these depths of 
 human nature and form but a perishable 
 judgment of the character of men. Of this, 
 however, we may be certain, that amid all 
 the diverse forms of bliss vouchsafed to man- 
 kind, the happiest moment that man can 
 enjoy is when he is conscious of complete 
 
 102 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 self-abnegation ; of voluntarily surrendering 
 all that he has for the sake of the rest of the 
 world. As with the great Nazarene, the con- 
 sciousness of universal and inseparable rela- 
 tionship is then at its highest. His sacrifice 
 is in accordance with the truth of things. 
 His soul is at peace, and that is his reward. 
 
 103 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Success. 
 
 T_T E alone has a right to be called successful 
 who has led a happy life. This is the 
 only and ultimate test. He may have gar- 
 nered riches, or achieved honour, or triumphed 
 over his enemies, or been a stranger to sick- 
 ness ; but if his conscience has haunted him, 
 or his temper soured him, or grievous temp- 
 tations have overborne and enslaved him, his 
 life has been a failure, if not to the world, at 
 least for him. For what is success before 
 men compared with the contentment of an 
 untroubled spirit ? This is success, indeed ; 
 worth all the emoluments, dignities, fame, 
 power that Fortune has it in her power to 
 lavish. You may find a man whose wealth is 
 such that the spending of it wisely would be 
 a career in itself; yet he is racked by some 
 ambition that he cannot satisfy; or another, 
 who by tortuous intrigue has attained his 
 
 104 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 ends, save the one that he covets most, now 
 that he has the rest— the respect and good- 
 will of those about him ; or perhaps a social 
 favourite, born in luck's lap, with every circum- 
 stance seemingly conspiring to cheat Sorrow 
 of her prey, but with a secret passion turning 
 all his joy to ashes; or even a great artist, 
 with the world at his feet, but tormented by 
 a morbid sensitiveness to the barbs of the 
 critics. 
 
 Success is only to be measured by a man's 
 own estimate of his happiness. What good 
 doth it do me that the world should think me 
 successful, if I am the discontented slave of 
 unfulfilled desires ? What harm, on the other 
 hand, can it bring, if they pity my unsuccess, 
 while I move among them with a singing 
 heart? Life is but a dream, a projected 
 phantasy, vaporous, changeful, unreal. The 
 reality Hes only in the dreamer, and if he 
 dream happily, his hfe— his dream— is a suc- 
 cessful one. The onlookers can see but a 
 fragment of it, and, curtailed thus, it is their 
 picture, not his. They may be witnessing a 
 
 105 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 nightmare, and gaze at it with envy ; or 
 looking into the face of Heaven, and un- 
 wittingly pass it by. If success meant 
 otherwise, failure would be stamped upon 
 humanity. As it is, we live in mansions of 
 our own designing, to which few are admitted 
 but the architects themselves. These look 
 through the windows upon an unseeing 
 crowd, and so long as they can enjoy the 
 peace of their premises, the freedom of their 
 own creation, riches can add nothing to 
 their kingdom, nor fame to their bliss. 
 
 106 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Leisure. 
 
 nr^HE man without leisure lives on a tread- 
 mill, for he can neither stop nor step 
 off, since others control the wheel of his days. 
 Indeed, there is no worse slavery than con- 
 tinuous subjection to alien circumstance. But 
 the freeman is he who can order a good 
 portion of his time as the spirit moves him, 
 unfettered by foreign wills or self-imposed 
 exactions. One of the objects of life should 
 therefore be, not so much work for itself, as to 
 achieve eventual emancipation from it. That 
 is the ultimate purpose and true reward of 
 toil. To martyr oneself by unremitted 
 drudgery is to be blind to the art of life. 
 We come into the world, we know not why, 
 and are hurried out of it, we know not 
 whither. Is it not absurd to suppose that the 
 highest philosophy is to grind oneself upon 
 
 107 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 the stone of toil for its own sake ? Labour 
 is only good in so far as it brings relief in its 
 train. The least that we can ask of mortality 
 is that our sojourn here should be as support- 
 able as our many ills can make it. To 
 deliver us into the hands of Fortune for fifty, 
 sixty, or seventy years, independently of any 
 original volition of our own, and then to 
 expect us to mortify the flesh and put a 
 halter on the spirit until the time of trial 
 is over, is contrary to reason and all human 
 instinct. 
 
 The aim of the wise is to live with 
 pleasure — to win the respite of a little inde- 
 pendence, the only state in which man can be 
 said to exist, not as a beast of burden, 
 but as a being with divine faculties. It is 
 leisure that makes life tolerable. AVithout it, 
 all effort becomes wearisome, all ambition a 
 wasting fever, all gain valueless, and the 
 whole catalogue of virtues a table of dis- 
 appointment. Leisure is one of the gifts of 
 the gods, denied to those who generally are 
 deemed fortunate — kings, princes, rulers, the 
 
 108 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 great ones of the earth. It is vouchsafed to 
 lesser folk — kings of their own hours, princes 
 of their own short span, whose subjects are the 
 flying moments and whose ministers are the 
 fancies of their own hearts. 
 
 109 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Politicians. 
 
 POLITICIANS have ever been a subject 
 for popular distrust, and the reason is 
 evident, for their advertised stock-in-trade 
 includes the relinquishment of every con- 
 sideration of personal advantage and the 
 absorption of their interests in the public 
 weal alone. The merchant openly confesses 
 to a desire to make a profit. The shopman, 
 too, sells you his goods and admits to a per- 
 centage on the transaction, without which, he 
 tells you, he could not live. The civil servant, 
 with a family to keep, toils all the year round, 
 pockets his salary, and who blames him ? The 
 soldier and the sailor receive their pay, 
 grumble at the inadequacy of the reward, and 
 every one agrees with them. Even the 
 minister of religion can acknowledge without 
 shame that he has to work for his bread in 
 the calling best suited to his temperament and 
 
 110 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 abilities, and takes his hard-earned stipend as 
 a matter of course. With the poUtician, how- 
 ever, it is otherwise. The very idea of profit, 
 of a wage, is unpopular, if not disgraceful, in 
 his case. The cure of immortal souls can go 
 hand in hand with emolument, and no one 
 have a smirching word to say ; but as soon as 
 a politician receives a farthing for his labours, 
 behold, he is making a living out of a sacred 
 trust, and preying upon his fellow-men ! 
 
 What, then, is the reason for this dis- 
 tinction between those engaged in politics, and 
 in any of the other professions ? It lies, 
 doubtless, in this : that the activities of the 
 politician affect every one of us in all our 
 earthly concerns. His schemes can interfere 
 with every instant of our lives, and may in- 
 fluence them profoundly. The distinction, in 
 short, is one not of principle, but of degree. 
 As his power ranges so much wider a field, his 
 good faith must be all the more established 
 before we entrust him with authority, his 
 disinterestedness in serving us the more con- 
 spicuous and certain. It would be too grave 
 
 111 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 a hazard to place all these threads of our 
 fortune in the hands of those for whom private 
 gain was a consideration. And, therefore, 
 safeguards have to be devised, pledges ex- 
 tracted, precautions taken on the one side, 
 and promises given, sacrifices endured, appear- 
 ances maintained on the other. Personal 
 profit has to be abjured, or at least concealed ; 
 and the result is that the profession of politics 
 is, on the face of it, the most arduous and 
 meanly paid of any in the world. 
 
 This, however, never deters a large number 
 of ambitious persons from aspiring to a seat in 
 Parliament. The glamour of publicity dazzles 
 them ; ignorance of the strain, of the long 
 seasons of inevitable weariness and disappoint- 
 ment blinds them ; and once in the charmed 
 circle, they can hardly quit it without con- 
 fession of failure to friend and foe. So on 
 they plod, slaves to their pride, and in their 
 own interests extol the system, magnifying 
 their zeal and influence to all whom they 
 chance to meet. Politicians, after all, are as 
 human as the rest of mankind — as stupid and 
 
 112 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 as wise, as self-seeking and as public-spirited, 
 as broad-minded and as narrow, as lustful 
 and as pure, as upright and as criminal. The 
 only difference is that they have happened on 
 a profession which affords them limitless 
 opportunities of touching the affairs of others 
 at almost every point of life, and that their 
 patrons consequently have to be more wary 
 in their choice, and they themselves more 
 cautious in soHciting confidence, than in the 
 case of any other occupation with a less 
 extensive scope. If you buy a bootlace in the 
 street which proves rotten when you use it, 
 your philosophy can more easily put up with 
 the nuisance than with the curse of a corrupt 
 Administration that vexes every moment of 
 your waking hours. 
 
 There are half-a-dozen main incentives 
 that tempt men to a political career. They 
 may be in conjunction, or become modified, or 
 even radically alter with the years; but, in 
 general, the catalogue will be found to stand. 
 The first man enters Parliament for the sake 
 of social advancement — hoping to obtain a 
 
 113 I 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 title, or access to a society whose barriers have 
 hitherto been closed to him. The second has 
 some business advantage in view, since a 
 politician will have a better chance in the 
 world of finance, with his manifold oppor- 
 tunities of gleaning information and gaining 
 the ear of influential persons, than if he were 
 merely a private individual. The third re- 
 gards Parliament in the light of a club, where 
 a member is in the thick of great things, and 
 hears all the important gossip of the day. 
 The fourth wants office, being in need of 
 money. The fifth covets power, and with it 
 fame — the opportunity to rule others and 
 govern their destinies. Lastly, the sixth steps 
 into the political arena for the sake of public 
 service, inspired, maybe, by enthusiasms, and 
 bent upon reforms which he hopes to carry. 
 Of these, the last finds by far the fewest com- 
 panions and the swiftest disillusionment. But 
 together they form the little microcosm of the 
 general sense and attributes of the nation. 
 They are the engine of government, the 
 ultimate, considered choice of their country- 
 
 114 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 men and their age, and, like all human con- 
 trivances, a clumsy and pathetic makeshift. 
 
 To blame the politicians is, therefore, to 
 blame the people. The latter get the 
 politicians, as well as the governments, they 
 deserve ; and the first incorruptible legisla- 
 ture that any country will see, will be when 
 its people, from whom both politicians and 
 Government are drawn, are themselves in- 
 corrupt ; when self-interest has vanished from 
 their midst — when the golden age has dawned. 
 Any other supposition is a vain and indolent 
 imagining. 
 
 115 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Genius. 
 
 /^^ EN I US is inspiration from without, rather 
 ^"^ than an awakening from within. It is 
 the Universal speaking through the individual. 
 That is why no man is master of it. He may- 
 wait for it, yearn for it, woo it, but cannot 
 command it. There are chords within him 
 that quiver and make answer when the spirit 
 smites them. But it is not he who lays his 
 hands on them, but a force beyond himself, 
 which seizes upon him for the moment as a 
 medium for its own revelation. It is for this 
 reason that no one can explain his own genius 
 or expound the secret of his work. He is 
 but a translator, a transmitter, an instrument 
 attuned by fortune's chance to the unplumbed, 
 shoreless seas that swirl invisibly but ever- 
 lastingly about us. 
 
 Although, therefore, such an instrument 
 is a source of wonder, it is marvellous as a 
 
 116 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 medium only, for it has no creative faculty, 
 being merely an interpreter. Its utterance is 
 sometimes involuntary, frequently misunder- 
 stood by itself, and thus it is the revelation 
 rather than the mouthpiece that should be the 
 object of honour. In statecraft, in stagecraft, 
 in science, in philosophy, in every branch of 
 artistry and human excellence, in every sphere 
 of thought and action, this principle prevails. 
 As we make idols of particular women, when 
 it is the self-revelation of Beauty that we 
 should rather worship, so too do we make 
 heroes of leaders, of poets, of painters, of 
 musicians, when it is the voice of incarnate 
 loveliness or truth before which we should 
 prostrate ourselves. 
 
 Indeed, there is naught admirable in 
 humanity, save in so far as it is visited by 
 the Spirit. That alone can give it splendour 
 and life. Without some breath of it, we are 
 little better than lay figures — inarticulate, 
 sealed. The Universal has passed us by, 
 having found us useless for its manifestations. 
 Strangers to inspiration, we mumble our creeds 
 
 117 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 at second-hand. In short, we are non-con- 
 ductors, dead earths to the racing current 
 which issues whence none can say, and bursts 
 forth Hke a leaping flame, here, maybe, or 
 there, perchance, for no apparent reason, and 
 at intervals that no one can foretell. 
 
 Fortunate are they who are elected to be 
 channels for the great pulse of the Universe. 
 We all feel its mighty throbbings. They beat 
 round every one, but only vitalise the very 
 few. There was something lacking at the 
 birth of most of us — an indistinguishable fila- 
 ment, perhaps, absent or unfinished, or rup- 
 tured at some invisible point, which prevents 
 the spark from flashing through. We may 
 have every other quality and all the talents, 
 but this one faculty is withheld — the capacity 
 of transmission, the gift of genius. Thus has 
 it ever been ; and those who are in closest 
 harmony with the elemental energies of the 
 unseen world recognise the most clearly that 
 they are agents only, obeying the bidding of 
 a power that they never understand and can- 
 not coerce. It possesses them one day and is 
 
 118 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 gone the next, and may forsake them without 
 warning, never to return. 
 
 While we marvel at Nature's contrivances, 
 we had best refrain, therefore, from idolising 
 the messengers of the Spirit, as though they 
 were themselves creators and originators. For 
 they are merely outlets for the expression of 
 the universal mind, ignorant of the laws that 
 made them so, and impotent to control them. 
 
 119 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Art of Living. 
 
 jy EGARD your life as high comedy, rather 
 than as tragedy. For tragedy is failure, 
 and failure breeds contempt. To be reason- 
 ably satisfied with things as they are, Fate 
 must be hidden in the wings. Inevitable con- 
 sequences, irretrievable opportunities — these 
 are the source of all sadness. To invite them 
 into our midst, to obtrude them upon atten- 
 tion, is to make a boon-companion of Despair. 
 To run to the other extreme and make a low 
 farce of life is even worse. To be a clown, 
 a world's fool, to degrade our griefs, our loves, 
 the ills of poor mortality with base laughter, 
 can make even the cynic weep. But the art 
 of fine living is the art of high comedy. To 
 act one's part elegantly, soberly, intelligently ; 
 setting the good against the evil ; neither too 
 grave nor too frivolous ; treating each day 
 partly as a duty, partly as a sport, chiefly as 
 
 120 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 a science — this is the stage and play at its 
 best. 
 
 For Ufe is one of the great sciences. As 
 in painting or in politics, in war or in letters, 
 some are to the manner born. They have the 
 freedom of their art by instinct. A few, again, 
 become experts after long trial, when half their 
 race, or more, is run. To others, to the vast 
 majority, the science is an enigma to the very 
 end. To them hfe is a tribulation rather than 
 an art — a ceaseless struggle for the unattained, 
 a diseased restlessness, an aimless circuit of 
 unsatisfying occupations, a fevered groping 
 after self-expression. 
 
 How different is it with him who is master 
 of life's craft, the one craft that matters ! You 
 may be a magician in any other, and if you 
 fail in this, you have failed in life. But if 
 you are master here, no other accomplishment 
 is necessary to make your days a triumph. It 
 is not to be rich or a leader of fashion, to be 
 famous or powerful, to be beloved or admired ; 
 nor even to be content — that is not the art of 
 life. It may include some of these, or all of 
 
 121 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 them, but not all oi them together can make 
 you a master of the art of living. That is an 
 art by itself, as individual, as heaven-sent, as 
 precious, as the draughtsmanship of Leonardo, 
 or the large humanity of Cervantes. 
 
 Wherein lies its secret ? It is the sense 
 of what is best in animate and inanimate 
 nature, coupled with the power of extracting 
 it and enlisting it for one's own enjoyment. 
 It is the critical, in conjunction with the 
 social, faculty that constitutes the master of 
 the art of life. For the first eliminates the 
 material of ignoble affections and mean ambi- 
 tions, discriminating between the genuine and 
 the spurious, the permanent and the ephemeral, 
 the dead and the living ; whilst the social 
 faculty ensures him a welcome to this purged 
 world of his choice, making him a partner in 
 its privileges, a shareholder in its glories, a 
 contributor to the relationship which knits the 
 little community into a reality, and gives it 
 an actual and corporate existence. Upon these 
 twin qualities, the art of life depends. A man 
 may be endowed with the critical without the 
 
 122 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 social, or with the social and be lacking in the 
 necessary discernment, or he may be gifted 
 in a measure with both. But the ampler his 
 share of them, and the more perfect their 
 equipoise, the greater master will he be of this 
 enviable and elusive art, the finer exponent 
 of the game of life. 
 
 This is no paltry ambition, for it demands 
 courage as well as wisdom. It embraces nearly 
 all the virtues, and vice is nothing but a hin- 
 drance to it. It sets an example to be followed 
 and a prize to be won. Taking no more than 
 it gives, it affords nothing but pleasure. While 
 its aim is being accomplished, it is an unmixed 
 blessing ; an honour to the man himself, and a 
 joy to the hearts of all who behold him. 
 
 123 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Imagination. 
 
 T IMAGINATION is the power of apprehend- 
 ing the underlying relationship between 
 things — of combining the shattered world once 
 more into unity. The common run of men 
 observe phenomena in manifold association, 
 and are able to reproduce this association in 
 their minds. This is the inferior kind of 
 imagination, and is purely memorial. But 
 others have an instinct for this affinity without 
 the help of experience. It is not necessary 
 for these that the parts of a picture should be 
 actually assembled in their view in order for 
 them to be aware of their inherent relation- 
 ship, and to visualise the whole when a portion 
 of it only happens to be present. They are 
 aware of the synthesis, independently of any 
 recollection of such grouping. As the first 
 kind of mental faculty has been called me- 
 
 124 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 morial, so may the second be termed creative. 
 It is a consciousness of the interdependence 
 of all Being : a dim and remote instinct which 
 all of us possess, but which in the majority is 
 too submerged and feeble to render much 
 service in the productive work of the intellect. 
 An act of imagination is the stirring of this 
 consciousness, which, irrespective of gathered 
 knowledge, discovers unity everywhere. The 
 more or the less of this faculty, therefore, 
 depends not on a knack of invention, of 
 piecing together the particles of experience 
 in ingenious patterns and designs, but on this 
 intuitive apprehension of the community of 
 things. The man with imagination beholds 
 the Universe rather as a whole, and to that 
 extent his contribution to the common store 
 is the truer and more valuable ; while he who 
 is without it sees the world in disconnected 
 fragments, while the perfect image is repos- 
 ing unsummoned and unawakened in his 
 soul. 
 
 Pity not him, therefore, because of his 
 circumstances who has the gift of Imagina- 
 
 125 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 tion, for he is richer than Midas and more 
 powerful than imperial Caesar. With the 
 alchemy of thought he can transmute the 
 base metal of fact into purest gold, and his 
 kingdom is only bounded by the rovings of 
 his own fancy. While you are trudging the 
 highway, he is scaling heaven on wings of tire, 
 climbing to the very tabernacle of light, and 
 viewing the gropings of mortality beneath 
 him. If yours is a world of shadows, his is 
 full of substance, for creation is ever in pro- 
 gress there, and new forms are being added 
 to it every day. The one is but a vault of 
 bones, inventoried, dismembered, and falling 
 into dust, while, in the other, energy is repro- 
 ducing itself in countless shapes and limitless 
 combinations. You and I, the generality of 
 mankind, sight-seers and lookers-on, are merely 
 conservators of the crumbling past, whilst he 
 is a master-spinner, weaving new fabrics in the 
 loom of life. No hurt that you may do him 
 can bhnd this sixth sense ; no discouragement 
 can atrophy it. Thrust him into a dungeon, 
 and out of his hardships he will spin a romance 
 
 126 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 to make the world laugh — aye, and weep — for 
 a thousand years. Withhold learning from 
 him, give him ploughmen for his companions 
 and peasants' daughters for his loves, yet he 
 will move the hearts of all the schools. Drive 
 him into a profession that is held in public 
 disesteem, with coxcombs for his patrons 
 and mountebanks for his intimates, and all 
 the nations shall sit at his feet. Brand him 
 as a felon, let him die like a dog in a ditch, 
 his whole life's work a seeming failure, and 
 his name shall be worshipped in every clime. 
 For imagination is a talisman against corrup- 
 tion, a philtre for ill-usage and neglect, and a 
 spell that prevails amid all the vicissitudes of 
 youth and age. 
 
 You who possess this vision — great archi- 
 tects and explorers, revealers of the mysteries 
 of truth and beauty !— how sparingly you are 
 sometimes paid ; with what scanty honour are 
 you treated, when a trifling recompense and a 
 small share of recognition would make all the 
 difference between indigence and sufficiency, 
 disappointment and success I You toil for 
 
 127 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Posterity, and are paid by posthumous fame, 
 but your days are often passed in want and 
 obscurity, while dullards wear the laurels that 
 are rightly yours. What then is your reward ? 
 Is it in to-morrow's anniversary, or a public 
 monument, when your mortal shell is a ruin, 
 and your spirit has been liberated from its 
 prison walls? Is this the glittering prize, 
 when naught material or human matters; 
 when to be on a million lips signifies nothing? 
 If it were so, despair would overwhelm your 
 effort, and irredeemable sadness be the lot of 
 man. But your reward is here, in the realm 
 of your own mind. Here you are lord in- 
 deed. Your thoughts are Hke alms that you 
 give to beggary, for your treasury is within 
 you — inexhaustible, priceless — and you dis- 
 tribute its contents to the needy and the 
 barren. Recognition of your merit is within 
 your empire too, for is it not the commenda- 
 tion of your own soul, the deep, unchangeable 
 consciousness of royalty ? Your subjects may 
 be wayward, ungrateful, disloyal, but you are 
 their King, and tolerant of their blindness. 
 
 128 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 This is your reward — not a post-mortem dis- 
 covery of worth, nor a name in history, nor 
 the flattery of the future, but the exercise of 
 your splendid faculty, whether crowned with 
 fame or unbeknown. 
 
 129 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 The Family Clock. 
 
 TF you listen too much to the clock, mad- 
 ness will overtake you, for it has no heart. 
 It has spoken thus, mechanically, unvary- 
 ingly, for nigh three centuries — three hundred 
 years of packed and fateful history, of battles, 
 weddings, coronations, funerals, of childhood 
 and old age, manhood and women's beauty. 
 In the midst of human anguish it has never 
 faltered, nor quickened to a different key 
 when mirth and laughter have echoed round 
 it. The cries of birth, the heart-aches of 
 youth, the gasping breath of dying agony, 
 have left it unpitying and unmoved. It 
 measures Time — its only interest and only 
 task — tonelessly, relentlessly, uninterruptedly. 
 As it has ticked out the seconds through all 
 the changing fortune of your own life, re- 
 cording the minutes and fading hours of your 
 follies and repentances, your good and evil 
 actions, your failures and successes, so will it 
 
 ISO 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 tick them off for those who follow after you, 
 when you are in the grave. 
 
 It not only marks the moments of this 
 small household, but of all the households 
 of the world — in the heart of London, on 
 the banks of the Ganges, under the wall 
 of China, in the sands of Egypt. Nothing 
 has escaped its reckoning — this ceaseless 
 march of the minutes — and nothing can 
 escape it. The gloomy and the gay, the 
 trivial and important, the ugly and the beau- 
 tiful, the wise and the foolish, all have the 
 same transient destiny, and it spells out their 
 little span, indifferent to their worth and 
 pretensions, without emotion and without 
 remission. It is Time herself — the Inexorable 
 — that you are Hstening to. She is giving 
 you audience in the Hall of Fate. You are 
 standing alone in the presence of the Eternal, 
 hearing the answer to your impracticable suit. 
 If only she would grant you a little respite, 
 a brief halt by the way, an interlude of 
 blessed, unageing rest; if only she would 
 humour you as a parent humours his children 
 
 131 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 — for are we not the offspring, the children 
 of our time ? There is something derisive 
 and deadly in this callous disregard of the 
 fate and feelings of those who are caught 
 unawares in the net of life. 
 
 He only can listen to this endless beat 
 without despair who has no hope, no am- 
 bition, no illusions, no regret. In it he hears 
 the vanity of the world passing away, the 
 sound of all things crumbling into ruin, the 
 eternity of disillusionment, the remorseless 
 reminder that nothing matters. For him 
 nothing does matter. He is in tune with the 
 old clock, and can strike a kind of ironic 
 fellowship with its ticking doom. But you 
 who have hope and ambition, who have illu- 
 sions not yet dead ; you, who feel the pangs 
 of regret and memories of the past plucking 
 at your heart, beware of listening too closely 
 to it. For you are hearkening to the very 
 voice of the Sphinx, to the utterance of an 
 inscrutable mystery, that will have no pity 
 lor your weakness and will craze your senses 
 if you are attentive overmuch. 
 
 132 
 
THOUGHTS IN iMIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 Celestial Bodies. 
 
 TF you stroll through the streets of any of 
 our large towns, what mysteries will gaze 
 out upon you, what chronicles you will see 
 engraved in the features of the passers-by ! 
 
 Here are two Sisters of Mercy, hooded 
 and footsore, turning from a doorway. What 
 does it matter to them who the Prime Minister 
 is, or whether they are living under a monarchy 
 or republic ? With downcast eyes, meekly, 
 but with unconquerable resolution, they move 
 to and fro, the self-constituted intermediaries 
 between all that is brilliant and prosperous 
 on the one hand, and all that is sordid and 
 wretched on the other. Out of the dens of 
 misery they come to knock at the doors of 
 wealth and success, and then back again they 
 turn to minister to the degraded, the dying, 
 and the destitute. Where they themselves 
 
 133 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 find shelter, who knows ? Have they any 
 Samaritan who cares ? What is the history, 
 the personal record, of these intrepid women ? 
 Did youth ever claim them in the irrespon- 
 sible, far-ofF days ? — and will some memorial, 
 set with reverent care, mark some day the 
 place of their long sleep ? Mutely, with 
 grave, pale faces, they pass us in the street, 
 mystical and shrouded, unconcerned with 
 and uncoloured by the busy life about them. 
 Peace be to your souls, courageous com- 
 forters ! Unattractive to the outward eye 
 though you may be, bringing with you, too, 
 the odours of foetid cabins, yet to me you are 
 sweet and lovely. I see you transfigured — 
 stripped of that uncomely garb and girt in the 
 drapery of the Celestial, with stars in your hair 
 and your feet in the blue of Heaven, inex- 
 tinguishable happiness shining in your eyes. 
 
 Another woman passes, a smile as of death 
 upon her face. For very weariness she can 
 scarce trail one step after another. Through 
 the rouge can be seen the suffering of years — 
 starvation, squalor, despair, entreaty. Who, 
 
 134 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 ignorant of her history, shall judge her — the 
 cruelties she has endured, the shifts she has 
 been put to, the blackguard fortune that has 
 dogged her ever since she was a girl? She 
 is as human as your own sister, perhaps as 
 generous and as kind, as honourable and as 
 tender. Her child, maybe, is dependent on her 
 earnings. Never a word but of motherly purity 
 has he heard from those painted lips, but while 
 he sleeps in his narrow cot, she tramps the streets 
 to win his bread. Poor social cast-away ! You, 
 too, I see differently — metamorphosed. Neither 
 bedizened, nor haggard, nor outcast, but clad in 
 vestal white, blameless and at peace, beholding 
 your little one with proud and radiant eyes. 
 
 And now an incurable cripple hobbles by 
 — a mere fragment of twisted humanity, a 
 hunchback on crutches. Every movement 
 drives a spasm across his wasted features, yet 
 he is gallantly whistling to keep up appear- 
 ances. What has life vouchsafed to him ? 
 Every look that has rested on him since birth 
 has been one of pity, derision, or disgust ; 
 every avenue of advancement has been closed. 
 
 135 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 There is hardly a man or woman who could 
 view him and deny that it would have been 
 better by far had he never been born. But 
 he is whistling a merry tune to keep up 
 appearances, this pathetic bagful of crooked 
 bones. Here is a brave man, unsoured, un- 
 resentful, charitable. Look at him well. He, 
 too, is waiting for his apotheosis, and I see 
 him transformed, erect like Apollo, bearing in 
 his countenance the light of victory, with the 
 burden of his mortal days lying at his feet. 
 
 We may pause beneath the moon on a 
 still and cloudless night, gazing in wonder 
 at the heavenly constellations, that majestic 
 multitude of worlds, so countless and un- 
 approachable — an immutable, unfathomable 
 host. But with what worlds we are sur- 
 rounded in the daily walks of life, in variety 
 without number, but fixed, each one of them, 
 in its own changeless orbit by the same over- 
 shadowing power ! Vast worlds are these, as 
 boundless as imagination, as deep as love, 
 peopled with all the passions and the fancies 
 of which men are the inheritors — a few feet, 
 
 136 
 
THOUGHTS IN MIDDLE LIFE. 
 
 each of them, of flesh and blood, seen across 
 the mighty distances that separate the depths 
 of common ignorance, but, in truth, measure- 
 less and mysterious, as they cross our vision 
 on their unknown journeyings through light 
 into darkness, and from darkness into light. 
 
 London: Strangeways, Printers.