11 
 
 

 
 !B"-XRY 
 
 C .-, . i r I s A
 
 r K
 
 FROM A COLLEGE 
 WINDOW
 
 FROM A COLLEGE 
 WINDOW 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 
 FELLOW Or MACOALENB COLLXGK, LAMBB1EX.H 
 
 cujusqtu is tit fui 
 
 THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD. 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK 
 
 (By mrraHftmint itritk Mutrt. Smitk, Eldtr, <V C.)
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE POINT OF VIEW . 9 
 
 II. ON GROWING OLDER * 24 
 
 III. BOOKS* .38 
 
 IV. SOCIABILITIES * 53 
 
 V. CONVERSATION * .... 65 
 
 VI. BEAUTY* 79 
 
 VII. ART* 97 
 
 VIII. EGOTISM * 109 
 
 IX. EDUCATION * . 123 
 
 X. AUTHORSHIP * . . . 141 
 
 XI. THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS * .... 156 
 
 XII. PRIESTS 169 
 
 XIII. AMBITION 182 
 
 XIV. THE SIMPLE LIFE 196 
 
 XV. GAMES 206 
 
 XVI. SPIRITUALISM 217 
 
 XVII. HABITS .... .... 227 
 
 XVIII. RELIGION* 236 
 
 These papers have already appeared in the Cornell Magazine.
 
 NOTE 
 
 TWELVE of the essays included in this volume 
 appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, monthly, from 
 May 1905 till April 1906. I have added six more, 
 dealing with kindred subjects. Those which have 
 already appeared are distinguished by an asterisk 
 in the Table of Contents. My best thanks are 
 due to the proprietor and editor of the Cornhill 
 Magazine for kind permission and encouragement 
 
 to reprint them. 
 
 A. C. B.
 
 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW 
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 I HAVE lately come to perceive that the one 
 thing which gives value to any piece of art. 
 whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that 
 subtle and evasive thing which is called person- 
 ality. No amount of labour, of zest, even of ac- 
 complishment, can make up for the absence of this 
 quality. It must be an almost wholly instinctive 
 thing, I believe. Of course, the mere presence of 
 personality in a work of art is not sufficient, be- 
 cause the personality revealed may be lacking in 
 charm ; and charm, again, is an instinctive thing. 
 No artist can set out to capture charm ; he will 
 toil all the night and take nothing ; but what even 1 
 artist can and must aim at, is to have a perfectly 
 sincere point of view. He must take his chance 
 as to whether his point of view is an attractive 
 one ; but sincerity is the one indispensable thing. 
 It is useless to take opinions on trust, to retail 
 them, to adopt them ; they must be formed, created, 
 truly felt. The work of a sincere artist is almost 
 
 136
 
 io FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 certain to have some value ; the work of an insin- 
 cere artist is of its very nature worthless. 
 
 I mean to try, in the pages that follow, to be 
 as sincere as I can. It is not an easy task, though 
 it may seem so ; for it means a certain disentan- 
 gling of the things that one has perceived and felt 
 tor oneself from the prejudices and preferences that 
 have been inherited, or stuck like burs upon the 
 soul by education and circumstance. 
 
 It may be asked why I should thus obtrude my 
 point of view in print ; why I should not keep my 
 precious experience to myself ; what the value of 
 it is to other people ? Well, the answer to that is 
 that it helps our sense of balance and proportion 
 to know how other people are looking at life, what 
 they expect from it, what they find in it, and what 
 they do not find. I have myself an intense curiosity 
 about other people's point of view, what they do when 
 they are alone, and what they think about. Edward 
 Fit/Gerald said that he wished we had more biog- 
 raphies of obscure persons. How often have I my- 
 self wished to ask simple, silent, deferential people, 
 such as station-masters, butlers, gardeners, what 
 they make of it all ! Yet one cannot do it, and even 
 if one could, ten to one they would not or could 
 not tell you. lint here is L'<>ing to be a sedate con- 
 fession. I am goinu to take the world into my con- 
 fidence, and say, it I can, \\hat I think and leel 
 about the little bit of experience which I call my 
 life, which seems to me such a strange and otten 
 so bewildering a tiling. 
 
 Let me :-pe.ik, then, plainly of what that life- 
 has been, ami tell uhat my point of view is. I 
 was brought up on ordinary English lines. My
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. n 
 
 father, in a busy life, held a series of what may 
 be called high official positions. He was an idealist, 
 who, owing to a vigorous power of practical organ- 
 ization and a mastery of detail, was essentially a 
 man of affairs. Yet he contrived to be a student 
 too. Thus, owing to the fact that he often shifted 
 his headquarters, I have seen a good deal of general 
 society in several parts of England. Moreover, I 
 was brought up in a distinctly intellectual atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 I was at a big public school, and gained a 
 scholarship at the University. I was a moderate 
 scholar and a competent athlete ; but I will add 
 that I had always a strong literary bent. I took 
 in younger days little interest in history or politics, 
 and tended rather to live an inner life in the region 
 of friendship and the artistic emotions. If I had 
 been possessed of private means, I should, no 
 doubt, have become a full-fledged dilettante. But 
 that doubtful privilege was denied me, and for a 
 good many years I lived a busy and fairly success- 
 ful life as a master at a big public school. I will 
 not dwell upon this, but I will say that I gained a 
 great interest in the science of education, and ac- 
 quired profound misgivings as to the nature of the 
 intellectual process know r n by the name of second- 
 ary education. More and more I began to per- 
 ceive that it is conducted on diffuse, detailed, un- 
 business-like lines. I tried my best, as far as it 
 was consistent with loyalty to an established system, 
 to correct the faulty bias. But it was with a pro- 
 found relief that I found myself suddenly provided 
 with a literary task of deep interest, and enabled 
 to quit my scholastic labours. At the same time,
 
 iz FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 I am deeply grateful for the practical experience 1 
 was enabled to gain, and even more for the many 
 true and pleasant friendships with colleagues, par- 
 ents, and boys that I was allowed to form. 
 
 What a waste of mental energy it is to be careful 
 and troubled about one's path in life ! Quite un- 
 expectedly, at this juncture, came my election to a 
 college Fellowship, giving me the one life that I 
 had always eagerly desired, and the possibility of 
 which had always seemed closed to me. 
 
 I became then a member of a small and definite 
 society, with a few prescribed duties, just enough, 
 so to speak, to form a hem to my life of compara- 
 tive leisure. I had acquired and kept, all through 
 my life as a schoolmaster, the habit of continuous 
 literary work ; not from a sense of duty, but simply 
 from instinctive pleasure. I found myself at once 
 at home in my small and beautiful college, rich 
 with all kinds of ancient and venerable traditions, 
 in buildings of humble and subtle grace. The little 
 dark-roofed chapel, where I have a stall of mv own ; 
 the ^aliened hall, with its armorial glass ; the low, 
 book-lined library ; the panelled combination-room, 
 with its dim portraits of old worthies : how sweet 
 a setting for a quiet life ! Then, too, I have my 
 own spacious rooms, with a peaceful outlook into 
 a big close, half orchard, half garden, with bird- 
 haunted thickets and immemorial trees, bounded 
 by a slow river. 
 
 And then, to teach me how " to borrow life and 
 not grow old," the happy tide of fresh and vigorous 
 life all about me, brisk, confident, cheerful young 
 men, friendly, sensible, amenable, at that pleasant 
 time when the world begins to open its rich pages
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 13 
 
 of experience, undimmed at present by anxiety or 
 care. 
 
 My college is one of the smallest in the Univer- 
 sity. Last night in Hall I sate next a distinguished 
 man, who is, moreover, very accessible and pleasant. 
 He unfolded to me his desires for the University. 
 He would like to amalgamate all the small colleges 
 into groups, so as to have about half-a-dozen col- 
 leges in all. He said, and evidently thought, that 
 little colleges are woefully circumscribed and petty 
 places ; that most of the better men go to the two 
 or three leading colleges, while the little establish- 
 ments are like small backwaters out of the main 
 stream. They elect, he said, their own men to 
 Fellowships ; they resist improvements ; much 
 money is wasted in management, and the whole 
 thing is minute and feeble. I am afraid it is true 
 in a way ; but, on the other hand, 1 think that a 
 large college has its defects too. There is no real 
 college spirit there ; it is very nice for two or three 
 sets. But the different schools which supply a big 
 college form each its own set there ; and if a man 
 goes there from a leading public school, he falls 
 into his respective set, lives under the traditions 
 and in the gossip of his old school, and gets to 
 know hardly any one from other schools. Then 
 the men who come up from smaller places just form 
 small inferior sets of their own, and really get very 
 little good out of the place. Big colleges keep up 
 their prestige because the best men tend to go to 
 them ; but I think they do very little for the 
 ordinary men \vho have fewer social advantages 
 to start with. 
 
 The only cure, said my friend, for these smaller
 
 i 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW 
 
 places is to throw their Fellowships open, and try 
 to get public-spirited and liberal-minded Dons. 
 Then, he added, they ought to specialize in some 
 one branch of University teaching, so that the men 
 who belonged to a particular department would 
 tend to go there. 
 
 Well, to-day was a wet day, so I did what I 
 particularly enjoy I went off for a slow stroll, 
 and poked about among some of the smaller col- 
 leges. I declare that the idea of tying them all 
 together seemed to me to be a horrible piece of 
 vandalism. These sweet and beautiful little places, 
 with a quiet, dignified history and tradition of their 
 own, are very attractive and beautiful. I went and 
 explored a little college I am ashamed to say I 
 had never visited before. It shows a poor plastered 
 front to the street, but the old place is there behind 
 the plaster. I went into a tiny, dark chapel, with 
 a high pillared pediment of carved wood behind 
 the altar, a rich ceiling, and some fine columned 
 alcoves where the dignitaries sit. Out of the gal- 
 lery opens a venerable library, with a regretful air 
 of the past about its faded volumes in their high 
 presses, as though it sadly said, " I am of yester- 
 day." Then we found ourselves in a spacious pan- 
 elled Hall, with a great oriel looking out into a 
 peaceful garden, embowered in great trees, with 
 smiling lawns. All round the Hall hung portraits 
 of old worthies peers, judges, and bishops, with 
 some rubicund wigged Masters. I like to think of 
 the obscure and yet dignified lives that have been 
 lived in these quaint arul stately chambers. I sup- 
 pose that there used to be a great deal of tippling 
 and low gossip in the old days of the vinous, idle
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 15 
 
 Fellows, who hung on for life, forgetting their 
 books, and just trying to dissipate boredom. One 
 tends to think that it was all like that ; and yet, 
 doubtless, there were quiet lives of study and medi- 
 tation led here by wise and simple men who have 
 long since mouldered into dust. And all that dull 
 rioting is happily over. The whole place is full of 
 activity and happiness. There is, if anything, among 
 the Dons, too much business, too many meetings, 
 too much teaching, and the life of mere study is 
 neglected. But it pleases me to think that even 
 now there are men who live quietly among their 
 books, unambitious, perhaps unproductive, but for- 
 getting the flight of time, and looking out into a 
 pleasant garden, with its rustling trees, among the 
 sound of mellow bells. We are, most of us, too 
 much in a fuss nowadays to live these gentle, in- 
 nocent, and beautiful lives ; and yet the University 
 is a place where a poor man, if he be virtuous, may 
 lead a life of dignity and simplicity, and refined 
 happiness. We make the mistake of thinking that 
 all can be done by precept, when, as a matter of 
 fact, example is no less potent a force. To make 
 such quiet lives possible was to a great extent what 
 these stately and beautiful places were founded for 
 that there should be in the busy world a corner 
 where activities should not be so urgent, and where 
 life should pass like an old dream, tinged with deli- 
 cate colour and soft sound. I declare I do not 
 know that it is more virtuous to be a clerk in a 
 bank, toiling day by day that others should be rich, 
 than to live in thought and meditation, with a heart 
 open to sweet influences and pure hopes. And yet 
 it seems to be held nowadays that virtue is bound up
 
 16 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 with practical life. If a man is content to abjure 
 wealth and to forego marriage, to live simply with- 
 out luxuries, he may spend a very dignified, gentle 
 life here, and at the same time he may be really 
 useful. It is a thing which is well worth doing to 
 attempt the reconciliation between the old and the 
 young. Boys come up here under the impression 
 that their pastors and teachers are all about fifty ; 
 they think of them as sensible, narrow-minded men, 
 and, like Melchizedek, without beginning of davs 
 or end of life. They suppose that they like mark- 
 ing mistakes in exercises with blue pencil, and take 
 delight in showing their power by setting punish- 
 ments. It does not often occur to them that school- 
 masters may be pathetically anxious to guide boys 
 right, and to guard them from evil. They think 
 ot them as devoid of passions and prejudices, with 
 a little dreary space to traverse before they sink 
 into the tomb. Even in homes, how seldom does 
 a perfectly simple human relation exist between a 
 boy and his father ! There is often a great deal 
 of affection on both sides, but little camaraderie. 
 Little boys are odd, tiresome creatures in many 
 ways, with savage instincts ; and I suppose many 
 fathers feel that, if they are to maintain their au- 
 thority, they must be a little distant and inscrutable 
 A boy goes for sympathy and companionship to 
 his mother and sisters, not often to his father. 
 Now a Don may do something to put this straight, 
 if he has the will. One of the best friends 1 ever 
 had was an elderly Don at my own college, who 
 hail been a contemporary of my father's. He liked 
 yoimu' men ; and 1 used to consult him and ask 
 his advice in things in which I could not well con-
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 17 
 
 suit my own contemporaries. It is not necessary 
 to be extravagantly youthful, to slap people on the 
 back, to run with the college boat, though that is 
 very pleasant if it is done naturally. All that is 
 wanted is to be accessible and quietly genial. And 
 under such influences a young man may, without 
 becoming elderly, get to understand the older point 
 of view. 
 
 The difficulty is that one acquires habits and 
 mannerisms ; one is crusty and gruff if interfered 
 with. But, as Pater said, to acquire habits is fail- 
 ure in life. Of course, one must realize limitations, 
 and learn in what regions one can be effective. 
 But no one need be case-hardened, smoke-dried, 
 angular. The worst of a University is that one 
 sees men lingering on because they must earn 
 a living, and there is nothing else that they can 
 do ; but for a human-hearted, good-humoured, 
 and sensible man, a college life is a life where it 
 is easy and pleasant to practise benevolence and 
 kindliness, and where a small investment of trouble 
 pays a large percentage of happiness. Indeed, sur- 
 veying it impartially as impartially as I can such 
 a life seems to hold within it perhaps the greatest 
 possibilities of happiness that life can hold. To 
 have leisure and a degree of simple stateliness 
 assured ; to live in a wholesome dignity ; to have 
 the society of the young and generous ; to have 
 lively and intelligent talk ; to have the choice of 
 society and solitude alike ; to have one's working 
 hours respected, and one's leisure hours solaced 
 is not this better than to drift into the so-called 
 tide of professional success, with its drear}' hours 
 .of work, its conventional domestic background ?
 
 18 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 No doubt the domestic background has its inter- 
 ests, its delights ; but one must pay a price for 
 everything, and I am more than willing to pay 
 the price of celibacy for my independence. 
 
 The elderly Don in college rooms, interested 
 in Greek particles, grumbling over his port wine, 
 is a figure beloved by writers of fiction as a con- 
 trast to all that is brave, and bright, and whole- 
 some in life. Could there be a more hopeless 
 misconception ? 1 do not know a single extant 
 example of the species at the University. Per- 
 sonally, I have no love for Greek particles, and 
 only a very moderate taste for port wine. But 
 I do love, with all my heart, the grace of antiquity 
 that mellows our crumbling courts, the old tradi- 
 tion of multifarious humanity that has century by 
 century entwined itself with the very fabric 01 the 
 place. I love the youthful spirit that flashes and 
 brightens in every corner of the old courts, as the 
 wallflower that rises spring by spring with its rich 
 orange-tawny hue, its wild scent, on the tons of 
 our mouldering walls. It is a gracious and beau- 
 tiful life for all who love peace and reflection, 
 strength and youth. It is not a life for fiery and 
 dominant natures, ea<jer to conquer, keen to im- 
 press ; but it is a lite for any one who believes 
 that the best rewards are not the brightest, who is 
 willing humbly to lend a cheerful hand, to listen 
 as well as to speak. It is a iiie for any one who 
 Mas found that there is a \\orld of tender, wistful 
 delicate emotions, subdued and soft impressions, 
 in which it is peace to live ; for one who has learned, 
 however dimly, that wise and faithful love-, quiet 
 aL i patient hope, are the bread by which the spirit
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 19 
 
 is nourished that religion is not an intellectual or 
 even an ecclesiastical thing, but a far-off and re- 
 mote vision of the soul. 
 
 I know well the thoughts and hopes that I 
 should desire to speak ; but they are evasive, subtle 
 things, and too often, like shy birds, will hardly 
 let you approach them. But I would add that life 
 has not been for me a dreamy thing, lived in soft 
 fantastic reveries ; indeed, it has been far the re- 
 verse. I have practised activity, I have mixed 
 much with my fellows ; I have taught, worked, 
 organized, directed. I have watched men and 
 boys ; I have found infinite food for mirth, for 
 interest, and even for grief. But I have grown to 
 feel that the ambitions which we preach and the 
 successes for which we prepare are very often 
 nothing but a missing of the simple road, a troubled 
 wandering among thorny by-paths and dark moun- 
 tains. I have grown to believe that the one thing 
 worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life ; that 
 one's relations with others should be direct and 
 not diplomatic ; that power leaves a bitter taste 
 in the mouth ; that meanness, and hardness, and 
 coldness are the unforgivable sins ; that conven- 
 tionality is the mother of dreariness ; that pleasure 
 exists not in virtue of material conditions, but in 
 the joyful heart ; that the world is a very inter- 
 esting and beautiful place ; that congenial labour 
 is the secret of happiness ; and many other things 
 which seem, as I write them down, to be dull and 
 trite commonplaces, but are for me the bright jewels 
 which I have found beside the way. 
 
 It is, then, from College Windows that I look 
 forth. But even so, though on the one hand I
 
 20 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 look upon the green and sheltered garden, with 
 its air of secluded recollection and repose, a place 
 of quiet pacing to and fro, of sober and joyful mus- 
 ing ; yet on another side I see the court, with all 
 its fresh and shifting life, its swift interchange of 
 study and activity ; and on yet another side I can 
 observe the street where the intinite pageant of 
 humanity goes to and fro, a tide full of sound and 
 foam, o( business and laughter, and of sorrow, too, 
 and sickness, and the funeral pomp of death. 
 
 This, then, is my point of view. I can truthfully 
 say that it is not gloomy, and equally that it is 
 not uproarious. I can boast of no deep philosophy, 
 for I feel, like Dr. Johnson's simple friend Edwards, 
 that " I have tried, too, in my time, to be a phil- 
 osopher, but -I don't know how cheerfulness was 
 always breaking in." Neither is it the point of 
 view of a proiound and erudite student, with a 
 deep belief in the efficacy of useless knowledge. 
 Neither am I a humorist, for I have loved beauty 
 better than laughter ; nor a sentimentalist, for I have 
 abhorred a weak dalliance with personal emotions. 
 It is hard, then, to say what I am ; but it is my 
 hope that this may emerge. My desire is but to 
 converse with my readers, to speak as in a com- 
 fortable tete-a-tete, of experience, and hope, and 
 patience. I have no wish to disguise the hard and 
 ugly things of life ; they are there, whether one 
 disguises them or not ; but 1 think that unless 
 one is a professed psychologist or statistician, one 
 gets little good by durlliM. upon them. I have 
 alwavs believed tliat it i.-, better to stimulate than 
 to correct, to fortity rather than to puni>h, to help 
 rather than to blame. It there is one attitude that I
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 21 
 
 fear and hate more than another it is the attitude of 
 the cynic. I believe with all my soul in romance : 
 that is, in a certain high-hearted, eager dealing with 
 life. I think that one ought to expect to find things 
 beautiful and people interesting, not to take de- 
 light in detecting meannesses and failures. And 
 there is yet another class of temperament for which 
 I have a deep detestation. I mean the assured, 
 the positive, the Pharisaical temper, that believes 
 itself to be impregnably in the right and its oppo- 
 nents indubitably in the wrong ; the people who 
 deal in axioms and certainties, who think that 
 compromise is weak and originality vulgar. I de- 
 test authority in every form ; I am a sincere re- 
 publican. In literature, in art, in life, I think that 
 the only conclusions worth coming to are one's own 
 conclusions. If they march with the verdict of the 
 connoisseurs, so much the better for the connois- 
 seurs ; if they do not so march, so much the better 
 for oneself. Every one cannot admire and love 
 everything ; but let a man look at things fairly 
 and without prejudice, and make his own selec- 
 tion, holding to it firmly, but not endeavouring 
 to impose his taste upon others ; defending, if 
 needs be, his preferences, but making no claim to 
 authority. 
 
 The time of my life that I consider to have 
 been wasted, from the intellectual point of view, 
 was the time when I tried, in a spirit of dumb 
 loyalty, to admire all the things that were said to 
 be admirable. Better spent was the time when I 
 was finding out that much that had received the 
 stamp of the world's approval was not to be ap- 
 proved, at least by me ; best of all was the time
 
 22 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 when I was learning to appraise the value of things 
 to myself, and learning to love them for their own 
 sake and mine. 
 
 Respect of a deferential and constitutional type 
 is out of place in art and literature. It is a good 
 enough guide to begin one's pilgrimage with, if one 
 soon parts company from it. Rather one must learn 
 to give honour where honour is due, to bow down 
 in true reverence before all spirits that are noble 
 and adorable, whether they wear crowns and bear 
 titles of honour, or whether they are simple and 
 unnoted persons, who wear no gold on their gar- 
 ments. 
 
 Sincerity and simplicity ! if I could only say 
 how I reverence them, how I desire to mould my 
 life in accordance with them ! And I would learn, 
 too, swiftly to detect the living spirits, whether they 
 be young or old, in which these great qualities reign. 
 
 Tor I believe that there is in life a great and 
 guarded city, of which we mav be worthy to be 
 citizens. We may, if we are blest, be always of 
 the happy number, by some kindly gift of God ; 
 but we may also, through misadventure and pain, 
 through errors and blunders, learn the way thither. 
 And sometimes we discern the city afar oil, with 
 her radiant spires and towers, her walls of strength, 
 her gates of pearl ; and there may come a day, too, 
 \vhen we have found the way thither, and enter in ; 
 happy if we go no more out, but happy, too, even 
 if we may not rest there, because we know that, 
 however far we wander, there is always a hearth 
 for us and welcoming smiles. 
 
 1 speak in a parable, but those who are finding 
 the way will understand me, however dimly ; and
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 23 
 
 those who have found the way, and seen a little 
 of the glory of the place, will smile at the page 
 and say : " So he, too, is of the city." 
 
 The city is known by many names, and wears 
 different aspects to different hearts. But one thing 
 is certain that no one who has entered there is 
 ever in any doubt again. lie may wander far 
 from the walls, he may visit it but rarely, but it 
 stands there in peace and glory, the one true and 
 real thing for him in mortal time and in what- 
 ever lies beyond.
 
 II 
 
 ON GROWING OLDER 
 
 THE sun flares red behind leafless elms and 
 battlemented towers as I come in from a 
 lonely walk beside the river ; above the chimney- 
 tops hangs a thin veil of drifting smoke, blue in 
 the golden light. The games in the Common are 
 just coming to an end ; a stream of long-coated 
 spectators sets towards the town, mingled with 
 the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. 
 I have been strolling half the afternoon along the 
 river bank, watching the boats passing up and 
 down ; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the meas- 
 ured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of row- 
 locks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh 
 grinding of the chain-ferries. Five - and - twenty 
 years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these 
 boats, and I do not \\ish to renew the experience. 
 I cannot conceive why and in what moment of 
 feeble good-nature or misapplied patriotism 1 ever 
 consented to lend a hand. 1 was not a good oar, 
 and did not become a better one ; 1 hail no illu- 
 sions about mv performance, and any momentary 
 complacency was generallv sternly dispelled by the 
 harsh cntici-m of the coach on the bank, when 
 we rested lor a moment to receive our meed of
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 25 
 
 praise or blame. But though I have no sort 
 of wish to repeat the process, to renew the slavery 
 which I found frankly and consistently intoler- 
 able, I find myself looking on at the cheerful scene 
 with an amusement in which mingles a shadow 
 of pain, because I feel that I have parted with 
 something, a certain buoyancy and elasticity of 
 body, and perhaps spirit, of which I was not con- 
 scious at the time, but which I now realize that 
 I must have possessed. It is with an admiration 
 mingled with envy that I see these youthful, shapely 
 figures, bare - necked and bare - kneed, swinging 
 rhythmically past. I watch a brisk crew lift a 
 boat out of the water by a boat-house ; half of 
 them duck underneath to get hold of the other side, 
 and they march up the grating gravel in a solemn 
 procession. I see a pair of cheerful young men, 
 released from tubbing, execute a wild and incon- 
 sequent dance upon the water's edge ; I see a 
 solemn conference of deep import between a stroke 
 and a coach. I see a neat, clean-limbed young 
 man go airily up to a well-earned tea, without, 
 I hope, a care, or an anxiety in his mind, expect- 
 ing and intending to spend an agreeable evening. 
 " Oh, Jones of Trinity, oh, Smith of Queen's," 1 
 think to myself, " tua si bona ndris ! Make the 
 best of the good time, my boy, before you go off 
 to the office, or the fourth-form room, or the coun- 
 try parish ! Live virtuously, make honest friends, 
 read the good old books, lay up a store of kindly 
 recollections, of iirelit rooms in venerable courts, 
 of pleasant talks, of innocent festivities. Very fresh 
 is the cool morning air, very fragrant is the newly- 
 lighted bird's-eye, very lively is the clink of knives
 
 26 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 and forks, very keen is the savour of the roast beef 
 that Hoats up to the dark rafters of the College 
 Hall. luit the days are short and the terms are 
 few ; and do not forget to be a sensible as well 
 as a good-humoured young man ! 
 
 Thackeray, in a delightful ballad, invites a 
 pretty page to wait till he comes to forty years : 
 well, 1 have waited indeed, I have somewhat 
 overshot the mark and to-day the sight of all this 
 brisk lite, going on just as it used to do, with the 
 same ir^>>ucianct and the same merriment, makes 
 me wi<h to reflect, to gather up the fragments, to 
 .-ee it it is all loss, all declension, or whether there 
 is something left, some strength in what remains 
 behind. 
 
 I have a theory that one ought to grow older 
 in a tranquil and appropriate way, that one ought 
 to be perfectly contented \\ ith one's time of life, 
 that amusements and pursuits ought to alter 
 naturally and easily, and not be regretfully aban- 
 doned. One outfit not to be dragged protesting 
 from the scene, catching dr- perately at every door- 
 way ami balustrade ; one should walk otf smiling. 
 It is ea.-ier said than done. It is not a pleasant 
 moment u hen a man tirst recogni/.es that he is 
 out ai p!,:ee in tlie football field, that he cannot 
 <toop v, ith the old agility to pick up a skimming 
 ^troke to cover-point, that dancing is rather too 
 i, rating to be decorous, that he cannot walk all 
 day \Mthout undue somnolence after dinner, or 
 rush olF ;:tter a heavy meal without indigestion. 
 These are ,nl moments uhidi we all ot us reach, 
 but uh:ch are better laughed over than fretted 
 ove- And a man uho, out < -t : ,heer inability to
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 27 
 
 part from boyhood, clings desperately and with 
 apoplectic puffings to these things is an essentially 
 grotesque ngure. To listen to young men discuss- 
 ing one of these my belated contemporaries, and 
 to hear one enforcing on another the amusement to 
 be gained from watching the old buffer's man- 
 oeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness. One 
 can indeed give amusement without loss of dig- 
 nity, by being open to being induced to join in 
 such things occasionally in an elderly way, with- 
 out any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that 
 is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps 
 the best way of all is to subside into the genial 
 and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud 
 the game you cannot play, and to admire the dex- 
 terity you cannot rival. 
 
 What then, if any, are the gains that make up 
 for the lack of youthful prowess ? They are, I 
 can contentedly say, many and great. In the first 
 place, there is the loss of a quality which is pro- 
 ductive of an extraordinary amount of pain among 
 the young, the quality of self-consciousness. How 
 often was one's peace of mind ruined by gaucherie, 
 by shyness, by the painful consciousness of having 
 nothing to say, and the still more painful conscious- 
 ness of having said the wrong thing in the wrong 
 way ! Of course, it was all immensely exaggerated. 
 If one went into chapel, for instance, with a straw 
 hat, which one had forgotten to remove, over a 
 surplice, one had the feeling for several days that it 
 was written in letters of fire on every wall. I was 
 myself an ardent conversationalist in early years, 
 and, with the charming omniscience of youth, fan- 
 cied that my opinion was far better worth having
 
 28 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 than the opinions of Dons encrusted with pedantry 
 and prejudice. Hut if 1 found m\>clf in the society 
 of these petrified persons, by the time that 1 had 
 composed a suitable remark, the slender opening 
 had already closed, and my contribution was either 
 not uttered at all, or hopelessly belated in its ap- 
 pearance. Or some deep generalization drawn from 
 the dark backward of my vast experience would be 
 produced, and either ruthlessly ignored or con- 
 temptuously corrected bv some unsympathetic elder 
 of unyielding voice and formed opinions. And then 
 there \\.is the crushing sense, at the conclusion of 
 one of these interviews, of having been put down 
 as a tiresome and heavy young man. I fully 
 believed in my own liveliness and sprightliness, but 
 it seemed an impossible task to persuade my 
 elders that these qualities were there. A good- 
 natured, elderly friend used at times to rally me 
 upon my shyness, and say that it all came from 
 thinking too much about myself. It was as use- 
 less as if one told a man \\ith a toothache that 
 it was mere self-absorption that made him suffer. 
 I* or I have no doubt that the disease of self-con- 
 sciousness is incident to intelligent youth. Marie 
 BashkirtsetF, in the terrible self-revealing journals 
 uhich she wrote, describes a visit that she paid to 
 some one who hail expressed an interest in her 
 and a desire to see her. She says that as she passed 
 the threshold of the room ..In- breathed a prayer, 
 O (iod, make me worth M -eing ! ' How often 
 used one to desire to make an impression, to make 
 
 M-lf fell and apprei iated ! 
 
 \\<ll, all that uneasv craving has left me. I no 
 er have any particular desire for 01 expecta-
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 29 
 
 tion of being impressive. One likes, of course, to 
 feel fresh and lively ; but whereas in the old days 
 I used to enter a circle with the intention of en- 
 deavouring to be felt, of giving pleasure and in- 
 terest, I now go in the humble hope of receiving 
 either. The result is that, having got rid to a 
 great extent of this pompous and self-regarding 
 attitude of mind, I not only find myself more at 
 ease, but I also find other people infinitely more 
 interesting. Instead of laying one's frigate along- 
 side of another craft with the intention of conduct- 
 ing a boarding expedition, one pays a genial visit 
 by means of the long-boat with all the circum- 
 stance of courtesy and amiability. Instead of de- 
 siring to make conquests, I am glad enough to be 
 tolerated. I dare, too, to say what I think, not 
 alert for any symptoms of contradiction, but fully 
 aware that my own point of view is but one of 
 many, and quite prepared to revise it. In the old 
 days I demanded agreement ; I am now amused 
 by divergence. In the old days I desired to con- 
 vince ; I am now only too thankful to be con- 
 vinced of error and ignorance. I now no longer 
 shrink from saying that I know nothing of a sub- 
 ject ; in old days I used to make a pretence of 
 omniscience, and had to submit irritably to being 
 tamely unmasked. It seems to me that I must 
 have been an unpleasant young man enough, but 
 I humbly hope that I was not so disagreeable as 
 might appear. 
 
 Another privilege of advancing years is the de- 
 creasing tyranny of convention. I used to desire 
 to do the right thing, to know the right people, 
 to plav the right games. I did not reflect whether
 
 3 o FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 it was worth the sacrifice of personal interest ; it 
 was all-important to he in the swim. Very grad- 
 ually I discovered that other people troubled their 
 heads very little about what one did ; that the 
 right people were often the most tiresome and the 
 most conventional, and that the only games which 
 were worth playing were the games which one 
 enjoyed. I used to undergo miseries in staying 
 at uncongenial houses, in accepting shooting in- 
 vitations when I could not shoot, in going to dances 
 because the people whom I knew were going. Of 
 course one h:is plenty of disagreeable duties to 
 perform in any case ; but 1 discovered gradually 
 that to adopt the principle of doing disagreeable 
 things which were supposed to be amusing and 
 .igreeable was to misunderstand the whole situa- 
 tion. Now, if I am asked to stay at a tiresome 
 house, I refuse ; I decline invitations to garden 
 parties and public dinners and dances, because I 
 c.now that they will bore me ; and as to games, 
 I never play them if I can help, because 1 find 
 that they do not entertain me. Of course there 
 are occasions when one is wanted to fill a gap, 
 aiul then it is the duty of a Christian ami a gentle- 
 man to conform, and to do it with a good grace. 
 Aj .1 am not at the mercy of small prejudices, 
 as 1 n>ed to be. As a young man, if I disliked 
 the cut of a person's whiskers or the fashion of 
 hi> cl"thes, it I considered Ins manner to be abrupt 
 or unpleasint,', it I was not interested in his sub- 
 ject-, I set him (!ov, n as an impossible person, and 
 mail-- no further attempt to form acquaintance. 
 
 No\s I know that the -e are superficial things, 
 and iliat a kind heart and an interesting person-
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 31 
 
 ality are not inconsistent with hoots of a grotesque 
 shape and even with mutton-chop whiskers. In 
 fact, I think that small oddities and differences 
 have grown to have a distinct value, and form 
 a pleasing variety. If a person's manner is un- 
 attractive, I often find that it is nothing more 
 than a shyness or an awkwardness which disap- 
 pears the moment that familiarity is established. 
 My standard is, in fact, lower, and I am more 
 tolerant. I am not, I confess, wholly tolerant, 
 hut my intolerance is reserved for qualities and 
 not for externals. I still fly swiftly from long- 
 winded, pompous, and contemptuous persons ; 
 but if their company is unavoidable, I have at 
 least learnt to hold my tongue. The other day 
 I was at a country-house where an old and ex- 
 tremely tiresome General laid down the law on 
 the subject of the Mutiny, where he had fought 
 as a youthful subaltern. I was pretty sure that 
 he was making the most grotesque misstatements, 
 but I was not in a position to contradict them. 
 Next the General w r as a courteous, w : eary old 
 gentleman, who sate with his finger-tips pressed 
 together, smiling and nodding at intervals. Half- 
 an-hour later we were lighting our candles. The 
 General strode fiercely up to bed, leaving a com- 
 pany of yawning and dispirited men behind. The 
 old gentleman came up to me and, as he took a 
 light, said with an inclination of his head in the 
 direction of the parting figure, " The poor Gen- 
 eral is a good deal misinformed. I didn't choose 
 to say anything, but I know something about the 
 subject, because I was private secretary to the 
 Secretary for War."
 
 32 FROM A COLLKGK WINDOW. 
 
 That was the risiht attitude, I thought, for the 
 gentlemanly philosopher; and I have learnt from 
 mv old friend the lesson not to choose to say any- 
 thing if a turbulent and pompous person lays 
 down the law on subjects with which I happen 
 to be acquainted. 
 
 Again, there is another gain that results from 
 advancing years. 1 think it is true that there 
 were sharper ecstasies in vouth, keener percep- 
 tions, more passionate thrills ; but then the mind 
 also dipped more s\\iftly and helplessly into dis- 
 couragement, dreariness, and despair. I do not 
 think that lite is so rapturous, but it certainly is 
 vastly more interesting. When I was young there 
 were an abundance of things about which I did 
 not care. I was all t<>r poetry and art; I found 
 history tedious, science tiresome, politics insup- 
 portable. Now I may thankfully say it is wholly 
 different. The tune ot youth was the opening to 
 me of many doors oi lite. Sometimes a door opened 
 upon a mysterious and wonderful place, an en- 
 chanted forest, a solemn avenue, a sleeping glade ; 
 often, too, it opened into some dusty \\ork-a-day 
 place, full of busy forms bent over intolerable 
 tasks, \\hix/mg \s heels, tl.uk gleaming machinery, 
 the dm <>[ the factor\ an the \\orkshop. Some- 
 time^, too, a door won! i opt \\ into a bare and 
 rnelanchoK place, a hillside strev, n \\ith stones, an 
 interminable plain of M i ; \\orst ot all, a place 
 would oini-tiines be revealed \\luch was full ot 
 sulFi ti'jui !i, and hopeless uoe. shadowed uitli 
 
 tears and -u. . Fii>m such ] 1 turned \\ith 
 
 groans unutterable ; but the : of the' accursed 
 place would u '! out me for davs. These sur-
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 33 
 
 prises, these strange surmises, crowded in fast upon 
 me. How different the world was from what the 
 careless forecast of boyhood had pictured it ! How 
 strange, how beautiful, and yet how terrible ! As 
 life went on the beauty increased, and a calmer, 
 quieter beauty made itself revealed ; in youth I 
 looked for strange, impressive, haunted beauties, 
 things that might deeply stir and move ; but year 
 by year a simpler, sweeter, healthier kind of beauty 
 made itself felt ; such beauty as lies on the bare, 
 lightly washed, faintly tinted hillside of winter, all 
 delicate greens and browns, so far removed from 
 the rich summer luxuriance, and yet so austere, so 
 pure. I grew to love different books too. In 
 youth one demanded a generous glow, a fire of 
 passion, a strongly tinged current of emotion ; but 
 by degrees came the love of sober, subdued reflec- 
 tion, a cooler world in which, if one could not rest, 
 one might at least travel equably and gladly, with 
 a far wider range of experience, a larger, if a fainter, 
 hope. I grew to demand less of the world, less of 
 Nature, less of people ; and, behold, a whole range 
 of subtler and gentler emotions came into sight, 
 like the blue hills of the distance, pure and low. 
 The whole movement of the world, past and pres- 
 ent, became intelligible and clear. I saw the hu- 
 manity that lies behind political and constitutional 
 questions, the strong, simple forces that move like 
 a steady stream behind the froth and foam of per- 
 sonality. If in youth I believed that personality 
 and influence could sway and mould the world, in 
 later years I have come to see that the strongest 
 and fiercest characters are only the river-wrack, the 
 broken boughs, the torn grasses that whirl and spin
 
 34 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 in the tongue of the creeping flood, and that there 
 is a dim resistless foice behind them that marches on 
 unheeding and drives them in the forefront of the 
 inundation. Things that had seemed drearily theo- 
 retical, drv, axiomatic, platitudinal, showed them- 
 sehcs to be great generalizations from a torrent of 
 human elFort ami mortal endeavour. And thus all 
 the mass of detail and human relation that had been 
 rudely set aside by the insolent prejudices of youth 
 under the generic name of business, came slowly to 
 have an intense and living significance. I cannot 
 trace th<- process in detail ; but I became aware of 
 the fulness, the energv, the matchless interest of 
 the world, and the vitality of a hundred thoughts 
 that had seemed to me the dreariest abstractions. 
 
 Then, too, the greatest gain of all, there comes 
 a sort of patience. In youth mistakes seemed irre- 
 parable, calamities intolerable, ambitions realizable, 
 disappointments unbearable. An anxiety hung like 
 a d.irk impenetrable cloud, a disappointment pois- 
 i the .-prints ot life. But now I have learned 
 that mistakes can often be set right, that anxieties 
 fade, that calamities have sometimes a compen- 
 satiML' ]ov, that an ambition realized is not always 
 plea-Mi. iMc, that a disappointment is often of it- 
 M-h a great incentive to try a-jain. One learns to 
 over trouble-, instead ot looking into them; 
 learns that hope is more unconquerable than 
 \nd so there flows into the gap the certainty 
 :ii m. tke more of misadventures, of un- 
 p: ( '! people, ot painful experiences, than one 
 
 It ma\ not be, nay, it is not, 
 ed a spirit ; but it is a serener, 
 a happier outlook.
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 35 
 
 And so, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, 
 striking a balance of my advantages and disad- 
 vantages, I am inclined to think that the good 
 points predominate. Of course there still re- 
 mains the intensely human instinct, which sur- 
 vives all the lectures of moralists, the desire to 
 eat one's cake and also to have it. One wants 
 to keep the gains of middle life and not to part 
 with the glow of youth. * The tragedy of grow- 
 ing old," says a brilliant writer, " is the remaining 
 young ; " that is to say, that the spirit does not 
 age as fast as the body. The sorrows of life lie 
 in the imagination, in the power to recall the good 
 days that have been and the old sprightly feelings ; 
 and in the power, too, to forecast the slow over- 
 shadowing and decay of age. But Lord Beacons- 
 iield once said that tne worst evil one has to endure 
 is the anticipation of the calamities that do not 
 happen ; and I am sure that the thing to aim at 
 is to live as far as possible in the day and for the 
 day. I do not mean in an epicurean fashion, by 
 tnking prodigally all the pleasure that one can get, 
 like a spendthrift of the happiness that is meant to 
 last a lifetime, but in the spirit of Newman's hymn 
 
 " I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 
 
 Even now I find that I am gaining a certain power, 
 instinctively, I suppose, in making the most of the 
 day and hour. In old days, if I had a disagreeable 
 engagement ahead of me, something to which I 
 looked forward with anxiety or dislike, I used to 
 find that it poisoned my cup. Now it is beginning 
 to be the other way ; and I find myself with a
 
 36 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 heightened sense of pleasure in the quiet and peace- 
 ful days that have to intervene before the fateful 
 morning dawns. I used to awake in the morning 
 on the days that were still niv own before the day 
 which I dreaded, and begin, in that agitated mood 
 which used to accompanv the return of consciousness 
 after sleep, when the mind is alert but unbalanced, 
 to anticipate the tiling 1 feared, and feel that I 
 could not face it. Now I tend to awake and say 
 to myself, " Well, at any rate I have still to-day 
 in my own hands ; " and then the very day itself 
 has an increased value trom the feeling that the 
 uncomfortable experience lies ahead. I suppose 
 that is the secret of the placid enjoyment which 
 the very old so otten display. They seem so 
 near the dark jate, and yet so entirely indilferent 
 to the thought of it ; so absorbed in little leisurely 
 tritles, happy with a childlike happiness. 
 
 And thus 1 went slowly back to College in 
 that gathering gloom that seldom fails to bring 
 a certain peace to the mind. The porter sate, with 
 his teet on the tender, in his comfortable den, 
 reading a paper. The lights were beginning to 
 appear in the court, and the firelight flickered 
 bri-kly upon walls hung \\ith all the pleasant signs 
 of youthful life, the groups, the family photo- 
 graphs, the suspended oar, the cap of glory. So 
 when I entered my book-lined rooms, and heard 
 the ke'tle Miig its comfortable song on the hearth, 
 and reflected that I had a few letters to write, 
 an mterr -:inL r book to turn over, a pleasant Hall 
 dinner tn look torv. ;;rd to, and that, after a space 
 of talk, an undergraduate or two were coming to 
 tall-' over a leisurely piece of work, an essay or a
 
 ON GROWING OLDER. 37 
 
 paper, I was more than ever inclined to acquiesce 
 in my disabilities, to purr like an elderly cat, and 
 to feel that while I had the priceless boon of leisure, 
 set in a framework of small duties, there was much 
 to be said for life, and that I was a poor creature 
 if I could not be soberly content. 
 
 Of course I know that I have missed the nearer 
 ties of life, the hearth, the home, the companion- 
 ship of a wife, the joys and interests of growing 
 girls and boys. But if a man is fatherly and kind- 
 hearted, he will find plenty of young men who are 
 responsive to a paternal interest, and intensely 
 grateful for the good-humoured care of one who 
 will listen to their troubles, their difficulties, and 
 their dreams. I have two or three young friends 
 who tell me what they are doing, and what they 
 hope to do ; I have many correspondents who 
 were friends of mine as boys, who tell me from 
 time to time how it goes with them in the bigger 
 world, and who like in return to hear something 
 of my own doings. 
 
 And so I sit, while the clock on the mantel- 
 piece ticks out the pleasant minutes, and the fire 
 winks and crumbles on the hearth, till the old 
 gyp comes tapping at the door to learn my in- 
 tentions for the evening ; and then, again, I pass 
 out into the court, the lighted windows of the 
 Hall gleam with the ancient armorial glass, from 
 staircase after staircase come troops of alert, gowned 
 figures, while overhead, above all the pleasant stir 
 and murmur of life, hang in the dark sky the un- 
 changing stars.
 
 BOOKS 
 
 ^~ > HE one room in my College which T always 
 enter with a certain sense of desolation and 
 sadness is the College library. There used to 
 be a story in my days at Cambridge of a hook- 
 collectini; I)on who was fond of discoursing in 
 public ot the various crosses he had to bear. He 
 was lamenting one day in Hall the unwieldy size 
 of his library. ' I really don't know what to do 
 with my books," he said, and looked round for 
 sympathy, ' Why not read them ? " said a sharp 
 and caustic Fellow opposite. It may be thought 
 that I am in need ot the same advice, but it is 
 not the ca^e. There are, indeed, many books 
 in our library ; but most of them, as I). G. Ros- 
 setti used to say in his childhood of his father's 
 learned volumes, are " no good tor reading." The 
 "t the College library are delightful, in- 
 leeil, t" look at ; rows upon rows of big irregu- 
 Kir volumes, with tan ! < -d tooling and faded 
 L'ildiriL: on the sun-so r< h-d backs. What are 
 they r ''Id ; "i"ii-; of classics, old volumes of 
 lontrnvei MI ol the Fathers, topo- 
 
 graphical treatiM->, cumbrous philosophers, pam- 
 phlet-. f -""i \\hich, like drv ashes, the heat of
 
 BOOKS. 39 
 
 the fire that warmed them once has fled. Take 
 one down : it is an agreeable sight enough ; there 
 is a gentle scent of antiquity ; the bumpy page 
 crackles faintly ; the big irregular print meets the 
 eye with a pleasant and leisurely mellowness. But 
 what do they tell one ? Very little, alas ! that 
 one need know, very much which it would be 
 a positive mistake to believe. That is the worst 
 of erudition that the next scholar sucks the few 
 drops of honey that you have accumulated, sets 
 right your blunders, and you are superseded. You 
 have handed on the torch, perhaps, and even 
 trimmed it. Your errors, your patient explana- 
 tions, were a necessary step in the progress of 
 knowledge ; but even now the procession has 
 turned the corner, and is out of sight. 
 
 Yet even here, it pleases me to think, some 
 mute and unsuspected treasure may lurk unknown. 
 In a room like this, for over a couple of centuries, 
 stood on one of the shelves an old rudely bound 
 volume of blank paper, the pages covered with 
 a curious straggling cipher ; no one paid any 
 heed to it, no one tried to spell its secrets. But 
 the day came when a Fellow who was both in- 
 quisitive and leisurely took up the old volume, 
 and formed a resolve to decipher it. Through 
 many baffling delays, through many patient wind- 
 ings, he carried his purpose out ; and the result 
 was a celebrated Day-book, which cast much light 
 upon the social conditions of a past age, as well 
 as revealed one of the most simple and genial 
 personalities that ever marched blithely through 
 the pages of a Diary. 
 
 But, in these days of cheap print and nasty
 
 40 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 paper, with a central library into which pours the 
 annual cataract of literature, these little ancient 
 libraries have no use left, save as repositories or 
 store-rooms. They belong to the days when books 
 were few and expensive ; when few persons could 
 acquire a library of their own ; when lecturers 
 accumulated knowledge that was not the property 
 of the world ; when notes were laboriously copied 
 and handed on ; when one of the joys of learning 
 was the consciousness of possessing secrets not 
 known to other men. An ancient Dean of Christ 
 Church is said to have given three reasons for the 
 study of Greek : the first was that it enabled you 
 to read the words of the Saviour in the original 
 tongue ; the second, that it gave you a proper 
 contempt for those who were ignorant of it ; and 
 the third was th.it it led to situations of emolu- 
 ment. \\hat a rich aroma hangs about this judg- 
 ment ! The first reason is probably erroneous, the 
 second is un-Christian, and the third is a gross 
 motive \\hich would equally apply to any pro- 
 fessional training whatsoever. 
 
 Well, the knowledge of Greek, except for the 
 schoolmaster and the clergyman, has not now the 
 same obvious commercial \alue. Knowledge is 
 more dilFuscd, more accessible. It is no longer 
 thought to be a seen', precious, rather terrible 
 possession; the possessor i> no longer venerated 
 and revered ; on the Contrary, a learned man 
 is rather considered likely to be tire-some. Old 
 folios have, nulce 1, become merely the stock-in- 
 trade ot the illu tratoi of sensational novels. Who 
 does not 1.;; ,v the ;i ;nl old man, \sith white 
 silky hair, \el\et -,ku!l-cap, and venerable ap-
 
 BOOKS. 41 
 
 pearance, who sits reading a folio at an oak table, 
 and who turns out to be the villain of the piece, 
 a mine of secret and unsuccessful wickedness ? 
 But no one in real life reads a folio now, because 
 anything that is worth reprinting, as well as a 
 good deal that is not, is reprinted in convenient 
 form, if not in England, at least in Germany. 
 
 And the result of it is that these College libra- 
 ries are almost wholly unvisited. It seems a pity, 
 but it also seems inevitable. I wish that some 
 use could be devised for them, for these old books 
 make at all events a very dignified and pleasant 
 background, and the fragrance of well-warmed old 
 leather is a delicate thing. But they are not even 
 good places for working in, now that one has one's 
 own books and one's own reading-chair. More- 
 over, if they were kept up to date, which would 
 in itself be an expensive thing, there would come 
 in the eternal difficulty of where to put the old 
 books, which no one would have the heart to de- 
 stroy. 
 
 Perhaps the best thing for a library like this 
 would be not to attempt to buy books, but to sub- 
 scribe like a club to a circulating library, and to 
 let a certain number of new volumes flow through 
 the place and lie upon the tables for a time. But, 
 on the other hand, here in the University there 
 seems to be little time for general reading ; and 
 indeed it is a great problem, as life goes on, as 
 duties grow more defined, and as one becomes 
 more and more conscious of the shortness of life, 
 what the duty of a cultivated and open-minded 
 man is with regard to general reading. I am in- 
 clined to think that as one grows older one may
 
 42 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 read less ; it is impossible to keep up with the 
 vast output <>f literature, and it is hard enough to 
 find time to follow even the one or two branches 
 in \\hich one is specially interested. Almost the 
 only books which, I think, it is a duty to read, 
 are the lives of great contemporaries ; one gets 
 thus to have an idea of \\liat is going on in the 
 \sorld, and to re.ili/e it from different points of 
 view. \ A fiction, new poetry, new travels are 
 very hard to peruse diligently. The effort, I con- 
 fe^s, of 1 vinniii:' a new novel, of making acquaint- 
 ance with an unfamiliar scene, of getting the in- 
 di\ : - of a :;esh group of people into one's 
 
 head, is becoivinu' every year harder for me ; but 
 there are >till one or two authors of fiction for 
 uhom I have a predilection, and whose works 1 
 look out for. New poetry demands an even greater 
 rt : and as to tra\els, they are written so much 
 in the journalistic style, and consist so much of 
 the meals our traveller obtains at wayside sta- 
 tions, of conversations uith obviously reticent and 
 even unintelligent persons ; they have so many 
 
 ravures of places that are exactly like other 
 -, and of complacent people in grotesque 
 i "lines, hke supers in a play, that one feeds the 
 \\hole thi iii,' to be hopelely superficial and un- 
 re.d. I- a journalistic foreigner visiting the 
 
 1 m\er ilv, lunchim: at the station refreshment- 
 room, ; to ! !!-a-do/eii of the best known 
 o>!!' r in .1 tram through the main thor- 
 oui' on at a football match, intcr- 
 
 a I'.v.n Councillor, and being presented 
 to tin- \ ice Cham .'.hat uould be- the profit 
 "f v Mi!. i i i oiild <MVC us' \\hat would
 
 BOOKS. 43 
 
 he have seen of the quiet daily life, the interests, 
 the home-current of the place ? The only books 
 of travel worth reading are those where a person 
 has settled deliberately in an unknown place, really 
 lived the life of the people, and penetrated the 
 secret of the landscape and the buildings. 
 
 I wish very much that there was a really good 
 literary paper, with an editor of catholic tastes, 
 and half-a-dozen stimulating specialists on the 
 staff, whose duty would be to read the books 
 that came out, each in his own line, write reviews 
 of appreciation and not of contemptuous fault- 
 finding, let feeble books alone, and make it their 
 business to tell ordinary people what to read, not 
 saving them the trouble of reading the books that 
 are worth reading, but sparing them the task of 
 glancing at a good many books that are not worth 
 reading. Literary papers, as a rule, either review 
 a book with hopeless rapidity, or tend to lag be- 
 hind too much. It would be of the essence of 
 such a paper as I have described, that there should 
 be no delay about telling one what to look out 
 for, and at the same time that the review's should 
 be deliberate and careful. 
 
 But I think that as one grows older one may 
 take out a licence, so to speak, to read less. One 
 may go back to the old restful books, where one 
 knows the characters well, hear the old remarks, 
 survey the same scenes. One may meditate more 
 upon one's stores, stroll about more, just looking 
 at life, seeing the quiet things that are happening:, 
 and beaming through one's spectacles. One ought 
 to have amassed, as life goes on and the shadows 
 lengthen, a good deal of material for reflection,
 
 44 FROM A COLLI-GE WINDOW. 
 
 And, alter all, reading is not in itself a virtue ; it 
 is only one way of passing the time ; talking is 
 another \vay, watching things another. Bacon says 
 that reading makes a full man ; well, I cannot 
 help thinking that many people are full to the 
 brim when they reach the age of forty, and that 
 much which thev afterwards put into the over- 
 charged vase merely drips and slobbers uncom- 
 fortably down the side and loot. 
 
 The thing to determine then, as one's brain 
 hardens or softens, is what the object of reading 
 is. It is not, 1 venture to think, what used to be 
 called the pursuit oi knowledge. Of course, if a 
 man is a professional teacher or a professional 
 writer, he must read for professional purposes, 
 ju>t as a coral insect must eat to enable it to secrete 
 the substances out ot which it builds its branching 
 house. But 1 am not here speaking of professional 
 studies, but of general reading. I suppose that 
 there are three motives lor reading the first, 
 purely pleasurable ; the second, intellectual ; the 
 third, what may be called ethical. As to the 
 first, a man who reads at all, reads just as he eats, 
 >leep>, and takes exercise, because he likes it ; and 
 that is probably the best reason that can be given 
 tor the practice. It is an innocent mode ot passing 
 the time, it takes one out ol oneself, it is amusing. 
 < >t course, it can be carried to an excess; and 
 a man may become- a men book-eater, as a man 
 ma\ become an opium-eater. I used at one time 
 to L'O and Mav with an old friend, a clcn/vman 
 in a remote part ot Lur-land. lie was a bachelor 
 and tai:U well oti. lie did not care about excr- 
 M-e or In iMnlen, and he hail no taste for general
 
 BOOKS. 45 
 
 society. He subscribed to the London Library and 
 to a lending library in the little town where lie 
 lived, and he bought, too, a good many books. 
 He must have spent, I used to calculate, about ten 
 hours of the twenty-four in reading. He seemed 
 to me to have read everything, old and new books 
 alike, and he had an astonishing memory ; any- 
 thing that he put into his mind remained there 
 exactly as fresh and clear as when he laid it away, 
 so that he never needed to read a book twice. If 
 he had lived at a University he would have been 
 a useful man ; if one wanted to know what books 
 to read in any line, one had only to pick his brains. 
 He could give one a list of authorities on almost 
 every subject. But in his country parish he was 
 entirely thrown away. He had not the least de- 
 sire to make anything of his stores, or to write. 
 He had not the art of expression, and he was a 
 distinctly tiresome talker. His idea of conversation 
 was to ask you whether you had read a number of 
 modern novels. If he found one that you had not 
 read, he sketched the plot in an intolerably prolix 
 manner, so that it was practically impossible to fix 
 the mind on what he was saying. He seemed to 
 have no preferences in literature whatever ; his 
 one desire was to read everything that came out, 
 and his only idea of a holiday was to go up to Lon- 
 don and get lists of books from a bookseller. That 
 is, of course, an extreme case ; and I cannot help 
 feeling that he would have been nearly as usefully 
 employed if he had confined himself to counting 
 the number of words in the books he read. But, 
 after all, he was interested and nmused, and a 
 perfectly contented man.
 
 46 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 As to the intellectual motive for reading, it 
 hardly needs discussing ; the object is to get clear 
 conceptions, to arrive at a critical sense of what 
 is good in literature, to have a knowledge of events 
 and tendencies of thought, to take a just view of 
 history and of great personalities ; not to be at the 
 mercy of theorists, but to be able to correct a faulty 
 bias by having a large and wide view of the progress 
 of events and the development of thought. One 
 who reads from this point of view will generally 
 find some particular line which he tends to follow, 
 some special region of the mind where he is desir- 
 ous to know all that can be known ; but he will, 
 at the same time, \\ish to acquaint himself in a 
 general vsay with other departments of thought, so 
 that he may be inteiested in subjects in which he 
 is not u holly well-informed, and be able to listen, 
 even to ask intelligent questions, in matters with 
 uhich he has no minute acquaintance. Such a 
 man, if he steers clear of the contempt for indefinite 
 views which is otten the curse ot men with clear 
 md definite minds, makes the best kind ot talker, 
 stimulating and su'juestn e ; his talk seems to open 
 doors into garden^ and corridors of the house of 
 thought ; and others, who>e knowledge is frag- 
 mentary, would like to be at home, too, in that 
 picas, iu palace. But it is of the essence of such 
 talk that it should be natural and attractive, not 
 pro!' ! or didactic. IVnplc who are not used 
 
 to I niverMties tend t<> believe that academical per- 
 sons arc IM\ ..; ubly ton . The\ think .1 them 
 as p. i dj \aM ston - t precise knowledge, and 
 actuate! b\ a n to detect and to ridi- 
 cule dclicicncics. of attainment among unpiotes-
 
 BOOKS. 47 
 
 sional people. Of course, there are people of this 
 type to be found at a University, just as in all other 
 professions it is possible to find uncharitable special- 
 ists who despise persons of hazy and leisurely views. 
 But my own impression is that it is a rare type 
 among University Dons ; I think that it is far com- 
 moner at the University to meet men of great at- 
 tainments combined with sincere humility and 
 charity, for the simple reason that the most erudite 
 specialist at a University becomes aware both of 
 the wide diversity of knowledge and of his own 
 limitations as well. 
 
 Personally, direct bookish talk is my abomina- 
 tion. A knowledge of books ought to give a man 
 a delicate allusiveness, an aptitude for pointed quo- 
 tation. A book ought to be only incidentally, not 
 anatomically, discussed ; and I am pleased to be 
 able to think that there is a good deal of this allusive 
 talk at the University, and that the only reason that 
 there is not more is that professional demands are 
 so insistent, and work so thorough, that academical 
 persons cannot keep up their general reading as 
 they would like to do. 
 
 And then we come to what I have called, for 
 want of a better word, the ethical motive for read- 
 ing ; it might sound at first as if I meant that people 
 ought to read improving books, but that is exactly 
 what I do not mean. I have very strong opinions 
 on this point, and hold that what I call the ethical 
 motive for reading is the best of all indeed the 
 only true one. And yet I find a great difficulty in 
 putting into words what is a very elusive and deli- 
 cate thought. But my belief is this. As I make 
 my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain
 
 48 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. 
 I see that many people find the world drear)' -arid, 
 indeed, there must he spaces of dreariness in it for 
 us all some find it interesting ; some surprising ; 
 some find it entirely satisfactory. But those who 
 find it satisfactory seem to me, as a rule, to be 
 tough, coarse, healthy natures, who find success 
 attractiye and tood digestible : who do not trouble 
 their heads yery much about other people, but go 
 cheerfully and optimistically on their way, closing 
 their eyes as far as possible to things painful and 
 sorrowful, and getting .ill the pleasure they can out 
 of material enjoyments. 
 
 Well, to speak yery sincerely and humbly, such 
 a life seems to me the worst kind of failure. It is 
 the life that men were liying in the days of Noah, 
 and out of such h\es comes nothing that is wise or 
 useful or good. Such men leaye the world as they 
 tound it, except tor the fact that they haye eaten a 
 little way into it, like a mite into a cheese, and 
 leaye a track of decomposition behind them. 
 
 I do not know why so much that is hard and 
 painful and sad is interwoyen with our life here ; 
 but I see, or seem to see, that it is meant to be so 
 interwoyen. All the best and most beautiful flowers 
 of character and thought seem to me to spring up 
 in the track of sulferiiiL' ; ami what is the most sor- 
 rowful of all mysteries, the mystery of death, the 
 ceasing to be, tin- relinquishing of our hopes and 
 dreams, the breaking of our dearest ties, becomes 
 more solemn and au c-iii-piring the nearer we ad- 
 vance to it. 
 
 I do not mean tli.it \s e are to <M> ami search 
 lor unhappine: , ; hut, or) the oilier hand, the only
 
 BOOKS. 49 
 
 happiness worth seeking for is a happiness which 
 takes all these dark things into account, looks them 
 in the face, reads the secret of their dim eyes and 
 set lips, dwells with them, and learns to be tranquil 
 in their presence. 
 
 In this mood and it is a mood which no thought- 
 ful man can hope or ought to \vish to escape read- 
 ing becomes less and less a searching for instructive 
 and impressive facts, and more and more a quest 
 after wisdom and truth and emotion. More and 
 more I feel the impenetrability of the mystery that 
 surrounds us ; the phenomena of nature, the dis- 
 coveries of science, instead of raising the veil, seem 
 only to make the problem more complex, more 
 bizarre, more insoluble ; the investigation of the 
 laws of light, of electricity, of chemical action, of 
 the causes of disease, the influence of heredity all 
 these things may minister to our convenience and 
 our health, but they make the mind of God, the 
 nature of the First Cause, an infinitely more mys- 
 terious and inconceivable problem. 
 
 But there still remains, inside, so to speak, of 
 these astonishing facts, a whole range of intimate 
 personal phenomena, of emotion, of relationship, 
 of mental or spiritual conceptions, such as beauty, 
 affection, righteousness, which seem to be an even 
 nearer concern, even more vital to our happiness 
 than the vast laws of which it is possible for men 
 to be so unconscious, that centuries have rolled 
 past without their being investigated. 
 
 And thus in such a mood reading becomes a 
 patient tracing out of human emotion, human feel- 
 ing, when confronted with the sorrows, the hopes, 
 the motives, the suilerings which beckon us and
 
 5 o FROM A COLLECa: WINDOW. 
 
 threaten us on ever)- side. One desires to know 
 v. hat pure and wise and high-hearted natures have 
 made of the problem ; one desires to let the sense 
 of beaut v that most spiritual of all pleasures sink 
 deeper into the heart ; one desires to share the 
 thoughts and hopes, the dreams and visions, in the 
 strength of which the human spirit has risen superior 
 to suffering and death. 
 
 And thus, as 1 say, the reading that is done in 
 such a mood has little of precise acquisition or 
 definite attainment about it ; it is a desire rather 
 to feed and console the spirit to enter the region 
 in which it seems better to wonder than to know, 
 to aspire rather than to define, to hope rather than 
 o be satisfied. A spirit which walks expectantly 
 along this path grows to learn that the secret of 
 such happiness as we can attain lies in simplicity 
 and courage, in sincerity and loving-kindness ; it 
 grows more and more averse to material ambitions 
 and mean aims ; it more and more desires silence 
 and recollection and contemplation. In this mood, 
 the word'-, of the \sise tall like the tolling of sweet, 
 <_'rave bells upon the soul, the dreams of poets come 
 like music heard at evening from the depth of some 
 enchanted forest, wafted oxer a wide water; we 
 know not \\hat instrument it is whence the music 
 wells, bv \\hat finders swept, by what lips blown ; 
 but we know that there is some presence there that 
 is sorrouful or t^lad, uho has power to translate his 
 dream mt<i the conrord < >\ > \veet sounds. Such a 
 mood need DI. t \\it!idrau u^ from life, from toil, 
 from km iiv n l.ition In; s, hop; deep affections; but 
 it utll lather -end us back to lite uith a renewed 
 and joyful /e>t, uith a desire to discern the true
 
 BOOKS. 51 
 
 quality of beautiful things, of fair thoughts, of cour- 
 ageous hopes, of wise designs. It will make us 
 tolerant and forgiving, patient with stubbornness 
 and prejudice, simple in conduct, sincere in word, 
 gentle in deed ; with pity for weakness, with affec- 
 tion for the lonely and the desolate, with admiration 
 for all that is noble and serene and strong. 
 
 Those who read in such a spirit will tend to 
 resort more and more to large and wise and beauti- 
 ful books, to press the sweetness out of old familiar 
 thoughts, to look more for warmth and loftiness of 
 feeling than for elaborate and artful expression. 
 They will value more and more books that speak 
 to the soul, rather than books that appeal to the 
 ear and to the mind. They will realize that it is 
 through wisdom and force and nobility that books 
 retain their hold upon the hearts of men, and not 
 by briskness and colour and epigram. A mind 
 thus stored may have little grasp of facts, little 
 garniture of paradox and jest ; but it will be full of 
 compassion and hope, of gentleness and joy. . . . 
 
 Well, this thought has taken me a long way 
 from the College library, where the old books look 
 somewhat pathetically from the shelves, like aged 
 dogs wondering why no one takes them for a walk. 
 Monuments of pathetic labour, tasks patiently ful- 
 filled through slow hours ! But yet I am sure that 
 a great deal of joy went to the making of them, the 
 joy of the old scholar who settled down soberly 
 among his papers, and heard the silvery bell above 
 him tell out the dear hours that, perhaps, he would 
 have delayed if he could. Yes, the old books are 
 a tender-hearted and a joyful company ; the days 
 slip past, the sunlight moves round the court, and
 
 52 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 steals warmly tor an hour or two into the deserted 
 room. Lite delightful lite spins merrily past; 
 the perennial stream ot youth flows on ; and per- 
 haps the best that the old books can do for us is to 
 hid us cast back a wUttul and loving thought into 
 the pa.^t a little gift of love for the old labourers 
 who wrote so diligently in the forgotten hours, till 
 the weary, tailing hand laid down the familiar pen, 
 and soon lav silent in the dust.
 
 IV 
 
 SOCIABILITIES 
 
 I HAVE a friend here, an old friend, who, in re- 
 freshing contrast with the majority of the human 
 race, possesses strongly marked characteristics. He 
 knows exactly the sort of life that suits him, and 
 exactly what he likes. He is not, as Mr. Enfield 
 said, one of the fellows who go about doing what is 
 called " good." But he contrives to give a great 
 deal of happiness without having any programme. 
 He is, in the first place, a savant with a great repu- 
 tation ; but he makes no parade of his work, and 
 sits down to it because he likes it, as a hungry man 
 may sit down to a pleasant meal. He is thus the 
 most leisurely man that I know, while, at the same 
 time, his output is amazing. His table is covered 
 deep with books and papers ; but he will work at 
 a corner, if he is fortunate enough to find one ; and, 
 if not, he will make a kind of cutting in the mass, 
 and work in the shade, with steep banks of stratified 
 papers on either hand. He is always accessible, 
 always ready to help any one. The undergraduate, 
 that shy bird in whose sight the net is so often 
 spread in vain, even though it be baited with the 
 priceless privilege of tea, tobacco, and the talk of 
 a well-informed man, comes, in troops and com-
 
 54 FROM A COLLI-GK \VINDO\V 
 
 panics, to sec him. He is a man too with a deeo 
 vein of humour, and, what is far more rare, a keen 
 vein of appreciation of the humour of others. He 
 laughs as if he were amused, not like a man dis- 
 charging a painful duty. It is true that he will not 
 answer letters ; but then his writing-paper is gen- 
 erally drowned deeper than plummet can sound ; 
 his pens are rusty, and his ink is of the consistency 
 of tar ; but he will always answer questions, with 
 an incredible patience and sympathy, correcting 
 one's mistakes in a genial and tentative way, as if 
 a matter admitted of many opinions. If a man, for 
 instance, maintains that the Norman Conquest took 
 place in 1006 H.C., he will say that some historians 
 put it more than two thousand years later, but that 
 of course it is difficult to arrive at exact accuracy in 
 these matters. Thus one never feels snubbed or 
 snutFed out by him. 
 
 Well, for the purposes of my argument, I will 
 call my friend Perry, though it is not his name ; 
 and having finished mv introduction I will 110 on 
 
 O 
 
 to my main story. 
 
 I took in to dinner the other night a beautiful 
 and accomplished lady, uith v. horn it is always a 
 pleasure to talk. The conversation turned upon 
 Sir. Perry. She said v. itli a Liaceful air of judg- 
 ment that she had but <>;ie fault to find with him, 
 and that was that he hated women. 1 ha/arded a 
 belief that he was >hv, to \\hich she replied with a 
 di;;mv ! .. Durance that he \\as not shy ; he was la/y. 
 
 Pnidence and di-cretion forbade me to appeal 
 against this decision ; b'-it I endeavoured to arrive 
 at the principles th.it sup; ited such a verdict. I 
 gathered that Kreria roi cd that every one
 
 SOCIABILITIES. 55 
 
 owed a certain duty to society ; that people had no 
 business to pick and choose, to cultivate the society 
 of those who happened to please and interest them, 
 and to eschew the society of those who bored and 
 wearied them ; that such a course was not fair to the 
 uninteresting people, and so forth. But the point 
 was that there was a duty involved, and that some 
 sacrifice was required of virtuous people in the matter. 
 
 Egeria herself is certainly blameless in the 
 matter : she diffuses sweetness and light in many 
 tedious assemblies ; she is true to her principles ; 
 but for all that I cannot agree with her on this point. 
 
 In the first place I cannot agree that sociability 
 is a duty at all, and to conceive of it as such seems 
 to me to misunderstand the whole situation. I 
 think that a man loses a great deal by being un- 
 sociable, and that for his own happiness he had 
 better make an effort to see something of his fellows. 
 All kinds of grumpinesses and morbidities arise 
 from solitude ; and a shy man ought to take occa- 
 sional dips into society from a medicinal point of 
 view, as a man should take a cold bath ; even if 
 he confers no pleasure on others by so doing, the 
 mere sense, to a timid man, of having steered a 
 moderately straight course through a social enter- 
 tainment is in itself enlivening and invigorating, 
 and gives the pleasing feeling of having escaped 
 from a great peril. But the accusation of unso- 
 ciability does not apply to Perry, whose doors are 
 open day and night, and whose welcome is always 
 perfectly sincere. Moreover, the frame of mind in 
 which a man goes to a party, determined to confer 
 pleasure and exercise influence, is a dangerously 
 self-satisfied one. Society is, after all, a recreation
 
 5 6 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 and a delight, and ought to be sought for with 
 pleasurable motives, not \\ith a consciousness ot 
 rectitude and justice. 
 
 My own belief is that every one lias a perfect 
 right to choose his o\\ n circle, and to make it large 
 or small as lie desires. It is a monstrous thing to 
 hold that, it an agreeable or desirable person comes 
 to a pi. ice, one has but to leave a piece of paste- 
 board at his door to entail upon him the duty ot 
 coming round till he finds one at home, and of 
 disporting himselt gingerly, like a dancing bear 
 among the teacups. A card ought to be a species 
 of charity, left on solitary strangers, to give them 
 the chance ot coming, it they like, to see the leaver 
 >t it, or as a preliminary to a real invitation. It 
 ought to be a ticket of admission, which a man may 
 use or not as he likes, not a legal summons. That 
 any one should return a call should be a compliment 
 and an honour, not regarded as the mere discharg- 
 ing of a compulsory duty. 
 
 I have heard tair ladies complain of the bore- 
 dom they endured at tea-parties ; they speak ot 
 thcni<el\es as the martvrs and \ictims ot a sense of 
 duty. It MH'h peoj K- talked ot the duty of visit- 
 ing the MI. k and atilicted .IN a thing which their 
 eption ot Chn-nan love entailed upon them, 
 uhich they performed, reluctantly and unwillingly, 
 from a sense ot obligation, 1 .-hoidd respect them 
 dccpK and pr< <!"uii(il\ . Hut 1 h.ive not otteii found 
 that tl.f v. ho ioi ; lain most ot their social 
 
 duties, and \\ ho d; them most sedulously, 
 
 complain becau t upt .1 course ot 
 
 Christian i nee. !' is, indeed, rather the 
 
 othtr '\a\ ; it u geiiei.ilK 'i ue that those \sho see
 
 SOCIABILITIES. 57 
 
 a good deal of society (from a sense of duty) and 
 find it dull, are the people who have no particular 
 interests or pursuits of their own. 
 
 There is less excuse in a University town than 
 in any other for adopting this pompous and formal 
 view of the duties of society, because there are very 
 few unoccupied people in such a place. My own 
 occupations, such as they are, fill the hours from 
 breakfast to luncheon and from tea to dinner ; men 
 of sedentary lives, who do a good deal of brain- 
 work, find an hour or two of exercise and fresh air 
 a necessity in the afternoon. Indeed, a man who 
 cares about his work, and who regards it as a primary 
 duty, finds no occupation more dispiriting, more 
 apt to unfit him for serious work, than pacing from 
 house to house in the early afternoon, delivering a 
 pack of visiting-cards, varied by a perfunctory con- 
 versation, seated at the edge of an easy-chair, on 
 subjects of inconceivable triviality. Of course there 
 are men so constituted that they find this pastime 
 a relief and a pleasure ; but their felicity of tem- 
 perament ought not to be made into a rule for 
 serious-minded men. The only social institution 
 which might really prove beneficial in a University 
 is an informal evening salon. If people might drop 
 in uninvited, in evening dress or not, as was con- 
 venient, from nine to ten in the evening, at a 
 pleasant house, it would be a rational practice ; 
 but few such experiments seem ever to be tried. 
 
 Moreover, the one thing that is fatal to all 
 spontaneous social enjoyment is that the guests 
 should, like the maimed and blind in the parable, 
 be compelled to come in. The frame of mind of 
 an eminent Cabinet Minister whom I once accom-
 
 S 8 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 panicd to an evening party rises before my mind. 
 He was in deep depression at having to go ; and 
 when I ventured to ask his motive in going, he said, 
 with an air of unutterable self-sacrifice, " I suppose 
 that we ought sometimes to be ready to submit to 
 the tortures we inflict on others." Imagine a circle 
 of guests assembled in such a frame of mind, and 
 it would seem that one had all the materials for a 
 thoroughly pleasant party. 
 
 I was lately taken by a friend, with whom I was 
 staying in the country, to a garden party. I con- 
 fess that I think it would be hard to conceive cir- 
 cumstances less favourable to personal enjoyment. 
 The day was hot, and I was uncomfortably dressed. 
 I found myself first in a hot room, where the host 
 and hostess were en^a^ed in what is called receiv- 
 ing. A stream of pale, perspiring people moved 
 slowly through, some- of them frankly miserable, 
 some with an air of false geniality, which deceived 
 no one, written upon their laces. ' So pleasant to 
 see so many friends ! ' ' \\hat a delightful day 
 vou have got for your party ! ' Such ineptitudes 
 were the current coin of the market. I passed on 
 into another room where refreshment, 01 a nature 
 that I did not want, was sadly accepted. And I 
 'hen pa->cd out into the open air ; the garden was 
 disagiccahly crowded ; there was " a din of doubt- 
 ful talk." as RosM-tti says. The sun beat down 
 dr//ilv on my streaming brow. 1 joined group after 
 group, where the conversation was all of the same 
 easy and stimulating character, until I felt sick and 
 taint (tl <!<'!) of rol.iM constitution) with the 
 ma/e- < ,\ heat and sound ' in which my life 
 Kcemed ' tuniiii'j, turning," like the lite of the
 
 I 
 
 SOCIABILITIES. 59 
 
 heroine of " Requiescat." I declare that such a 
 performance is the sort of thing that I should ex- 
 pect to find in hell, even down to the burning marl, 
 as Milton says. I got away dizzy, unstrung, unfit 
 for life, with that terrible sense of fatigue unac- 
 companied by wholesome tiredness, that comes of 
 standing in hot buzzing places. I had heard not 
 a single word that amused or interested me ; and 
 et there were plenty of people present with whom 
 should have enjoyed a leisurely talk, to whom I 
 felt inclined to say, in the words of Prince Henry 
 to Poins, " Prithee, Ned, come out of this fat room, 
 and lend me thy hand to laugh a little ! " But as 
 I went away, I pondered sadly upon the almost 
 inconceivable nature of the motive which could lead 
 people to behave as I had seen them behaving, and 
 resolutely to label it pleasure. I suppose that, as a 
 matter of fact, many persons find stir, and move- 
 ment, and the presence of a crowd an agreeable 
 stimulus. I imagine that people are divided into 
 those who, if they see a crowd of human beings in 
 a field, have a desire to join them, and those who, 
 at the same sight, long to fly swiftly to the utter- 
 most ends of the earth. I am of the latter tem- 
 perament ; and I cannot believe that there is any 
 duty which should lead me to resist the impulse as 
 a temptation to evil. But the truth is that sociable 
 people, like liturgical people, require, for the full 
 satisfaction of their instincts, that a certain number 
 of other persons should be present at the ceremonies 
 which they affect, and that all should be occupied 
 in the same way. It is of little moment to the 
 originators of the ceremony whether those present 
 arc there willingly or unwillingly ; and thus the
 
 60 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 onlv resource of their victims is to go out on strike ; 
 so far from thinking it a duty to he present at social 
 or religious functions, in order that my sociable or 
 liturgical friends should have a suitable background 
 for their pleasures, I think it a solemn duty to resist 
 to the uttermost this false and vexatious theory of 
 society and religion ! 
 
 I suppose, too, that inveterate talkers and dis- 
 coursers require an audience who should listen 
 meekly and admiringly, and not interrupt. I have 
 friends who are alllicted with this taste to such an 
 extent, who are so determined to hold the talk in 
 their own hands, that I declare they might as well 
 have a company of stulFed seals to sit down to dinner 
 with, as a circle ot living and breathing men. But 
 I do not think it right, or at all events necessary, in 
 the interests of human kindliness, that I should 
 victimize myself so for a man's pleasure. Neither 
 do I think it necessary that I should attend a cere- 
 mony u here I neither i;et nor give anything of the 
 nature ot pleasure, simply in order to conform to 
 a social rule, invented and propagated by those who 
 happen to en]oy such gatherings. 
 
 I remember being much struck by an artless 
 reminiscence, of an undergraduate, quoted in the 
 Memoirs ot a certain distinguished academical per- 
 sonage, who was fond ot uniting young men to 
 share his hospitality for experimental reasons. 1 
 cannot recollect the exact words, but the under- 
 graduate wrote of Ins celebrated entertainer some- 
 what to tt.r following clicct : 'He asked me to sit 
 do\sn, so I sate do\\ n ; he asked me to eat an 
 apple, so ! ate it. lie- askol me to take a glass of 
 wine, so 1 poured one out, and drank it. I am
 
 SOCIABILITIES. 61 
 
 told that he tries to get you to talk so that he may 
 see the kind of fellow you are ; but I didn't want 
 him to know the kind of fellow I was, so I didn't 
 talk ; and presently I went away." I think that 
 this species of retaliation is perfectly fair in the 
 case of experimental entertainments. Social gather- 
 ings must be conducted on a basis of perfect equal- 
 ity, and the idea of duty in connection with them 
 is a bugbear invented in the interests of those who 
 are greedy of society, and not in a position to con- 
 tribute any pleasure to a social gathering. 
 
 It might be inferred from the above considera- 
 tions that I am an inveterately unsociable person ; 
 but such is not the case. I am extremely gre- 
 garious at the right time and place. I love to 
 spend a large part of the day alone ; I think that 
 a perfect day consists in a solitary breakfast and a 
 solitary morning ; a single companion for luncheon 
 and exercise ; again some solitary hours ; but then 
 I love to dine in company and, if possible, to spend 
 the rest of the evening with two or three congenial 
 persons. But more and more, as life goes on, do 
 I find the mixed company tiresome, and the tete-d- 
 t$te delightful. The only amusement of society is 
 the getting to know what other people really think 
 and feel : what amuses them, what pleases them, 
 what shocks them ; what they like and what they 
 loathe ; what they tolerate and what they con- 
 demn. A dinner-party is agreeable, principally be- 
 cause one is absolutely tied down to make the best 
 of two people. Very few English people have the 
 art of conversing unaffectedly and sincerely before 
 a circle ; when one does come across it, it is a rare 
 and beautiful art, like singing, or oratory. But the
 
 62 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 presence of such an impravisatore is the only thing 
 that makes a circle tolerable. On the other hand, 
 a great many English people have the art of t/te-d- 
 tSte talking ; and I can honestly say that 1 have 
 very seldom been brought into close relations with 
 an individual without rinding an unsuspected depth 
 and width of interest in the companionship. 
 
 Hut in any case the whole thing is a mere ques- 
 tion of pleasure ; and 1 return to my thesis, which 
 is that the only possible theory is for every one to 
 rind and create the kind of society that he or she 
 may like. Depend upon it, congenial society is the 
 only kind of society to, and in which, any one will 
 give his best. If people like the society of the 
 restaurant, the club, the drawing-room, the dining- 
 room, the open air, the cricket-field, the moor, the 
 golf-course, in the name of pleasure and common 
 sense let them have it ; but to condemn people, by 
 brandishing the fierv sword of duty over their heads, 
 tc attend uncongenial gatherings seems to me to be 
 both absurd and unjust. 
 
 The case of my friend Perry is, I must admit, 
 complicated by the fact that he does add greatly 
 to the happiness of any circle of which he is a 
 member ; he is an admirable listener and a sym- 
 pathetic talker. But it Egeria desires to make a 
 Nurna of him, and to inspire him with her own 
 gentle wisdom, let her convince him quietly that 
 he does owe a duty to society, and not censure him 
 before his friends. If Egeria, in her own inimitable 
 way, would say to him that the lives of academical 
 ladies uere apt to be dull, and that it was a matte i 
 of gracetul chivalry for him to brighten the horizon, 
 why, IVrry could not resist he; But chivalry is a
 
 SOCIABILITIES. 63 
 
 thing which must be courteously and generously 
 conceded, and must never he pettishly claimed ; 
 and indeed I do not want Perry interfered with 
 in this matter : he fills a very peculiar niche, he 
 is a lodestar to enthusiastic undergraduates ; he 
 is the joy of sober common-rooms. I wish with 
 all my heart that the convenances of life permitted 
 Egeria herself to stray into those book-lined rooms, 
 dim with tobacco-smoke, to warble and sing to the 
 accompaniment of Perry's cracked piano, to take 
 her place among the casual company. But as Egeria 
 cannot go to Perry, and as Perry will not go to 
 Egeria, they must respect each other from a dis- 
 tance, and do their best alone. 
 
 And, after all, simple, sincere, and kindly per- 
 sons are apt to find, as Stevenson wisely said, their 
 circle ready-made. The only people who cannot 
 get the friends and companions they want are those 
 who petulantly claim attention ; and the worst error 
 of all consists in mistaking the gentle pleasures of 
 life, such as society and intercourse, for the duties 
 of life, and of codifying and formalizing them. 
 For myself, I wish with all my heart that I had 
 Perry's power ; I wish that those throngs of young 
 men would feel impelled to come in and talk to 
 me, easily and simply. I have, it is true, several 
 faithful friends, but very few of them will come 
 except in response to a definite invitation ; and 
 really, if they do not want to come, I do not at all 
 wish to force them to do so. It mi^ht amuse me ; 
 
 o ' 
 
 but if it amused them, they would come : as they 
 do not come, I am quite ready to conclude that 
 it does not amuse them. I am as conscious as 
 every one else of the exquisitely stimulating and
 
 6 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 entertaining character of my own talk ; it con- 
 stantly pains me that so few people take advantage 
 of their opportunities of visiting the healing fount. 
 But the fact is incontestable that my talents are not 
 appreciated at their riidit value ; and I must be 
 content with such slender encouragement as I re- 
 ceive. In vain do I purchase choice brands of 
 cigars and cigarettes, and load my side-table with 
 the best Scotch whisky. Not even with that solace 
 will the vagrant undergraduate consent to be douched 
 under the stream of my suggestive conversation. 
 
 A humorous friend ot mine, Tipton by name, 
 an ofiicial of a neighbouring college, told me that 
 he held receptions of undergraduates on Sunday 
 evenings. I believe tli.it he is in reality a model 
 host, hill of resource and sprightliness, and that 
 admission to his entertainments is eagerly coveted. 
 Hut it pleases him to depreciate his own success. 
 Oh, yes," he said, in answer to my questions as 
 to the art he practised, " a tew of them come ; one 
 or tuo because they h!:e UK ; some because they 
 thin', there is going to he a row about attendance 
 at eli. '.pel, and hope- to mend matters ; one or two 
 ! ecause the\ like to stand \\ell with the dons, when 
 there i> ;i chance of a fellowship; but the lowest 
 motive ot ;ill," he went on, " \\as the motive which 
 I he.trd from the lips of one on a summer evening, 
 when my \\mdo\\s were all open, and I was just 
 prepared to recei\e hoarders ; an ingenuous friend 
 of mine beneath : aid to ai unoccupied youth, 
 
 ' U '' ' you tl::n!. about doing a Tipper to- 
 
 nr.dit : ' To \\hieh th'- other replied, ' Well, yes, 
 <>ne to do one a term ; let's go in at once 
 
 ;md '/el it o\ er.'
 
 CONVERSATION 
 
 I CANNOT help wishing sometimes that English 
 people had more theories about conversation. 
 Really good talk is one of the greatest pleasures 
 there is, and yet how rarely one comes across it ! 
 There are a good many people among my ac- 
 quaintance who on occasions are capable of talking 
 well. But what they seem to lack is initiative, and 
 deliberate purpose. If people would only look 
 upon conversation in a more serious light, much 
 would be gained. I do not of course mean, Heaven 
 forbid ! that people should try to converse seriously ; 
 that results in the worst kind of dreariness, in feel- 
 ing, as Stevenson said, that one has the brain of a 
 sheep and the eyes of a boiled codfish. But I mean 
 that the more seriously one takes an amusement, 
 the more amusing it becomes. What I wish is that 
 people would apply the same sort of seriousness to 
 talk that they apply to golf and bridge ; that they 
 should desire to improve their game, brood over 
 their mistakes, try to do better. Why is it that so 
 many people would think it priggish and effemi- 
 nate to try to improve their talk, and yet think it 
 manly and rational to try to shoot better ? Of 
 course it must be done with a natural zest and
 
 66 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 enjoyment, or it is useless. What a ghastly picture 
 one pets of the old-fashioned talkers and wits, com- 
 mitting a number of subjects to memory, turning 
 over a commonplace book for apposite anecdotes 
 and jests, adding dates to those selected that they 
 may not tell the same story again too soon, learn- 
 ing t.p a list of epigram?, stuck in a shaving-glass, 
 when they are dressing for dinner, and then sally- 
 ing forth primed to bursting with conversation ! It 
 is all very well to know beforehand the kind of line 
 you would vsish to take, but spontaneity is a neces- 
 sary ingredient of talk, and to make up one's mind 
 to get certain stories in, is to deprive talk of its 
 fortuitous charm. When two celebrated talkers of 
 the kind that I have described used to meet, the 
 talk was nothing but a smart interchange of anec- 
 dotes. There is a story of Macaulay and some 
 other great conversationalist getting into the swing 
 at breakfast when staying, 1 think, with Lord Lans- 
 downe. They drew their chairs to the tire, the rest 
 of the company formed a circle round them, and 
 listened meekly to the dialogue until luncheon. 
 What an appalling picture ! One sympathizes with 
 C'arlvle on the occasion when he was asked to 
 dinner to meet a ureat talker, who poured forth a 
 continuous ilow of jest and anecdote until the meal 
 was far advanced. Then came a lull ; Carlyle 
 laid d"wn his knife and fork, and looking round 
 \Mth the famous " crucified " expression on his face, 
 said in a voice of a^oni/ed entreaty, " For (Jod's 
 sake tal.c me auav, and put me in a room by my- 
 self, aiu! give me a pipe of tobacco!' He felt, 
 as I have felt on such occasions, an imperative need 
 of silence ;nul recollection and repose. Indeed, as
 
 CONVERSATION. 67 
 
 he said on another occasion, of one of Coleridge's 
 harangues, " to sit still and be pumped into is never 
 an exhilarating process." 
 
 That species of talker is, however, practically 
 extinct ; though indeed I have met men whose idea 
 of talk was a string of anecdotes, and who employed 
 the reluctant intervals of silence imposed upon them 
 by the desperate attempt of fellow-guests to join 
 in the fun, in arranging the points of their next 
 anecdote. 
 
 What seems to me so odd about a talker of 
 that kind is the lack of any sense of justice about 
 his talk. He presumably enjoys the exercise of 
 speech, and it seems to me strange that it should 
 not occur to him that others may like it too, and 
 that he should not concede a certain opportunity 
 to others to have their say, if only in the interests 
 of fair play. It is as though a gourmet's satisfac- 
 tion in a good dinner were not complete unless he 
 could prevent every one else from partaking of the 
 food before them. 
 
 What is really most needed in social gatherings 
 is a kind of moderator of the talk, an informal presi- 
 dent. Many people, as I have said, are quite ca- 
 pable of talking interestingly, if they get a lead. The 
 perfect moderator should have a large stock of 
 subjects of general interest. He should, so to 
 speak, kick-off. And then he should either feel, 
 or at least artfully simulate, an interest in other 
 people's point of view. He should ask questions, 
 reply to arguments, encourage, elicit expressions of 
 opinion. He should not desire to steer his ow r n 
 course, but follow the line that the talk happens 
 to take. If he aims at the reputation of being a
 
 68 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 pood talker, hi- will win a far higher fame by pur- 
 suing this course ; tor it is a lamentable fact that, 
 after a lively talk, one is apt to remember far better 
 what one has oneself contributed to the discussion 
 than what other people have said ; and if you can 
 send guests away from a gathering feeling that they 
 have talked well, they will be disposed in that genial 
 mood to concede conversational merit to the other 
 participators. A naive and simple-minded friend 
 of my own once cast an extraordinary light on the 
 subject, by sa\ing to me, the day after an agree- 
 able symposium at my own house, " We had a very 
 pleasant evening with you yesterday. I was in 
 great form " ! 
 
 The only two kinds of talker that I find tire- 
 some are the talker of paradoxes and the egotist. A 
 few paradoxes are all vcrv v.ell; they are stimu- 
 lating and gently provocative. Hut one gets tired 
 ot a string of them ; they become little more than 
 a sort of fence erected round a man's mind ; one 
 despairs ot e\er knowing what a paradoxical talker 
 really thinks. Halt the charm of good talk con- 
 sists in the glimpses and peeps one gets into the 
 stutf ot a man's thoughts ; and it is wearisome to 
 feel that a talker is tor ever tossing subjects on his 
 horn-, perpetually tr\mg to say the unexpected, the 
 startling thing. In the best talk of all, a glade 
 suddenly opens up, like the glades in the Alpine 
 forests through which they bring the timber down 
 to the \;illev ; one sees a IMIV^ tureen vista, all bathed 
 in ' mg sun hme, \sith the dark head of :i 
 
 mountain it the t"p. Sn in the best talk one lr^ 
 a sudden ^ighl ot something hu/h. sweet, serious 
 ansfrre
 
 CONVERSATION. 69 
 
 The other kind of talk that I find very disagree- 
 able is the talk of a full-fledged egotist, who con- 
 verses without reference to his hearers, and brings 
 out what is in his mind. One gets interesting 
 things in this way from time to time ; but the 
 essence, as I have said, of good talk is that one 
 should have provoking and stimulating peeps into 
 other minds, not that one should be compelled to 
 gaze and stare into them. I have a friend, or rather 
 an acquaintance, whose talk is just as if he opened 
 a trap-door into his mind : you look into a dark 
 place where something flows, stream or sewer ; 
 sometimes it runs clear and brisk, but at other 
 times it seems to be charged with dirt and debris ; 
 and yet there is no escape ; you have to stand and 
 look, to breathe the very odours of the mind, until 
 he chooses to close the door. 
 
 The mistake that many earnest and persevering 
 talkers make is to suppose that to be engrossed is 
 the same thing as being engrossing. It is true of 
 conversation as of many other things, that the 
 half is better than the whole. People who are 
 fond of talking ought to beware of being lengthy. 
 How one knows the despair of conversing with 
 a man who is determined to make a clear and 
 complete statement of everything, and not to let 
 his hearer off anything ! Arguments, questions, 
 views, rise in the mind in the course of the harangue, 
 and are swept away by the moving stream. Such 
 talkers suffer from a complacent feeling that their 
 information is correct and complete, and that their 
 deductions are necessarily sound. But it is quite 
 possible to form and hold a strong opinion, and 
 yet to realize that it is after all only one point of
 
 70 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 view, and that there is probably much to be said 
 on the other side. The unhappiest feature of drift- 
 ing into a habit of positive and continuous talk is 
 that one has few friends faithful enough to criticise 
 such a habit and tell one the unvarnished truth ; if 
 the habit is once confirmed, it becomes almost 
 impossible to break it <>tf. I know of a family con- 
 clave that was once summoned, in order, if possible, 
 to communicate the fact to one of the circle that 
 he was in danger of becoming a bore ; the head 
 of the family was finally deputed to convey the fact 
 as delicately as possible to the erring brother. He 
 did so, with much tender circumlocution. The 
 offender was deeply mortified, but endeavoured to 
 thank his elderly relative for discharging so painful 
 a task. He promised aim -lulment. He sate glum 
 and tongue-tied for several weeks in the midst of 
 cheerful gatherings. Verv gradually the old habit 
 prevailed. Within six months he was as tedious as 
 ever ; but uhat is the saddest part of the whole 
 business is that he has never quite forgiven the teller 
 of the unwelcome news, uhile at the same time he 
 labours under the impression that he has cured 
 himself of the habit. 
 
 It is, of course, useless to attempt to make one- 
 self into a brilliant talker, because the qualities 
 in-died humour, quickness, the power of seeing 
 unexpected connections, picturesque phrasing, nat- 
 ural charm, sympathv, readiness, and so forth- 
 are things hardly attainable by effort. But much 
 can be done |>v perseverance ; and it is possible to 
 form a deliberate habit ot conversation by deter- 
 mining that however mikh one may be indisposed 
 to talk, however unpromising one's comoamons
 
 CONVERSATION. 71 
 
 may seem, one will at all events keep up an end. 
 I have known really shy and unready persons who 
 from a sheer sense of duty have made themselves 
 into very tolerable talkers. A friend of my ac- 
 quaintance confesses that a device she has occa- 
 sionally employed is to think of subjects in alpha- 
 betical order. I could not practise this device 
 myself, because when I had lighted upon, we will 
 say, algebra, archery, and astigmatism, as possible 
 subjects for talk, I should find it impossible to 
 invent any gambit by which they could be suc- 
 cessfully introduced. 
 
 The only recipe which I would offer to a student 
 of the art is not to be afraid of apparent egotism, 
 but to talk frankly of any subject in which he may 
 be interested, from a personal point of view. An 
 impersonal talker is apt to be a dull dog. There is 
 nothing like a frank expression of personal views to 
 elicit an equally frank expression of divergence or 
 agreement. Neither is it well to despise the day 
 of small things ; the weather, railway travelling, 
 symptoms of illness, visits to a dentist, sea-sick- 
 ness, as representing the universal experiences and 
 interests of humanity, will often serve as points 
 d'appui. 
 
 Of course there come to all people horrible 
 tongue-tied moments w r hen they can think of noth- 
 ing to say, and feel like a walrus on an ice-floe, 
 heavy, melancholy, ineffective. Such a catastrophe 
 is almost invariably precipitated in my own case by 
 being told that some one is particularly anxious to 
 be introduced to me. A philosopher of my acquaint- 
 ance, who was an admirable talker, told me that on 
 a certain occasion, an evening party, his hostess led
 
 72 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 up a young girl to him, like Iphigcnia decked for 
 the sacrifice, and said that Miss - - was desirous 
 of meeting him. The world became instantly a 
 blank to him. The enthusiastic damsel stared at 
 him with large admiring eyes. After a period of 
 agonized silence, a remark occurred to him which 
 he felt might have been appropriate if it had been 
 made earlier in tin encounter. He rejected it as 
 useless, and after another interval a thought came 
 to him which he saw might have served, if the 
 suspense had not been already so prolonged ; this 
 was also put aside ; and after a series of belated 
 remarks had occurred to him, each of which seemed 
 to be hopelessly unworthy of the expectation he 
 had excited, the hostess, seeing that things had 
 gone wroni:, came, like Artemis, and led Iphigenia 
 away, without the philosopher having had the op- 
 portunity of induliMM'j in a single reflection. The 
 experience, he said, was of so appalling a character, 
 that he set to, and invented a remark which he said 
 was applicable to persons of all ages and of either 
 sex, under any circumstances whatever ; but, as 
 he would never reveal thi.- precious possession to 
 the most ardent inquirers, the secret, whatever it 
 was, has perished with him. 
 
 One of my friends has a perfectly unique gift of 
 conversation. He is a prominent man of alFairs, 
 a perfect mine of politu.il secrets. He is a ready 
 talker, and has the art, both in a tetc-a-tctt as well 
 as in a mixed comp.mv, ot mentioning things which 
 are cxtieri.-lv intere-tnrj. and appear to be- hope- 
 lessly null erect. He L'cnerallv accompanies hia 
 relation ot these incident.-, with a request that the 
 subject mav not be mentioned outside. The result
 
 CONVERSATION. 73 
 
 is that every one who is brought into contact with him 
 feels that he is selected by the great man because of 
 some happy gift of temperament, trustworthiness, 
 or discretion, or even on grounds of personal im- 
 portance, to be the recipient of this signal mark of 
 confidence. On one occasion I endeavoured, after 
 one of these conversations, not for the sake of be- 
 traying him, but in the interests of a diary which I 
 keep, to formulate in precise and permanent terms 
 some of this interesting intelligence. To my in- 
 tense surprise and disappointment, I found myself 
 entirely unable to recollect, much less to express, any 
 of his statements. They had melted in the mind, 
 like some delicate confection, and left behind them 
 nothing but a faint aroma of interest and pleasure. 
 
 This would be a dangerous example to imitate, 
 because it requires a very subtle species of art to 
 select incidents and episodes which should both 
 gratify the hearers, and which at the same time it 
 should be impossible to hand on. Most people 
 who attempted such a task would sink into being 
 miserable blabbers of tacenda, mere sieves through 
 which matters of secret importance would granu- 
 late into the hands of ardent journalists. But at 
 once to stimulate and gratify curiosity, and to give 
 a quiet circle the sense of being admitted to the 
 inmost penetralia of affairs , is a triumph of con- 
 versational art. 
 
 Dr. Johnson used to say that he loved to stretch 
 his legs and have his talk out ; and the fact re- 
 mains that the best conversation one gets is the 
 conversation that one does not scheme for, and 
 even on occasions from which one has expected 
 but little. The talks that remain in my mind as
 
 74 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 of pre-eminent interest are long leisurely 
 tfte talks, oftencst perhaps of all in the course ol 
 a walk, when exercise sends the blood coursing 
 through the brain, when a pleasant countryside 
 tunes the spirit to a serene harmony of mood, and 
 when the mind, stimulated into a joyful readiness by 
 association with some quiet, just, and perceptive 
 companion, visits its dusty warehouse, and turns 
 over its fantastic stores. Then is the time to pene- 
 trate into the inmost labyrinths of a subject, to in- 
 dulge in pleasing discursiveness, as the fancy leads 
 one, and yet to return again and again with renewed 
 relish to the central theme. Such talks as these, 
 with no overshadowing anxiety upon the mind, held 
 on bree/y uplands or in pleasant country lanes, 
 make the moments, indeed, to which the mind, 
 in the sad mood which remembers the days that 
 are ( j"iie, turns with that sorrowful desolation of 
 which Dante speaks, as to a treasure lightly spent 
 and ungratefully regarded. How such hours rise 
 up In-fore the mind ! Kven now as I write I think 
 of such a scene, when 1 walked with a friend, long 
 dead, on the broad vcllow sands beside a western 
 sea. I can re-call the ^liarp hiss of the shoreward 
 wind, the wholesome savours ot the brine, the soft 
 clap ot -mall waves, the sand-dunes behind the shore, 
 pricket! with L'i'cen tutts ot <jrass, the ships moving 
 slowlv on the sea's run, and the shadowy headland 
 to whit h we hardly seemed to draw more near, while 
 we spoke ot all that was in our hearts, and all that 
 we meant to do and be. That day was a great gitt 
 from ( MM! ; and yet, as 1 received it, 1 did not know 
 how tan a jewel of memory it would be. I like 
 to think that there are many such jewels of recollec-
 
 CONVERSATION. 75 
 
 tion clasped close in the heart's casket, even in the 
 minds or men and women that I meet, that seem 
 so commonplace to me, so interesting to them- 
 selves ! 
 
 It is strange, in reflecting about the memorable 
 talks I have held with different people, to find that 
 I remember best the talks that I have had with 
 men, rather than with women. There is a kind 
 of simple openness, an equal comradeship in talks 
 with men, which I find it difficult to attain in the 
 case of women. I suppose that some unsuspected 
 mystery of sex creeps in, and that with women 
 there is a whole range of experiences and emo- 
 tions that one does not share, so that there is an 
 invisible and intangible barrier erected between the 
 two minds. I feel, too, in talking with women, 
 that I am met with almost too much sympathy and 
 tact, so that one falls into an egotistical mood. It is 
 difficult, too, 1 find, to be as frank in talking with 
 women as with men ; because I think that women 
 tend more than men to hold a preconceived idea of 
 one's character and tastes ; and it is difficult to talk 
 simply and naturally to any one who has formed 
 a mental picture of one, especially if one is aware 
 that it is not correct. But men are slower to form 
 impressions, and thus talk is more experimental ; 
 moreover, in talking with men, one encounters 
 more opposition, and opposition puts one more on 
 one's mettle. 
 
 Thus a tSte-d-tete \vith a man of similar tastes, 
 who is just and yet sympathetic, critical yet appre- 
 ciative, whose point of view just differs enough to 
 make it possible for him to throw sidelights on a 
 subject, and to illumine aspect? of it that were un-
 
 76 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 perceived and neglected this is a high intellectual 
 pleasure, a potion to be delicately sipped at leisure. 
 
 Hut after all it is impossible to say \vhat makes 
 a conversationalist. There are people who seem to 
 possess every qualification for conversing except the 
 power to converse. The two absolutely essential 
 things are, in the first place, a certain charm of 
 mind and even manner, which is a purely instinctive 
 gift ; and, in the second place, real sympathy with, 
 real interest in the deuteragonist. 
 
 People can be useful talkers, even interesting 
 talkers, without these gifts. One may like to hear 
 what a man of vigorous mind may have to say on a 
 subject that he knows well, even if he is unsym- 
 pathetic. Hut then one listens in a receptive frame 
 of mind, as though one were prepared to attend a 
 lecture. There are plenty of useful talkers at a 
 t'nivcrsitv, men whom it is a pleasure to meet occa- 
 sionally, men with whom one tries, so to speak, a 
 variety ot conversational Hies, and who will give 
 one line sport when they are lairly hooked. Hut 
 thoiiL'h a University is a place where one ought to 
 expect to find abundance ot the best talk, the want 
 <it leisure among the present generation of Dons 
 is a serious bar to interesting talk. By the evening 
 the majority of Dons are apt to be tired. They 
 have been hard at uork most of the day, and they 
 look upon the sociable evening hours as a time to 
 be given up to what the Scotch call " datiing " ; 
 that is to say, .1 sort ot nimble interchange ot humor- 
 ous or mte:rxtmg go^-ip ; a man who pursues a 
 subject intently is apt to be thought a bore. I think 
 that the mni .ie-a^i-d Don is apt to be less interest- 
 ing than cither the elderlv or the vouthtul Don
 
 CONVERSATION. 77 
 
 The middle-aged Don is, like all successful pro- 
 fessional men, full to the brim of affairs. He has 
 little time for general reading. He lectures, he 
 attends meetings, his table is covered with papers, 
 and his leisure hours are full of interviews. But 
 the younger Don is generally less occupied and 
 more enthusiastic ; and best of all is the elderly 
 Don, who is beginning to take things more easily, 
 has a knowledge of men, a philosophy and a good- 
 humoured tolerance which makes him more acces- 
 sible. He is not in a hurry, he is not preoccupied. 
 He studies the daily papers with deliberation, and 
 he has just enough duties to make him feel whole- 
 somely busy. His ambitions are things of the past, 
 and he is gratified by attention and deference. 
 
 I suppose the same is the case, in a certain 
 degree, all the world over. But the truth about con- 
 versation is that, to make anything of it, people 
 must realize it as a definite mental occupation, and 
 not merely a dribbling into words of casual thoughts. 
 To do it well implies a certain deliberate intention, 
 a certain unselfishness, a certain zest. The diffi- 
 culty is that it demands a catholicity of interests, a 
 full mind. Yet it does not do to have a subject 
 on the brain, and to introduce it into all companies. 
 The pity is that conversation is not more recog- 
 nized as a definite accomplishment. People who 
 care about the success of social gatherings are apt 
 to invite an instrumentalist or a singer, or a man 
 with what may be called parlour tricks ; but few 
 people are equally careful to plant out two or three 
 conversationalists among their parties, or to take 
 care that their conversationalists are provided with 
 a sympathetic background.
 
 78 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 For the fact remains that conversation is a 
 real art, and depends like all other arts upon con- 
 genial circumstances and suitable surroundings. 
 People are too apt to believe that, because they 
 have interests in their minds and can nut those in- 
 terests into words, they are equipped tor the pretty 
 and delicate game of talk. Hut a rare admixture of 
 qualities is needed, and a subtle conversational elfcct, 
 a sudden fancy, that throws a charming or a bizarre 
 light on a subject, a power of pleasing metaphorical 
 expression, the communication of an imaginative 
 interest to a familiar topic all these things are oi 
 the nature of instinctive ait. I have heard well- 
 intonncd and sensible people talk of a subject in a 
 way that made me feel that I desired never to 
 hear it mentioned ag.iin ; but I have heard, on the 
 other hand, people talk of matters which I had 
 believed to be worn threadbare by use, and yet 
 communicate a rich colour, a fragrant sentiment 
 to them, which made me ieel that I had never 
 thought adequately on the topic before. One 
 should be careful, I think, to express to such per- 
 sons one's appreciation and admiration of their 
 gifts, for the art is so rare that we ought to wel- 
 come it when we find it ; and, like all arts, it 
 depends to a urcat extent for its sustenance on 
 the avowed L'ratitude <>i tho>e who enjoy it. It is 
 on these subtle halt-toned glimpses of personality 
 and -ice that mo-t of our happv impre.-sions 
 
 of hie depend; and no one ean alioid wilfully to 
 neglect (it innocent lov, or to lose oppor- 
 
 tunities of pleasure through a stupid or brutal 
 contempt for the slender !e.sourccs out of \\luch 
 these gent !< elfect:-. arc pi > uluced
 
 VI 
 BEAUTY 
 
 I WAS visited, as I sate in my room to-day, by 
 one of those sudden impressions of rare beauty 
 that come and go like flashes, and which leave 
 one desiring a similar experience. The materials 
 of the impression were simple and familiar enough. 
 My room looks out into a little court ; there is a 
 plot of grass, and to the right of it an old stone- 
 built wall, close against which stands a row of aged 
 lime-trees. Straight opposite, at right angles to the 
 wall, is the east side of the Hall, with its big plain 
 traceried window enlivened with a few heraldic 
 shields of stained glass. While I was looking out 
 to-day there came a flying burst of sun, and the 
 little corner became a sudden feast of delicate colour ; 
 the fresh green of the grass, the foliage of the lime- 
 trees, their brown wrinkled stems, the pale moss 
 on the walls, the bright points of colour in the 
 emblazonries of the window, made a sudden deli- 
 cate harmony of tints. I had seen the place a 
 hundred times before without ever guessing what 
 a perfect picture it made. 
 
 What a strange power the perception of beauty 
 is ! It seems to ebb and flow like some secret 
 tide, independent alike of health or disease, of joy
 
 8o FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 or sorrow. There arc times in our lives when 
 we seem to go sinning on our way, and when the 
 beauty of the world sets itself like a quiet harmony 
 to the song we uplift. Then again come seasons 
 when all is well with us, when we are prosperous 
 and contented, interested in lite and all its concerns, 
 when no perception of beauty comes near us ; 
 when we are tranquil and content, and take no heed 
 of the delicate visions ot the day ; when music 
 has no inner voice, and poetry seems a mere cheer- 
 ful jingling of ordered phrases. Then again we 
 have a time of gloom and dreariness ; work has 
 no interest, pleasure no savour ; we go about our 
 business and our delight alike in a leaden mood of 
 dulness ; and yet again, when we are surrounded 
 \vith care and trouble, perhaps in pain or weakness 
 of body, there Hashes into the darkened life an 
 exquisite perception of things beautiful and rare ; 
 the vision of a spring copse with all its tapestry 
 of flowers, bright points of radiant colour, tills us 
 with a strange yearning, a delightful pain ; in such 
 a mood a tew chords ot music, the haunting melody 
 ot some familiar line of verse, the song of a bird at 
 dawn, the light of sunset on lonely fields, thrill us 
 with an inexpressible rapture. 1'erhaps some of 
 those who read these uorJs will say that it is all 
 an unreal, a fantastic experience of which I speak. 
 ( )t course there are manv tranquil, wholesome, 
 equable natures to whom Mich an experience is un- 
 known ; but it is to me one ot the truest and com- 
 monest things of my lite to be \ isilcd by this strange 
 perception and appieciation ot beauty, which gives 
 the davs in which 1 am conscious ot it a memorable 
 quality, that seems to make them the momentous
 
 BEAUTY. 81 
 
 days of one's life ; and yet again the mood is so 
 utterly withdrawn at intervals, that the despondent 
 spirit feels that it can never return ; and then a 
 new day dawns, and the sense comes back again 
 to bless me. 
 
 If the emotion which I describe followed the 
 variations of bodily health ; if it came when all 
 was prosperous and joyful, and was withdrawn 
 when the light was low ; if it deserted me in seasons 
 of robust vigour, and came when the bodily vitality 
 was depressed, I could refer it to some physical 
 basis. But it contradicts all material laws, and 
 seems to come and go with a whimsical determina- 
 tion of its own. When it is with me, nothing can 
 banish it ; it pulls insistently at my elbow ; it 
 diverts my attention in the midst of the gravest 
 business ; and, on the other hand, no extremity of 
 sorrow or gloom can suspend it. I have stood 
 beside the grave of one I loved, with the shadow 
 of urgent business, of hard detailed arrangements 
 of a practical kind, hanging over me, with the light 
 gone out of life, and the prospect unutterably 
 dreary ; and yet the strange spirit has been with 
 me, so that a strain of music should have power to 
 affect me to tears, and the delicate petals of the 
 very funeral wreaths should draw me into a rap- 
 turous contemplation of their fresh curves, their 
 lovely intricacy, their penetrating fragrance. In 
 such a moment one could find it in one's heart to 
 believe that some ethereal soulless creature, like 
 Ariel of the " Tempest," was floating at one's side, 
 directing one's attention, like a petulant child, to 
 the things that touched its light-hearted fancy, and 
 constraining one into an unsought enjoyment.
 
 82 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 Neither does it seem to be an intellectual pro- 
 cess ; because it comes in the same self-willed way, 
 alike when one's mind is deeply engrossed in con- 
 genial work, as well as when one is busy and dis- 
 tracted ; one raises one's head for an instant, and 
 the sunlight on a flowing water or on an ancient 
 wall, the sound of the wind among trees, the calling 
 of birds, take one captive with the mysterious spell ; 
 or on another day when I am working, under ap- 
 parently the same conditions, the sun may fall 
 golden on the old garden, the dove may murmur 
 in the high elm, the daffodils may hang their sweet 
 heads among the meadow-grass, and yet the scene 
 may be dark to me and silent, with no charm and 
 no significance. 
 
 It all seems to enact itself in a separate region 
 of the spirit, neither in the physical nor in the 
 mental region. It may come for a few moments 
 in a day, and then it may depart in an instant. 
 I was taking a week ago \\hat, for the sake of the 
 associations, I call my holiday. I walked with a 
 cheerful companion amon^ spring woods, lying 
 nestled in the folds and dingles of the Sussex hills ; 
 the sky was full of flying gleams ; the distant ridges, 
 clothed in wood, lay blue and remote in the warm 
 air ; but I caret! for none of these things. Then, 
 when we stood for a moment in a place where I 
 have stood a hundred times before, where a full 
 stream spills itselt over a pair of broken lock-gates 
 into a deserted lock, \\here the stonecrop grows 
 among the masonry, ami tin- aiders root themselves 
 among the mouKlci ni-j brickwork, the mood came 
 upon me, and 1 felt lil.c a thirsty soul that has 
 found a bubbling spring coming out cool from its
 
 BEAUTY. 83 
 
 hidden caverns on the hot hillside. The sight, the 
 sound, fed and satisfied my spirit ; and yet I had 
 not known that I had needed anything. 
 
 That it is, I will not say, a wholly capricious 
 thing, but a thing that depends upon a certain 
 harmony of mood, is best proved by the fact that 
 the same poem or piece of music which can at one 
 time evoke the sensation most intensely, will at 
 another time fail to convey the slightest hint of 
 charm, so that one can even wonder in a dreary 
 way what it could be that one had ever admired 
 and loved. But it is this very evanescent quality 
 which gives me a certain sense of security. If one 
 reads the lives of people with strong aesthetic per- 
 ceptions, such as Rossetti, Pater, J. A. Symonds, 
 one feels that these natures ran a certain risk of 
 being absorbed in delicate perception. One feels 
 that a sensation of beauty was to them so rap- 
 turous a thing that they ran the risk of making the 
 pursuit of such sensations the one object and busi- 
 ness of their existence ; of sweeping the w r aters of 
 life with busy nets, in the hope of entangling some 
 creature " of bright hue and sharp fin " ; of con- 
 sidering the days and hours that were unvisited 
 by such perceptions barren and drears 7 . This is, 
 I cannot help feeling, a dangerous business ; it is 
 to make of the soul nothing but a delicate instru- 
 ment for registering aesthetic perceptions ; and the 
 result is a loss of balance and proportion, an excess 
 of sentiment. The peril is that, as life goes on, and 
 as the perceptive faculty gets blunted and jaded, a 
 mood of pessimism creeps over the mind. 
 
 From this I am personally saved by the fact 
 that the sense of beauty is, as I have said, so whim-
 
 84 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 sical in its movements. I should never think of 
 setting out deliberately to capture these sensations, 
 because it would be so futile a task. No kind of 
 occupation, however prosaic, however absorbing, 
 seems to be either favourable to this perception, or 
 the reverse. It is not even like bodily health, 
 which has its variations, but is on the whole likely 
 to result from a certain defined regime of diet, exer- 
 cise, and habits ; and what would still more preserve 
 me from making a deliberate attempt to capture it 
 would be that it comes perhaps most poignantly 
 and insistently of all when I am uneasy, overstrained, 
 and melancholy. No ! the only thing to do is to 
 live one's lite without reference to it, to be thankful 
 when it comes, and to be contented when it is with- 
 drawn. 
 
 1 sometimes think that a great deal of stufT is 
 both written and talked about the beauties of nature. 
 By this 1 do not mean for a moment that nature 
 is less beautiful than is supposed, but that many of 
 the rapturous expressions one hears and sees used 
 about the enjoyment ot nature are very insincere ; 
 though it is equally true on the other hand that a 
 great deal of genuine admiration of natural beauty 
 is not expressed, perhaps hardly consciously felt. 
 To have a true and deep appreciation of nature 
 dcmaiuU a certain poetical force, which is rare ; 
 and a threat many people who have a considerable 
 power ot expression, but little originality, feel 
 bound to expend a portion of this upon expressing 
 an ailn.ir.ition for nature uhich they do not so 
 much actually feel as think themselves hound to 
 feel, because they believe that people in general 
 expect it ot them.
 
 BEAUTY. 85 
 
 But on the other hand there is, I am sure, in 
 the hearts of many quiet people a real love for 
 and delight in the beauty of the kindly earth, the 
 silent and exquisite changes, the influx and efflux 
 of life, which we call the seasons, the rich trans- 
 figuring influences of sunrise and sunset, the slow 
 or swift lapse of clear streams, the march and plunge 
 of sea-billows, the bewildering beauty and aromatic 
 scents of those delicate toys of God which we call 
 flowers, the large air and the sun, the star-strewn 
 spaces of the night. 
 
 Those who are fortunate enough to spend their 
 lives in the quiet country-side have much of this 
 tranquil and unuttered love of nature ; and others 
 again, who are condemned by circumstances to 
 spend their days in toilsome towns, and yet have 
 the instinct, derived perhaps from long generations 
 of country forefathers, feel this beauty, in the short 
 weeks when they are enabled to approach it, more 
 poignantly still. 
 
 FitzGerald tells a story of how he went to see 
 Thomas Carlyle in London, and sate with him in a 
 room at the top of his house, with a wide prospect 
 of house-backs and chimney-pots ; and how the 
 sage reviled and vituperated the horrors of city life, 
 and yet left on FitzGerald's mind the impression 
 that perhaps after all he did not really wish to leave it. 
 
 The fact remains, however, that a love of nature 
 is part of the panoply of cultivation which at the 
 present time people above a certain social standing 
 feel bound to assume. Very few ordinary persons 
 would care to avow that they took no interest in 
 national politics, in games and sport, in literature, 
 in appreciation of nature, or in religion. As a
 
 86 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 matter of fact the vital interest that is taken in 
 these subjects, except perhaps in games and sport, 
 is far below the interest that is expressed in them. 
 A person who said frankly that he thought that 
 any of these subjects were uninteresting, tiresome 
 or absurd, would be thought stupid or affected, 
 even brutal. Probably most of the people who 
 express a deep concern for these things believe 
 that they are giving utterance to a sincere feel- 
 ing ; but not to expatiate on the emotions which 
 they mistake for the real emotion in the other de- 
 partments, there are probably a good many people 
 who mistake for a love of nature the pleasure of 
 fresh air, physical movement, and change of scene. 
 Many worthy golfers, for instance, who do not know 
 that they are speaking insincerely, attribute, in con- 
 versation, the pleasure they feel in pursuing their 
 game to the agreeable surroundings in which it is 
 pursued ; but my secret belief is that they pay 
 more attention to the lie of the little white ball, 
 and the character of bunkers, than to the pageantry 
 of sea and sky. 
 
 As with all other refined pleasures, there is 
 no doubt that the pleasure derived from the ob- 
 servation of nature can be, if not acquired, im- 
 rnen>ely increased by pi act ice. I am not now 
 speaking of the pursuit of natural history but the 
 pursuit of natural emotion. The thing to aim at, 
 as is the ease with all aitistic pleasures, is the per- 
 ception of quality, of small etiects. Many of the 
 people who believe themselves to have an appre- 
 ciation ot natural scenery cannot appreciate it ex- 
 cept on a sensational scale. They can derive a 
 certain pleasure from wui prospects of startling
 
 BEAUTY. 87 
 
 beauty, rugged mountains, steep gorges, great falls 
 of water all the things that are supposed to be 
 picturesque. But though this is all very well as 
 far as it goes, it is a very elementary kind of thing. 
 The perception of which I speak is a perception 
 which can be fed in the most familiar scene, in the 
 shortest stroll, even in a momentary glance from a 
 window. The things to look out for are little 
 accidents of light and colour, little effects of chance 
 grouping, the transfiguration of some well-known 
 and even commonplace object, such as is produced 
 by the sudden burst into greenness of the trees 
 that peep over some suburban garden wall, or by 
 the sunlight falling, by a happy fortune, on pool 
 or flower. Much of course depends upon the inner 
 mood ; there are days when it seems impossible to 
 be thrilled by anything, when a perverse dreariness 
 holds the mind ; and then all of a sudden the 
 gentle and wistful mood flows back, and the world 
 is full of beauty to the brim. 
 
 Here, if anywhere, in this town of ancient col- 
 leges, is abundant material of beauty for eye and 
 mind. It is not, it is true, the simple beauty of 
 nature ; but nature has been invoked to sanctify 
 and mellow art. These stately stone-fronted build- 
 ings have weathered like crags and precipices. They 
 rise out of dark ancient embowered gardens. They 
 are like bright birds of the forest dwelling content- 
 edly in gilded cages. These great palaces of learn- 
 ing, beautiful when seen in the setting of sunny 
 gardens, and with even a sterner dignity when 
 planted, like a fortress of quiet, close to the very 
 dust and din of the street, hold many treasures of 
 statelv loveliness and fair association ; this city of
 
 88 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 palaces, thick-set with spires and towers, as rich 
 and dim as Camclot, is invested with a romance 
 that few cities can equal ; and then the waterside 
 pleasaunces with their trim alleys, their air of 
 ancient security and wealthy seclusion, have an 
 incomparable charm ; day by day, as one hurries or 
 saunters through the streets, the charm strikes across 
 the mind with an incredible force, a newness of 
 impression which is the test of the highest beauty. 
 Vet these auain are beauties of a sensational order 
 which beat insistently upon the dullest mind. The 
 true connoisseur of natural beauty acquiesces in, 
 nay prefers, an economy, an austerity of effect. The 
 curve of a wood seen a hundred times before, the 
 gentle line of a fallow, a little pool among the pas- 
 tures, fringed with rushes, the long blue line of the 
 distant downs, the cloud-perspective, the still sunset 
 L'low these will give him ever new delights, and 
 delights that grow with observation and intuition. 
 
 1 have spoken hitherto ot nature as she appears 
 to the unruffled, the perceptive mind ; but let us 
 further consider what relation nature can bear to 
 rhe burdened heart and the overshadowed mood. 
 Is there indeed a vis nu'diciitrix in nature which can 
 heal our grief and console our anxieties ? The 
 country for a wounded heart " says the old proverb. 
 Is that indeed true ? 1 am here inclined to part 
 companv uith \vise men and poets who have spoken 
 and sun'.: ot the consoling power ot nature. I 
 think it is not so. It is true that anything which 
 \\e love very dceplv lias a certain power ot dis- 
 tracting the n.ind. hint 1 tliink there is no greater 
 at'ony than to be confronted \sitli tranquil pas- 
 >ionate beauty, when the heart and spirit are out
 
 BEAUTY. 89 
 
 of tune with it. In the days of one's joy, nature 
 laughs with us ; in the days of vague and fantastic 
 melancholy, there is an air of wistfulness, of mys- 
 tery, that ministers to our luxurious sadness. But 
 when one bears about the heavy burden of a harass- 
 ing anxiety of sorrow, then the smile on the face 
 of nature has something poisonous, almost madden- 
 ing about it. It breeds an emotion that is like the 
 rage of Othello when he looks upon the face of 
 Desdemona, and believes her false. Nature has no 
 sympathy, no pity. She has her work to do, and 
 the swift and bright process goes on ; she casts her 
 failures aside with merciless glee ; she seems to say 
 to men oppressed by sorrow and sickness, " This is 
 no world for you ; rejoice and make merry, or I 
 have no need of you." In a far-off way, indeed, the 
 gentle beauty of nature may help a sad heart, by 
 seeming to assure one that the mind of God is set 
 upon what is fair and sweet ; but neither God nor 
 nature seems to have any direct message to the 
 stricken heart. 
 
 " Not till the fire is dying in the grate 
 Look we for any kinship with the stars," 
 
 says a subtle poet ; and such comfort as nature 
 can give is not the direct comfort of sympathy 
 and tenderness, but only the comfort that can be 
 resolutely distilled from the contemplation of nature 
 by man's indomitable spirit. For nature tends to 
 replace rather than to heal ; and the sadness of 
 life consists for most of us in the irreplaceaMeness 
 of the things we love and lose. The lesson is a 
 hard one, that ' Nature tolerates, she does not 
 need." Let us only be sure that it is a true one,
 
 90 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 for nothing but the truth can give us ultimate re- 
 pose. To the youthful spirit it is different, for all 
 that the young and ardent need is that, if the old 
 fails them, some new delight should be substituted. 
 They but desire that the truth should be hidden 
 from their gaze ; as in the childish stories, when 
 the hero and heroine have been safely piloted 
 through danger and brought into prosperity, the 
 door is closed with a snap. ' They lived happily 
 ever afterwards." But the older spirit knows that 
 the " ever " must be deleted, makes question of the 
 " afterwards," and looks through to the old age 
 of bereavement and sorrow, when the two must 
 again be parted. 
 
 But I would have every one who cares to estab- 
 lish a wise economy of life and joy, cultivate, by all 
 means in his power, a sympathy with and a delight 
 in nature. We tend, in this age of ours, when 
 communication is so easy and rapid, when the daily 
 paper brings the whole course of the world into our 
 secluded libraries, to be too busy, too much pre- 
 occupied ; to value excitement above tranquillity, 
 and interest above peace. It is good for us all to 
 be much alone, not to tly from society, but resolutely 
 to determine that we will not be dependent upon it 
 for our comfort. I would have all busy people 
 make times in their lives when, at the cost of some 
 amusement, and payintj the price perhaps of a little 
 melancholy, thcv should try to be alone with nature 
 and their own hearts. They should try to realize 
 the quiet unwearying life that manifests itself in 
 field and wood. They should wander alone in soli- 
 tary places, where the ha/el-hidden stream makes 
 music, and the bird sings out of the heart of the
 
 BEAUTY. 91 
 
 forest ; in meadows where the flowers grow brightly, 
 or through the copse, purple with bluebells or 
 starred with anemones ; or they may climb the 
 crisp turf of the down, and see the wonderful world 
 lie spread out beneath their feet, with some cluster- 
 ing town " smouldering and glittering " in the dis- 
 tance ; or lie upon the cliff-top, with the fields of 
 waving wheat behind, and the sea spread out like 
 a wrinkled marble floor in front ; or walk on the 
 sand beside the falling waves. Perhaps a soi- 
 disant sensible man may see these words and think 
 that I am a sad sentimentalist. I cannot help it ; 
 it is what I believe ; nay, I will go further, and say 
 that a man who does not wish to do these things is 
 shutting one of the doors of his spirit, a door through 
 which many sweet and true things come in. " Con- 
 sider the lilies of the field " said long ago One 
 whom we profess to follow as our Guide and Master. 
 And a quiet receptiveness, an openness of eye, a 
 simple readiness to take in these gentle impressions 
 is, I believe with all my heart, of the essence of 
 true wisdom. We have all of us our work to 
 do in the world ; but we have our lesson to learn 
 as well. The man with the muck-rake in the old 
 parable, who raked together the straws and the 
 dust of the street, was faithful enough if he was 
 set to do that lowly work ; but had he only cared 
 to look up, had he only had a moment's leisure, he 
 would have seen that the celestial crown hung close 
 above his head, and within reach of his forgetful 
 hand. 
 
 There is a well-known passage in a brilliant 
 modern satire, where a trenchant satirist declares 
 that he has tracked all human emotions to their
 
 92 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 lair, and has discovered that they all consist of 
 some dilution of primal and degrading instincts. 
 But the pure and passionless love of natural beauty 
 can have nothing that is acquisitive or reproductive 
 about it. There is no physical instinct to which 
 it can be referred ; it arouses no sense of proprie- 
 torship ; it cannot be connected with any impulse 
 for self-preservation. If it were merely aroused by 
 tranquil, comfortable amenities of scene, it might 
 be referable to the general sense of well-being, and 
 of contented life under pleasant conditions. But it 
 is aroused just as strongly bv prospects that are 
 inimical to life and comfort, lashing storms, inac- 
 cessible peaks, desolate moors, wild sunsets, foam- 
 ing seas. It is a sense of wonder, of mystery ; it 
 arouses a strange and yearning desire for we know 
 not what ; very often a rich melancholy attends it, 
 which is yet not painful or sorrowful, but heightens 
 and intensifies the significance, the value of life. I 
 do not know how to interpret it, but it seems to me 
 to be a call from without, a beckoning of some 
 large and loving power to the soul. The primal 
 instincts of which 1 have spoken all tend to con- 
 centrate the mind upon itself, to strengthen it tor 
 a selfish part ; but the beauty of nature seems to be 
 a call to the spirit to come forth, like the voice 
 which summoned La/arus from the rock-hewn 
 sepulchre. It bids us to believe that our small 
 identities, our limited desires, do not say the last 
 word for us, but that there is something larger 
 and stronger outside, in which we may claim a 
 share. As I write thoe vvonls 1 look out upon a 
 strairje tran^lr/uration of a familiar scene. The sky 
 is full of hl.icl. and mkv eloiuls, but from the low
 
 BEAUTY. 93 
 
 setting sun there pours an intense pale radiance, 
 which lights up house-roofs, trees, and fields, with a 
 white light ; a flight of pigeons, wheeling high in the 
 air, become brilliant specks of moving light upon 
 a background of dark rolling vapour. What is the 
 meaning of the intense and rapturous thrill that 
 this sends through me ? It is no selfish delight, no 
 personal profit that it gives me. It promises me 
 nothing, it sends me nothing but a deep and mys- 
 terious satisfaction, which seems to make light of 
 my sullen and petty moods. 
 
 I was reading the other day, in a strange book, 
 of the influence of magic upon the spirit, the vague 
 dreams of the deeper mind that could be awak- 
 ened by the contemplation of symbols. It seemed 
 to me to be unreal and fantastic, a manufacturing of 
 secrets, a playing of whimsical tricks with the mind ; 
 and yet I ought not to say that, because it was evi- 
 dently written in good faith. But I have since re- 
 flected that it is true in a sense of all those who 
 are sensitive to the influences of the spirit. Nature 
 has a magic for many of us that is to say, a secret 
 power that strikes across our lives at intervals, with 
 a message from an unknown region. And this 
 message is aroused too by symbols ; a tree, a flash 
 of light on lonely clouds, a flower, a stream- 
 simple things that we have seen a thousand times 
 have sometimes the power to cast a spell over 
 our spirit, and to bring something that is great 
 and incommunicable near us. This must be called 
 magic, for it is not a thing which can be explained 
 by ordinary laws, or dcrmed in precise terms ; but 
 the spell is there, real, insistent, undeniable ; it 
 seems to make a bridge for the spirit to pass into
 
 94 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 a far-off, dimly apprehended region ; it ^ives us 
 a sense of great issues and remote visions ; it leaves 
 us with a longing which has no mortal fulfilment. 
 
 These are of course merely idiosyncrasies of 
 perception ; but it is a far more difficult task to 
 attempt to indicate what the perception of beauty 
 is, and whence the mind derives the unhesitating 
 canons with which it judges and appraises beauty. 
 The reason, I believe, why the sense is weaker than 
 it need be in many people, is that, instead of trust- 
 ing their own instinct in the matter, they from their 
 earliest years endeavour to correct their perception 
 of what is beautiful by the opinions of other people, 
 and to superimpose on their own taste the taste of 
 others. I mvself hold strongly that nothing is worth 
 admiring which is not admired sincerely. Of course 
 one must not form one's opinions too early, or hold 
 them arrogantly or self-sufficiently. If one finds a 
 large number of people admiring or professing to 
 admire a certain class of objects, a certain species 
 of scene, one ought to make a resolute effort to see 
 what it is that appeals to them. But there ought to 
 come a time, when one has imbibed sufficient ex- 
 perience, when one should begin to decide and to 
 distinguish, and to form one's own taste. And then 
 I believe it is better to be individual than catholic, 
 and better to attempt to feed one's own genuine 
 sense of preference, than to continue attempting to 
 correct it by the standard of other people. 
 
 It remains th;it the whole instinct for admiring 
 beauty is one ot the most mysterious experiences 
 of the mind. There are certain things, like thr 
 curves and colours of flowers, the movements 
 of young animals, that seem to have a perennial
 
 BEAUTY. 95 
 
 attraction for the human spirit. But the enjoy- 
 ment of natural scenery, at all events of wild and 
 rugged prospects, seems hardly to have existed 
 among ancient writers, and to have originated as 
 late as the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson spoke 
 of mountains with disgust, and Gray seems to have 
 been probably the first man who deliberately culti- 
 vated a delight in the sight of those " monstrous 
 creatures of God," as he calls mountains. Till his 
 time, the emotions that " nodding rocks " and " cas- 
 cades " gave our forefathers seem mostly to have 
 been emotions of terror ; but Gray seems to have 
 had a perception of the true quality of landscape 
 beauty, as indeed that wonderful, chilly, unsatis- 
 fied, critical nature seems to have had of almost 
 everything. His letters are full of beautiful vig- 
 nettes, and it pleases me to think that he visited 
 Rydal and thought it beautiful, about the time that 
 Wordsworth first drew breath. 
 
 But the perception of beauty in art, in archi- 
 tecture, in music, is a far more complicated thing, 
 for there seem to be no fixed canons here ; what 
 one needs in art, for instance, is not that things 
 should be perfectly seen and accurately presented ; 
 a picture of hard fidelity is often entirely displeas- 
 ing ; but one craves for a certain sense of person- 
 ality, of emotion, of inner truth ; something that 
 seizes tyrannously upon the soul, and makes one 
 desire more of the intangible and indescribable 
 essence. 
 
 I always feel that the instinct for beauty is 
 perhaps the surest indication of some essence of 
 immortality in the soul ; and indeed there are 
 moments when it gives one the sense of pre-
 
 96 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 existence, the feeling that one has loved these fair 
 things in a region that is further back even than 
 the beginnings of consciousness. Blake, indeed, 
 in one of his wild halt-inspired utterances, went 
 even further, and announced that a man's hopes of 
 immortality depended not upon virtuous conduct 
 but upon intellectual perception. And it is hard to 
 resist the belief, when one is brought into the pres- 
 ence of perfect beauty, in whatever form it may 
 come, that the deep craving it arouses is meant to 
 receive a satisfaction more deep and real than the 
 act of mere contemplation can give. I have felt in 
 such moments as if I were on the verge of grasping 
 some momentous secret, as if only the thinnest of 
 veils hung between me and some knowledge that 
 would set my whole lite and being on a different 
 plane. But the moment passes, and the secret 
 delays. Yet we are n<j;lit to regard such emotions 
 as direct messages from (lod; because they bring 
 with them no desire of possession, which is the 
 sign of mortality, but ratlin the divine desire to be 
 possessed by them ; that the reality, whatever it 
 be, of which beauty is the symbol, may enter in 
 and enthral the soul. It remains a mystery, like all 
 the best things to which we draw near. And the 
 joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes 
 from their contemplation, that there are many doors 
 yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward 
 way : that we are at the threshold and not near the 
 goal; and then, like the :'low of sunset, rises the 
 hope that the i:rave, tar trom being the gate of 
 death, mav be indeed the vale of life.
 
 VT1 
 
 ART 
 
 I OFTEN wish that we had a more beautiful 
 word than " art " for so beautiful a thing ; it 
 is in itself a snappish explosive word, like the cry 
 of an angry animal ; and it has, too, to bear the 
 sad burden of its own misuse by affected people. 
 Moreover, it stands for so many things, that one 
 is never quite sure what the people who use it in- 
 tend it to mean ; some people use it in an abstract, 
 some in a concrete sense ; and it is unfortunate, 
 too, in bearing, in certain usages, a nuance of un- 
 reality and scheming. 
 
 What I mean by art, in its deepest and truest 
 sense, is a certain perceptiveness, a power of see- 
 ing what is characteristic, coupled as a rule, in the 
 artistic temperament, with a certain power of 
 expression, an imaginative gift which can raise 
 a large fabric out of slender resources, building a 
 palace, like the Genie in the story of Aladdin, in 
 a single night. 
 
 The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, 
 than is supposed. Most people find it difficult to 
 believe in the existence of it, unless it is accom- 
 panied by certain fragile signs of its existence, such 
 as water-colour drawing, or a tendency to strum 
 
 4
 
 98 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 on a piano. But, as a matter of fact, the posses- 
 sion of an artistic temperament, without the power 
 of expression, is one of the commonest causes of 
 unhappiness in the world. Who does not know 
 those ill-regulated, fastidious people, who have a 
 strong sense of their own significance and position, 
 a sense which is not justified by any particular 
 performance, who are contemptuous of others, 
 critical, hard to satisfy, who have a general sense 
 of disappointment and dreariness, a craving for 
 recognition, and a feeling that they are not appre- 
 ciated at their true worth ? To such people, sen- 
 sitive, ineffective, proud, every circumstance of life 
 gives food for discontent. They have vague percep- 
 tions which they cannot translate into words or 
 symbols. They find their work humdrum and un- 
 exciting, their relations with others tiresome ; they 
 think that under different circumstances and in 
 other surroundings they might have played a braver 
 part ; they never realize that the root of their un- 
 happiness lies in themselves ; and, perhaps, it is 
 merciful that they do not, for the fact that they 
 can accumulate blame upon the conditions imposed 
 on them by fate is the only thing that saves them 
 from irreclaimable depression. 
 
 Sometimes, again, the temperament exists with 
 a certain power of expression, but without sufficient 
 perseverance or hard technical merit to produce 
 artistic successes ; and thus we get the amateur. 
 Sometimes it is the other way, and the technical 
 power of production is developed beyond the inner 
 pcrceptivcness ; and this produces a species of dull 
 soulless art, and the rule ot the professional artist. 
 Verv rarclv one sees the outward and the inward
 
 ART. 99 
 
 power perfectly combined, but then we get the 
 humble, hopeful artist who lives for and in his 
 work ; he is humble because he cannot reach the 
 perfection for which he strives ; he is hopeful 
 because he gets nearer to it day by day. But, 
 speaking generally, the temperament is not one that 
 brings steady happiness ; it brings with it moments 
 of rapture, when some bright dream is being real- 
 ized ; but it brings with it also moments of deep 
 depression, when dreams are silent, and the weary 
 brain fears that the light is quenched. There 
 are, indeed, instances of the equable disposition 
 being found in connection with the artistic temper ; 
 such were Reynolds, Handel, Wordsworth. But 
 the annals of art are crowded with the figures of 
 those who have had to bear the doom of art, and 
 have been denied the tranquil spirit. 
 
 But besides all these, there are artistic tempera- 
 ments which do not express themselves in any of 
 the recognized mediums of art, but which apply 
 their powers direct to life itself. I do not mean 
 successful, professional people, who win their tri- 
 umphs by a happy sanity and directness of view, to 
 whom labour is congenial and success enjoyable ; 
 but I mean those who have a fine perception of 
 quality in innumerable forms ; who are interested 
 in the salient points of others, who delight to enter 
 into appropriate relations with those they meet, to 
 whom life itself, its joys and sorrows, its gifts and 
 its losses, has a certain romantic, beautiful, mys- 
 terious savour. Such people have a strong sense 
 of the significance of their relations with others, 
 they enjoy dealing with characters, with problems, 
 with situations. Having both interest and sym-
 
 ioo FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 pathy, they net the best out of other people ; they 
 pierce through the conventional fence that so manv 
 of us erect as a protection against intrusion. Such 
 people bring the same perception to bear on tech- 
 nical art. They enjov books, art, music, without 
 any envious desire to province ; they can enjoy the 
 noble pleasure of admiring and praising. Again and 
 again, in reading the lives of artists, one comes across 
 traces of these wise and generous spirits, who have 
 loved the society of artists, have understood them, 
 and whose admiration has never been clouded by 
 the least shadow of that jealousy which is the curse 
 of most artistic natures. People without artistic 
 sensibilities find the society of artists trying ; be- 
 cause they see only their irritability, their vanity, 
 their egotism, and cannot sympathize with the 
 visions by which they are haunted. But those who 
 can understand without jealousy, pass by the exact- 
 ing vagaries of the artist \\ith a gentle and tender 
 compassion, and evoke what is sincere and generous 
 and lovable, without am conscious elTort. 
 
 It is not, 1 think, often enough realized that the 
 ba.sis of the succc.^tul artistic temperament is a 
 certain hardness combined with great superficial 
 sensitiveness. Those who see the artistic nature 
 suittly and emotionalK aliected by a beautiful or 
 a pathetic thing, wh see Hi it a th.Mnjht, a line of 
 poetrv, a bar of music, a sketch, will c\okc a thrill 
 of feeling to \shich thev cannot themselves aspire, 
 are apt to think that -.uch a spirit is necessarily tar 
 and tender, and that it possesses unfathomable re- 
 serve- ' nob). 'i hi is otten a i;reat mis- 
 take ; tar belov. the ; rent of chan:j'f": and 
 glittering emotion there otten lies, in the artistic
 
 ART. 101 
 
 nature, a reserve, not of tenderness or depth, but of 
 cold and critical calm. There are very few people 
 who are highly developed in one faculty who do not 
 pay for it in some other part of their natures. Below 
 the emotion itself there sits enthroned a hard intel- 
 lectual force, a power of appraising quality, a Rhada- 
 manthine judgment. It is this hardness which has 
 so often made artists such excellent men of business, 
 so alert to strike favourable bargains. In those 
 artists whose medium is words this hardness is not 
 so often detected as it is in the case of other artists, 
 for they have the power of rhetoric, the power of 
 luxuriously heightening impressions, indeed of 
 imaginatively simulating a force which is in reality 
 of a superficial nature. One of the greatest powers 
 of great artists is that of hinting at an emotion which 
 they have very possibly never intimately gauged. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that this is in all prob- 
 ability the reason why women, with all their power 
 of swift impression, of subtle intuition, have so sel- 
 dom achieved the highest stations in art. It is, I 
 think, because they seldom or never have that calm, 
 strong egotism at the base of their natures, which 
 men so constantly have, and which indeed seems 
 almost a condition of attaining the highest success in 
 art. The male artist can believe whole-heartedly 
 and with entire absorption in the value of \vhat he 
 is doing, can realize it as the one end of his being, 
 the object for which his life was given him. He can 
 believe that all experience, all relations with others, 
 all emotions, are and must be subservient to this one 
 aim ; they can deepen for him the channels in which 
 his art flows ; they can reveal and illustrate to him 
 the significance of the world of which he is the in-
 
 102 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 terprcter. Such an aspiration can be a very high 
 and holy thing ; it can lead a man to live purely and 
 laboriously, to make sacrifices, to endure hardness. 
 But the altar on which the sacrifice is made, stands, 
 \vhcn all is said and done, before the idol of self. 
 But with women it is ditferent. The deepest quality 
 in their hearts is, one may gratefully say, an in- 
 tense devotion to others, an unselfishness which is 
 unconscious of itself ; and thus their aim is to help, 
 to encourage, to sympathize ; and their artistic gitts 
 are subordinated to a deeper purpose, the desire of 
 giving and serving. One with such a passion in the 
 heart is incapable of believing art to be the deepest 
 thing in the world ; it is to such an one more like 
 the lily which floats upwards, to bloom on the sur- 
 face of some dim pool, a thing exquisitely fair and 
 symbolical of mysteries ; but all growing out of the 
 depths of life, and not a thing which is deeper and 
 truer than life. 
 
 It is useless to try to dive deeper than the secrets 
 of personality and temperament. One must merely 
 be grateful for the beauty which springs from them. 
 We must reflect that the hard, vigorous, hammered 
 qualitv, which is characteristic of the best art, can 
 only be produced, in a mood ot blind and unquestion- 
 ing faith, by a temperament which believes that such 
 production is its highest end. But one who stands 
 a little apart from the artistic world, and yet ardently 
 loves it, can see that, be.uitiful as is the dream of 
 the artist, true and pure a^ hi> aspiration is, there is 
 yet a d'-eper mystery ot life still, of which art is 
 nothing but a symbol and an evidence. Perhaps 
 that very belief ma\ \ \' ; If \\eaken a man's possi- 
 bilities in nt. But, tor m\<e!f', I know that I regard
 
 ART. 103 
 
 the absorption in art as a terrible and strong temp- 
 tation for one whose chief pleasure lies in the delight 
 of expression, and who seems, in the zest of shaping 
 a melodious sentence to express as perfectly and 
 lucidly as possible the shape of the thought within, 
 to touch the highest joy of which the spirit is capable. 
 A thought, a scene of beauty comes home with an 
 irresistible sense of pow r er and meaning to the mind 
 or eye ; for God to have devised the pale liquid 
 green of the enamelled evening sky, to have set the 
 dark forms of trees against it, and to have hung a 
 star in the thickening gloom to have done this, and 
 to see that it is good, seems, in certain moods, to be 
 the dearest work of the Divine mind ; and the de- 
 sire to express it, to speak simply of the sight, and 
 of the joy that it arouses, comes upon the mind with 
 a sweet agony, an irresistible spell ; life would seem 
 to have been well spent if one had only caught a 
 few such imperishable ecstasies, and written them 
 down in a record that might convey the same joy to 
 others. But behind this rises the deeper conviction 
 that this is not the end ; that there are deeper and 
 sweeter secrets in the heavenly treasure-house ; and 
 then comes in the shadow of a fear that, in yielding 
 thus delightedly to these imperative joys, one is 
 blinding the inner eye to the perception of the 
 remoter and more divine truth. And then at last 
 comes the conviction, in which it is possible alike 
 to rest and to labour, that it is right to devote one's 
 time and energy to presenting these rich emotions 
 as perfectly as they can be presented, so long as 
 one keeps open the further avenues of the soul, and 
 believes that art is but one of the antechambers 
 through which one must take one's faithful way,
 
 104 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 before the doors of the Presence itself can be flung 
 wide. 
 
 But \vhether one be of the happy number or 
 not who have the haunting instinct for some special 
 form of expression, one may learn at all events to 
 deal with lite in an artistic spirit. I do not at all 
 mean by that that one should learn to overvalue the 
 artistic side of lite, to hold personal emotion to be 
 a finer thing than m; Itish usefulness. I mean 
 rather that one should aim at the perception of 
 qualitv, the quality of actions, the quality of thoughts, 
 the quality of character ; that one should not be 
 misled by public opinion, that one should not con- 
 sider the value of a man's thoughts to be affected 
 by his social position ; but that one should look 
 out for and appreciate sense, vigour, faithfulness, 
 kindness, rectitude, and <\ i-Mnality, in ho\\ever 
 humble a sphere these qualities may be displayed. 
 That one should tight hard against conventionality, 
 that one should welcome beauty, both the beauty 
 of natural things, as \\ell as the beauty displayed 
 in sincere and simple- live- in every rank of life. 
 I have heard conventional p; i!e>sional people, who 
 thought they were giving utterance to manly and 
 independent sentiments, speak slightingly of dukes 
 and duchesses, as it the possession of high rank 
 nece^arilv forfeited all claims to simplicity and 
 true-heartedness. Sueli an attitude is as inartistic 
 and offensive as tor a duchess to think that fine 
 courier and con -; lei ation could not be found 
 among washerwomen. The truth is that beauty 
 of char.u ter i> ju ' n and just as un- 
 
 common ai;i"i-' people ol high rank as it is among 
 bagmen ; and the only just attitude to adopt is
 
 ART. 105 
 
 to approach all persons simply and directly on the 
 grounds of our common humanity. One who does 
 this will find simplicity, tenderness, and rectitude 
 among persons of high rank ; he will also find 
 conventionality, meanness, and complacency among 
 them ; when he is brought into contact with bag- 
 men, he will find bagmen of sincerity, directness, 
 and delicacy, while he will also find pompous, com- 
 placent, and conventional bagmen. 
 
 Of course the special circumstances of any life 
 tend to develop certain innate faults of character 
 into prominence ; but it may safely be said that 
 circumstances never develop a fault that is not 
 naturally there ; and, not to travel far for in- 
 stances, I will only say that one of the most un- 
 affected and humble-minded persons I have ever 
 met was a duke, while one of the proudest and 
 most affected Pharisees I ever encountered was a 
 servant. It all depends upon a consciousness of 
 values, a sense of proportion ; the only way in 
 which wealth and poverty, rank and insignificance, 
 can aiTect a life, is in a certain degree of personal 
 comfort ; and it is one of the most elementary 
 lessons that one can learn, that it is not either 
 wealth or poverty that can confer even comfort, 
 but the sound constitution and the contented mind. 
 
 What I would here plead is that the artistic 
 sense, of which I have spoken, should be deliber- 
 ately and consciously cultivated. It is not an easy 
 thing to get rid of conventionality, if one has been 
 brought up on conventional lines ; but I know by 
 personal experience that the mere desire for sim- 
 plicity and sincerity can effect something. 
 
 All persons engaged in education, whether for-
 
 io6 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 mally or informally, whether as professed teachers 
 or parents, ought to regard it as a sacred duty to 
 cultivate this sense among the objects of their care. 
 They ought to demand that all people, whether 
 high or low, should be met with the same simple 
 courtesy and consideration ; they ought to train 
 children both to speak their mind, and also to pay 
 respect to the opinion of others ; they ought not 
 to insist upon obedience, without giving the reasons 
 why it is desirable and necessary ; they ought reso- 
 lutely to avoid malicious gossip, but not the inter- 
 ested discussion of other personalities ; they ought 
 to follow, and to give, direct and simple motives 
 for action, and to learn, if they do not know it, 
 that it is from this simple and quiet independence 
 of mind that the best blessings, the best happinesses 
 come ; above all, they ought to practise a real and 
 perceptive sympathy, to allow for differences of 
 character and taste, not to try so much to form 
 children on the model of their own characters, as 
 to encourage them to develop on their own lines. 
 To do this completely needs wisdom, tact, and 
 justice ; but nothing can excuse us from attempt- 
 ing it. 
 
 The reason why life is so often made into a 
 dull and dreary business for ourselves and others, 
 is that we accept some conventional standard of 
 duty anil rectitude, ami heavily enforce it ; we 
 neglect the interest, the /.est, the beauty of life. 
 In my own career as an educator, 1 can truthfully 
 say that when I arrived at some of the perceptions 
 enunciated above, it made an immense difference 
 to me. I saw that it \\as a mistake to coerce, to 
 correct, to enforce ; of course such things have to
 
 ART 107 
 
 be done occasionally with wilful and perverse 
 natures ; but I realized, after 1 had gained 
 some practice in dealing with boys, that generous 
 and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, 
 admiration, directness, could win victories that 
 no amount of strictness or repression could win. 
 I began to see that enthusiasm and interest were 
 the contagious things, and that it was possible 
 to sympathize genuinely with tastes which one did 
 not share. Of course there w r ere plenty of failures 
 on my own part, failures of irritability, stupidity, 
 and indolence ; but 1 soon realized that these w r ere 
 failures ; and, after all, in education it matters 
 more which way one's face is set than how fast 
 one proceeds ! 
 
 I seem, perhaps, to have strayed into the edu- 
 cational point of view ; but it is only an instance 
 of how the artistic method may be applied in a 
 region which is believed by many to be remote 
 from the region of art. The principle, after all, is a 
 very clear one ; it is that life can be made with a 
 little effort into a beautiful thing ; that the real 
 ugliness of life consists not in its conditions, not 
 in good or bad fortune, not in joy or sorrow, not 
 in health or illness, but upon the perceptive atti- 
 tude of mind which we can apply to all experi- 
 ences. Everything that comes from the hand of 
 God has the quality of which I am speaking ; our 
 business is to try to disentangle it from the pre- 
 judices, the false judgments, the severities, the 
 heavinesses, with which human nature tends to 
 overlay it. Imagine a man oppressed by all the 
 ills which humanity can suffer, by shame and 
 disease and failure. Can it be denied, in the
 
 loS FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 presence of the life of Christ, that it is yet possible 
 to make out of such a situation a noble and a beau- 
 tiful tiling ? And that is the supreme value of the 
 example of Christ to the world, that He displayed, 
 if I may so speak, the instinct which I have de- 
 scribed in its absolute perfection. lie met all 
 humanity face to face, with perfect directness, 
 perfect sympathy, perfect perception. He never 
 ceased to protest, with shame and indignation, 
 against the unhappincsscs which men brin^ upon 
 themselves, by the yielding to lower desires, by 
 prejudice, by complacency; but He made allow- 
 ance for weakness, and despaired of none ; and in 
 the presence of those darker and sadder afflictions 
 of body ami spirit, which it seems that God per- 
 mits, if He does not authorize, He bore Himself with 
 di'jnity, patience, and o<nfulence; He proved that 
 nothing was unbearable, but that the human spirit 
 can face the worst calamities with an indomitable 
 simplicity, which adorns it with an imperishable 
 beauty, and proves it to be indeed divine.
 
 VIII 
 
 EGOTISM 
 
 1HAD an experience the other day, very dis- 
 agreeable but most wholesome, which held up 
 for a moment a mirror to my life and character. 
 I suppose that, at least once in his life, every one 
 has known what it is, in some corridor or stair- 
 way, to see a figure advancing towards him, and 
 then to discover with a shock of surprise that he 
 has been advancing to a mirror, and that the stranger 
 is himself. This happened to me some short while 
 ago, and I was by no means favourably impressed 
 by what I saw ! 
 
 Well, the other day I was conducting an argu- 
 ment with an irascible man. His temper suddenly 
 boiled over, and he said several personal things to 
 me, of which I did not at once recognize the truth ; 
 but I have since considered the criticisms, and have 
 decided that they are mainly true, heightened per- 
 haps by a little tinge of temper. 
 
 I am sorry my friend said the things, because it 
 is difficult to meet, on cordial terms, a man whom 
 one knows to hold an unfavourable opinion of one- 
 self. But in one way I am glad he said them, 
 because I do not think I could in any other manner 
 have discerned the truth. If a friend had said them
 
 no FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 without anger, he would no doubt have so gilded 
 the pill that it would have seemed rather a precious 
 ornament than a hitter remedy. 
 
 I will not here say in detail what my friend 
 accused me of, but it amounted to a charge of 
 egotism ; and as egotism is a common fault, and 
 particularly common with lonely and unmarried 
 men, I will make no excuse for propounding a 
 few considerations on the point, and how it may 
 perhaps be cured, or, if not cured, at least modified. 
 
 I suppose that the egotist is the man who re- 
 gards the world as a setting for himself, as opposed 
 to the man who realizes that he is a small unit in 
 a gigantic system. The characteristic of the egotist 
 is to consider himself of too great importance, while 
 the danger of the non-egotist is not sufficiently to 
 realize his significance. Kgotism is the natural 
 temptation of all those \\liose individuality is strong ; 
 the man of intense desires, of acute perceptions, of 
 vigorous preferences, of ea-jcr temperament, is in 
 danger of trying to construct his life too sedulously 
 on his own lines ; and vet these are the very people 
 who help other people most, and in whom the hope 
 of the race- lies. Meek, humble, timid persons, who 
 accept things as they arc-, uho tread in beaten paths, 
 who are easily persuaded, uho are cautious, pru- 
 dent, and submissive, leave things very much as 
 they find them. I need make no attempt at indi- 
 cating the line that such people ous^ht to follow, 
 because it is, unhappily, certain that they will follow 
 the line of least re>i>tance. and that they have no 
 more {tower of initialise tl.an the brick^ of a wall 
 or the waters of a stream. The- following con- 
 siderations will be addressed to people of a cer-
 
 EGOTISM. in 
 
 tain vividness of nature, who have strong impulses, 
 fervent convictions, vigorous desires. I shall try 
 to suggest a species of discipline that can be prac- 
 tised by such persons, a line that they can follow, 
 in order that they may aim at, and perhaps attain, 
 a due subordination and co-ordination of themselves 
 and their temperaments. 
 
 To treat of intellectual egotism first, the danger 
 that besets such people as I have described is a 
 want of sympathy with other points of view, and 
 the first thing that such natures must aim at, is the 
 getting rid of what I will call the sectarian spirit. 
 We ought to realize that absolute truth is not the 
 property of any creed or school or nation ; the 
 whole lesson of history is the lesson of the danger 
 of affirmation. The great difference between the 
 modern and the ancient world is the growth of the 
 scientific spirit, and the meaning and value of evi- 
 dence. There are many kinds of certainties. There 
 is the absolute scientific certainty of such proposi- 
 tions as that two and two make four, and cannot 
 possibly make five. This is of course only the 
 principle that two and two cannot be said to make 
 four, out that they are four, and that 2 + 2 and 4 
 are only different ways of describing the same 
 phenomenon. Then there come the lesser cer- 
 tainties, that is to say, the certainties that justify 
 practical action. A man who is aware that he has 
 twenty thousand pounds in the hands of trustees, 
 whose duty it is to pay him the interest, is justified 
 in spending a certain income ; but he cannot be 
 said to know at any moment that the capital is 
 there, because the trustees may have absconded 
 with the money, and the man may not have been
 
 ii2 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 informed of the fact. The danger of the egotist is 
 that he is apt to regard as scientific certainties what 
 are only relative certainties ; and the first step to- 
 wards the tolerant attitude is to get rid of these 
 prejudices as far as possible, and to perceive that 
 the first duty of the philosopher is not to deal in 
 assumptions, but to reali/e that other people's 
 regions of what may be called practical certainties 
 that is to say, the assurances which justify prac- 
 tical action may be both smaller or even larger than 
 his own. The first duty then of the man of vivid 
 nature is to fight resolutely against the sin of im- 
 patience, lie must reali/e that some people may 
 regard as a certainty what is to him a questionable 
 opinion, and that his business is not the destruc- 
 tion of the certainties of others, but the defining 
 the limits of his own. The sympathy that can be 
 practised intellectually is the resolute attempt to 
 enter into the position of others. The temptation 
 to argue with people of convinced views should 
 be resolutely resisted ; argument only strengthens 
 and fortifies the com ictions of opponents, and I can 
 honestly say that I have never yet met a man of 
 strong intellectual fibre who was ever converted by 
 argument. Yet I am sure that it is a duty for all 
 of us to aim at a just appreciation ot various points 
 of view, and that we on-.;! it to try to understand 
 others rather than to persuade them. 
 
 So far I have been speaking of the intellectual 
 region, and I would sum it up by saying that 1 
 think that the duty of everv thoughtful person, who 
 desires to a\<ul egotism in the intellectual reL'ion, 
 is to cultivate uh.it may be called the scientific, or 
 even the sceptical spirit, to ^eigh evidence, and
 
 EGOTISM. 113 
 
 not to form conclusions without evidence. Thus 
 one avoids the dangers of egotism best, because 
 egotism is the frame of mind of the man who says 
 credo quia credo. Whereas the aim of the philosopher 
 should be to take nothing for granted, and to be 
 ready to give up personal preferences in the light 
 of truth. In dealing with others in the intellectual 
 region, the object should be not to convince, but 
 to get people to state their own views, and to realize 
 that unless a man converts himself, no one else can ; 
 the method therefore should be not to attack con- 
 clusions, but to ask patiently for the evidence upon 
 which those conclusions are based. 
 
 But there is a danger in lingering too long in 
 the intellectual regions ; the other regions of the 
 human spirit may be called the aesthetic and the 
 mystical regions. To take the aesthetic region next, 
 the duty of the philosopher is to realize at the out- 
 set that the perception of beauty is essentially an 
 individual thing, and that the canons of what are 
 called good taste are of all things the most shifting. 
 In this region the danger of dogmatism is very great, 
 because the more that a man indulges the rapturous 
 perception of the beauty that appeals to himself, 
 the more likely he is to believe that there is no 
 beauty outside of his own perceptions. The duty 
 of a man who wishes to avoid egotism in this region 
 is to try and recognize faithful conception and firm 
 execution everywhere ; to realize that half, and 
 more than half, of the beauty of everything is the 
 beauty of age, remoteness, and association. There 
 is no temptation so strong for the aesthetic nature, 
 as to deride and contemn the beauty of the art 
 that we have just outgrown. To take a simple case.
 
 u 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 The Early Victorian upholsterers derided the still- 
 ness and austerity of Queen Anne furniture, and 
 the public genuinely admired the florid and rococo 
 forms of Early Victorian art. A generation passed, 
 and Early Victorian art was relentlessly derided, 
 while the Queen Anne was reinstalled. Now there 
 are signs of a growing tolerance among connois- 
 seurs of the Early Victorian taste again. The truth 
 is that there is no absolute beauty in either ; that 
 the thing to aim at is progress and development in 
 art, and that probably the most dangerous and 
 decadent sign of all is the reverting to the beauty 
 of a previous age rather than striking out a new 
 line of our own. The aim then of the man who 
 would avoid aesthetic egotism should be, not to lay 
 down canons of what is or what is not good art, 
 but to try to recognize, as I have said, faithful 
 conception and firm execution wherever he can 
 discern it ; and, for himself, to express as vividly 
 as he can his own keenest and acutcst perceptions 
 of beauty. The only beauty that is worth anything, 
 is the beauty perceived in sincerity, and here again 
 the secret lies in resolutely abstaining from laying 
 down laws, from judging, from condemning. The 
 victory always remains \\ith those who admire, 
 rather than with those \sho deride, and the power 
 ot appreciating is worth any amount ot the power 
 of despising. 
 
 And now we pass to the third and most in- 
 tangible region of the spirit, the region that 1 will 
 call the mystical rei/inn. This is in a sense akin 
 to the uMhetic rei'iiin, bec.ui^e it partly o>n>i>ts in 
 the appreciation ol be.nity in ethic.il things. Here 
 the danger of the vivid personality is to let his
 
 EGOTISM. 115 
 
 preferences be his guide, and to contemn certain 
 types of character, certain qualities, certain modes 
 of thought, certain points of view. Here again 
 one's duty is plain. It is the resolute avoidance 
 of the critical attitude, the attempt to disentangle 
 the golden thread, the nobility, the purity, the 
 strength, the intensity, that may underlie char- 
 acters and views that do not superficially appeal 
 to oneself. The philosopher need not seek the 
 society of uncongenial persons : such a practice is 
 a useless expenditure of time and energy ; but no 
 one can avoid a certain contact with dissimilar 
 natures, and the aim of the philosopher must be 
 to try and do sympathetic justice to them, to seek 
 earnestly for points of contact, rather than to at- 
 tempt to emphasize differences. For instance, if 
 the philosopher is thrown into the society of a man 
 who can talk nothing but motor jargon or golfing 
 shop I select the instances of the conversation 
 that is personally to me the dreariest -he need not 
 attempt to talk of golf or motors, and he is equally 
 bound not to discourse of his own chosen intel- 
 lectual interests ; but he ought to endeavour to 
 find a common region, in which he can meet the 
 golfer or the motorist without mutual dreariness. 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought that i have drifted 
 out of the mystical region, but it is not so, for the 
 relations of human beings with each other appear 
 to me to belong to this region. The strange affini- 
 ties and hostilities of temperament, the inexplicable 
 and undeniable thing called charm, the attraction 
 and repulsion ot character all this is in the mys- 
 tical region of the spirit, the region of intuition and 
 instinct, which is a far stronger, more vital, and
 
 u6 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 more general region than the intellectual or the 
 artistic. And further, there comes the deepest in- 
 tuition of all, the relation of the human spirit to its 
 Maker, its originating cause. Whether this rela- 
 tion can he a direct one is a matter for each person 
 to decide from his own experience ; but perhaps 
 the only two things of which a human being can 
 be said to be absolutely conscious are his own 
 identity, and the existence of a controlling Power 
 outside of him. And here lies the deepest danger 
 of all, that a man should attempt to limit or define 
 his conception of the Power that originated him, by 
 his own preferences. The deepest mystery of all 
 lies in the conviction, which seems to be inex- 
 tricably rooted in the human spirit, namely, the 
 instinct to distinguish between the impulses which 
 we believe emanate from (iod, and the impulses 
 which we believe emanate from ourselves. It is 
 incontestable that the greater part ot the human race 
 have the instinct that in following beneficent, un- 
 seltish, noble impulses tin v are following the will 
 ot their Maker ; but that in yielding to cruel, sen- 
 sual, low impulses they are acting contrary to the 
 will ot the C'reator. And this intuition is one which 
 many ot us do not doubt, though it is a principle 
 uhich cannot be scientifically proved. Indeed, it 
 is incontestable that, though we believe the will ot 
 ( iod to be on the side ot v. hat is good, yet lie puts 
 manv obstacles, or permit^ tlfiu to be put, in the 
 way of the man who d to act rr.;litlv. 
 
 1 lie onlv way, I believe, in tins List region, in 
 which \\ e e.'.n hope to improve, to uin victories, is 
 the uav oj a (j-net and sincere -ul >niis>ion. It is 
 easy to submit to the \\ill ol ( Jod when it sends
 
 EGOTISM. 117 
 
 us joy and peace, when it makes us courageous, 
 high-hearted, and just. The difficulty is to ac- 
 quiesce when He sends us adversity, ill-health, 
 suffering ; when I le permits us to sin, or if that 
 is a faithless phrase, does not grant us strength 
 to resist. But we must try to be patient, we must 
 try to interpret the value of suffering, the meaning 
 of failure, the significance of shame. Perhaps it 
 may be urged that this too is a temptation of 
 egotism in another guise, and that we grow thus 
 to conceive of ourselves as filling too large a space 
 in the mind of God. But unless we do this, we can 
 only conceive of ourselves as the victims of God's 
 inattention or neglect, which is a wholly despairing 
 thought. 
 
 In one sense we must be egotistic, if self-know- 
 ledge is egotism. We must try to take the measure 
 of our faculties, and we must try to use them. But 
 while we must wisely humiliate ourselves before 
 the majesty of God, the vast and profound scheme 
 of the Universe, we must at the same time believe 
 that we have our place and our work ; that God 
 indeed purposely set us where we find ourselves ; 
 and among the complicated difficulties of sense, of 
 temptation, of unhappiness, of failure, we must try 
 to fix our eyes humbly and faithfully upon the 
 best, and seek to be worthy of it. We must try 
 not to be self-sufficient, but to be humble and yet 
 diligent. 
 
 I do not think that we practise this simple 
 resignation often enough ; it is astonishing how 
 the act of placing our own will as far as possible 
 in unison with the Will of God restores our tran- 
 quillity.
 
 n8 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 It was only a short time ago that I was walking 
 alone among fields and villages. It was one of 
 those languid days of early spring, when the frame 
 and the mind alike seem unstrung and listless. 
 The orchards were white with flower, and the 
 hedges were breaking into fresh green. I had just 
 returned to my work after a brief and delightful 
 holiday, and was overshadowed with the vague 
 depression that the resumption of work tends to 
 bring to anxious minds. 1 entered a little ancient 
 church that stood open ; it was full of sunlight, 
 and had been tenderly decked with an abundance 
 of spring flowers. If I had been glad at heart it 
 would have seemed a sweet place, full of peace and 
 beautiful mysteries. But it had no voice, no mes- 
 sage for me. I was overshadowed too by a sad 
 anxiety about one whom I loved, who was acting 
 perversely and unworthily. There came into my 
 mind a sudden gracious thought to commit myself 
 to the heart of God, not to disguise my weakness 
 and anxiety, not to ask that the load should be 
 lightened, (nit that I might endure His will to the 
 uttermost. 
 
 In a moment came the strength I sought ; no 
 lightening of the load, but a deeper serenity, a desire 
 to bear it faithfully. The very fragrance of the 
 flowers seemed to mingle like a sweet incense with 
 my vow. The old walls whispered of patience and 
 hope. I do not know where the peace that then 
 settled upon me came from, but not, it seemed, out 
 of the slender resources of my o\\n vexed spirit. 
 
 Hut alter all, the wonder is, in this mysterious 
 world, not that there is so much egotism abroad, 
 but that there is so little ! Considering the narrow
 
 EGOTISM. 119 
 
 space, the little cage of bones and skin, in which 
 our spirit is confined, like a fluttering bird, it often 
 astonished me to find how much of how many 
 people's thoughts is not given to themselves, but 
 to their work, their friends, their families. 
 
 The simplest and most practical cure for egotism, 
 after all, is resolutely to suppress public manifes- 
 tations of it ; and it is best to overcome it as a 
 matter of good manners, rather than as a matter 
 of religious principle. One does not want people 
 to be impersonal ; all one desires to feel is that 
 their interest and sympathy is not, so to speak, 
 tethered by the leg, and only able to hobble in a 
 small and trodden circle. One does not want 
 people to suppress their personality, but to be 
 ready to compare it with the personalities of others, 
 rather than to refer other personalities to the stand- 
 ard of their own ; to be generous and expansive, if 
 possible, and if that is not possible, or not easy, to 
 be prepared, at least, to take such deliberate steps 
 as all can take, in the right direction. We can all 
 force ourselves to express interest in the tastes and 
 idiosyncrasies of others, we can ask questions, we 
 can cultivate relations. The one way in which we 
 can all of us improve, is to commit ourselves to a 
 course of action from which we shall be ashamed to 
 draw back. Many people who would otherwise 
 drift into self-regarding ways do this when they 
 marry. They may marry for egotistical reasons ; 
 but once inside the fence, affection and duty and 
 the amazing experience of having children of their 
 own give them the stimulus they need. But even 
 the most helpless celibate has only to embark upon 
 relations with others, to find them multiply and
 
 izo FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 increase. After all, egotism has little to do with 
 the forming or holding ot strong opinions, or even 
 with the intentness with which we pursue our aims. 
 The dog is the intentest ot all animals, and throws 
 himself most eagerly into his pursuits, but he is 
 also the least egotistical and the most sympathetic 
 of creatures. Egotism resides more in a kind of 
 proud isolation, in a species of contempt for the 
 opinions and aims ot others. It is not, as a rule, 
 the most successful men who are the most ego- 
 tistical. The most uncompromising egotist I know 
 is a would-be literary man, who has the most 
 pathetic beliel in the interest and significance of 
 his own very halting performances, a belief which 
 no amount of rejection or indifference can shake, and 
 who has hardly a good word for the books of other 
 writers. I have sometimes thought that it is in his 
 case a species ot mental disease, because he is an 
 acute critic of all %vork except his own. Doctors 
 will indeed tell one that transcendent egotism is 
 very nearly allied to insanity ; but in ordinary cases 
 a little common sense ,uul a little courtesy vsill soon 
 suppress the manifestations of the tendency, if a 
 man can only reali/e that the forming of decided 
 opinions is the cheapest luxury in the world, while 
 a licence to exprc>> them uncompromisingly is one 
 ot the most expensive. Perhaps the hardest kind of 
 cgotiMii to cure, is the egoti in that is combined with 
 a deferential courtesy, and the- power ot displir. ing 
 a superlicial sympath\, because an egotist of this 
 type so seldom encounter^ anv checks \\luch \\otild 
 convince him ot hi. tault. Such people, it they 
 have natural abiht\, eve '.M'cat success, 
 
 because thev pursue their own ambitions with re-
 
 EGOTISM. 121 
 
 lentless perseverance, and have the tact to do it 
 without appearing to interfere with the designs of 
 others. They bide their time ; they are all con- 
 sideration and delicacy ; they are never importunate 
 or tiresome ; if they fail, they accept the failure as 
 though it were a piece of undeserved good fortune ; 
 they never have a grievance ; they simply wipe up 
 the spilt milk, and say no more about it ; baffled 
 at one point, they go quietly round the corner, and 
 continue their quest. They never for a moment 
 really consider any one's interests except their own ; 
 even their generous impulses are deliberately calcu- 
 lated for the sake of the artistic effect. Such people 
 make it hard to believe in disinterested virtue ; yet 
 they join with the meek in inheriting the earth, and 
 their prosperity seems the sign of Divine approval. 
 
 But apart from the definite steps that the ordi- 
 nary, moderately interesting, moderately successful 
 man may take, in the direction of a cure for ego- 
 tism, the best cure, after all, for all faults, is a 
 humble desire to be different. That is the most 
 transforming power in the world ; we may fail a 
 thousand times, but as long as we are ashamed of 
 our failure, as long as we do not helplessly acqui- 
 esce, as long as we do not try to comfort ourselves 
 for it by a careful parade of our other virtues, we 
 are in the pilgrim's road. It is a childish fault, 
 after all. I watched to-day a party of children at 
 play. One detestable little boy, the clumsiest and 
 most incapable of the party, spent the whole time 
 in climbing up a step and jumping from it, while he 
 entreated all the others to see how far he could 
 project himself. There was not a child there who 
 could not have jumped twice as far, but they were
 
 122 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 angelically patient and sympathetic with the odious 
 little wretch. It seemed to me a sad, small parable 
 of what we so many of us are engaged all our lives 
 long in doing. The child had no eyes for and no 
 thoughts of the rest ; he simply reiterated his ridic- 
 ulous performance, and claimed admiration. There 
 came into my mind that exquisite and beautiful ode, 
 the work too, strange to say, of a transcendent ego- 
 tist, Coventry Patmore, and the prayer he made : 
 
 " Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, 
 Nor vexing Thee in death, 
 And Thou rememl>erest of what toys 
 We made our J<>YX ( 
 How weakly understood 
 Thy great commanded good, 
 Then, fatherly not l->s 
 
 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
 ' I will be sorry for th-ir childishness.' ' 
 
 This is where we may leave our problem ; leave 
 it, that is to say, if we have faithfully struggled 
 with it, if we have tried to amend ourselves and 
 to encourage others ; if we have done all this, and 
 reached a point beyond which progress seems im- 
 possible. But we must not fling our problems 
 and perplexities, as we are apt to do, upon the 
 knees of God, the very instant they begin to be- 
 wilder us, as children bring a tangled skein, or a 
 toy bent crooked, to a nurse. We must not, I 
 say ; and yet, after all, I ;im not sure that it is 
 not the best and simplest \say of all !
 
 IX 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 1SAID that I was a public-school master for 
 nearly twenty years ; and now that it is over I 
 sometimes sit and wonder, rather sadly, I am 
 afraid, what we were all about. 
 
 We were a strictly classical school ; that is to 
 say, all the boys in the school were practically 
 specialists in classics, whether they had any apti- 
 tude for them or not. We shoved and rammed 
 in a good many other subjects into the tightly 
 packed budget we called the curriculum. But it 
 was not a sincere attempt to widen our education, 
 or to give boys a real chance to work at the things 
 they cared for ; it was only a compromise with 
 the supposed claims of the public, in order that 
 we might try to believe that we taught things \ve 
 did not really teach. We had an enormous and 
 elaborate machine ; the boys worked hard, and 
 the masters were horribly overworked. The whole 
 thing whizzed, banged, grumbled, and hummed 
 like a factory ; but very little education was the 
 result. It used to go to my heart to see a sparkling 
 stream of bright, keen, lively little boys arrive, half 
 after half, ready to work, full of interest, ready 
 to listen breathlessly to anything that struck their
 
 124 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 fancy, ready to ask questions such excellent ma- 
 terial, I used to think. At the other end used to 
 depart a slow river of cheerful and conventional 
 boys, well-dressed, well-mannered, thoroughly nice, 
 reasonable, sensible, and <j;ood-humoured creatures, 
 but knowing next to nothing, without intellectual 
 interests, and, indeed, honestly despising them. I 
 do not want to exasperate ; and I will frankly con- 
 fess that there were always a few well-educated 
 boys among them ; but these were boys of real 
 ability, with an aptitude for classics. And as pro- 
 viding a classical education, the system was effective, 
 though cumbrous ; hampered and congested by the 
 other subjects, which were well enough taught, but 
 which had no adequate time given to them, and 
 intruded upon the classics without having oppor- 
 tunity to develop themselves. It is a melancholy 
 picture, but the result certainly was that intellectual 
 cynicism was the note of the place. 
 
 The pity of it is that the machinery was all 
 there ; cheerful industry among masters and boys 
 alike ; but the whole thing fro/en and chilled, 
 partly by the congestion of subjects, partly by 
 antiquated methods. 
 
 Moreover, to provide a classical education for 
 the best boys, everything ;l^e was sacrificed. The 
 boys were taught classics, not on the literary method, 
 but on the academic method, as it they were all to 
 enter for triposes and scholarships, and to end by 
 becoming professors. Instead ot simply reading 
 away at interesting and be.r.it'.lul books, and trying 
 to cover some ground, a threat qnantitv of pedantic 
 grammar uas taught ; time was uastcd m trying 
 to make the bo\ s compose m both Latin aiul ( ireek.
 
 EDUCATION. 125 
 
 when they had no vocabulary, and no knowledge of 
 the languages. It was like setting children of six 
 and seven to write English in the style of Milton 
 and Carlyle. 
 
 The solution is a very obvious one ; it is, at 
 all costs to simplify, and to relieve pressure. The 
 staple of education should be French, easy mathe- 
 matics, history, geography, and popular science. 1 
 would not even begin Latin or Greek at first. Then, 
 when the first stages were over, I would have every 
 boy with any special gift put to a single subject, 
 in which he should try to make real progress, but 
 so that there would be time to keep up the simpler 
 subjects as well. The result would be that when a 
 boy had finished his course, he would have some 
 one subject which he could reasonably be expected 
 to have mastered up to a certain point. He would 
 have learnt classics, or mathematics, or history, or 
 modern languages, or science, thoroughly ; while 
 all might hope to have a competent knowledge of 
 French, English, history, easy mathematics, and 
 easy science. Boys who had obviously no special 
 aptitude would be kept on at the simple subjects. 
 And if the result was only that a school sent out 
 boys who could read French easily, and write simple 
 French grammatically, who knew something of 
 modern history and geography, could work out 
 sums in arithmetic, and had some conception of 
 elementary science well, they would, I believe, 
 be very fairly educated boys. 
 
 The reason why intellectual cynicism sets in, 
 is because the boys, as they go on, feel that they 
 have mastered nothing. They have been set to 
 compose in Greek and Latin and French ; the
 
 iz6 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 result is that they have no power of composing in 
 any of these languages, when they might have 
 learnt to compose in one. Meanwhile, they have 
 not had time to read any English to speak of, or 
 to be practised in writing it. They know nothing 
 of their own history or of modern geography ; and 
 the blame is not with them if they find all know- 
 ledge arid and unattractive. 
 
 I would try all sorts of experiments. I would 
 make boys do easy precis-writing ; to give a set 
 of boys a simple printed correspondence and tell 
 them to analyze it, would be to give them a task 
 in which the dullest would find some amusement. 
 I should read a story aloud, or a short episode of 
 history, and require them to re-tell it in their 
 own words. Or I would relate a simple incident, 
 and make them write it in French ; make them 
 write letters in French. And it would be easy thus 
 to make one subject play into another, because 
 they could be made to give an account in French 
 of something that they had done in science or 
 history. 
 
 At present each of the roads Latin, Greek, 
 French, mathematics, science leads ofT in a 
 separate direction, and seems to lead nowhere in 
 particular. 
 
 The defenders of the classical system say that 
 it fortifies the mind and makes it a strong and 
 vigorous instrument. Where is the proof of it ? 
 It is true that it fortifies and invigorates minds 
 which have, to start with, plenty of grip and in- 
 terest ; but pure classics are, as the results abun- 
 dantly prove, too hard a subject for ordinary minds, 
 and they are taught in too abstruse and elaborate
 
 EDUCATION. 127 
 
 a way. If it were determined by the united good 
 sense of educational authorities that Latin and Greek 
 must be retained at all costs, then the only thing 
 to do would be to sacrifice all other subjects, and 
 to alter all the methods of teaching the classics. 
 I do not think it would be a good solution ; but it 
 would be better than the present system of intel- 
 lectual starvation. 
 
 The truth is that the present results are so poor 
 that any experiments are justified. The one quality 
 which you can depend upon in boys is interest, 
 and interest is ruthlessly sacrificed. When I used 
 to press this fact upon my sterner colleagues, they 
 would say that I only wanted to make things amus- 
 ing, and that the result would be that we should 
 only turn out amateurs. But amateurs are at least 
 better than barbarians ; and my complaint is that 
 the majority of the boys are not turned out even 
 professionally equipped in the elaborate subjects 
 they are supposed to have been taught. 
 
 The same melancholy thing goes on in the 
 older Universities. The classics are retained as a 
 subject in which all must qualify ; and the educa- 
 tion provided for the ordinary passman is of a con- 
 temptible, smattering kind ; it is really no educa- 
 tion at all. It gives no grip, or vigour, or stimulus. 
 Here again no one takes any interest in the average 
 man. If the more liberal residents try to get rid 
 of the intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, 
 a band of earnest, conventional people streams up 
 from the country and outvotes them, saying sol- 
 emnly, and obviously believing, that education is 
 in danger. The truth is that the intellectual edu- 
 cation of the average Englishman is sacrificed to
 
 128 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 an antiquated humanist system, administered by 
 unimaginative and pedantic people. 
 
 The saddest part of it all is that we have, most 
 of us, so little idea of what we want to effect by 
 education. My own theory is a simple one. I 
 think that we ought first of all to equip boys, as 
 far as we can, to play a useful part in the world. 
 Such a theory is decried by educational theorists 
 as being utilitarian ; but if education is not to be 
 useful, we had better close our schools at once. 
 The idealist says, " Never mind the use ; get the 
 best educational instrument for the training of the 
 mind, and, when you have finished your work, the 
 mind will be bright and strong, and capable of dis- 
 charging any labour." That is a beautiful theory ; 
 but it is not borne out by results ; and one of the 
 reasons of the profound disbelief which is rapidly 
 spreading in the coun'rv \\ith regard to our public 
 schools, is that we send out so many boys, not only 
 without intellectual life, but not even capable of 
 humble usefulness. These theorists continue to talk 
 of classics as a splendid gymnastic, but in their 
 hands it becomes a rack ; instead of leaving the 
 limbs supple and well knit, they are strained, dis- 
 jointed, and feeble. Iv.rn the flower of our classical 
 system are too often leit without anv original power 
 of expression ; critical, fastidious minds, admiring 
 erudition, preferring the elucidation of second-rate 
 authors to the study o! tin- best. A man who reads 
 Virgil for pleasure is a better result of a system of 
 education than one who re-edits Tibullus. Instead 
 of having original thn<: -';? , and a Mvle ol their own 
 to expre-s them in, '!.;< i-la^iei-t^ are left 
 
 with a profound l:now Icd-jc 0} the -tvle and usage
 
 EDUCATION. 129 
 
 of ancient authors, a thing not to be undervalued 
 as a step in a progress, but still essentially an ante- 
 room of the mind. 
 
 The further task that lies before us educators, 
 when we have trained a mind to be useful, con- 
 sists in the awakening, in whatever regions may- 
 be possible, of the soul. By this I do not mean 
 the ethical soul, but the spirit of fine perception of 
 beauty, of generous admiration for what is noble 
 and true and high. And here I am sure that we 
 fail, and fail miserably. For one thing, these great 
 classicists make the mistake of thinking that only 
 through literature, and, what is more, the austere 
 literature of Greece and Rome, can this sense be 
 developed. I myself have a deep admiration for 
 Greek literature. I think it one of the brightest 
 flowers of the human spirit, and I think it well that 
 any boy with a real literary sense should be brought 
 into contact with it. I do not think so highly of 
 Latin literature. There are very few writers of the 
 first rank. Virgil is, of course, one ; and Horace 
 is a splendid craftsman, but not a high master of 
 literature. There is hardly any prose in Latin fit 
 for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often 
 affords little more than small-talk on abstract 
 topics ; Tacitus a brilliant but affected prosateur, 
 Caesar a dull and uninspiring author. But to many 
 boys the path to literary appreciation cannot lie 
 through Latin, or even Greek, because the old 
 language hangs like a veil between them and the 
 thought within. To some boys the enkindling ot 
 the intellectual soul comes through English litera- 
 ture, to some through history, to 'some through a 
 knowledge of other lands, which can be approached
 
 130 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 by geography. To some through art and music ; 
 and of these two things we trifle with the latter and 
 hardly touch upon the former. I cannot see that 
 a knowledge of the lives, the motives, the perform- 
 ances of artists is in itself a less valuable instrument 
 of education than a knowledge of the lives, motives, 
 and performances of writers, even though they be 
 Greek. 
 
 What our teachers fail in and the most en- 
 thusiastic often f.'.il most hopelessly is in sym- 
 pathy and imagination. They cannot conceive 
 that what moves, touches, and inspires themselves 
 may have no meanin-: for boys with a different 
 type of mind. 
 
 The result of our education can be well re- 
 viewed by one who, like myself, after wrestling, 
 often very sorrowfully, with the problems of school 
 education, comes up to a university and gets to 
 know something of these boys at a later stage. 
 Many of them are tine, vigorous fellows ; but 
 they often tend to look upon their work as a dis- 
 agreeable necessity, which they do conscientiously, 
 expecting nothing in particular from it. They 
 play games ardently, and till their hours of leisure 
 with talk about them. Yet one discerns in mind 
 after mind the genus of intellectual things, unde- 
 veloped and bewildered. Many of them have an 
 interest in something, but they are often ashamed 
 to talk about it. Tlu-v have a deep horror of bein;: 
 supposed to be superior; thev listen politely to 
 about bonks and pictures, conscious of igno- 
 rance, not ill-'!i--p'^ed to listen; but it is all an 
 unreal uorld t<> them. 
 
 I am all f<>r hard ami strenuous work. 1 do
 
 EDUCATION. 131 
 
 not at all wish to make work slipshod and dil- 
 ettante. I would raise the standards of simple 
 education, and force boys to show that they are 
 working honestly. I want energy and zeal above 
 everything. But my honest belief is that you cannot 
 get strenuous and zealous work unless you also have 
 interest and belief in work. At present, education 
 as conducted in our public-school and university 
 system appears to me to be neither utilitarian nor 
 intellectual. It aims at being intellectual first and 
 utilitarian afterwards, and it misses both. 
 
 Whether anything can be done on a big scale 
 to help us out of the poor tangle in which we are 
 involved, I do not know. I fear not. I do not 
 think that the time is ripe. I do not believe that 
 great movements can be brought about by prophets, 
 however enlightened their views, however vigorous 
 their personalities, unless there is a corresponding 
 energy below. An individual may initiate and con- 
 trol a great force of public opinion ; I do not think 
 he can originate it. There is certainly a vague and 
 widespread discontent with our present results ; 
 but it is all a negative opinion, a dissatisfaction 
 with what is being done. The movement must 
 have a certain positive character before it can take 
 shape. There must arise a desire and a respect 
 for intellectual things, a certain mental tone, which 
 is wanting. At present, public opinion only indi- 
 cates that the rising generation is not well trained, 
 and that boys, after going through an elaborate edu- 
 cation, seem to be very little equipped for practical 
 life. There is no complaint that boys are made 
 unpractical ; the feeling rather is that they are 
 turned out healthy, well-drilled creatures, fond of
 
 i 3 2 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 games, manly, obedient, but with a considerable 
 aversion to settling down to work, and with a firm 
 resolve to extract what amusement they can out of 
 life. All that is, I feel, perfectly true ; but there 
 is little demand on the part of parents that boys 
 should have intellectual interests or enthusiasms 
 for the things of the mind. What teachers ought 
 to aim at is to communicate something of this en- 
 thusiasm, by devising a form of education which 
 should appeal to the simpler forms of intellectual 
 curiosity, instead of starving boys upon an ideal of 
 inaccessible dignity. I do not ifor a moment deny 
 that those who defend the old classical tradition 
 have a high intellectual ideal. But it is an unprac- 
 tical ideal, and takes no account of the plain facts 
 of experience. 
 
 The result is that we teachers have forfeited 
 confidence ; and we must somehow or other re- 
 gain it. We are tolerated, as all ancient and 
 respectable things are tolerated. We have become 
 a part of the social order, and we have still the 
 prestige of wealth and dignity. But what wealthy 
 people ever dream nowadays of building and en- 
 dowing colleges on purely literary lines ? All the 
 buildings which have an>en of late in my University 
 are either buildings for scientific purposes or clerical 
 foundations for ecclesiastical ends. The vitality of 
 our literary education is slouly fading out oi" it. 
 This lack ot vitality is not so evident until you go 
 a little way beneath the surface. Classical profi- 
 ciency is still liberally rewarded by scholarships 
 and fellowships; and while the classical tradition 
 remains in our schools th'-re are a good many men, 
 uho intend to be teachers, who enter for classical
 
 EDUCATION. 133 
 
 examinations. But where we fail grievously is in 
 our provision for average men ; they are provided 
 with feeble examinations in desultory and diffuse 
 subjects, in which a high standard is not required. 
 It is difficult to imagine a condition of greater 
 vacuity than that in which a man leaves the Uni- 
 versity after taking a pass degree. No one has 
 endeavoured to do anything for him, or to cultivate 
 his intelligence in any line. And yet these are our 
 parents in the next generation. And the only way 
 m which we stifle mental revolt is by leaving our 
 victims in such a condition of mental abjectness and 
 intellectual humility, that it does not even occur 
 to them to complain of how unjustly they have been 
 treated. After all, we have interfered with them 
 so little that they have contrived to have a good 
 time at the University. They have made friends, 
 played games, and lived a healthy life enough ; 
 they resolve that their boys shall have a good time 
 too, if possible ; and so the poor educational farce 
 is played on from generation to generation. It is 
 melancholy to read the sonnet which Tennyson 
 wrote, more than sixty years ago, a grave and bitter 
 indictment of Cambridge 
 
 " Because you do profess to teach, 
 And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart." 
 
 That is the mistake : we do not feed the heart ; 
 we are too professional ; we concern ourselves with 
 methods and details ; we swallow blindly the elab- 
 orate tradition under which we have ourselves been 
 educated ; we continue to respect the erudite mind, 
 and to decry the appreciative spirit as amateurish 
 and dilettante. We continue to think that a boy
 
 134 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 is well trained in history it he has a minute know- 
 ledge of the sequence of events that is, of course, 
 a necessary part of the equipment of a professor or 
 a teacher ; but here again lies one of the fatal fal- 
 lacies of our system that \ve train from the pro- 
 fessorial point of view. Omniscience is not even 
 desirable in the ordinary mind. A boy who has 
 appreciated the force of a few great historical char- 
 acters, who has learnt generous insight into the un- 
 selfish patriotism that wins the great victories of 
 the world, who can see the horror of tyranny and 
 the wrongs done to humanity in the name of au- 
 thority, who has seen how a nation in earlier stages 
 is best ruled by an enlightened despotism, until it 
 has learnt vigour and honesty and truth, who has 
 learnt to perceive that political agitation only sur- 
 vives in virtue of the justice which underlies its 
 demands a boy, I say, who has been taught to 
 perceive such things, has learnt the lesson of his- 
 tory in a way which a student crammed with dates 
 and facts may have whollv missed. 
 
 The truth is that we do not know what we are 
 aiming at. Our school and university systems aim 
 at present at an austere standard of mental disci- 
 pline, and then fail to enforce it, by making in- 
 evitable concessions to the mental weakness in- 
 herited from long generations trained upon the 
 system of starvation. The system, indeed, too 
 often reminds me of an ol-.i picture in Punch, of 
 genteel poverty dining in state ; in a room hung 
 with portraits, attended by t<><>tmen, two attenuated 
 persons sit, v-hile a silver cover is removed from a 
 dish containing a ro;i ted mouse. The resources 
 that ought to be spent on ;i wholesome meal are
 
 EDUCATION 135 
 
 wasted in keeping up an ideal of state. Of coins* 
 there is something noble in all sacrifice of personal 
 comfort and health to a dignified ideal ; but it is 
 our business at present to till the dish rather than 
 to insist on the cover being of silver. 
 
 One very practical proof of the disbelief which 
 the public has in education is that, while the charges 
 of public schools have risen greatly in the last fifty 
 years, the margin is all expended in the comfort 
 of boys, and in opportunities for athletic exer- 
 cises ; while masters, at all but a very few public 
 schools, are still so poorly paid that it is impossible 
 for the best men to adopt the profession, unless 
 they have an enthusiasm which causes them to put 
 considerations of personal comfort aside. It is only 
 too melancholy to observe at the University that 
 the men of vigour and force tend to choose the 
 Civil Service or the Bar in preference to educa- 
 tional work. I cannot wonder at it. The drudgery 
 of falling in with the established system, of teaching 
 things in which there is no interest to be communi- 
 cated, of insisting on details in the value of which 
 one does not believe, is such that fe\v people, ex- 
 cept unambitious men, who have no special mental 
 bent, adopt the profession ; and these only because 
 the imparting of the slender accomplishments that 
 they have gained is an obvious and simple method 
 of earning a livelihood. 
 
 The blame must, I fear, fall first upon the 
 Universities. I am not speaking of the educa- 
 tion there provided for the honour men, which 
 is often excellent of its kind ; though it must be 
 confessed that the keenest and best enthusiasm 
 seems to me tjhere to be drifting away from the
 
 136 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 literary side of education. But while an old and 
 outworn humanist tradition is allowed to prevail, 
 while the studies of the average passman are al- 
 lowed to he dilluse, desultory, and aimless, and 
 of a kind from which it is useless to expect either 
 animation or precision, so long will a blight rest 
 upon the education of the country. While hoys 
 of average abilities continue to be sent to the Uni- 
 versities, and while the Universities maintain the 
 classical fence, so long will the so-called modern 
 sides at schools continue to be collections of more 
 or less incapable boys. And in decrying modern 
 sides, as even headmasters of great schools have 
 been often known to do, it is very seldom stated 
 that the average of ability in these departments 
 tends to be so low that even the masters who teach 
 in them teach without taith or interest. 
 
 It may be thought of these considerations that 
 they resemble the attitude of Carlyle, of whom 
 Fit/(jcrald said that he had sat tor many years 
 pretty comfortably in his study at Chelsea, scold- 
 ing all the world for not being heroic, but without 
 being very precise in telling them how. But this 
 is a case where individual action is out of the ques- 
 tion ; and it I am asked to name a simple reform 
 which would have an elfcct, I would suggest that 
 a caret ul revision of the education of passmen at 
 our Universities is the best and most practical step 
 to take. 
 
 And, for the schools, the only solution possible 
 is that the directors of secondary education should 
 devise a real and simple form of curriculum. If 
 they wholc-heartcdlv believe in the classics as the 
 best possible form of education, then let them realize
 
 EDUCATION. 137 
 
 that the classics form a large and complicated sub- 
 ject, which demands the whole of the energies of 
 hovs. Let them resist utilitarian demands alto- 
 
 j 
 
 gether, and bundle all other subjects, except classics, 
 out of the curriculum, so that classics may, at all 
 events, be learnt thoroughly and completely. At 
 present they make large and reluctant concessions 
 to utilitarian demands, and spoil the effect of the 
 classics to which they cling, and in which they 
 sincerely believe, by admitting modern subjects to 
 the curriculum in deference to the clamour of utili- 
 tarians. A rigid system, faithfully administered, 
 would be better than a slatternly compromise. Of 
 course, one would like to teach all boys everything 
 if it were possible ! But the holding capacity of 
 tender minds is small, and a few subjects thoroughly 
 taught are infinitely better than a large number of 
 subjects flabbily taught. 
 
 I say, quite honestly, that I had rather have 
 the old system of classics pure and simple, taught 
 with relentless accuracy, than the present hotch- 
 potch. But I earnestly hope myself that the pres- 
 sure of the demand for modern subjects is too 
 strong to be resisted. 
 
 It seems to me that, when the whole world is 
 expanding and thrilling with new life all around 
 us, it is an intolerable mistake not to bring the 
 minds of boys in touch with the modern spirit. 
 The history of Greece and Rome may well form 
 a part of modern education ; but we want rather 
 to bring the minds of those who are being educated 
 into contact with the Greek and Roman spirit, as 
 part of the spirit of the world, than to make them 
 acquainted with the philological and syntactical
 
 138 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 peculiarities of the two languages. It may be 
 said that we cannot come into contact with the 
 Greek and the Roman spirit except through read- 
 ing their respective literatures ; hut if that is the 
 case, how can a system of teaching classics be 
 defended which never brings the vast majority of 
 the boys, who endure it, in contact with the liter- 
 ature or the national spirit of the Greeks and 
 Romans at all ? I do not think that classical 
 teachers can sincerely maintain that the average 
 product of a classical school has any real insight 
 into, or familiarity with, either the language or 
 the spirit of these two great nations. 
 
 And if that is true of average boys educated 
 on this system, what is it that classical teachers 
 profess to have given them ? They will say grip, 
 vigour, the fortified mind. But where is the proof 
 of it ? If I saw classically educated boys flinging 
 themselves afterwards with energy and ardour into 
 modern literature, history, philosophy, science, I 
 should be the first to concur in the value of the 
 system. But I see, instead, intellectual cynicism, 
 intellectual apathy, an absorbing love of physical 
 exercise, an appetite lor material pleasures, a dis- 
 taste for books and thought. I do not say that 
 these tendencies would at once yield to a simpler 
 and more enlightened system of education ; but 
 the results of the present system seem to me so 
 negative, so unsatisfactory, as to justify, and in- 
 deed necessitate, the Irving of educational experi- 
 ments. It is terrible to see the patient acquies- 
 cence, the humble conscientiousness with which 
 the present system is administered. It is pathetic 
 to see so much labour expended upon an impos-
 
 EDUCATION. 139 
 
 sible task. There is something, of course, morally 
 impressive about the courage and loyalty of those 
 who stick to a sinking ship, and attempt to bale 
 out with teacups the inrush of the overwhelming 
 tide. But one cannot help feeling that too much 
 is at stake ; that year by year the younger genera- 
 tion, which ought to be sent out alive to intel- 
 lectual interests of every kind, in a period which is 
 palpitating with problems and thrilled by wonder- 
 ful surprises, is being starved and cramped by an 
 obstinate clinging to an old tradition, to a system 
 which reveals its inadequacy to all who pass by ; 
 or, rather, our boys are being sacrificed to a weak 
 compromise between two systems, the old and the 
 new, which are struggling together. The new 
 system cannot at present eject the old, and the 
 old can only render the new futile without exer- 
 cising its own complete influence. 
 
 The best statesmanship in the world is not to 
 break rudely \vith old traditions, but to cause 
 the old to run smoothly into the new. My own 
 sincere belief is that it is not too late to attempt 
 this ; but that if the subject continues to be shelved, 
 if our educational authorities refuse to consider the 
 question of reform, the growing dissatisfaction will 
 reach such a height that the old system will be 
 swept away root and branch, and that many vener- 
 able and beautiful associations will thereby be 
 sacrificed. And with all my heart do I deprecate 
 this, believing, as I do, that a wise continuity, a 
 tendency to temperate reform, is one of the best 
 notes of the English character. We have a great 
 and instinctive tact in England for avoiding revo- 
 lutions, and for making freedom broaden slowly
 
 140 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 down ; that is what, one ventures to hope, may 
 be the issue of the present discontent. But I 
 would rather have a revolution, with all its de- 
 structive agencies, than an unintelligent and op- 
 pressive tyranny.
 
 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 I HAVE been sometimes consulted by young 
 aspirants in literature as to the best mode of 
 embarking upon the profession of letters ; and 
 if my inquirer has confessed that he will be obliged 
 to earn his living, I have always replied, dully but 
 faithfully, that the best way to realize his ambi- 
 tion is to enter some other profession without 
 delay. Writing is indeed the most delightful thing 
 in the world, if one has not to depend upon it 
 for a livelihood ; and the truth is that, if a man 
 has the real literary gift, there are very few pro- 
 fessions which do not afford a margin of time 
 sufficient for him to indulge what is the happiest 
 and simplest of hobbies. Sometimes the early 
 impulse has no root, and withers ; but if, after a 
 time, a man finds that his heart is entirely in 
 his writing, and if he feels that he may without 
 imprudence give himself to the practice of the 
 beloved art, then he may formally adopt it as a 
 profession. But he must not hope for much 
 monetary reward. A successful writer of plays 
 may make a fortune, a novelist or a journalist of 
 the first rank may earn a handsome income ; but to 
 achieve conspicuous mundane success in literature, 
 a certain degree of good fortune is almost more
 
 i 4 2 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 important than genius, or even than talent. Ability 
 by itself, even literary ability of a high order, is 
 not sufficient ; it is necessary to have a vogue, to 
 create or satisfy a special demand, to hit the taste 
 of the age. But the writer of belles-lettres, the 
 literary writer pure and simple, can hardly hope 
 to earn a living wage, unless he is content to do, 
 and indeed fortunate enough to obtain, a good deal 
 of hackwork as well, lie must be ready to write 
 reviews and introductions ; to pour out occasional 
 articles, to compile, to edit, to select ; and the 
 chances are that if his livelihood depends upon his 
 labour, he will have little of the tranquillity, the 
 serenity, the leisure, upon the enjoyment of which 
 the quality of the best work depends. John Ad- 
 dington Symonds makes a calculation, in one of 
 his published letters, to the eilect that his entire 
 earnings for the years in which he had been em- 
 ployed in writing his history of the Italian Re- 
 naissance, had been at the rate of about 100 a 
 year, from which probably nearly half had to be 
 subtracted for inevitable incidental expenses, such 
 as books and travelling. The conclusion is that 
 unless a man has private resources, or a sufficiently 
 robust constitution to be able to earn," on his literary 
 work side by side with his professional work, he can 
 hardly afford to turn his attention to belles-lettres. 
 
 Nowadays literature ha> become a rather fashion- 
 able pui^ :it than otherwise. Tunes have changed 
 since (iray refused to accept monev for his pub- 
 lications, and gave it to be understood that he 
 was an eccentric gentleman who wrote solely for 
 his own amusement ; since tin- inheritor of Kokeby 
 found among the iamilv porti.i;'-; of the magnates
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 143 
 
 that adorned his walls a picture of the novelist 
 Richardson, and was at the pains of adding a rib- 
 bon and a star, in order to turn it into a portrait 
 of Sir Robert Walpole, that he might free his gal- 
 lery from such degrading associations. 
 
 But now a social personage is hardly ashamed 
 of writing a book, of travels, perhaps, or even of 
 literary appreciations, so long as it is untainted by 
 erudition ; he is not averse to publishing a volume 
 of mild lyrics, or a piece of simple fiction, just to 
 show how easy it is, and what he could do, if only, 
 as Charles Lamb said, he had the mind. It adds 
 a pleasant touch of charming originality to a great 
 lady if she can bring out a little book. Such com- 
 positions are indubitably books ; they generally 
 have a title-page, an emotional dedication, an ultra- 
 modest preface, followed by a certain number of 
 pages of undeniable print. It is common enough 
 too, at a big dinner-party, to meet three or four 
 people, without the least professional dinginess, who 
 nave w r ritten books. Mr. Winston Churchill said 
 the other day, with much humour, that he could 
 not reckon himself a professional author because 
 he had only written five books the same number 
 as Moses.* And 1 am far from decrying the pleasant 
 labours of these amateurs. The writing of such 
 books as I have described has been a real amuse- 
 ment to the author, not entailing any particular 
 strain ; the sweet pride of authorship enlarges 
 one's sympathies, and gives an agreeable glow to 
 life. No inconvenient rivalry results. The little 
 
 * This sentence was, of course, written before the publi- 
 cation by Mr. Churchill of the Life of his father, Lord 
 Randolph Churchill.
 
 144 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 volumes just flutter into the sunshine, like gauzy 
 flies from some tiny cocoon, and spread their 
 slender wings very gracefully in the sun. 
 
 I would not, then, like some austere critics, 
 forbid such leisurely writers as I have described 
 to indulge in the pleasant diversion of writing 
 books. There are reviewers who think it a sacred 
 duty to hunt and chase these amiable and well- 
 meaning amateurs out of the field, as though they 
 had trespassed upon some sacred enclosure. I do 
 not think that it is necessary or even kind to do 
 this. 1 would rather regard literature as a kind 
 of Tom Tiddler's ground, where there is gold as 
 well as silver to be picked up. Amateurs tend, it 
 is true, rather to scatter gold and silver in the field 
 of literature than to acquire it ; and I had just as 
 soon, after all, that they should lavish their super- 
 fluous wealth there, to be picked up by honest pub- 
 lishers, as that they should lavish it in other regions 
 of unnecessary expenditure. It is not a crime, 
 when all is said, to write or even to print an in- 
 ferior book ; I would indeed go further, and say 
 that writing in any shape is at worst a harmless 
 diversion ; and I see no reason why people should 
 be discouraged from such diversion, any more than 
 that they should be discouraged from practising 
 music, or making sketches in water-colour, because 
 they only attain a low standard of execution in 
 such pursuits. Indeed, 1 think that hours devoted 
 to the production of interior literature-, by persons 
 of leisure, are quite as well bestowed as hours spent 
 in golfing and motoring ; to engage in the task of 
 writing a book implies a certain sympathy with 
 intellectual things ; and I an. disposed to applaud
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 145 
 
 and encourage anything which increases intellectual 
 appreciation in our country at the present time. 
 There is not too much of it abroad ; and I care 
 very little how it is acquired, if only it is acquired. 
 The only way in which these amateurs can be tire- 
 some is if they insist upon reading their composi- 
 tions aloud in a domestic circle, or if they request 
 one to read a published book and give them a 
 candid opinion. I once stayed with a worthy 
 country gentleman who, evening after evening, 
 after we had returned from shooting, insisted on 
 reading aloud in the smoking-room, with solemn 
 zest, the novel on which he was engaged. It was 
 heavy work ! The shooting was good, but I am 
 not sure that it was not dearly purchased at the 
 price. The plot of the book was intricate, the 
 characters numerous ; and I found it almost im- 
 possible to keep the dramatis persona apart. But 
 I did not grudge my friend the pleasure he took 
 in his composition ; I only grudged the time I 
 was obliged to spend in listening to it. The novel 
 was not worth writing from the point of view of 
 its intrinsic merits ; but it gave my old friend an 
 occupation ; he was never bored ; he flew back to 
 his book whenever he had an hour to spare. It 
 saved him from dulness and ennui ; it gave him, I 
 doubt not, many a glowing hour of secret joy ; it 
 was an unmixed benefit to himself and his family 
 that he had this indoors resource ; it entailed no 
 expense ; it was simply the cheapest and most harm- 
 less hobby that it is possible to conceive. 
 
 It is characteristic of our nation to feel an im- 
 perative need for occupation. I suppose that there 
 is no nation in the \vorld which has so little capacity
 
 146 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 for doing nothing gracefully, and enjoying it, as the 
 English. This characteristic is part of our strength, 
 because it testifies to a certain childlike vitality. 
 We are impatient, restless, unsatisfied. We cannot 
 be happy unless \ve have a definite end in view. 
 The result of this temperament is to be seen at the 
 present time in the enormous and consuming pas- 
 sion for athletic exercise in the open air. We are 
 not an intellectual nation, and we must do some- 
 thing ; we are wealthy and secure, and, in default 
 of regular work, we have got to organize our hours 
 of leisure on the supposition that we have some- 
 thing to do. I have little doubt that if we became 
 a more intellectual nation the change would be 
 signalized by an immense output of interior books, 
 because we have not the student temperament, the 
 gift of absorbing literature. We have a deep in- 
 stinct for publicity. \l we are athletically gifted, 
 we must display our athletic prowess in public. If 
 we have thoughts <>t our own, we must have a 
 hearing ; we look upon meditation, contemplation, 
 conversation, the arts of leisurely living, as a waste 
 of time ; we are above all things practical. 
 
 But I would pass on to consider the case of 
 more serious writers ; and I would begin by mak- 
 ing a personal confession. My own occupations 
 are mainly literary ; and I would say frankly that 
 there seems to me to be no pleasure comparable 
 to the pleasure of unti:r r . To find a congenial 
 subject, and to expre^> tliat subject as lucidly, as 
 sincerely, as frankly as p< ;Me, appears to me tc 
 be the must delightful occupation in the world. 
 Nature is full of e\<|i;i it- ts and sounds, da\ 
 
 by day ; the hta-je of the \\orld is crowded with
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 147 
 
 interesting and fascinating personalities, rich in 
 contrasts, in characteristics, in humour, in pathos. 
 We are surrounded, the moment we pass outside 
 of the complex material phenomena which surround 
 us, by all kinds of wonderful secrets and incompre- 
 hensible mysteries. What is this strange pageant 
 that unrolls itself before us from hour to hour ? this 
 panorama of night and day, sun and moon, summer 
 and winter, joy and sorrow, life and death ? We 
 have all of us, like Jack Horner, our slice of pic 
 to eat. Which of us does not know the delighted 
 complacency with which we pull out the plums ? 
 The poet is silent of the moment when the plate is 
 empty, when nothing is left but the stones ; but 
 that is no less impressive an experience. 
 
 The wonderful thing to me is, not that there is 
 so much desire in the world to express our little 
 portion of the joy, the grief, the mystery of it all, 
 but that there is so little. I wish with all my heart 
 that there was more instinct for personal expres- 
 sion ; Edward FitzGerald said that he wished we 
 had more lives of obscure persons ; one wants to 
 know what other people are thinking and feeling 
 about it all ; what joys they anticipate, what fears 
 they sustain, how they regard the end and cessation 
 of life and perception, which waits for us all. The 
 worst of it is that people are often so modest ; they 
 think that their own experience is so dull, so unro- 
 mantic, so uninteresting. It is an entire mistake. 
 If the dullest person in the world would only put 
 down sincerely what he or she thought about his 
 or her life, about work and love, religion and emo- 
 tion, it would be a fascinating document. My only 
 sorrow is that the amateurs of whom I have spoken
 
 148 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 above will not do this ; they rather turn to external 
 and impersonal impressions, relate definite things, 
 what they see on their travels, for instance, describ- 
 ing just the things which any one can see. They 
 tend to indulge in the melancholy labour of trans- 
 lation, or employ customary, familiar forms, such 
 as the novel or the play. If only they would write 
 diaries and publish them ; compose imaginary 
 letters ; let one inside the house of self instead of 
 keeping one wandering in the park ! The real in- 
 terest of literature is the apprehending of other 
 points of view ; one spriuls an immense time in 
 what is called society, in the pursuit of other people's 
 views ; but what a very little grain results from an 
 intolerable deal of chal: ! And all because people 
 are conventional and not simple-minded ; because 
 they will not say what they think ; indeed they 
 will not as a rule try to find out what they do think, 
 but prefer to trailic with the conventional counters. 
 Vet what a refreshment it is to meet with a per- 
 fectly sincere person, who makes you feel that you 
 are in real contact with a human being ! This is 
 '..hat we ought to aim at in writing : at a perfectly 
 sincere presentment of our thoughts. We cannot, 
 of course, all of us hope to have views upon art, 
 upon theology, upon politics, upon education, be- 
 cause we may not ha\e any experience in these 
 subjects ; but we have all of us experience in life, in 
 nature, in emotion, in reli. :mn ; and to express 
 \\hat we feel, as sincerely .is we can, is certainly 
 useful to ourselves, because it clears our view, 
 leads us not to confuse hopes with certainties, en- 
 .ti'lcs us to disentangle what we really believe from 
 uhat we conventionally adopt.
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 149 
 
 Of course this cannot be done all at once ; 
 when we first begin to write, we find how difficult 
 it is to keep the thread of our thoughts ; we keep 
 turning out of the main road to explore attractive 
 by-paths ; we cannot arrange our ideas. All writers 
 who produce original work pass through a stage in 
 which they are conscious of a throng of kindred 
 notions, all more or less bearing on the central 
 thought, but the movements of which they can- 
 not wholly control. Their thoughts are like a tur- 
 bulent crowd, and one's business is to drill them 
 into an ordered regiment. A writer has to pass 
 through a certain apprenticeship ; and the cure for 
 this natural vagueness is to choose small precise 
 subjects, to say all that we have in our minds about 
 them, and to stop when we have finished ; not 
 to aim at fine writing, but at definiteness and 
 clearness. 
 
 I suppose people arrive at their end in different 
 ways ; but my own belief is that, in writing, one 
 cannot do much by correction. I believe that 
 the best way to arrive at lucidity is by incessant 
 practice ; we must be content to abandon and 
 sacrifice faulty manuscripts altogether ; we ought 
 not to fret over them and rewrite them. The two 
 things that I have found to be of infinite service to 
 myself, in learning to write prose, have been keep- 
 ing a full diary, and writing poetry. The habit of 
 diarizing is easily acquired, and as soon as it be- 
 comes habitual, the day is no more complete with- 
 out it than it is complete without a cold bath and 
 regular meals. People say that they have not time 
 to keep a diarv ; but they would never say that 
 they had not time to take a bath or to have their
 
 150 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 meals. A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of 
 one's movements ; it should aim rather at giving 
 a salient account of some particular episode, a walk, 
 a book, a conversation. It is a practice which brings 
 its own reward in many ways ; it is a singularly 
 delightful thing to look at old diaries, to see how 
 one was occupied, say, ten years ago ; what one 
 was reading, the people one was meeting, one's 
 earlier point of view. And then, further, as I have 
 said, it has the immense advantage of developing 
 style ; the subjects are ready to hand ; and one 
 may learn, by diarizing, the art of sincere and frank 
 expression. 
 
 And then there is the practice of writing poetry ; 
 there are certain years in the life of most people 
 with a literary temperament, when poetry seems 
 the most natural and desirable mode of scli-expres- 
 sion. This impulse should be freely yielded to. 
 The poetry need not be very good ; I have no illu- 
 sions, for instance, as to the merits of my own ; but 
 it gives one a copious vocabulary, it teaches the art 
 of poise, of cadence, of choice in words, of pictur- 
 escjueness. There comes a time when one aban- 
 dons poetry, or is abandoned by it ; and, after all, 
 prose is the most real and natural form of expres- 
 sion. 'There arrives, in the case of one who has 
 practised poetical expression diligently, a wonder- 
 ful sense of freedom, ot expansiveness, of delight, 
 when he begins to use what has been material for 
 poetry for the purposes of prose. Poetical expres- 
 sion is strictly conditioned by length of stanzas, 
 dignity of vocabulary, and the painful exigencies of 
 rhyme. How good are the days when one has 
 escaped from all that tyranny, when one can say
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 151 
 
 the things that stir the emotion, freely and liber- 
 ally, in Howing phrases, without being brought to 
 a stop by the severe fences of poetical form ! The 
 melody, the cadence, the rise and fall of the sen- 
 tence, antithesis, contrast, mellifluous energy these 
 are the joys of prose ; but there is nothing like 
 the writing of verse to make them easy and in- 
 stinctive. 
 
 A word may be said about style. Stevenson 
 said that he arrived at flexibility of style by frank 
 and unashamed imitation of other writers ; he 
 played, as he said, " the sedulous ape " to great 
 authors. This system has its merits, but it also 
 has its dangers. A sensitive literary temperament 
 is apt to catch, to repeat, to perpetuate the charm- 
 ing mannerisms of great writers. I have sometimes 
 had to write critical monographs on the \vork of 
 great stylists. It is a perilous business ! If for 
 several months one studies the work of a conta- 
 gious and delicate writer, critically and apprecia- 
 tively, one is apt to shape one's sentences with a 
 dangerous resemblance to the cadences of the 
 author whom one is supposed to be criticising. 
 More than once, when my monograph has been 
 completed, I have felt that it might almost have 
 been written by the author under examination ; 
 and there is no merit in that. I am sure that one 
 should not aim at practising a particular style. 
 The one aim should be to present the matter as 
 clearly, as vigorously, as forcibly as one can ; if 
 one does this sincerely, one's own personality will 
 make the style ; and thus I feel that people whose 
 aim is to write vigorously should abstain from even 
 reading authors whose style aifects them strongly.
 
 152 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 Stevenson himself da reel not read Livy ; Pater con- 
 fessed that he coulel not afford to read Stevenson ; 
 he addeel, that he did not consider his own style 
 better than the style of Stevenson rather the re- 
 verse hut he had his ou n theory, his own method 
 of expression, deliberately adopted anel diligently 
 pursued. He therefore carefully refrained from 
 reading an author whom he felt unconsciously com- 
 pelled to imitate. The question of style, then, is 
 one which a writer who desires originality should 
 leave altogether alone. It must emerge of itself, 
 or it is sure to lack distinctiveness. I saw once a 
 curious instance of this. I knew a diligent writer, 
 whose hasty and unconsidercd writings were forcible, 
 lively, and lucid, penetrated by his own poetical anel 
 incisive personality ; but he set no store by these 
 writings, and if they were ever praised in his pres- 
 ence, he said that he was ashamed of them for being 
 so rough. This man devoted many years to the 
 composition of a great literary work. He took in- 
 finite pains with it ; he concentrated whole sen- 
 tences into epithets ; lie hammered and chiselled 
 his phrases ; he was for ever retouching and re- 
 writing. But when the book at last appeared it 
 was a complete disappointment. The thing was 
 really unintelligible ; it hael no motion, no space 
 about it ; the reader had to devote heart-breaking 
 thought to the exploration of a paragraph, anel was 
 as a rule only reuardeel by finding that it was .1 
 simple thought, e\pre>>eil \\ith profound obscurity ; 
 whereas the object ot the '/.liter ou^ht to be to ex- 
 press a profound and ciii.A'ih thought clearly and 
 lucidly. The only piece ot literary advice that I 
 have ever louiul to be ot real ami abiding use, is
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 153 
 
 the advice I once heard given by Professor Seeley 
 to a youthful essayist, who had involved a simple 
 subject in mazes of irrelevant intricacy. ' Don't 
 be afraid," said the Professor, " of letting the bones 
 show." That is the secret : a piece of literary art 
 must not be merely dry bones ; the skeleton must 
 be overlaid with delicate flesh and appropriate 
 muscle ; but the structure must be there, and it 
 must be visible. 
 
 The perfection of lucid writing, which one sees 
 in books such as Newman's Apologia or Ruskin's 
 Prceterita, seems to resemble a crystal stream, which 
 flows limpidly and deliciously over its pebbly bed ; 
 the very shape of the channel is revealed ; there 
 are transparent glassy water-breaks over the pale 
 gravel ; but though the very stream has a beauty 
 of its own, a beauty of liquid curve and delicate 
 murmur, its chief beauty is in the exquisite trans- 
 figuring effect which it has over the shingle, the 
 vegetation that glimmers and sways beneath the 
 surface. How dry, how commonplace the pebbles 
 on the edge look ! How stiff and ruinous the 
 plants from which the water has receded ! But 
 seen through the hyaline medium, what coolness, 
 what romance, what secret and remote mystery, 
 lingers over the tiny pebbles, the little reefs of 
 rock, the ribbons of weed, that poise so delicately 
 in the gliding stream ! What a vision of unimagined 
 peace, of cool refreshment, of gentle tranquillity, it 
 all gives ! 
 
 Thus it is with the transfiguring power of art, 
 of style. The objects by themselves, in the com- 
 monplace light, in the dreary air, are trivial and 
 unromantic enough ; one can hold them in one's
 
 154 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 hand, one seems to have seen them a hundred 
 times before ; but, plunged beneath that clear and 
 fresh medium, they have a unity, a softness, a 
 sweetness which seem the result of a magical spell, 
 an incommunicable influence ; they bring all heaven 
 before the eyes ; they whisper the secrets of a re- 
 gion which is veritably there, which we can discern 
 and enjoy, but the charm of which we can neither 
 analyze nor explain ; we can only confess its ex- 
 istence with a grateful heart. One who devotes 
 himself to writing should find, then, his chief joy 
 in the practice of his art, not in the rewards of it ; 
 publication has its merits, because it entails upon 
 one the labour of perfecting the book as far as 
 possible ; if one wrote without publication in view, 
 one would be tempted to shirk the final labour of 
 the file ; one would leave sentences incomplete, 
 paragraphs unfinished ; and then, too, imperfect 
 as reviews often are, it is wholesome as well as 
 interesting to see the impression that one's work 
 makes on others. If one's work is generally con- 
 temned, it is bracing to know that one fails in one's 
 appeal, that one cannot amuse and interest readers. 
 High literature has often met at first with unmerited 
 neglect and even obloquy ; but to incur neglect and 
 obloquy is not in itself a proof that one's standard 
 is high and one's taste fastidious. Moreover, if 
 one has done one's best, and expressed sincerely 
 what one feels and believes, one sometimes has 
 the true and rare pleasure of eliciting a grateful 
 letter from an unknown person, uho has derived 
 pleasure, perhaps even encouragement, from a 
 book. These are some of the pleasant re\\ards of 
 writing, and though one should not write vsith
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 155 
 
 one's eye on the rewards, yet they may be accepted 
 with a sober gratitude. 
 
 Of course there will come moods of discourage- 
 ment to all authors, when they will ask themselves, 
 as even Tennyson confesses that he was tempted 
 to do, what, after all, it amounts to ? The author 
 must beware of rating his own possibilities too high. 
 In looking back at one's own life, in trying to trace 
 what are the things that have had a deep and per- 
 manent influence on one's character, how rarely is 
 it possible to point to a particular book, and say r 
 ' That book gave me the message I most needed, 
 made me take the right turn, gave me the requisite 
 bias, the momentous impulse " ? We tend to want 
 to do things on too large a scale, to affect great 
 masses of people, to influence numerous hearts. 
 An author should be more than content if he finds 
 he has made a difference to a handful of people, 
 or given innocent pleasure to a small company. 
 Only to those whose heart is high, whose patience 
 is inexhaustible, whose vigour is great, whose emo- 
 tion is passionate, is it given to make a deep mark 
 upon the age ; and there is needed too the magical 
 charm of personality, overflowing in ; ' thoughts 
 that breathe and words that burn." But we can 
 all take a hand in the great game ; and if the lead- 
 ing parts are denied us, if we are told off to sit 
 among a row of supers, drinking and whispering 
 on a bench, while the great characters soliloquize, 
 let us be sure that we drain our empty cup with 
 zest, and do our whispering with iutentness ; not 
 striving to divert attention to ourselves, but con- 
 tributing with all our might to the naturalness, the 
 effectiveness of the scene.
 
 XI 
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS 
 
 I WAS staying the other day in the house of an 
 old friend, a public man, who is a deeply inter- 
 esting character, energetic, able, vigorous, with very 
 definite limitations. The only male guest in the 
 house, it so happened, was also an old friend of 
 mine, a serious man. One night, when we were 
 all three in the smoking-room, our host rose, and 
 excused himself, saying that he had some letters 
 to write. When he was gone, I said to my serious 
 friend : ' What an interesting fellow our host is ! 
 He is almost more interesting because of the quali- 
 ties that he does not possess, than because of the 
 qualities that he does possess." My companion, 
 who is remarkable for his power of blunt statement, 
 looked at me gravely, and said : ' If you propose 
 to discuss our host, you must find some one else 
 to conduct the argument ; he is my friend, whom 
 I esteem and love, and I am not in a position to 
 criticise him." I laughed, and said : " Well, he is 
 my friend, too, and / <.>u-cm and love him ; and 
 that i.-> the very reason \\liy I should like to discuss 
 him. Nothing that eitin-r you or I could sav would 
 make me love him less; but I uish to understand 
 him. I have a very clear impression of him, and
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 157 
 
 I have no doubt you have a very clear impression 
 too ; yet we should probably differ about him in 
 many points, and 1 should like to see what light 
 you could throw upon his character." My com- 
 panion said : " No ; it is inconsistent with my idea 
 of loyalty to criticise my friends. Besides, you 
 know I am an old-fashioned person, and I dis- 
 approve of criticising people altogether. I think 
 it is a violation of the ninth commandment ; I do 
 not think we are justified in bearing false witness 
 against our neighbour." 
 
 " But you beg the question," I said, " by saying 
 'false witness.' I quite agree that to discuss people 
 in a malicious spirit, or in a spirit of mockery, with 
 the intention of exaggerating their faults and mak- 
 ing a grotesque picture of their foibles, is wrong. 
 But two just persons, such as you and I are, may 
 surely talk over our friends, in what Mr. Chadband 
 called a spirit of love ? " My companion shook his 
 head. " No," he said, " I think it is altogether 
 wrong. Our business is to see the good points of our 
 friends, and to be blind to their faults." " Well," 
 I said, " then let us ' praise him soft and low, call 
 him worthiest to be loved,' like the people in ' The 
 Princess.' You shall make a panegyric, and I will 
 say ' Hear, hear ! ' ' You are making a joke out 
 of it," said my companion, " and I shall stick to 
 my principles and you won't mind my saying," 
 he went on, " that I think your tendency is to 
 criticise people much too much. You are always 
 discussing people's faults, and I think it ends in 
 your having a lower estimate of human nature than 
 is either kind or necessary. To-night, at dinner, 
 it made me quite melancholy to hear the way in
 
 158 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 which you spoke of several of our best friends." 
 4 Not leaving Lancelot brave nor Galahad pure ! ' 
 I said ; " in fact you think that I behaved like the 
 ingenious demon in the Acts, who always seems to 
 me to have had a strong sense of humour. It was 
 the seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, was it not, who 
 tried to exorcise an evil spirit ? But he ' leapt upon 
 them and overcame them, so that they fled out of 
 the house naked and wounded.' You mean that I 
 use my friends like that, strip off their reputations, 
 belabour them, and leave them without a rag of 
 virtue or honour ? " My companion frowned, and 
 said : " Yes ; that is more or less what I mean, 
 though I think your illustration is needlessly pro- 
 fane. My idea is that we ought to make the best 
 of people, and try as far as possible to be blind to 
 their faults." ' Unless their fault happens to be 
 criticism ? " I said. My companion turned to me 
 very solemnly, and said : ' I think we ought not 
 to be afraid, if nccessarv, of telling our friends 
 about their faults ; but that is quite a different 
 thing from amusing oneself by discussing their 
 faults with others." " Well," I said, " I believe 
 that one is in a much better position to speak to 
 people about their faults, it one knows them ; and 
 personally I think I arrive at a juster view both of 
 my friends' faults and virtues by discussing them 
 with others. I think one takes a much fairer view, 
 by seeing the impression that one's friends make 
 on other people ; and I think that I generally 
 arrive at admiring my friends more by seeing 
 them reflected in the mind of another, than I do 
 when they are merely reflected in my own mind. 
 Besides, if one is possessed of critic. il faculties, it
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 159 
 
 seems to me absurd to rule out one part of life, 
 and that, perhaps, the most important one's fel- 
 low-beings, I mean and to say that one is not 
 to exercise the faculty of criticism there. You 
 would not think it wrong, for instance, to criticise 
 books ? ' " No," said my companion, " certainly 
 not. I think that it is not only legitimate, but a 
 duty, to bring one's critical faculties to bear on 
 books ; it is one of the most valuable methods of 
 self-education." " And yet books are nothing but 
 an expression of an author's personality," I said. 
 * Would you go so far as to say that one has no 
 business to criticise one's friends' books ? " ' You 
 are only arguing for the sake of arguing," said my 
 companion. ' With books it is quite different ; 
 they are a public expression of a man's opinions, 
 and consequently they are submitted to the world 
 for criticism." ' I confess," I said, " that I do not 
 think the distinction is a real one. I feel sure one 
 has a right to criticise a man's opinions, delivered 
 in conversation ; and I think that much of our 
 lives is nothing but a more or less public expres- 
 sion of ourselves. Your position seems to me no 
 more reasonable than if a man was to sav : ' I 
 
 j 
 
 look upon the whole world, and all that is in it, as 
 the work of God ; and I am not in a position to 
 criticise any of the works of God.' If one may 
 not criticise the character of a friend whom one 
 esteems and loves, surely, a fortiori, we ought not 
 to criticise anything in the world at all. The whole 
 of ethics, the whole of religion, is nothing else than 
 bringing our critical faculties to bear upon actions 
 and qualities ; and it seems to me that if our crit- 
 ical faculty means anything at all, we are bound to
 
 160 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 apply it to all the phenomena \ve see about us." 
 My companion said disdainfully that I was indul- 
 ging in the merest sophistry, and that he thought 
 that \ve had better go to bed, which we presently 
 did. 
 
 I have, since this conversation, been reflecting 
 about the whole subject, and I am not inclined to 
 admit that my companion was right. In the first 
 place, if every one were to follow the principle 
 that one had no business to criticise one's friends, 
 it would end in being deplorably dull. Imagine 
 the appalling ponderosity of a conversation in 
 which one felt bound to praise every one who was 
 mentioned. Think of the insensate chorus which 
 would arise. 'How tall and stately A is! 
 How sturdy and compact B - is ! Then there 
 
 is dear C ; how wise, judicious, prudent, and 
 
 sensible ! And the excellent D , what can- 
 dour, what impulsiveness ! E , how worthy, 
 how business-like ! Yes, how true that is ! How 
 thankful we should be for the examples of A , 
 
 B , C- -, D- , and E- A very little 
 
 of such conversation would go a long way. How 
 it would refresh and invigorate the mind ! What a 
 field for humour and subtlety it would open up ! 
 
 It may be urged that we ought not to regulate 
 our conduct upon the basis of trying to avoid 
 what is dull ; but 1 am myself of opinion that 
 dulness is responsible lor a large amount of human 
 error and misery. Readers of The Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress will no doubt remember the young woman whose 
 name was Dull, and her choice of companions 
 Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Short-mind, Slow- 
 pace, No-heart, Linger-after-lust, and Sleepy-head.
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 161 
 
 These are the natural associates of Madam Dull. 
 The danger of dulness, whether natural or ac- 
 quired, is the danger of coa^placently lingering 
 among stupid and conventional ideas, and losing 
 all the bright interchange of the larger world. 
 The dull people are not, as a rule, the simple 
 people they are generally provided with a narrow 
 and self-sufficient code ; they are often entirely 
 self-satisfied, and apt to disapprove of everything 
 that is lively, romantic, and vigorous. Simplicity, 
 as a rule, is either a natural gift, or else can be 
 attained only by people of strong critical powers, 
 who will, firmly and vigorously, test, examine, and 
 weigh motives, and arrive through experience at a 
 direct and natural method of dealing with men and 
 circumstances. True simplicity is not an inherited 
 poverty of spirit ; it is rather like the poverty of 
 one who has deliberately discarded what is hamper- 
 ing, vexatious, and unnecessary, and has learnt that 
 the art of life consists in disentangling the spirit 
 from all conventional claims, in living by trained 
 impulse and fine instinct, rather than by tradition 
 and authority. I do not say that the dull people 
 are not probably, in a way, the happier people ; 
 I suppose that anything that leads to self-satisfac- 
 tion is, in a sense, a cause of happiness ; but it is 
 not a species of happiness that people ought to 
 pursue. 
 
 Perhaps one ought not to use the word dul- 
 ness, because it may be misunderstood. The kind 
 of dulness of which I speak is not inconsistent 
 with a high degree, not only of practical, but even 
 of mental, ability. I know several people of very 
 great intellectual power who are models of dulness. 
 
 6
 
 i6 2 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 Their memories are loaded with what is no doubt 
 very valuable information, and their conclusions 
 are of the weightiest character ; but they have no 
 vivid perception, no alertness, they are not open 
 to new ideas, they never say an interesting or a 
 suggestive thing ; their presence is a load on the 
 spirits of a lively party, their very facial expression 
 is a rebuke to all light-mindedness and triviality. 
 Sometimes these people are silent, and then to be 
 in their presence is like being in a thick mist ; 
 there is no outlook, no enlivening prospect. Some- 
 times they are talkers ; and I am not sure that 
 that is not even worse, because they generally 
 discourse on their own subjects with protound 
 and serious conviction. They have no power of 
 conversation, because they are not interested in 
 any one else's point of view ; they care no more 
 who their companions are, than a pump cares what 
 sort of a vessel is put under it they only demand 
 that people should listen in silence. I remember 
 not long ago meeting one of the species, in this 
 case an antiquarian. He discoursed continuously, 
 with a hard eye, fixed as a rule upon the table, 
 about the antiquities ot the neighbourhood. I was 
 on one side of him, aiul was lar too much crushed 
 to attempt resistance. I ate and drank mechani- 
 callv ; I said " Yes " and " Very interesting " at 
 intervals ; and the onlv ray of hope upon the 
 hon/on was that the hands of the clock upon the 
 mantelpiece- did undoubtedly move, though they 
 moved with leaden slowness. On the other side 
 of the stii'tint was a hvelv talker, Matthews by 
 name, who grew vcrv restive under the process. 
 The iM'-'t man had seln ted Dorchester as his
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 163 
 
 theme, because he had unhappily discovered that 
 I had recently visited it. My friend Matthews, 
 who had been included in the audience, made 
 desperate attempts to escape ; and once, seeing 
 that I was fairly grappled, began a conversation 
 with his next neighbour. But the antiquary was not 
 to be put off. He stopped, and looked at Mat- 
 thews with a relentless eye. ' Matthews," he said, 
 " MATTHEWS ! " raising his voice. Matthews looked 
 round. ' I was saying that Dorchester was a very 
 interesting place." Matthews made no further at- 
 tempt to escape, and resigned himself to his fate. 
 
 Such men as the antiquary are certainly very 
 happy people ; they are absorbed in their subject, 
 and consider it to be of immense importance. I 
 suppose that their lives are, in a sense, well spent, 
 and that the world is in a way the gainer by their 
 labours. My friend the antiquary has certainly, 
 according to his own account, proved that certain 
 ancient earthworks near Dorchester are of a date 
 at least five hundred years anterior to the received 
 date. It took him a year or two to find out, and I 
 suppose that the human race has benefited in some 
 way or other by the conclusion ; but, on the other 
 hand, the antiquary seems to miss all the best things 
 of life. If life is an educative process, people who 
 have lived and loved, who have smiled and suffered, 
 who have perceived beautiful things, who have felt 
 the rapturous and bewildering mysteries of the 
 world well, they have learnt something of the 
 mind of God, and, when they close their eyes upon 
 the world, take with them an alert, a hopeful, an 
 inquisitive, an ardent spirit, into whatever may be 
 the next act of the drama ; but my friend the anti-
 
 1 64 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 quary, when he crosses the threshold of the un- 
 seen, when he is questioned as to what has been his 
 relation to life, will have seen and perceived, and 
 learnt nothing, except the date of the Dorchester 
 earthworks, and similar monuments of history. 
 
 And of all the shitting pageant of life, by far 
 the most interesting and exquisite part is our re- 
 lations with the other souls who are bound on the 
 same pilgrimage. One desires ardently to know 
 what other people fee! about it all what their 
 points of view are, what their motives are, what 
 are the data on which they form their opinions 
 so that to cut oil the discussion of other personal- 
 ities, on ethical grounds, is like any other stiff and 
 Puritanical attempt to limit interests, to circum- 
 scribe experience, to maim life. The criticism, then, 
 or the discussion, of other people is not so much 
 a cause ot interest in lite, as a sign of it ; it is no 
 more to be suppressed by codes or edicts than any 
 other form of temperamental activity. It is no more 
 necessary to justify the habit, than it is necessary 
 to give good reasons tor eating or for breathing ; 
 the only thing that it is advisable to do, is to lay 
 down certain rules about it, and prescribe certain 
 methods ot practising it. The people who do not 
 desire to discuss others, or who disapprove of doing 
 it, may be pronounced to be, as a rule, either stupid, 
 or egotistical, or Pharisaical ; and sometimes they 
 arc- ;iil three. The only principle to bear in mind is 
 the principle of justice. It a man discusses others 
 spitefully or malevolently, with the sole intention 
 ot eitln-; extracting amusement out ot their foibles, 
 or with the still more odious intention of emphasizing 
 his own \irtues bv discovering the weakness of
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 165 
 
 others, or with the cynical desire which is per- 
 haps the lowest of all of proving the whole busi- 
 ness of human life to he a vile and sordid spectacle, 
 then he may be frankly disapproved of, and if 
 possible avoided ; but if a man takes a generous 
 view of humanity, if he admires what is large and 
 noble, if he gives full credit for kindliness, strength, 
 usefulness, vigour, sympathy, then his humorous 
 perception of faults and deficiencies, of whims and 
 mannerisms, of prejudices and unreasonablenesses, 
 will have nothing that is hard or bitter about it. 
 For the truth is that, if we are sure that a man 
 is generous and just, his little mannerisms, his fads, 
 his ways, are what mostly endear him to us. The 
 man of lavish liberality is all the more lovable if he has 
 an intense dislike to cutting the string of a parcel, 
 and loves to fill his drawers with little hanks of 
 twine, the untying of which stands for many wasted 
 hours. If we know a man to be simple-minded, 
 forbearing, and conscientious, we like him all the 
 better when he tells for the fiftieth time an ancient 
 story, prefacing it by anxious inquiries, which are 
 smilingly rebutted, as to whether any of his hearers 
 have ever heard the anecdote before. 
 
 But we must not let this tendency, to take a 
 man in his entirety, to love him as he is, carry 
 us too far ; we must be careful that the foibles 
 that endear him to us are in themselves innocent. 
 
 There is one particular form of priggishness, 
 in this matter of criticism of others, which is apt 
 to beset literary people, and more especially at a 
 time when it seems to be considered by many 
 writers that the first duty of a critic they would 
 probably call him an artist for the sake of the asso-
 
 166 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 ciations is to get rid of all sense ot right and wrong 
 I was reading the other day a sensible and appre- 
 ciative review of Mr. Lucas's new biography of 
 Charles Lamb. The reviewer quoted with cordial 
 praise Mr. Lucas's remark referring, of course, to 
 the gin-and-water, which casts, I fear, in my own 
 narrow view, something of a sordid shadow over 
 Lamb's otherwise innocent life " A man must be 
 very secure in his own righteousness who would 
 pass condemnatory judgment upon Charles Lamb's 
 only weakness." I do not myself think this a 
 sound criticism. \Ve ought not to abstain from 
 condemning the weakness, we must abstain from 
 condemning Charles Lamb. His beautiful virtues, 
 his tenderness, his extraordinary sweetness and 
 purity of nature, far outweigh this weakness. But 
 what are we to do ? Are we to ignore, to condone, 
 to praise the habit ? Are we to think the better 
 of Charles Lamb and love him more because he 
 tippled ? Would he not have been more lovable 
 without it ? 
 
 And the fact that one may be conscious of 
 similar faults and moral weaknesses, ought not to 
 make one more, but less, indulgent to such a fault 
 when we see it in a beautiful nature. The fault 
 in question is no more in itself adorable, than it 
 is in another man who docs not possess Lamb's 
 genius. 
 
 \\ < have a prrtrct n-jlit nay, we do well 
 to coiuknm in others faults which we frankly 
 coii'icii'ii in ourselves. It i!u-s not help on tin. 1 
 \\orM it \\ c : r o about e\er\v.here slobbering \\ith 
 foriMvt ;u 1 affection; it i -, the ino-t mawkish 
 
 scutum iil.ihtv to lo\ c people m ->ueh a \\a\ that
 
 THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS. 167 
 
 we condone grave faults in them ; and to condone 
 a fault because a man is great, when \ve condemn 
 it if he is not great, is only a species of snob- 
 bishness. It is right to compassionate sinners, to 
 find excuse for the faults or every one but our- 
 selves ; but we ought not to love so foolishly and 
 irrationally, that we cannot even bring ourselves to 
 wish our hero's faults away. 
 
 I confess to feeling the most minute and de- 
 tailed interest in the smallest matters connected 
 with other people's lives and idiosyncrasies. I 
 cannot bear biographies of the dignified order, 
 which do not condescend to give what are called 
 personal details, but confine themselves to matters 
 of undoubted importance. When I have finished 
 reading such books I feel as if I had been reading 
 The Statesman's Year-book, or The Annual Regis- 
 ter. I have no mental picture of the hero ; he is 
 merely like one of those bronze statues, in frock- 
 coat and trousers, that decorate our London squares. 
 
 I was reading, the other day, an ecclesiastical 
 biography. The subject of it, a high dignitary of 
 the Church, had attended the funeral of one of his 
 episcopal colleagues, with whom he had had sev- 
 eral technical controversies. On the evening of the 
 day he wrote a very tender and beautiful account 
 of the funeral in his diary, which is quoted at length : 
 ' How little," he wrote, " the sense of difference, 
 and how strong my feeling of his power and solid 
 sense ; how little I care that ne was wrong about 
 the Discipline Bill, how much that he was so happy 
 with us in the summer ; how much that he was, as 
 all the family told me, so ' devoted ' to my Nellie ! 
 
 That is a thoroughly human statement, nnd
 
 i68 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 preserves a due sense of proportion. In the pres- 
 ence of death it is the kindly human relations that 
 matter more than policies and statesmanship. 
 
 And so it may be said, in conclusion, that \ve 
 cannot taste the fulness ot lite, unless we can hon- 
 estly say, \iliil humani a me alienum puto. If we 
 grow absorbed in work, in business, in literature, 
 in art, in policy, to the exclusion of the nearer 
 human elements, we dock and maim our lives. 
 We cannot solve the mystery of this difficult world ; 
 but we may be sure of this that it is not for noth- 
 ing that we are set in the midst of interests and 
 relationships, of liking and loving, of tenderness 
 and mirth, of sorrow and pain. It we are to get 
 the most and the best out of life, we must not 
 seclude ourselves from these things ; and one of 
 the nearest and simplest of duties is the perception 
 of others' points of view, of sympathy, in no limited 
 sense ; and that sympathy we can only gain through 
 looking at humanity in its wholeness. If we allow 
 ourselves to be blinded by false conscience, by 
 tradition, by stupidity, even by affection, from 
 realizing what others are, we sulFer, as we always 
 suffer from any wilful blindness ; indeed, wilful 
 blindness is the most dr.-peratc of all faults, per- 
 haps the only one that can hardly be condoned, 
 because it argues a confidence in one's own opinion, 
 a self-sufficiency, a self-estimation, which shut out, 
 as by an opaque and soulid screen, the light of 
 heaven tiom the soul.
 
 XII 
 
 PRIESTS 
 
 I HAVE been fortunate in the course of my life 
 in knowing, more or less intimately, several 
 eminent priests ; and by this I do not mean neces- 
 sarily eminent ecclesiastics ; several famous ecclesi- 
 astics with whom circumstances have brought me 
 into contact have not been priestly persons at all ; 
 they have been vigorous, wise, energetic, states- 
 manlike men, such as I suppose the Pontifex Maxi- 
 mus at Rome might have been, with a kind of formal, 
 almost hereditary, priesthood. And, on the other 
 hand, I have known more than one layman of dis- 
 tinctly priestly character, priestly alter the order 
 of Melchizedek, who had not, I suppose, received 
 any religious consecration for his ministry, apart 
 from perhaps a kingly initiation. 
 
 The essence of the priest is that he should 
 believe himself, however humbly and secretly, to 
 be set in a certain sense between humanity and God. 
 He is conscious, if not of a mission, at least of a 
 vocation, as an interpreter of secrets, a guardian of 
 mysteries ; he would believe that there are certain 
 people in the world who are called to be apostles, 
 whose work it is to remind men of God, and to 
 justify the ways of God to men. lie feels that he 
 
 6a
 
 i yo FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 stands, like Aaron, to make atonement ; that he is 
 in a certain definite relation to God, a relation which 
 all do not share ; and that this gives him, in a 
 special sense, something of the divine and fatherly 
 relation to men. In the hands of a perfectly humble, 
 perfectly disinterested man. this may become a very 
 beautiful and tender thing. Such a man, from long 
 and intimate relations with humanity, will have a 
 very deep knowledge of the human heart. lie will 
 be surprised at no weakness or frailty ; he will be 
 patient with all perverseness and obduracy ; he will 
 be endlessly compassionate, because he will realize 
 the strength and insistence of temptation ; he will 
 be endlessly hopeful, because he will have seen, a 
 hundred times over, the tlower of virtue and love 
 blooming in an arid and desolate heart. He will 
 have seen close at hand the transforming power of 
 faith, even in natures which have become the shud- 
 dering victims of evil habit. 
 
 Such a priest as 1 describe had occasion once 
 to interview a great doctor about the terrible case 
 of a woman of high social position who had become 
 the slave of drink. The doctor was a man of great 
 force and ability, and ot unwearying devotion ; but 
 he was what \\ould be called a sceptic and a material- 
 ist. The priest asked it the case was hopeless ; the 
 great doctor shrugged his shoulders. ' Yes," he 
 said, " pathologically speaking, it is hopeless ; there 
 may be periods of recoverv, but the course that the 
 case v. ill normally run \sill be a series of relapses, 
 each more serious and ot longer duration than the 
 hist." ' Is there no chance ot recovery on any line 
 that you could sirji.'<^t ? ' said the priest. The 
 two looked at each other, both good men and true.
 
 PRIESTS. 171 
 
 4 Well," said the doctor after a pause, " this is more 
 in your line than mine ; the only possible chance 
 lies in the will, and that can only be touched through 
 an emotion. I have seen a religious emotion suc- 
 cessful, where everything else failed." The priest 
 smiled and said, " I suppose that would seem to 
 you a species of delusion ? You would not admit 
 that there was any reality behind it ? " " Yes," 
 said the doctor, " a certain reality, no doubt ; the 
 emotional processes are at present somewhat ob- 
 scure from the scientific point of view : it is a for- 
 lorn hope." * Yes," said the priest, " and it is 
 thus the kind of task for which I and those of my 
 calling feel bound to volunteer." 
 
 Of course one of the difficulties that the priest 
 has to struggle against is his inheritance. If we 
 trace back the vocation of the priest to the earliest 
 times, we find their progenitors connected with 
 some of the darkest and saddest things in human 
 history. They are of the same tribe as wizards and 
 magicians, sorcerers and medicine-men, the cele- 
 brators of cruel and unholy rites. The priests of 
 Moloch, of Chemosh, of Baal, are the dark and 
 ancient ancestors of the same vocation. All who 
 have trafficked in the terrors of mankind, who have 
 gained power by trading on superstitious imagi- 
 nings, who have professed to propitiate wrathful and 
 malignant spirits, to stand between men and their 
 dreadful Maker all these have contributed their 
 share to the dark and sad burden which the priest 
 has to bear. As soon as man, rising out of pure 
 savagery, began to have any conception of the laws 
 of nature, he found in himself a deep instinct for 
 happiness, a terror of suffering and death ; yet, at
 
 172 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 the same time, he found himself set in a world 
 where afflictions seemed to be rained down upon 
 humanity by some mysterious, unseen, and awful 
 power. Could man believe that God wished him 
 well, who racked him with cruel pain, sent plagues 
 among his cattle, swept away those whom he loved, 
 destroyed his crops with hail and thunderbolts, and 
 at the end of all dragged him reluctant and shud- 
 dering into the darkness, out of a world where so 
 much was kind and cheerful, and where, after all, 
 it was sweet to live ? 
 
 He turned in his despair to any one who could 
 profess to hold out any shield over him, who could 
 claim to read the dreadtul mind of God, and to 
 propitiate His mercy. Even then a demand created 
 a supply. Men have always loved power and in- 
 fluence ; and so spirits of sterner and more tena- 
 cious mould, who could perhaps despise the lesser 
 terrors of mankind, and who desired, above all 
 things, to hold the destinies of others in their hands, 
 to make themselves felt, naturally seized the oppor- 
 tunity of surrounding themselves with the awe and 
 dignity that the supposed possession of deeper 
 knowledge and more recondite powers offered 
 them. 
 
 Then as the world broadened and widened, as 
 reason began to extend its sway, the work of the 
 priest became more beneficent, and tended to 
 bless and hallow rather than to blast and curse. 
 Hut still the temptation remains a terribly strong 
 one tor men of a certain type, man who can afford 
 to de>piM- the more material successes of the world, 
 who can n;cii:e their personal ambition in ambi- 
 tions for an order and a raste, still to claim to
 
 PRIESTS. 173 
 
 stand between man and God, to profess to with- 
 hold His blessings, to grasp the keys of I lis mysteries, 
 to save men from the consequences of sin. As long 
 as human terror exists, as long as men fear sutler- 
 ing and darkness and death, they will turn to any 
 one who can profess to give them relief ; and re- 
 lief, too, will come ; for the essence of courage is, 
 for many timid hearts, the dependence upon a 
 stronger will. And if a man can say, with a tran- 
 quil conviction, to a suffering and terrified com- 
 rade, " There is no need to fear," the fear loses 
 half its terrors and half its sting. 
 
 Now, when religion of any kind becomes a part 
 of the definite social life of the world, there must 
 of course be an order of ministers whose business 
 it is to preach it, and to bring it home to the minds 
 of men. Such men will be set apart by a solemn 
 initiation to their office ; the more solemn the ini- 
 tiation is, the more faithful they will be. The ques- 
 tion rather is what extent of spiritual power such 
 ministers may claim. The essence of religious 
 liberty is that men should feel that there is noth- 
 ing whatever that stands between themselves and 
 God ; that they can approach God with perfect 
 and simple access ; that they can speak to I lim 
 without concealment of their sins, and receive from 
 Him the comforting sense of the possibility of for- 
 giveness. Of course the sense of sin is a terribly 
 complicated one, because it seems to be made up 
 partly of an inner sense of transgression, a sense of 
 failure, a consciousness that we have acted un- 
 worthily, meanly, miserably. Yet the sense of sin 
 follows many acts that are not in themselves neces- 
 sarily disastrous either to oneself or the community.
 
 i 7 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 Then there is a further sense of sin, perhaps devel- 
 oped by long inheritance of instinct, which seems 
 to attend acts not in themselves sinful, but which 
 menace the security of society. For instance, there 
 is nothing sinful in a man's desiring to save him- 
 self, and in fact saving himself, from a sudden 
 danger. If a man leaps out of the way of a run- 
 away cart, or throws himself on the ground to avoid 
 the accidental discharge of a gun, lie would never 
 be blamed, nor would he blame himself, for any 
 want of courage. Vet if a man in a battle saves 
 himself from death by Hight, he would regard him- 
 self, and be regarded by others, as having failed in 
 his duty, and he would be apt to feel a lifelong 
 shame and remorse for having yielded to the im- 
 pulse. Again, the deliberate killing of another 
 human being in a fit of anger, however just, would 
 be regarded by the offender as a deeply sinful act, 
 and he would not quarrel with the justice of the 
 sentence of death which would be meted out to 
 him ; but when we transfer the same act to the 
 region of war, which is consecrated by the usage of 
 society, a man uho had slam a hundred enemies 
 would regard the iact with a certain complacency, 
 and would not be even encouraged by a minister 
 of religion to repent ot his hundred heinous crimes 
 upon his deathbed. 
 
 The sense, then, of sin is in a certain degree 
 an artificial sense, and \\ouhl seem to consist partly 
 of a deep and divine instinct which arraigns the soul 
 for acts, which may be in themselves trifling, but 
 which seem to possess the sinful quality ; and 
 partly of a conventional instinct \\lnch considers 
 certain things to be abominable, which are not
 
 PRIESTS. 175 
 
 necessarily in themselves sinful, because it is the 
 custom of the world to consider them so. 
 
 And then to the philosopher there falls a darker 
 tinge upon the whole matter, when he considers 
 that the evil impulses, to yield to which is sin, are 
 in themselves deliberately implanted in man by his 
 Creator, or at least not apparently eradicated ; and 
 that many of those whose whole life has been dark- 
 ened, embittered, and wrecked by sin, have in- 
 curred their misery by yielding to tendencies which 
 in themselves are, by inheritance, practically irre- 
 sistible. 
 
 What room is there, then, in these latter days, 
 when reason and science together have dispelled 
 the darkness of superstition, have diminished the 
 possibility of miraculous occurrences, have laughed 
 empirical occultism out of the field, for the 
 priest ? 
 
 There is no room for him if there lingers in 
 the depth of his mind any taint of the temptation 
 to serve his own ends, or to exalt himself or his 
 order, by trading on the fears of irrational and credu- 
 lous humanity. Against such priestcraft as this the 
 true priest must array himself, together with the 
 scientist, the statesman, the physician. Against all 
 personal and priestly domination all lovers of 
 liberty and God must combine. Theirs is the sin 
 of Simon Magus, the sin of Hoplmi, the sin of 
 Caiaphas ; the sin that desires that men should still 
 be bound, in order that they may themselves win 
 worship and honour. It is the deadliest and vilest 
 tyranny in the world. 
 
 But of the true priesthood there is more need 
 than there ever was, as the rninds of men awaken
 
 176 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 to the truth ; for in a world where there is so much 
 that is dark, men need to be constantly encouraged, 
 reminded, even rebuked. The true priest must 
 leave the social conscience alone, and entrust it to 
 the hands of statesmen and officials. His concern 
 must be with the individual ; he must endeavour 
 to make men realize that tranquillity and security 
 of heart can only be won by victories over self, 
 that law is only a cumbrous and incomplete organi- 
 zation for enforcing upon men a sense of equality ; 
 and he must show how far law lags behind morality, 
 and that a man may be legally respectable yet mor- 
 ally abominable. The true priest must not ob- 
 scure the oracles of God ; he must beware of 
 teaching that faith is an intricate intellectual process. 
 He must pare religion to the bone, and show that 
 the essence of it is a perfectly simple relation with 
 God and neighbour. He must not concern him- 
 self with policy or ceremony ; he must warn men 
 against mistaking iusthetic impulse for the percep- 
 tion of virtue ; he must light against precedent and 
 tradition and custom ; he must realize that one 
 point of union is more important than a hundred 
 points of difference. He must set himself against 
 upholsteries and uniforms, against formalities and 
 rituals. He must abjure wealth and position, in 
 favour of humble kindliness and scrviceableness. 
 He must have a sense <>t poetry and romance and 
 beauty about life ; where other men are artists in 
 words, in musical tones, in pigments or sculptured 
 stone, he must be an artist in virtue. lie must be 
 the friend and lover of humble, inefficient, inarticu- 
 late, unpleasing persons ; and he must be able to 
 show that there is a desirable quality of beauty in
 
 PRIESTS. 177 
 
 the most sordid and commonplace action, if faith- 
 fully performed. 
 
 Against such an ideal are arrayed all the forces 
 of the world. Christ and Christ-like men have 
 held up such an ideal to humanity ; and the sorrow 
 of it is that, the moment that such thoughts have 
 won for themselves the incredible and instant power 
 that they do win among mortals, men of impure 
 motive, who have desired the power more than the 
 service, have seized upon the source, have fenced 
 it off, have systematized its distribution, have en- 
 riched themselves by withholding and denying it to 
 all but those who can pay a price, if not of wealth, 
 at all events of submission and obedience and re- 
 cognition. 
 
 A man who desires the true priesthood may 
 perhaps find it readiest to his hand in some eccle- 
 siastical organization ; yet there he is surrounded 
 by danger ; his impulses are repressed ; he must 
 sacrifice them for the sake of the caste to which he 
 belongs ; he is told to be cautious and prudent ; he 
 is praised and rewarded for being conventional. But 
 a man may also take such a consecration for himself, 
 as a king takes a crown from the altar and crowns 
 himself with might ; he need not require it at the 
 hands of another. If a man resolves not to live for 
 himself or his own ambitions, but to walk up and 
 down in the earth, praising simplicity and virtue 
 and the love of God wherever he sees it, protesting 
 against tyranny and selfishness, bearing others' bur- 
 dens as far as he can, he may exercise the priesthood 
 of God. Such men are to be found in every Church, 
 and even holding the highest places in them ; but 
 such a priesthood is found, though perhaps few
 
 178 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 suspect it, by thousands among women \vhcre it is 
 found by tens among men. Perhaps it may be said 
 that if a man adds the tenderness of a woman to the 
 serene strength of a man, he is best fitted for the 
 task ; but the truth lies in the fact that the qualities 
 for the exercise of such an influence are to be found 
 far more commonly among women than among men, 
 though accompanied as a rule by less consciousness 
 of it, and little desire to exercise it officially ; indeed 
 it is the very absence of egotism among women, the 
 absence of the personal claim, that makes them less 
 effective than they otherwise might be, because they 
 do not hold an object or an aim dear enough. They 
 desire to achieve, rather than to be known to have 
 achieved ; and yet in this unperceptive world, 
 human beings are apt to choose for their guides 
 and counsellors people whom they know by repu- 
 tation, rather than those whom they know famil- 
 iarly. And thus mere recognition often brings with 
 it a power of wider influence, because people are 
 apt to trust the judgment of others rather than their 
 own. In seeking for an adviser, men are apt to 
 consider who has the greatest reputation for wis- 
 dom, rather than whom they themselves have found 
 wisest ; and thus the man who seeks for influence 
 often attains it, because he has a wider circle of 
 those who recommend him. It is this absence of 
 independent judgment that ^'ives strength to the 
 self-seeking priest ; while the natural priesthood 
 of women is less recognixed because it is attended 
 with no advertisement. 
 
 The natural priest is one whom one ran in- 
 stinctively and utterly trust, in \\hom one can 
 deposit secrets as one dep<>. it>, them in the cus-
 
 PRIESTS. 179 
 
 tody of a hank, without any fear that they will be 
 used for other purposes. In the true priest one 
 finds a tender compassion, a deep and patient love ; 
 it is not worth while to wear disguises before him, 
 because his keen, weary, and amused eye sees 
 through the mask. It is not worth while to keep 
 back, as Ananias did, part of the price of the land, 
 to leave sordid temptations untold, because the true 
 priest loves the sinner even more than he hates the 
 sin ; it is best to be utterly sincere with him, be- 
 cause he loves sincerity even more than unstained 
 virtue ; and one can confess to him one's desires 
 for good with as little false shame as one can 
 confess one's hankering after evil. Perhaps in 
 one respect the man is more fitted to be a con- 
 fessor than a woman, because he has a deeper 
 experience of the ardour and the pleasure of 
 temptation ; and yet the deeper tenderness of the 
 woman gives her a sympathy for the tempted, 
 which is not even communicated by a wider ex- 
 perience of sin. 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing that reflects our anthro- 
 pomorphic ideas of God more strongly than the fact 
 that no revelation of prophets has ever conceived of 
 the Supreme Deity as other than masculine ; and 
 no doubt the Mariolatry of the Church of Rome is 
 the reflection of the growing influence in the world 
 of the feminine element ; and yet the conception of 
 God as masculine is in itself a limitation of His in- 
 finite perfection. That we should carry our con- 
 ception of sex into the infinite is perhaps a mere 
 failure of imagination, and if we could divest our- 
 selves of a thought which possibly has no reality in 
 it, we should perhaps grow to feel that the true
 
 i8o FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 priesthood of life could be exercised as well by 
 women as by men, or even better. The true prin- 
 ciple is that all those who are set free by a natural 
 grace, a divine instinct, from grosser temptations, 
 and whose freedom leads them not to a cold self- 
 sufficiency, to a contempt for what is weaker, but 
 to an ardent desire to save, to renew, to upraise, are 
 the natural priests or priestesses of the world ; for 
 the only way in which the priest can stand between 
 man and God is, when smaller and more hampered 
 natures realize that he lias a divine freedom and 
 compassion conferred upon him, which sets him 
 above themselves ; when they can feel that in reli- 
 gion it is better to agree with the saints than to 
 differ from them ; when they can see that there 
 are certain people whose religious intuitions can 
 be trusted, because they are wider and deeper 
 than the narrower intuitions of more elementary 
 natures. 
 
 The priest, then, that I would recognize is not 
 the celebrator of lonely and forlorn mysteries, the 
 proprietor of divine blessings, the posturer in solemn 
 ceremonies, but the man or woman of candid gaze, 
 of fearless heart, of deep compassion, of infinite 
 concern. It is these qualities which, if they are 
 there, lend to rite and solemnity a holiness and a 
 significance which they cannot win from antiquity or 
 tradition. Such priests as these are the interpreters 
 of the Divine will, the channels of Divine grace ; 
 and the hope of the race lies in the fact that such 
 men and women are sent into the world, and go in 
 and out among us, more than in all the stately 
 organizations, the mysterious secrets, the splendid 
 shrines, devised by the art of man to make fences
 
 PRIESTS. 181 
 
 about the healing spring ; shrines \vherc, though 
 sound and colour may lavish their rich hues, their 
 moving tones, yet the raiment of the priest may hide 
 a proud and greedy heart, and the very altar may 
 be cold.
 
 I 
 
 XIII 
 
 AMBITION 
 
 AM afraid that Milton's great line about am- 
 bition, 
 
 " That last infirmity of noble minds," 
 
 is responsible for a pood deal of harm, because it 
 induces high-minded persons of inexact ideas to 
 think ambition a noble infirmity, or at least to 
 believe that they need not try to get rid of their 
 personal ambitions until they have conquered all 
 their other evil dispositions. I suppose that what 
 Milton meant was that it was the hardest of all 
 faults to get rid of ; and the reason why it is so 
 difficult to eject it, is because it is so subtle and 
 ingenious a spirit, and masquerades under such 
 splendid disguises, arrayed in robes of light. A 
 man who desires to fill a hi^h position in the world 
 is so apt to disguise his craving to himself by think- 
 ing, or trying to think, that he desires a great place 
 because of the beneficent influence he can exert, 
 and all the <jond that he will be able to do, which 
 shall -ire.un from him as light from the sun. Of 
 course to a high-minded man that is naturally one 
 of the honest pleasures of an important post ; but 
 he ought to be quite sure that his motive is that the
 
 AMBITION. 183 
 
 good should he done, and not that he should have 
 the credit of doing it. I have burnt my own finders 
 not once nor twice at the fire of ambition, and the 
 subject has been often in my mind. But my ex- 
 periences were so wholly unlike anything that I had 
 anticipated, though I suppose they are in reality 
 normal enough, that I will venture to set them 
 dow r n here. The first curious experience was how, 
 on a nearer survey of the prospect of obtaining an 
 important post, all the incidental advantages and 
 conveniences of the position sank into nothingness. 
 This was a quite unexpected development ; I had 
 imagined that a prospect of dignity and importance 
 would have had something vaguely sustaining about 
 it. A brilliant satirist once said that a curate did 
 not as a rule desire to be a bishop that he might 
 exercise a wide and useful influence, but primarily 
 that he might be called " my lord." I myself was 
 brought, as a child, in contact with one who was 
 somewhat unexpectedly called to a high office. I 
 was much with him in the days when his honours 
 first invested him, and I confess with a certain 
 shame that it did undoubtedly seem to me that the 
 
 ^ J 
 
 dignity of the office, the sense of power, the obvious 
 respect paid to him by people of position, were things 
 that must pleasantly sweeten a mortal cup. The 
 other day I was in the company of an eminent pre- 
 late ; there were three curates present : they hov- 
 ered round the great man like bees round a flower ; 
 they gazed with innocent rapture upon his shapely 
 legs, somewhat strangely swathed, as Carlyle said, 
 his bright, grotesque hat ; and I could not help 
 feeling that they thought how well such raiment 
 would become themselves. It is of course a childish
 
 1 84 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 view ; hut then how long our childish views sur- 
 vive, though hidden under grave pretences ! To 
 see a great personage move with dignity to his 
 appointed place in a great ceremony, attended by 
 all the circumstances of pomp, a congregation gaz- 
 ing, with an organ above thundering out rich and 
 solemn music, how impressive it all appears ! How 
 hard to think that the central actor in such a scene 
 does not feel his heart swell with a complacent joy ! 
 And yet I suppose that any sensible man under 
 such conditions is far more likely to be oppressed 
 with a sense of weakness and anxious responsibility ; 
 how soon such surroundings ought to, nay, do find 
 their true value in a wise man's mind ! The tri- 
 umph rather is if, in the midst of all this glitter 
 and glory, when a silence is made, the worshipful 
 man speaks simple and strong words out of a pure 
 and noble heart ; and then one can feel that the 
 pomp is nothing but the due homage of mankind 
 for real greatness, and that it has followed him 
 rather than been followed by him. 
 
 It was a relief to find, as I say, that, on a nearer 
 prospect, all the circumstance oi greatness vanished 
 into shadow indeed more than that it became one 
 of the distinct disadvantages of the position. I felt 
 that time and money and thought would have to 
 be spent on the useless and fatiguing mise-cn-scenc, 
 and that it would all entail a quantity of futile worry, 
 of tiresome publicity, of intolerable- functions, that 
 meant nothing but weariness of spirit. I think that 
 men of \\vj\\ official position are most to be pitied 
 because of the time that they ha\e to spend, not in 
 their work, but in the ornamental appearances en- 
 tniled on them bv their duties. These things have
 
 AMBITION. 185 
 
 a certain value, I suppose, in stimulating the imagi- 
 nation of gazers ; but surely it is a poor value after 
 all. A secretary of state in his study, working out 
 the hard and tiresome details of a plan that will 
 benefit perhaps a whole nation in humble ways, is 
 a more admirable figure than the same man, in 
 ribbon and star, bowing and smiling at an evening 
 party. And yet the dignified trappings of the post 
 are what ordinary men desire. 
 
 The next step in my own progress when con- 
 fronted, as I say, with the prospect of the possi- 
 bility that I might feel bound to accept an important 
 position, was the consciousness of the anxious and 
 wearing responsibilities that it involved. I felt that 
 a millstone was to be bound round my neck, and 
 that I must bid farewell to what is after all the 
 best gift of heaven, my liberty ; a liberty won b) 
 anxious years of hard toil. 
 
 And here I have no doubt, though I tried hard 
 not to let it affect me, that my desire not to sacri- 
 fice my liberty did make me exaggerate the diffi- 
 culties that lay before me ; difficulties which I 
 should probably have unconsciously minimized if 
 I had desired the position which was in prospect. 
 It was a happy moment when I found myself 
 relieved from the responsibility of undertaking 
 an impossible task. I felt, too, that I was further 
 disqualified by my reluctance to attempt the task ; 
 a reluctance which a near prospect of the position 
 had poignantly revealed to me. A great task ought 
 to be taken up with a certain buoyancy and eager- 
 ness of spirit, not in heaviness and sadness. A cer- 
 tain tremor of nerves, a stage fright, is natural to all 
 sensitive performers. But this is merely a kind of
 
 186 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 anteroom through which one must needs pass to a 
 part which one desires to play ; but if one does 
 not sincerely desire to play the part, it is clear 
 that to attempt it merely from a sense of duty is 
 an ill omen for success. And so I felt sincerely 
 and humbly that I ought not to feel compelled to 
 attempt it. The conviction came in a flash like 
 a divine intuition, and was followed by a peace of 
 mind which showed me that I was acting rightly. 
 I seemed too to perceive that the best work in the 
 world was not the work of administration and or- 
 ganization, but humble and individual ministries 
 performed in a corner without tangible rewards. 
 For such work I was both equipped and prepared, 
 and I turned back to the fallentis semi t a viter, which 
 is the true path for the sincere spirit, aware that I 
 had been truly and tenderly saved from committing 
 a grave mistake. 
 
 Perhaps if one could have looked at the whole 
 question in a simpler and larger-minded way, the 
 result might have been dilTerent. But here tempera- 
 ment comes in, and the very complexities and in- 
 tricacies that clouded the matter were of themselves 
 evidence that after all it was the temperament that 
 was at fault. Cecil Rhodes, it is recorded, once 
 asked Lord Acton why Mr. Bent, the explorer, did 
 not pronounce certain ruins to be of Pha-nician 
 origin. Lord Acton replied with a smile that it was 
 probably because he was not sure. ' Ah ! " said 
 Cecil Rhodes, " that is nut the way that Empires are 
 made." A true, interesting, and characteristic com- 
 ment ; but it also contains a lesson that people who 
 are not sure should not attempt to make empires, 
 or undertake tasks that involve the welfare of many.
 
 AMBITION. 187 
 
 And so there remains the duty to me, after my 
 piece ot experience, to gather up the fragments that 
 remain, to interpret. Dante assigns the lowest place 
 in the lower world to those who refuse a great oppor- 
 tunity, but he is speaking of those who perversely 
 reject a great task, which is plainly in their power, 
 for some false and low motive. But the case is 
 different for those who have a great temptation put 
 before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, 
 have it brought home to them in a convincing way 
 that it is not their opportunity. No one ought to 
 assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to 
 them. One of the saddest things ever said on a 
 human deathbed was what was said by a great eccle- 
 siastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had 
 been formed of him. In his last moments he turned 
 to one who stood near him and murmured, " I have 
 held a great post, and I have not been equal to it." 
 The misery was that no one could sincerely con- 
 tradict him. It is not a piece of noble self-sacrifice 
 to have assumed confidently a great responsibility 
 to which one is not equal. It is a mere mistake, 
 and a mistake which is even more reprehensible 
 than the mistake of being over-persuaded into at- 
 tempting a task for which one is not fitted. One is 
 given reason and common sense and prudence that 
 one may use them, and to act contrary to their dic- 
 tates because those who do not know you so well 
 as you know yourself advise you cheerfully that it 
 will probably be all right, is an act of criminal 
 folly. Heavy responsibilities are lightly assumed 
 nowadays, because the temptations ot power and 
 publicity are very strong, and because too hiirh a 
 value is set upon worldly success. It is a plainer
 
 1 88 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 and simpler duty for those who wish to act rightly, 
 and who have formed a deliberate idea of their 
 own limitations, to refuse great positions humbly 
 and seriously, if they know that they will be un- 
 equal to them. 
 
 Of course I knew that I should be reproached 
 with indolence and even cowardice. I knew that 
 I should be supposed to be one of those consist- 
 ently impracticable people who insist on going of! 
 at a tangent when the straight course lies before 
 them. That I should be relegated to the class of 
 persons who have failed in life through some deep- 
 seated defect of will. The worst of a serious deci- 
 sion of the kind is that, whichever step one takes, 
 one is sure to be blamed. I saw all this with painful 
 clearness, but it is better to be arraigned before the 
 tribunal of other men's consciences than to be con- 
 demned before one's own. It is better to refuse 
 and be disappointed, than to accept and be dis- 
 appointed. Failure in the course marked out, in 
 the event of acceptance, would have been disastrous, 
 not only to myself but to the institution I was to 
 be set to rule and guide. Far better that the task 
 should be entrusted to one who had no difHdence, 
 no hesitation, but a sincere confidence in his power 
 of dealing with the ditiiculties of the situation, and 
 an ardent de-sire to grapple with them. 
 
 The only difficulty, it one believes very strongly, 
 as I do, in a great ami \\ise Providence that guides 
 our path, is to interpret why the possibility of a 
 great task is indicated to one if it is not intended 
 that one should perform it. Hut the essence of a 
 true belief in the call of Providence seems to me 
 to lie not in the rash acceptance of any invitation
 
 AMBITION. 189 
 
 that happens to come in one's way, hut a stern and 
 austere judgment of one's own faculties and powers. 
 I have not the smallest doubt that Providence in- 
 tended that this great task should be refused by 
 me ; my only dilriculty is to see what to make of 
 it, and why it was even suggested. One lesson is 
 that one must beware of personal vanity, another 
 that one should not indulge in the temptation to 
 desire important posts for any reason except the 
 best : the humble hope to do work that is useful 
 and valuable. If I had sternly repressed these 
 tendencies at an earlier stage of life, this tempta- 
 tion would not have been necessary, nor the humilia- 
 tion which inevitably succeeds it. 
 But 
 
 He that is down need fear no fall, 
 He that is low no pride. 
 
 And there can be now no more chance of these 
 bitter and self-revealing incidents, which show one, 
 as in a clear mirror, the secret weaknesses of the 
 heart. 
 
 But in setting aside the desire for the crowns 
 and thrones of ambition, we must be very careful 
 that we are not merely yielding to temptations of 
 indolence, of fastidiousness, of cowardice, and call- 
 ing a personal motive unworldliness for the sake of 
 the associations. No man need set himself to seek 
 great positions, but a man who is diffident, and 
 possibly indolent, will do well to pin himself down 
 in a position of responsibility and influence, if it 
 comes naturally in his way. There are a good many 
 men with high natural gifts of an instinctive kind 
 who are yet averse to using them diligently, who,
 
 1 90 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 indeed, from the very facility with which they ex- 
 ercise them, hardly know their value. Such men 
 as these and I have known several undertake a 
 great responsibility if they refuse to take advantage 
 of obvious opportunities to use their gifts. Men 
 of this kind have often a certain vague, poetical, 
 and dreamy quality of mind ; a contemplative gift. 
 They see and exaggerate the difficulties and perils 
 of posts of high responsibility. If they yield to 
 temptations of temperament, they often become 
 ineffective, dilettante, half-hearted natures, playing 
 with life and speculating over it, instead of setting 
 to work on a corner of the tangle. They hang 
 spiritless upon the verge of the battle instead of 
 mingling with the fray. The curse of such tem- 
 peraments is that they seem destined to be un- 
 happy whichever way they decide. If they accept 
 positions of responsibility, they are fretted and 
 strained by difficulties and obstacles ; they live un- 
 easily and anxiously ; they lose the buoyancy with 
 which great work should be done ; if, on the other 
 hand, they refuse to come forward, they are tor- 
 tured with regrets for having abstained ; they be- 
 come conscious of ineffectiveness and indecision ; 
 they are haunted by the spectres of what might 
 have been. 
 
 The only course for such natures is to endeavour 
 to see where their true life lies, and to follow the 
 dictates of reason and conscience as far as possible. 
 They must resolve not to be tempted by the glamour 
 of possible success, but to take the true measure of 
 their powers. They nnist not yield to the temp- 
 tation to trust to the flattering judgment that others 
 may form of their capacities, nor liphf-herirtedly to
 
 AMBITION. 191 
 
 shoulder a burden which they may be able to lift 
 but not to carry. Such natures will sometimes 
 attempt a great task with a certain glow and en- 
 thusiasm ; but they must ask themselves humbly 
 how they will continue to discharge it when the 
 novelty nas worn olT, and when the prospect that 
 lies before them is one of patient and unpraised 
 labour. It leads to worse disasters to over-estimate 
 one's powers than to under-estimate them. A man 
 who over-estimates his capacities is apt to grow im- 
 patient, and even tyrannical, in the presence of 
 difficulties. 
 
 And after all it may be said that humility is a 
 rarer virtue than confidence ; and though it is not 
 so popular, though it does not appeal so much to 
 the imagination, it is a quality that may well be 
 exercised, if it is done without self-consciousness, 
 in these busy days and in these active western climes. 
 The best work of the world is done, as I have said, 
 not by those who organize on a large scale, but by 
 those who work faithfully on individual lines, in 
 corners and byways. Indeed, the success of those 
 who organize and rule is due in part no doubt to 
 the power that they may possess of inspiring silent 
 effort, but is still more largely due to the faithful 
 workers whose labours are unnoted, who carry out 
 great designs in a simple and quiet spirit. There is 
 strong warrant in the teaching of Christ for the 
 work of those who are faithful in a few things. 
 There is no warrant for the action of those who 
 stride into the front, and clamour to be entrusted 
 with the destinies of others. There can be no 
 question that Christ does not admit the value of 
 ambition in anv form as a motive for character.
 
 i 9 2 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 The lives that lie praises are the lives of quiet, 
 affectionate persons, more concerned with the things 
 of the spirit than with the things of the intellect. 
 The Christian must concern himself, not with 
 grasping at influence, not even with setting his 
 mark upon the world, but with the quality of his 
 decisions, his work, his words, his thoughts. The 
 only thing possible tor him is to go forward step by 
 step, trusting more to the guidance of (Jod than 
 to his own designs, to what are called intuitions 
 more than to reasoned conclusions. In that spirit, 
 if he can attain to it, he begins to be able to esti- 
 mate things at their true value. Instead of being 
 da/xled with the bright glare which the world 
 throws upon the objects of his desire, he sees all 
 things in a pale, clear li^ht of dawn, and true aims 
 begin to glow with an inner radiance. He may 
 tremble and hesitate before a decision, but once 
 taken there is no looking back ; he knows that he 
 has been guided, and that (Jod has told him, by 
 silent and eloquent motions of the spirit, what it is 
 that He would have him to do ; he has but to inter- 
 pret and to trust. 
 
 But even supposing that one has learnt one's 
 own lesson in the >chool of ambition, the question 
 comes in as to how far it should be used as a motive 
 for the young, by those who are entrusted with 
 educational responsibilities. It is one of the most 
 difficult things to dedi'.r as to what extent it is 
 permissible to use motives that are lower than the 
 highest, because they mav pos.-,css a greater effect- 
 iveness in the case of immature mini!--. It is easy 
 enoii'jh to sav sincerely lh.it one outfit always to 
 appeal to the highest possible motive; but \\hen
 
 AMBITION. 193 
 
 one is conscious that the highest motive is quite 
 out of the horizon of the person concerned, and 
 practically is no motive at all, is it not merely ped- 
 antry to insist upon appealing to the highest motive 
 for one's own satisfaction ? It is not perhaps so 
 difficult where the lower reason for a course of 
 action is still a sound reason in itself, as, for instance, 
 if one is trying to help a man out of drunken habits. 
 The highest motive to appeal to is the truth that 
 in yielding to sensual impulses, in such a matter, a 
 man is falling short of his best ideal ; but a more 
 practical motive is to point out the loss of health 
 and respectability that results from the practice. 
 Yet when one appeals to a boy's ambition, and en- 
 courages him to be ambitious, one cannot be quite 
 certain whether one is not appealing to a false motive 
 altogether. The excuse for using it is the hope 
 that, when for the sake of ambition he has learnt 
 diligence and perseverance, he may grow to per- 
 ceive that the competitive instinct, which in its 
 barest form is the desire to obtain desirable things 
 at the expense of others, is not in reality a good 
 motive at all. With immature characters part of 
 the joy of success is that others have been beaten, 
 the pride of having carried off a prize which others 
 are disappointed of obtaining. And if one talks to 
 an ambitious boy, and tries to inculcate the prin- 
 ciple that one should do one's best without caring 
 about results, one is generally conscious that he 
 believes it to be only a tiresome professional plati- 
 tude, the kind of sentiment in which older people 
 think fit to indulge for the purpose, if possible, of 
 throwing cold water on innocent enjoyment. 
 
 Yet, after all, how very few people there are
 
 i 9 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 who do learn the further lesson ! The successful 
 man generally continues to show to the end of his 
 life a contempt for unsuccessful persons, which is 
 only good-humoured because of the consciousness 
 of his own triumph ; how rare, again, it is to find 
 an unsuccessful person who' does not attempt, if 
 he can, to belittle the attainments of his successful 
 rival, or who at least, if he overcomes that tempta- 
 tion from a sense of propriety, feels entitled to 
 nourish a secret satisfaction at any indication of 
 failure on the part of the man who has obtained 
 the prize that lie himself coveted in vain. Yet if 
 one has ever seen, as I have, the astonishing change 
 ot both work and even character which may come 
 over a boy or a young man who is perhaps diffident 
 and indolent, if one can get him to do a successful 
 piece ot work, or push an opportunity in his way 
 and help him to sei/c it, one hesitates before ruling 
 out the use of ambition as an incentive. Perhaps 
 it is uneasy and casuistical morality to shrink from 
 usuv.: this incentive, so long as one faithfully puts 
 the higher side of the question before a boy as well. 
 But when one is quite sure that the larger aspect 
 of the case will tall on cleat ears, and that only the 
 lower stimulus will be absorbed, one is apt to hesi- 
 tate. I am inclined, however, to think that such 
 hesitation is on the \\hole misplaced, and that in 
 dealing with immature minds one must be content 
 to us i- immature moti\es. There is a temptation to 
 try and keep the education of people too much in 
 one's own hands, and to teel oneselt to be too re- 
 sponsible in the matter. I have a friend who errs 
 in thi- respect, anil \s!io is apt to assume too wide 
 a responsibility in de.ilii".: with others, who was
 
 AMBITION. 195 
 
 gently rebuked by a wise-hearted teacher of wide 
 and deep experience, who said on one occasion, 
 when over-anxiety had spoilt the effect of my 
 friend's attempts, that he ought to be content to 
 leave something for God to do. 
 
 But for oneself, one must try to learn the large 
 lesson in the course of time, to learn that the sense 
 of ambition is often, in reality, only a sense of per- 
 sonal vanity and self-confidence disguised ; and 
 that the one possible attitude of mind is to go 
 humbly and patiently forward, desiring the best, 
 labouring faithfully and abundantly, neither seek- 
 ing nor avoiding great opportunities, not failing in 
 courage nor giving way to rash impulses, and realiz- 
 ing the truth of the wise old Greek proverb that 
 the greatest of all disasters for a man is to be opened 
 and found to be empty ; the wise application of 
 which to life is not to avoid the occasions of open- 
 ing, but to make sure that if the opening comes 
 inevitably, we shall be found not to have devoted 
 ourselves to the adorning of the casket, but to have 
 piled with careful hands the treasure high within.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE 
 
 THERE is a good deal of talk just now about 
 " the simple life," and though I would not go 
 so far as to say that there is a movement in the 
 direction of it, yet the talk that one hears on many 
 sides proves, at all events, that people take a certain 
 interest in the question. 
 
 Part of it is a pose no doubt ; there is a distin- 
 guished, and I would add very charming, lady of 
 my acquaintance, \sho has the subject constantly 
 on her lips. Her method of practising simplicity 
 is a delightful one, as all her methods are. In addi- 
 tion to the three magnificent residences which she 
 already possesses, she lias bought a cottage in a 
 secluded part of the country ; she has spent a large 
 sum of money in adding to it ; it is furnished with 
 that stately austerity \\hkii can only be achieved at 
 great expense. She inntois down there, perhaps 
 three times in the year, and spends three days there, 
 on each visit, with tv\o or three friends who are 
 cquallv in love \\ith simplicity; I was fortunate 
 enough, the other dav , to he included in one of 
 these parties ; the onh us of simplicity to the 
 complex mind uere th.it i ! . re were only live courses 
 at dinner, that we dranh eharnjvu'iic out of rather
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE. 197 
 
 old-fashioned long glasses, and that two goats were 
 tethered in a corner of the lawn. The goats 1 un- 
 derstood were the seal and symbol of the simple life. 
 No use was made of them, and they were decidedly 
 in the way, but without them life would have been 
 complicated at once. 
 
 When we went off again in the motor, my 
 charming hostess waved her hand at the little cot- 
 tage, as we turned the corner, with a sigh, as of 
 one condemned by a stern fate to abjure the rural 
 felicity which she loved, and then settled down 
 with delighted zest to discuss her programme of 
 social engagements for the next few weeks. 
 
 It had certainly been very delightful ; we had 
 talked all day long ; we had wandered, adoring 
 simplicity, on the village green ; we had attended 
 an evening service in the church ; we had con- 
 sumed exquisitely cooked meals about an hour before 
 the usual time, because to breakfast at eight and to 
 dine at seven was all part of the pretty game. I 
 ventured to ask my hostess how she would like to 
 spend six months in her cottage comparatively 
 alone, and she replied with deep conviction, " I 
 should adore it ; I would give all I possess to be 
 able to do it." L Then it is nothing," I said, " but 
 a sense of duty that tears you away ? " To which 
 she made no answer except to shake her head 
 mournfully, and to give me a penetrating smile. 
 
 I cannot help wondering whether the people 
 who talk about the simple life have any idea what 
 it means ; I do not think that my fair hostess's 
 desire for it is altogether a pose. One who lives, 
 as she does, in the centre of the fashionable world, 
 must inevitably tire of it from time to time. She
 
 198 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 meets the same people over and over again, she 
 hears the same stories, the same jokes ; she is not 
 exactly an intellectual woman, though she has a 
 taste for books and music ; the interest for her, in 
 the world in which she lives, is the changing rela- 
 tions of people, their affinities, their aversions, their 
 loves and hates, their warmth and their coldness. 
 What underlies the shifting scene, the endless enter- 
 tainments, the country-house visits, the ebb and flow 
 of society, is really the mystery of sex. People with 
 not very much to do but to amuse themselves, with 
 no prescribed duties, with few intellectual interests, 
 become preoccupied in what is the great underly- 
 ing force in the world, the passion of love ; the talk 
 that goes on, dull and tiresome as it appears to an 
 outsider, is all charged with the secret influence ; 
 it is not what is said that matters ; it is what is 
 implied by manner and glance and inflection of 
 tone. This atmosphere of electrical emotion is, for 
 a good many years of their lives, the native air of 
 these fair and unoccupied women. Men drift into 
 it and out of it, and it provides for them often no 
 more than a beautiful and thrilling episode ; they 
 become interested in sport, in agriculture, in poli- 
 tics, in business ; but with women it is different ; 
 lovers and husbands, emotional friendships with 
 other women these constitute the business of life 
 for a time ; and then perhaps the tranquillizing and 
 purer love of children, the troubles and joys of grow- 
 ing boys and girls, come in to fill the mind \\ith a 
 serener and kindlier, though not less passionate an 
 emotion ; and so hit- passes, and age draws near. 
 
 It is thus easier lor men to lead the simple life 
 than \sonicn, because they tuul it natural to grow
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE. i 99 
 
 absorbed in some definite and tangible occupa- 
 tion ; and, after all, the essence of the simple life 
 is that it can be lived in any milieu and under any 
 circumstances. It does not require a cottage orne 
 and a motor, though these are not inconsistent with 
 it, if only they are natural. 
 
 I would try to trace what I believe the essence 
 of the simple life to be ; it lies very far down in 
 the spirit, among the roots of life. The first re- 
 quisite is a perfect sincerity of character. This 
 implies many things : it means a joyful temper- 
 ance of soul, a certain clearness and strength of 
 temperament. The truly simple person must not 
 be vague and indeterminate, swayed by desire or 
 shifting emotion ; he must meet others with a 
 candid frankness, he must have no petty ambi- 
 tions, he must have wide and genial interests, he 
 must be quick to discern what is beautiful and 
 wise ; he must have a clear and straightforward 
 point of view ; he must act on his own intuitions 
 and beliefs, not simply try to find out what other 
 people are thinking and try to think it too ; he 
 must in short be free from conventionality. The 
 essence of the really simple character is that a man 
 should accept his environment and circle ; if he 
 is born in the so-called world, he need not seek to 
 fly from it. Such a character as I have described 
 has a marvellous power of evoking what is sincere 
 and simple in other natures ; such a one will tend 
 to believe that other people are as straightforward 
 and genuine as himself ; and he will not be wholly 
 mistaken, because when they are with him, they will 
 be simple too. The simple person will have a 
 strong, but not a Pharisaic?!, ^cnse of duty ; he
 
 200 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 will probably credit other people with the same 
 sense of duty, and he will not often feel himself 
 bound to disapprove of others, reserving his indig- 
 nation for any instances of cruelty, meanness, false- 
 ness, and selfishness that he may encounter. He 
 will not be suspicious or envious. Yet he will not 
 necessarily be what is called a religious man, because 
 his religion will be rather vital than technical. To 
 be religious in the technical sense of the word to 
 care, that is, for religious services and solemnities, 
 for priestly influences, for intricate doctrinal emo- 
 tions-implies a strong artistic sense, and is often 
 very far removed from any simplicity of conduct. 
 But on the other hand the simple man will have a 
 strong sense of responsibility, a deep confidence in 
 the Will of God and His high purposes. 
 
 And thus the simple man will scarcely be a man 
 of leisure, because there is so much that he will 
 desire to do, and which he will feel called upon to 
 do. Whatever he considers to be his work, he will 
 do with a cheerful energy, which will sustain him 
 far beyond the threshold of fatigue. His personal 
 wants will be few ; he will not care for spending 
 money for the sake of spending it, but he will be 
 liberal and generous win-never there is need. He 
 will be uneasy in luxury. lie will be a lover of 
 the open air and of the country, but his aim will 
 be exercise, and the sense of health and vigour, 
 rather than amusement. He will never be reduced 
 to asking himself how he is going to spend the day, 
 for the present day, and a long perspective of days 
 ahead, will already he full by anticipation. He will 
 take work, amusement, people, as they come, and 
 he will not be apt to make plans or to arrange
 
 TIIK SIMPLH LIH-. 201 
 
 parties, because he will expect to find in ordinary 
 life the amusement and the interest that he desires. 
 Me will be above all things tender-hearted, kind, and 
 fearless. lie will not take fancies to people, or 
 easily discard a friend ; but he will be courteous, 
 kind to all weakness, compassionate to awkwardness, 
 fond of children, good-natured, loving laughter and 
 peacefulness ; he will not be easily disappointed, 
 and he will have no time to be fretful, if things do 
 not turn out exactly as he desires. 
 
 I have known such persons in ever}' rank of 
 life. They are the people who can be depended 
 upon to do what they undertake, to understand the 
 difficulties of others, to sympathize, to help. The 
 essence of it all is a great absence of self-conscious- 
 ness, and such people as I have described would 
 be genuinely surprised, as a rule, if they were told 
 that they were living a different life from the lives 
 of others. 
 
 This simplicity of nature is not often found in 
 conjunction with very great artistic or intellectual 
 gifts ; but when it is so found, it is one of the 
 most perfect combinations in the world. 
 
 The one thing that is entirely fatal to simplicity 
 is the desire to stimulate the curiosity of others in 
 the matter. The most conspicuous instance of 
 this, in literature, is the case of Thoreau, who is 
 by many regarded as the apostle of the simple life. 
 Thoreau was a man of extremely simple tastes, it 
 is true. He ate pulse, whatever that may be, and 
 drank water ; he was decnlv interested in the con- 
 templation of nature, and he loved to disembarrass 
 himself of all the apparatus of lil'e. It was really 
 that he hated trouble more than anthin in the
 
 202 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 world ; he found that by working six weeks in the 
 vear, he could earn enough to enable him to live 
 m a hut in a wood for the rest of the twelvemonth ; 
 he did his household work himself, and his little 
 stock of money sufficed to buy him food and clothes, 
 and to meet his small expenses. But Thoreau was 
 indolent rather than simple ; and what spoilt his 
 simplicity was that he was for ever hoping that he 
 would be observed and admired ; he was for ever 
 peeping out of the corner of his eye, to see if in- 
 quisitive strangers were hovering about to observe 
 the hermit at his contemplation. If he had really 
 loved simplicity best, he would have lived his life 
 and not troubled himself about what other people 
 thought of him ; but instead of that he found his 
 own simplicity a deeply interesting and refreshing 
 subject of contemplation. He was for ever looking 
 at himself in the glass, and describing to others the 
 rugged, sunbrowned, slovenly, solemn person that 
 he saw there. 
 
 And then, too, it was easier for Thoreau to 
 make money than it would be for the ordinary arti- 
 san. When Thoreau wrote his famous maxim, " To 
 maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but 
 a pastime," he did not add that he was himself a 
 man of remarkable mechanical gifts ; he made, 
 when he was disposed, admirable pencils, he was 
 an excellent land-surveyor, and an author as well ; 
 moreover, he was a celibate by nature. He would 
 no doubt have found, it he hail had a wife and 
 children, and no aptitude for skilled labour, that 
 he would have had to \vurk as hard as any one else. 
 
 Thoreau had, too, a quality \slm'li is in itselt an 
 econoiuic.il thing. He did not care in the least for
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE. 203 
 
 society. He said that he would rather ' keep 
 bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven." 
 He was not a sociable man, and sociability is in 
 itself expensive. lie had, it is true, some devoted 
 friends, but it seems that he would have done 
 anything for them except see them. He was a 
 man of many virtues and no vices, but he was 
 most at his ease with faddists. Not that he avoided 
 his fellow-men ; he was always ready to see people, 
 to talk, to play with children, but on the other 
 hand society was not essential to him. Yet, just 
 and virtuous as he was, there was something radi- 
 cally unamiable about him : ' I love Henry," one 
 of his friends said of him, " but I cannot like him ; 
 and as for taking his arm I should as soon think of 
 taking the arm of an elm-tree." He was in fact an 
 egotist with strong fancies and preferences ; and, 
 though he was an ascetic by preference, he cannot 
 be called a simple-minded man, because the essence 
 of simplicity is not to ride a hobby hard. He 
 thought and talked too much about simplicity ; and 
 the fact is that simplicity, like humility, cannot 
 exist side by side with self-consciousness. The 
 moment that a man is conscious that he is simple 
 and humble, he is simple and humble no longer. 
 You cannot become humble by reminding people 
 constantly, like Uriah Heep, of your humility; simi- 
 larly you cannot become simple, by doing elabor- 
 ately, and making a parade of doini:, the things that 
 the simple man would do without thinking about 
 them. 
 
 It is almost true to say that the people who are 
 most in love with simplicity are often the most 
 complicated natures. They become weary of their
 
 204 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 own complexity, and they fancy that by acting on 
 a certain regimen they can arrive at tranquillity of 
 soul. It is in reality just the other way. One must 
 become simple in soul first, and the simple setting 
 follows as a matter of course. If a man can purge 
 himself of ambition, and social pride, and ostenta- 
 tion, and the desire of praise, his life falls at once 
 into a simple mould, because keeping up appear- 
 ances is the most expensive thing in the world ; to 
 begin with eating pulse and drinking water, is as 
 if a man were to wear his hair like Tennyson, and 
 expect to become a poet thereby. Asceticism is 
 the sign and not the cause of simplicity. The simple 
 life will become easy and common enough when 
 people have simple minds and hearts, when they 
 do the duties that lie ready to their hand, and do 
 not crave for recognition. 
 
 Neither can simplicity be brought about by a 
 movement. There is nothing which is more fatal 
 to it than that people should meet to discuss the 
 subject ; it can only be done by individuals, and 
 in comparative isolation. A friend of mine dreamed 
 the other day that she \v;is discussing the subject of 
 mission services with a stranger ; she defended 
 them in her dream with great warmth and rhetoric : 
 when she had done, her companion said, " \\ell, to 
 tell you the truth, I don't believe in people being 
 inspired /'// rows." Tins oracular saving has a pro- 
 found truth in it- that salvation is not to be loum! 
 in public meetings ; and that to assemble a number 
 of persons, and to address them on the subject of 
 simplicitv, is the surest v.ay to miss thc charm of 
 that secluded \ irtue. 
 
 The wor;.; of it is that the real, practical, noral
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE. 205 
 
 simplicity of which I have been speaking is not an 
 attractive thing to a generation fond of movement 
 and excitement ; what they desire is a picturesque 
 mise-en-scene, a simplicity which comes as a little 
 pretty interlude to busy life ; they do not desire it 
 in its entirety and continuously. They would find 
 it dull, triste, enmiyant. 
 
 Thus it must fall into the hands of individuals 
 to practise it, who are sincerely enamoured of 
 quietness and peace. The simple man must have 
 a deep fund of natural joy and zest ; he must bring 
 his own seasoning to the plain fare of life ; but if 
 he loves the face of nature, and books, and his 
 fellow-men, and above all, work, there is no need 
 for him to go out into the wilderness in pursuit of 
 a transcendental ideal. But those whose spirits flag 
 and droop in solitude ; who open their eyes upon 
 the world, and wonder what they will find to do ; 
 who love talk and laughter and amusement ; who 
 crave for alcoholic mirth, and the song of them 
 that feast, had better make no pretence of pursuing 
 a spirit which haunts the country lane and the 
 village street, the rough pasture beside the brim- 
 ming stream, the forest glade, with the fragrant 
 breeze blowing cool out of the wood. Simplicity, 
 to be successfully attained, must be the result of 
 a passionate instinct, not of a picturesque curiosity ; 
 and it is useless to lament that one has no time to 
 possess one's soul, if, when one visits the inner- 
 most chamber, there is nothing there but cobwebs 
 and ugly dust.
 
 XV 
 
 GAMES 
 
 IT requires almost more courage to write about 
 panics nowadays than it docs to write about the 
 Decalogue, because the higher criticism is tend- 
 ing to make a belief in the Decalogue a matter 
 of taste, while to the ordinary Englishman a belief 
 in games is a matter of faith and morals. 
 
 I will begin by saying frankly that 1 do not like 
 games ; but I say it, not because any particular 
 interest attaches to my own dislikes and likes, but 
 to raise a little flag of revolt against a species of 
 social tyranny. 1 believe that there are a good 
 many people who do not like games, but who do 
 not dare to say so. Perhaps it may be thought that 
 I am speaking from the point of view of a person 
 who has never been able to play them. A vision 
 rises in the mind ot a spectacled owlish man, trot- 
 ting feebly about a football field, and making des- 
 perate attempts to avoid the proximity of the ball ; 
 or joining in a game ot cricket, and fielding a drive 
 with the air of a man trsing to catch an insect on 
 the ground, or sitting in a boat with the oar fixed 
 under his chin, being forced backwards \\ith an air 
 of smiling and virtuous eontiiMnii. 1 hasten to say 
 that this is not a true picture. 1 arrived at a rea-
 
 GAMES. 207 
 
 sonable degree of proficiency in several games : I 
 was a competent, though not a zealous, oar ; I 
 captained a college football team, and I do not 
 hesitate to say that I have derived more pleasure 
 from football than from any other form of exercise. 
 I have climbed some mountains, and am even a 
 member of the Alpine Club ; I may add that I am 
 a keen, though not a skilful, sportsman, and am 
 indeed rather a martyr to exercise and open air. 
 I make these confessions simply to show that I do 
 not approach the subject from the point of view of 
 a sedentary person but indeed rather the reverse. 
 No weather appears to me to be too bad to go out 
 in, and I do not suppose there are a dozen days in 
 the year in which I do not contrive to get exercise. 
 But exercise in the open air is one thing, and 
 games are quite another. It seems to me that 
 when a man has reached an age of discretion, 
 he ought no longer to need the stimulus of com- 
 petition, the desire to hit or kick balls about, the 
 wish to do such things better than other people. 
 It seems to me that the elaborate organization of 
 athletics is a really rather serious thing, because it 
 makes people unable to get on without some species 
 of excitement. I was staying the other day at a 
 quiet house in the country, where there was noth- 
 ing particular to do ; there was not, strange to say, 
 even a golf course within reach. There came to 
 stay there for a few days an eminent golfer, who 
 fell into a condition of really pitiable dejection. 
 The idea of taking a walk or riding a bicycle was in- 
 supportable to him ; and I think he never left the 
 house except for a rueful stroll in the garden. When 
 I was a schoolmaster it used to distress me to iind
 
 2o8 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 how invariably the parents of boys discoursed with 
 earnestness and solemnity about a boy's games ; 
 one was told that a boy was a good field, and really 
 had the makings of an excellent bat ; eager in- 
 quiries were made as to whether it was possible for 
 the boy to get some professional coaching ; in the 
 case of more philosophically inclined parents it gen- 
 erally led on to a statement of the social advantages 
 of being a good cricketer, and often to the expres- 
 sion of a belief that virtue was in some way indis- 
 solubly connected with keenness in games. Eor 
 one parent who said anything about a boy's intel- 
 lectual interests, there were ten whose preoccupa- 
 tion in the boy's athletics was deep and vital. 
 
 It is no wonder that, with all this parental ear- 
 nestness, boys tended to consider success in games 
 the one paramount object of their lives ; it was all 
 knit up with social ambitions, and it was viewed, 
 I do not hesitate to say, as of infinitely more im- 
 portance than anything else. I do not mean to say 
 that many of the boys did not consider it important 
 to be good, and did not desire to be conscientious 
 about their work. But as a practical matter games 
 were what they thought about and talked about, 
 and what aroused genuine enthusiasm. They were 
 disposed to despise boys who could not play games, 
 however virtuous, kindly, and sensible they might 
 be ; an entire lack of conscientiousness, and even 
 grave moral obliquity, were apt to be condoned in 
 the case of a successful athlete. We masters, I must 
 frankly confess, clul not make any serious attempt 
 to right the tendency. \Vc spent our spare time 
 in walking about the cricket and football tic-Ids, in 
 looking on, in discussing the line nuances in the
 
 GAMES. 209 
 
 style of individual players. It was very natural to 
 take an interest in the thing which was to the boys 
 a matter of profound concern ; hut what I should 
 be inclined to censure was that it was really a 
 matter of profound concern with ourselves ; and 
 we did not take a kindly and paternal interest in 
 the matter, so much as the interest of enthusiasts 
 and partisans. 
 
 It is very difficult to see how to alter this. Prob- 
 ably, like other deep-seated national tendencies, it 
 will have to cure itself. It would be impossible to 
 insist that the educators of youth should suppress the 
 interest which they instinctively and genuinely feel 
 in games, and profess an interest in intellectual 
 matters which they do not really feel. No good 
 would come out of practising hypocrisy in the mat- 
 ter, from however high a motive. While school- 
 masters rush off to golf whenever they get a chance, 
 and fill their holidays to the brim with games of 
 various kinds, it would be simply hypocritical to 
 attempt to conceal the truth ; and the difficulty is 
 increased by the fact that, while parents and boys 
 alike feel as they do about the essential importance 
 of games, head-masters are more or less bound to 
 select men for masterships who are proficient in 
 them ; because whatever else has to be attended 
 to at school, games have to be attended to ; and, 
 moreover, a man whom the boys respect as an 
 athlete is likely to be more effective both as a dis- 
 ciplinarian and a teacher. If a man is a first-rate 
 slow bowler, the boys will consider his views on 
 Thucydides and Euclid more worthy of considera- 
 tion than the views of a man who has only a high 
 university degree.
 
 zio FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 The other day I was told of the case of a head- 
 master of a small proprietary private school, who 
 was treated with open insolence and contempt by 
 one of his assistants, who neglected his work, 
 smoked in his class-room, and even absented him- 
 self on occasions without leave. It may be asked 
 why the head-master did not dismiss his recalci- 
 trant assistant. It was because he had secured a 
 man who was a 'Varsity cricket-blue, and whose 
 presence on the staiF pave the parents confidence, 
 and provided an excellent advertisement. The 
 assistant, on the other hand, knew that he could 
 get a similar post for the asking, and on the whole 
 preferred a school where he might consult his own 
 convenience. This is, of course, an extreme case ; 
 but would to God, as Dr. Johnson said, that it 
 were an impossible one ! I do not wish to tilt 
 against athletics, nor do I at all undervalue the 
 benefits of open air and exercise for growing boys. 
 But surely there is a lamentable want of propor- 
 tion about the whole view ! The truth is that we 
 English are in many respects barbarians still, and 
 as we happen at the present time to be wealthy 
 barbarians, we devote our time and our energies 
 to the things for which we really care. 1 do not 
 at all want to see games diminished, or played 
 with less keenness. 1 only desire to see them 
 duly subordinated. 1 do not think it ought to 
 be considered slightly ci centric for a boy to care 
 verv much about his work, or to take an interest 
 
 J 
 
 in books. I should h!.e it to be recognized at 
 schools that the one (ju.ility that was admirable 
 was keenness, and th.it it v,.is admirable in \\liat- 
 ever department it was displayed ; but nowadays
 
 GAMES. 211 
 
 keenness about games is considered admirable and 
 heroic, while keenness about work or books is con- 
 sidered slightly grovelling and priggish. 
 
 The same spirit has affected what is called sport. 
 People no longer look upon it as an agreeable inter- 
 lude, but as a business in itself ; they will not accept 
 invitations to shoot, unless the sport is likely to be 
 good ; a moderate performer with the gun is 
 treated as if it was a crime for him to want to shoot 
 at all ; then the motoring craxe has come in upon 
 the top of the golfing craze ; and all the spare time 
 of people of leisure tends to be tilled up with bridge. 
 The difficulty in dealing with the situation is that 
 the thing itself is not only not wrong, but really 
 beneficial ; it is better to be occupied than to be 
 idle, and it is hard to preach against a thing which 
 is excellent in moderation and only mischievous in 
 excess. 
 
 Personally I am afraid that I only look upon 
 games as a pis-allcr. I would always rather take 
 a walk than play golf, and read a book than play 
 bridge. Bridge, indeed, I should regard as only 
 one degree better than absolutely vacuous conver- 
 sation, which is certainly the most fatiguing thing 
 in the world. But the odd thing is that while it 
 is regarded as rather vicious to do nothing, it is 
 regarded as positively virtuous to play a game. Per- 
 sonally I think competition always a more or less 
 disagreeable thing. I dislike it in real life, and I 
 do not see why it should be introduced into one's 
 amusements. If it amuses me to do a thing, I do 
 not very much care whether I do it better than 
 another person. I have no desire to be always 
 comparing my skill with the skill of others.
 
 212 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 Then, too, I am afraid that I must confess to a 
 lamentably feeble pleasure in mere country sights 
 and sounds. I love to watch the curious and beau- 
 tiful things that go on in every hedgerow and every 
 field ; it is a ceaseless delight to see the tender un- 
 cnimpling leaves of the copse in spring, and no less 
 a pleasure to see the woodland streaked and stained 
 with the flaming glories of autumn. It is a joy in 
 high midsummer to see the clear dwindled stream 
 run under the thick ha/els, among the lush water- 
 plants ; it is no less a joy to see the same stream 
 running full and turbid in winter, when the banks 
 are bare, and the trees are leailess, and the pasture 
 is wrinkled with frost. Half the joy, for instance, 
 of shooting, in which I trankly confess I take a 
 childish delight, is the <juiet tramping over the clean- 
 cut stubble, the distant view of field and wood, the 
 long, quiet wait at the covert-end, where the spindle- 
 wood hangs out her quaint rosy berries, and the 
 rabbits come scampering up the copse, as the far- 
 oif tapping of the beaters draws near in the frosty 
 air. The delights of the country-side grow upon 
 ir>e even' month and every year. 1 love to stroll 
 in the lanes in spring, with white clouds floating in 
 the blue above, and to see the glade carpeted with 
 steel-blue hyacinths. I love to \\alk on country 
 roads or by woodland paths, on a rain-drenched 
 day of summer, when the sky is full of heavy inky 
 clouds, and the earth smells iresh and sweet; I 
 love to go briskly homeward on a \\mter evening, 
 when the sunset smoulders low in the west, when 
 the pheasants leap trumpeting to their roosts, and 
 the lights begin to peep in cottage windows. 
 
 Such joys as these are \\ithin the reach of every
 
 GAMES. 213 
 
 one ; and to call the country dull because one has 
 not the opportunity of hitting and pursuing a little 
 white ball round and round among the same fields, 
 with elaborately contrived obstacles to test the skill 
 and the temper, seems to me to be grotesque, if it 
 were not also so distressing. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that games are things that 
 are appropriate to the restless days of boyhood, 
 when one will take infinite trouble and toil over any- 
 thing of the nature of a make-believe, so long as it 
 is understood not to be work ; but as one gets older 
 and perhaps wiser, a simpler and quieter range of 
 interests ought to take their place. I can humbly 
 answer for it that it need imply no loss of zest ; my 
 own power of enjoyment is far deeper and stronger 
 than it was in early years ; the pleasures I have 
 described, of sight and sound, mean infinitely more 
 to me than the definite occupations of boyhood 
 ever did. But the danger is that if we are brought 
 up ourselves to depend upon games, and if we 
 bring up all our boys to depend on them, we are 
 not able to do without them as we grow older ; and 
 thus we so often have the melancholy spectacle of 
 the elderly man, who is hopelessly bored with ex- 
 istence, and who is the terror of the smoking-room 
 and the dinner-table, because he is only capable 
 of indulging in lengthy reminiscences of his own 
 astonishing athletic performances, and in lamenta- 
 tions over the degeneracy of the human race. 
 
 Another remarkable fact about the convention- 
 ality that attends games is that certain games are 
 dismissed as childish and contemptible while others 
 are crowned with glory 7 and worship. One knows 
 of eminent clergymen who play golf; a TV.! that they
 
 2i 4 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 should do so seems to constitute so high a title to 
 the respect and regard with which normal persons 
 view them, that one sometimes wonders whether 
 they do not take up the practice with the wisdom 
 of the serpent that is recommended in the Gospels, 
 or hecause of the Pauline doctrine of adaptability, 
 that by all means they may save some. 
 
 But as far as mere air and exercise goes, the 
 childish game of playing at horses is admirably 
 calculated to increase health and vigour and needs 
 no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and 
 thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out 
 of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells 
 tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon 
 drawn in to repress the curvetting of the gaitered 
 steed ? There is nothing in reality more undig- 
 nified about that than in hitting a little ball about 
 over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the 
 Lord Chief Justice trundled hoops round and round 
 after breakfast in the gravelled space behind the 
 Horse Guards, who could allege that they would 
 not be the better for the exercise ? Yet thcv would 
 be held for some mysterious reason to have forfeited 
 respect. To the mind ot the philosopher all games 
 arc either silly or reasonable ; and nothing so reveals 
 the stupid conventionality of the ordinary mind as 
 the fact that men consider a series of handbooks on 
 Great Howlers to be a serious and important addi- 
 tion to literature, while they would hold that a little 
 manual on Blind-man's l.ulf was a tit subject for 
 dcriMon. St. Paul said that when he became a man 
 he put away childish tilings, lie could hanllv 
 afford to say that now, it he hoped to be regarded 
 as a man of sense and weight.
 
 GAMES. 215 
 
 I do not wish to be a mere Jeremiah in the 
 region of prophecy, and to deplore, sarcastically 
 and incisively, what I cannot amend. What I 
 rather wish to do is to make a plea for greater 
 simplicity in the matter, and to try and destroy 
 some of the terrible priggishness in the matter of 
 athletics, which appears to me to prevail. After all, 
 athletics are only one form of leisurely amusement ; 
 and I maintain that it is of the essence of priggish- 
 ness to import solemnity into a matter which does 
 not need it, and which would be better without it. 
 Because the tyranny is a real one ; the man of many 
 games is not content with simply enjoying them ; 
 he has a sense of complacent superiority, and a 
 hardly disguised contempt for the people who do 
 not play them. 
 
 I was staying in a house the other day where a 
 distinguished philosopher had driven over to pay 
 an afternoon call. The call concluded, he wished 
 to make a start, so I went down to the stable with 
 him to see about putting his pony in. The stables 
 were deserted. I was forced to confess that I knew 
 nothing about the harnessing of steeds, however 
 humble. We discovered portions of what appeared 
 to be the equipment of a pony, and I held them for 
 him, while he gingerly tried them on, applying 
 them cautiously to various portions of the innocent 
 animal's person. Eventually we had to give it up 
 as a bad job, and seek for professional assistance. 
 I described the scene for the benefit of a lively lady 
 of my acquaintance, who is a devotee of anything 
 connected with horses, and she laughed unmercifully 
 at the description, and expressed the contempt, 
 which she sincerely i'elt, in no measured term::-
 
 216 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 But, after all, it is no part of my business to har- 
 ness horses ; it is a convenience that there should 
 he persons who possess the requisite knowledge ; 
 tor me horses only represent a convenient form of 
 locomotion. I did not mind her being amused 
 indeed, that was the object of my narrative but 
 her contempt was just as much misplaced as if I 
 had despised her for not being able to tell the 
 dilference between sapphics ana alcaics, which it 
 was my business to know. 
 
 It is the complacency, the self-satisfaction, that 
 results from the worship of games, which is one 
 of its most serious features. I wish with all my 
 heart that I could surest a remedy for it ; but 
 the only thing that ! can do is to pursue my own 
 inclinations, with a fervent conviction that they are 
 at least as innocent as the pursuit of athletic exer- 
 cises ; and I can also, as I have said, wave a little 
 flag of revolt, and rally to my standard the quieter 
 and more simple-minded persons, who love their 
 liberty, and decline to part with it unless they can 
 find a better reason than the merely comfortable 
 desire to do what every one else is doing.
 
 XVI 
 
 SPIRITUALISM 
 
 I WAS sitting the other day in a vicarage garden 
 with my friend the vicar. It was a pretty, well- 
 kept place, with old shrubberies and umbrageous 
 trees ; to the right, the tower of the church rose 
 among its elms. We sate out of the wind, looking 
 over a rough pasture field, apparently a common, 
 divided from the garden by a little ha-ha of brick. 
 The surface of the field was very irregular, as 
 though there had been excavations made in it for 
 gravel at some time or other ; in certain parts of 
 the field there appeared fragments of a stone wall, 
 just showing above the ground. 
 
 The vicar pointed to the field. ' Do you see 
 that wall ? " he said ; "I will tell you a very curi- 
 ous story about that. When I came here, forty 
 years ago, I asked the old gardener what the field 
 was, as I never saw any one in it, or any beasts 
 grazing there ; and yet it was unfenced, and ap- 
 peared to be common land- it was full of little 
 thickets and thorn-bushes then. He was not ven 
 willing to tell me, I thought, but by dint of ques- 
 tions I discovered that it was a common, and that 
 it was known locally by the curious name of Heareri's 
 Walls. He went on to say that it was considered
 
 2i8 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 unlucky to set foot in it ; and that, as a matter of 
 fact, no villager would ever dream ot going there ; 
 he would not say why, but at last it came out that 
 it was supposed to be haunted by a spirit. No one, 
 it seemed, had ever seen anything there, but it was 
 an unlucky place. 
 
 ' Well, I thought no more of it at the time, 
 though I often went into the field. It was a quiet 
 and pretty place enough ; full of thickets, as I have 
 said, where the birds built unmolested there was 
 generally a goldfinch's nest there. 
 
 "It became necessary to lay a drain across it, 
 and a big trench was dug. One day they came and 
 told me that the workmen had found something- 
 would I go and look at it ? I went out and found 
 that they had unearthed a large Roman cinerary 
 urn, containing some calcined bones. I told the 
 lord of the manor, who is a squire in the next parish, 
 and he and I after that kept a look-out over the 
 workmen. We found another urn, and another, both 
 full of bones. Then we found a big glass vessel, 
 also containing bones. The squire got interested 
 in the thing, and eventually had the whole place 
 dug out. We found a large enclosure, once sur- 
 rounded by a stone wall, of which you see the 
 remains ; in two ot the corners there \\as an enor- 
 mous deposit of wood ashes, in deep pits, which 
 looked as it great fires had burnt there ; and the 
 walls in those two corners weie all calcined and 
 smoke-stained. We tomul iilty or sixty urns, all 
 full of bones ; and in another corner there was a 
 deep shall, like a \\cll, du^ in the chalk, \Mth hand- 
 holds do\vn the sides, al.Mi lull ot calcined bones. 
 We fo'.Hi i 'i fe'.v coni'v an>l in one- pi ice a congloniera-
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 219 
 
 tion of rust that looked as if it might ha\e hern a 
 heap of tools or weapons. We set the antiquaries 
 to work, and they pronounced it to he \\hat is 
 called a Roman Ustrinum that is to say, a puhlic 
 crematorium, where people who could not afford 
 a separate funeral might bring a corpse to he burnt. 
 If they had no place to deposit the urn, in which 
 the bones were enclosed, they were allowed, it 
 seems, to bury the urn there, until such time as 
 they cared to remove it. There was a big Roman 
 settlement here, you know. There was a fort on 
 the hill there, and the sites of several large Roman 
 villas have been discovered in the neighbourhood. 
 This place must have stood rather lonely, away 
 from the town, probably in the wood which then 
 covered the whole of this county ; but it is curi- 
 ous, is it not ? " said the vicar, " that the tradition 
 should have been handed down through all these 
 centuries of its being an ill-omened place, long 
 after any tradition of what the uses of the spot 
 were ! " 
 
 It was curious indeed ! The vicar was pre- 
 sently called away, and 1 sate musing over the 
 strange old story. I could fancy the place as it 
 must have been, standing with its high blank walls 
 in a clearing of the forest, with perhaps a great 
 column of evil-smelling smoke drifting in oily waves 
 over the corner of the wall, telling ot the sad rites 
 that were going on within. I could fancy heavy- 
 eyed mourners dragging a bier up to the gates, with 
 a silent form lying upon it, waiting in pale dismay 
 until the great doors were flung open hy the sombre 
 rough attendants of the place ; until they could see 
 the ugly enclosure, with the wood piled high in the
 
 220 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 pit for the last sad service. Then would follow the 
 burning and the drenching of the ashes, the gather- 
 ing of the bones all that was left of one so dear, 
 father or mother, boy or maiden the enclosing of 
 them in the urn, and the final burial. What agonies 
 of simple grief the place must have witnessed! Then, 
 I suppose, the place was deserted by the Romans, 
 the walls crumbled down into ruin, grass and bushes 
 grew over the place. Then perhaps the forest was 
 gradually felled and stubbed up, as the area of cul- 
 tivation widened ; but still the sad tradition of the 
 spot left it desolate, until all recollection of its pur- 
 pose was gone. No doubt, in Saxon days, it was 
 thought to be haunted by the old wailing, restless 
 spirits of those who had suffered the last rites there ; 
 so that still the place was condemned to a sinister 
 solitude. 
 
 I went on to reflect over the strange and obsti- 
 nate tradition that lingers still with such vitality 
 among the human race, that certain places are 
 haunted by the spirits of the dead. It is hard to 
 believe that such tradition, so widespread, so uni- 
 versal, should have no kind of justification in fact. 
 And yet there appears to be no justification for the 
 idea, unless the spiritual conditions of the world 
 have altered, unless there \\cre real phenomena 
 which have for some cause ceased to manifest them- 
 selves, which originated the tradition. Hut there 
 is certainly no scientific evidence of the fact. The 
 Psychical Society, which has faced some ridicule 
 for its serious attempt to find out the truth about 
 these matters, have announced that investigations 
 of so-called haunted houses have produced no 
 evidence whatever. Thrv seem to !< a wholly
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 221 
 
 unreliable type of stories, which always break 
 down under careful inquiry. I am inclined myself 
 to believe that such stories arose in a perfectly nat- 
 ural way. It is perfectly natural to simple people 
 to believe that the spirit which animated a mortal 
 body would, on leaving it, tend to linger about the 
 scene of suffering and death. Indeed, it is im- 
 possible not to feel that, if the spirit has any con- 
 scious identity, it would be sure to desire to remain 
 in the neighbourhood of those whom it loved so 
 well. But the unsatisfactory element in these stories 
 is that it generally appears to be the victim of some 
 heinous deed, and not the perpetrator, who is con- 
 demned to make its sad presence known, by wailing 
 and by sorrowful gestures, on the scene of its pas- 
 sion. But once given the belief that a spirit might 
 tend to remain for a time in the place where its 
 earthly life was lived, the terrors of man, his swift 
 imagination, his power of self-delusion, would do 
 the rest. 
 
 The only class of stories, say the investigators, 
 which appear to be proved beyond the possibility 
 of reasonable doubt, is the class of stories dealing 
 with apparitions at the time of death ; and this 
 they explain by supposing a species of telepathy, 
 which is indeed an obscure force, but obviously an 
 existing one, though its conditions and limitations 
 are not clearly understood. Telepathy is the power 
 of communication between mind and mind without 
 the medium of speech, and indeed in certain cases 
 exercised at an immense distance. The theory i c 
 that the thought of the dying person is so potently 
 exercised on some particular living person, as t< 
 cause the recipient to project a figure of the other
 
 222 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 upon the air. That power of visualization is nut a 
 very uncommon one ; indeed, we all possess it 
 more or less ; we can all remember what we believe 
 we have seen in our dreams, and we remember the 
 figures of our dreams as optical images, though they 
 have been purely mental conceptions, translated 
 into the terms of actual sight. The impression of 
 a dream-figure, indeed, appears to us to be as much 
 the impression of an image received upon the retina 
 of the eye, as our impressions of images actually so 
 received. The whole thing is strange, of course, 
 but not stranger than wireless telegraphy. It may 
 be that the conditions of telepathy may some day 
 be scientifically defined ; and in that case it will 
 probably make a clear and coherent connection be- 
 tween a number of phenomena which we do not 
 connect together, just as the discover}' of electricity 
 connected together phenomena which all had ob- 
 served, like the adhering of substances to charged 
 amber, as well as the lightning-flash which breaks 
 from the thunder-cloud. No one in former days 
 traced any connection between these two phenomena, 
 but we now know that they are only two manifes- 
 tations of the same force. In the same way we 
 may find that phenomena of which we are all con- 
 scious, but (t which v.e do not know the reason, 
 may prove to be manifestations of some central tele- 
 pathic force such phenomena, I mean, as the 
 imivery of armies in action, or the excitement which 
 may seize upon a large leathering of men. 
 
 We ought, I think, to admire and praise the 
 patient work of the Psychical Society, though it 
 is common enough to hear quite sensible people 
 deride it, because it is an attempt to treat a sub-
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 223 
 
 ject scientifically. What \ve have every right to 
 deride is the dabbling in spiritualistic things by- 
 credulous and feeble-minded persons. These prac- 
 tices open to our view one of the most lamentable 
 and deplorable provinces of the human mind, its 
 power of convincing itself of anything which it de- 
 sires to believe, its debility, its childishness. If the 
 professions of so-called mediums were true, why 
 cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and 
 incontestable way, not surround ing themselves with 
 all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in 
 which the human power of self-delusion finds its 
 richest field ? 
 
 A friend of mine told me the other day what 
 he evidently felt to be an extremely impressive 
 story about a dignitary of the Church. This clergy- 
 man was overcome one day by an intense mental 
 conviction that he was wanted at Bristol. lie ac- 
 cordingly went there by train, wandered about aim- 
 lessly, and finally put up at a hotel for the nii^ht. 
 In the morning he found a friend in the coffee- 
 room, to whom he confided the cause of his pres- 
 ence in Bristol, and announced his intention of 
 going away by the next train. The friend then told 
 him that an Australian was dying in the hotel, and 
 that his wife was very anxious to find a clergyman 
 The dignitary- went to see the lady, with the inten- 
 tion of offering her his services, when he discovered 
 that he had met her when travelling in Australia, 
 and that her husband had been deeply impressed 
 by a sermon which he had then delivered, and had 
 been entreating for some days that he might be 
 summoned to administer the last consolations of 
 religion. The clergyman went in to ?ee the patient,
 
 224 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 administered the last rites, comforted and encouraged 
 him, and was with him when lie died. He after- 
 wards told the widow the story of his mysterious 
 summons to Bristol, and she replied that she had 
 been praying night and day that he might come, 
 and that he had no doubt come in answer to her 
 prayers. 
 
 But the unsatisfactory part of the story is that 
 one is asked to condone the extremely unbusiness- 
 like, sloppy, and troublesome methods employed 
 by this spiritual agency. The lady knew the name 
 and position of the clergyman perfectly well, and 
 might have written or wired to him. He could thus 
 have been spared his aimless and mysterious jour- 
 ney, the expense of spending a night at the hotel ; 
 and moreover it was only the fortuitous meeting 
 with a third person, not closely connected with the 
 story, which prevented the clergyman from leaving 
 the place, his mission unfulfilled. One cannot help 
 feeling that, if a spiritual agency was at work, it was 
 working cither in a very clumsy way, or with a relish 
 for mystery which reminds one of the adventures 
 of Sherlock Holmes; it one is expected to accept 
 the story as a manifestation of supernatural power, 
 one can only conceive of it as the work of a very 
 tricksy spirit, like Ariel in the "Tempest "; it seems 
 like a very elaborate and melodramatic attempt to 
 bring about a result, that could have been far more 
 satisfactorily achieved bv a little common sense. 
 It instead of inspiring the l::dy to earnest prayer 
 which appears too to have been very slow in its 
 action -why could not the supernatu r al power at 
 work have inspired her with the much simpler ul< i :i 
 of looking at the Clcrgv List ? And vet the storv
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 225 
 
 no doubt produces on the ordinary mind an impres- 
 sive effect, when as a matter of fact, if it is fairly 
 considered, it can only be regarded, if true, as the 
 work of an amiable and rather dilettante power, 
 with a strong relish for the elaborately marvellous. 
 
 The truth is that what the ordinary human being 
 desires, in matters of this kind, is not scientific 
 knowledge but picturesqueness. As long as people 
 frankly confess that it is the latter element of which 
 they are in search, that, like the fat boy in Pick-trick, 
 they merely want to make their flesh creep, no harm 
 is done. The harm is done by people who are 
 really in search of sensation, who yet profess to be 
 approaching the question in a scientific spirit of 
 inquiry. I enjoy a good ghost story as much as 
 any one ; and I am interested, too, in hearing the 
 philosophical conclusions of earnest-minded people ; 
 but to hear the question discussed, as one so often 
 hears it, with a pretentious attempt to treat it scien- 
 tifically, by people who, like the White Queen in 
 Through the Looking-glass, find it pleasant to train 
 themselves to believe a dozen impossible things 
 before breakfast, afflicts me with a deep mental and 
 moral nausea. 
 
 One, at least, of the patient investigators of this 
 accumulated mass of human delusion, took up the 
 quest in the hope that he might receive scientific 
 evidence of the continued existence of identity. 
 He was forced to confess that the evidence went all 
 the other way, and that all the tales which appeared 
 to substantiate the fact, were hopelessly discredited. 
 The only thing, as I have said, that the investiga- 
 tions seem to have substantiated . is evidence which 
 none but a determinedly sceptic, il mind would Jis- 
 
 8
 
 226 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 allow, that there does exist, in certain abnormal 
 cases, a possibility of direct communication be- 
 tween two or more living minds. 
 
 But, as I pondered thus, the day began to 
 darken over the rough pasture with its ruined wall, 
 and I felt creeping upon me that old inheritance of 
 humanity, that terror in the presence of the un- 
 seen, which sets the mind at work, distorting and 
 exaggerating the impressions of eye and ear. How- 
 easy, in such a mood, to grow tense and expectant 
 
 ' Till sight and hearing ache 
 For something that may keep 
 The awful inner sense 
 l.'nroused, Ir-t it should mark 
 The life that haunts the emptiness 
 And horror of the dark." 
 
 Face to face with the impenetrable mystery, 
 with the thought of those whom we have loved, 
 who have slipt without a word or a sign over the 
 dark threshold, what wonder if we beat with un- 
 availing hands against the closed door ? It would 
 be strange if we did not, for we too must some 
 day enter in ; well, the souls of all those who have 
 died, alike those whom we have loved, and the 
 spirits of those old Romans whose mortal bodies 
 melted into smoke year after year in the little en- 
 closure into which I look, know whatever there is 
 to know. That is a stern and dreadful truth ; the 
 secret is impenetrably ^ralt-d from us ; but, " though 
 the heart ache to contemplate it, it is there."
 
 XVII 
 
 HABITS 
 
 WALTER PATER says, in his most oracular 
 mood, in that fine manifesto of a lofty Epi- 
 cureanism which is known as the Conclusion to the 
 Renaissance essays, that to form habits is failure in 
 life. The difficulty in uttering oracles is that one 
 is obliged for the sake of being forcible to reduce 
 a statement to its simplest terms ; and when one 
 does that, there are generally a whole group ot 
 cases which appear to be covered by the statement, 
 which contradict it. It is nearly impossible to 
 make any general statement both simple enough 
 and large enough. In the case of Pater's pro- 
 nouncement, he had fixed his mental gaze so firmly 
 on a particular phenomenon, that he forgot that 
 his words might prove misleading when applied to 
 the facts of life. What he meant, no doubt, was 
 that one of the commonest of mental clangers is to 
 form intellectual and moral prejudices early in life, 
 and so to stereotype them that we are unable to look 
 round them, or to give anything that we instinctively 
 dislike a fair trial. Most people in fact, in matters 
 of opinion, tend to get infected with a species ot 
 Ton ism by the time that they reach middle age, 
 until they get into the frame of mind which Mon-
 
 228 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 taigne describes, of thinking so highly of their own 
 conjectures as to be prepared to burn other people 
 tor not regarding them as certainties. This frame 
 of mind is much to be reprobated, but it is un- 
 happily common. How often does one meet sen- 
 sible, shrewd, and intelligent men, who say frankly 
 that they are not prepared to listen to any evidence 
 which tells against their beliefs. I low rare it is to 
 meet a man who in the course of an argument will 
 say, " Well, I had never thought of that before ; 
 it must be taken into account, and it modifies my 
 view." Such an attitude is looked upon by active- 
 minded and energetic men as having something 
 weak and even sentimental about it. How com- 
 mon it is to hear people say that a man ought to 
 have the courage of his opinions ; how rare it is to 
 find a man who will say that one ought to have the 
 courage to change one's opinions. Indeed, in public 
 life it is generally considered a kind of treachery to 
 change, because people value what they call loyalty 
 above truth. Pater no doubt meant that the duty 
 and privilege of the philosopher is to keep his 
 inner eye open to new impressions, to be ready 
 to see beauty in new forms, not to love com- 
 fortable and settled ways, but to bring the same 
 fresh apprehension that youth brings, to art and 
 to life. 
 
 He is merely speaking of a mental process in 
 these words ; what he is condemning is the dull- 
 ing and encrusting of the mind with prejudices and 
 habits, th- tendency, as Charles Lamb \\ittilv said, 
 \\henevcr a new bonk comes out, to read an old 
 one, to get into the liresule-and-slippers frame of 
 nund, to grumble at noveltv, to complain that the
 
 HABITS. 229 
 
 younci; men arc violating all the sacred canons of 
 faith and art. 
 
 This is not at all the same thing as knowing 
 one's own limitations ; every one, whether he he 
 artist or writer, critic or practitioner, ought to take 
 the measure of his forces, and to determine in what 
 regions he can be elfective ; indeed it is often 
 necessary for a man of artistic impulses to confine 
 his energies to one specific department, although he 
 may be attracted by several. Pater was himself an 
 instance of this. He knew, for instance, that his 
 dramatic sense was weak, and he wisely let drama 
 alone ; he found that certain vigorous writers ex- 
 ercised a contagious influence over his own style, 
 and therefore he gave up reading them. But within 
 his own region he endeavoured to be catholic and 
 sympathetic ; he never tied up the contents of his 
 mind into packets and labelled them, a task which 
 most men between thirty and forty find highly 
 congenial. 
 
 But I desire here to go into the larger question 
 of forming habits ; and as a general rule it may 
 be said that Pater's dictum is entirely untrue, and 
 that success in life depends more upon forming 
 habits than upon anything else, except good health. 
 Indeed, Pater himself is an excellent instance in 
 point. He achieved his large output of beautiful 
 literary work, the amazing amount of perfectly fin- 
 ished and exquisitely expressed writing that he gave 
 to the world, by an extreme and patient regularity 
 of labour. He did not, as some writers do, have 
 periods of energetic creation, interrupted by period* 
 of fallow idleness. Perhaps his work might have 
 been more spontaneous if lie couki. like Milton's
 
 230 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 friend, have been wise enough " of such delights to 
 judge, and interpose them ott." But the achieve- 
 ment of Pater was to realize and to carry out his 
 own individual method, and it is upon doing this 
 that successful productivity depends. 
 
 I could name, if 1 chose, two or three friends 
 of my own, men of high and subtle intelligence, 
 admirable humour, undiminished zest, who have 
 failed, and will fail, to realize their possibilities, 
 simply by a lack of method. Who does not know 
 the men whom Mr. Mullock so wittily describes, of 
 whom, up to the age of forty, their friends say that 
 they could do anything if they only chose, and after 
 the age of forty that they could have done anything 
 if they had chosen ? I have one particular friend 
 in my eye at this moment, the possessor of wealth 
 and leisure, who is a born writer if any man ever 
 was. He has no particular duties, except the duties 
 of a small landowner and the father of a family ; he 
 is a wide reader, and a critic of delicate and sym- 
 pathetic acutcness. lie is bent on writing ; and 
 he has written a single book crammed from end to 
 end with good and beautiful things, the stutF of 
 which would have sulliced, in the hands of a facile 
 writer, for half-a-dozen excellent books. He is, 
 moreover, sincerely anxious to write, but he does 
 nothing. It you ask him and I conceive it to be 
 my duty at intervals to chide him for not produ- 
 cing more -what he does with his time, he says with 
 a melancholy smile : ' Oh, 1 hardly know : it 
 goes ! " 1 trace his failure to produce, simply to 
 the fact that he has never set apart any particular 
 portion of the day for writing ; he allows himself 
 to be interrupted ; he entertains many gucsLs \\hoin
 
 HABITS. 231 
 
 he has no particular wish to see ; he " sets around 
 and looks ornery," like the frog ; lie talks delight- 
 fully ; an industrious Boswell could, by asking him 
 questions and taking careful notes of his talk, fill 
 a charming volume in a month out of his shrewd 
 and suggestive conversation ; of course it is possible 
 to say that he practises the art of living, to talk 
 of " gems of purest ray serene " and flowers " born 
 to blush unseen " and all the rest of it. But his 
 talk streams to waste among guests who do not as 
 a rule appreciate it ; and if there is any duty or 
 responsibility in the world at all, it is a duty for 
 men of great endowments, admirable humour, and 
 poetical suggcstiveness, to sow the seed of the 
 mind freely and lavishly. We English are of course 
 the chosen race ; but we should be none the worse 
 for a little more intellectual apprehension, a little 
 more amiable charm. If my friend had been a 
 professional man, obliged to earn a living by his 
 pen, he would, I do not doubt, have given to the 
 world a series of great books, which would have 
 done something to spread the influence of the king- 
 dom of heaven. 
 
 Of course there is a sense in which it is a mis- 
 take to let habits become too tyrannical ; one ought 
 not to find oneself hopelessly distracted and irritated 
 if one's daily programme is interfered with at any 
 point ; one ought to be able to enjoy leisure, to pay 
 visits, to converse volubly. Like Dr. Johnson, one 
 ought to be ready for a frolic. But, on the other 
 hand, if a man takes himself seriously and I am 
 here not speaking of people with definite engage- 
 ments, but of people, like writers and artists, who 
 may choose their own times to do their work he
 
 232 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 ought to have a regular though not an invariable 
 programme. If he is possessed of such super- 
 abundant energy as Walter Scott possessed, he may 
 rise at five, and write ten immortal octavo pages 
 before he appears at breakfast. But as a rule the 
 vitality of ordinary people is more limited, and 
 they are bound to husband it, if they mean to do 
 anything that is worth the name ; an artist then 
 ought to have his sacred hours, secure from inter- 
 ruption ; and then let him fill the rest of the day 
 with any amusement that lie finds to be congenial. 
 
 Of course the thing is easy enough if one's work 
 is really the thing in which one is most interested. 
 There is very little danger, in the case of a man 
 who likes and relishes the work he is doing more 
 than he relishes any form of amusement ; but we 
 many of us have the unhappy feeling that we enjoy 
 our work very much, if we can once sit down to 
 it ; only we do not care about beginning it. We 
 read the paper, we write a few letters, we look out 
 an address in Who's H 'ho, and we become absorbed 
 in the biographies of our fellow-men ; very soon it 
 is time for luncheon, and then we think that we 
 shall feel fresher if we take a little exercise ; after 
 tea, the weather is so beautiful that we think it 
 would be a pity not to en|oy the long sunset lights ; 
 we come in ; the piano 4ands invitingly open, and 
 we must strike a tew chords ; then the bell rings 
 for dressing, and the day is gene, because we mis- 
 trust the work that we do late at night, and so we 
 go to bed in good tune. Not so does a big book 
 get written ! 
 
 We ought rather to lincl out all about ourselves ; 
 when ve van work our best, how lon< r we cyn work
 
 HABITS. 233 
 
 continuously with full vigour ; and then round 
 these fixed points we should group our sociability, our 
 leisure, our amusement. If we are altruistically in- 
 clined, we probably say that it is a duty to see 
 something of our fellow-creatures, that we ought not 
 to grow morose and solitary ; there is an abundance 
 of excuses that can be made ; but the artist and 
 the writer ought to reali/e that their duty to the 
 \vorld is to perceive what is beautiful and to express 
 it as resolutely, as attractively as they can ; if a 
 writer can write a good book, he can talk in its 
 pages to a numerous audience ; and he is right to 
 save up his best thoughts for his readers, rather 
 than to let them flow away in diffuse conversation. 
 Of course a writer of fiction is bound to make the 
 observation of varieties of temperament a duty ; it 
 is his material ; if he becomes isolated and self- 
 absorbed, his work becomes narrow and manner- 
 ized ; and it is true, too, that, with most writers, 
 the collision of mind with mind is what produces 
 the brightest sparks. 
 
 And then to step into a still wider field, there 
 is no sort of doubt that the formation of reason- 
 able habits, of method, of punctuality, is a duty, 
 not from an exalted point of view, but because it 
 makes enormously for the happiness and convenience 
 of every one about us. In the old-fashioned story- 
 books a prodigious value, perhaps an exaggerated 
 value, was set upon time ; one was told to redeem 
 the time, whatever that might mean. The ideal 
 mother of the family, in the little books which I 
 used to read in my childhood, was a lady \\h<> ap- 
 peared punctually at breakfast, and had a bunch of 
 keys hanging at her girdle. Breakfast o\er, she paid
 
 234 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 a scries of visits, looked into the larder, weighed out 
 stores, and then settled down to some solid reading 
 or embroidered a fire-screen ; the afternoon would 
 be spent in visits of benevolence, carrying portions 
 of the midday dinner to her poorer neighbours ; 
 the evening would be given to working at the fire- 
 screen again, while some one read aloud. Some- 
 how it is not an attractive picture, though it need 
 not have been so dull as it appears. The point is 
 whether the solid reading had a useful effect or not. 
 In the books I have in view, it generally led the 
 materfamilias into having an undue respect for 
 correct information, and a pharisaical contempt for 
 people who indulged their fancy. In Harrv and 
 Lucy, for instance, Lucy, who is the only human 
 figure in the book, is perpetually being snubbed by 
 the terrible hard-headed Harry, with his desperate 
 interest in machinery, by the repellent father who 
 delights to explain the laws of gravity and the 
 parabola described by the stone which Harry throws. 
 What was undervalued in those old, dry, high-prin- 
 cipled books was the charm of vivid apprehension, 
 of fanciful imagination, of simple, neighbourly kind- 
 liness. The aim was too much to improve every- 
 body and everything, to impart and retain correct 
 information. Nowadays the pendulum has swung 
 a little too far the other way, and children arc too 
 much encouraged, if anything, to be childish ; but 
 there is a certain austere charm in the old simple 
 high-minded household liie for all that. 
 
 The point is that habit should be there, like 
 the hem of a handkerchief, to keep the fabric to- 
 gether ; but that it should not be relentlessly and 
 oppressivclv paraded ; the triumph is to have habit?
 
 HABITS. 235 
 
 and to conceal them, just as in Ruskin's celebrated 
 dictum, that the artist's aim should be to be fit for 
 the best society, and then that he should renounce 
 it. One ought to be reliable, to perform the work 
 that one undertakes without ceaseless reminders, to 
 discharge duties easily and satisfactorily ; and then, 
 if to this one can add the grace of apparent leisure- 
 liness, the power of never appearing to be inter- 
 rupted, the good-humoured readiness to amuse and 
 to be amused, one is high upon the ladder of per- 
 fection. It is absolutely necessary, if one is to 
 play a satisfactory part in the world, to be in earnest, 
 to be serious ; and it is no less necessary to abstain 
 from ostentatiously parading that seriousness. One 
 has to take for granted that others are serious too ; 
 and far more is effected by example than by pre- 
 cept, in this, as in most matters. But if one cannot 
 do both, it is better to be serious and to show it, 
 than to make a show of despising seriousness and 
 decrying it. It is better to have habits and to let 
 others know it, than to lose one's soul by endeav- 
 ouring to escape the reproach of priegishness, a 
 quality which in these easy-going days incurs an 
 excessive degree of odium.
 
 XV1I1 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 THERE i a motto which I should like to 
 sec written over the door of even" place of 
 worship, both as an invitation and a warning : 
 THOU SHALT MARK ME TO UNDERSTAND WISDOM 
 SECRETLY. It is an invitation to those who enter, to 
 come and participate in a great and holy mystery ; 
 and it is a warning to those who believe that in the 
 formalities of religion alone is the secret of religion 
 to be found. I will not here speak of worship, of 
 the value of the symbol, the winged prayer, the 
 uttered word ; ! wish rather to speak for a little 
 of religion itself, a tiling, as I believe, greatly mis- 
 understood. How much it is misunderstood may 
 be seen from the fact that, though the word itself, 
 religion, stands for one of the most beautiful and 
 simple things in the world, there yet hangs about 
 it an aroma which is not wholly pleasing. What 
 dillicult service that great and humble name has 
 seen ! With what strange and evil meanings it has 
 been charged ! How dinted and battered it is with 
 hard usau r c ! how dimmed its radiance, how stained 
 its puritv ! It is the best word, perhaps the only 
 word, for the thing that I im-an ; and yet something 
 dusty and technical hangs about it, which makes it
 
 RELIGION. 237 
 
 wearisome instead of delightful, dreary rather than 
 joyful. The same is the case with mam of the 
 words which stand for great tilings. They have 
 been weapons in the hands of dry, bigoted, offen- 
 sive persons, until their brightness is clouded, their 
 keen edge hacked and broken. 
 
 By religion I mean the power, whatever it be, 
 which makes a man choose what is hard rather than 
 what is easy, what is lofty and noble rather than 
 what is mean and selfish ; that puts courage into 
 timorous hearts, and gladness into clouded spirits ; 
 that consoles men in grief, misfortune, and dis- 
 appointment ; that makes them joyfully accept a 
 heavy burden ; that, in a word, uplifts men out of 
 the dominion of material things, and sets their feet 
 in a purer and simpler region. 
 
 Yet this great thing, which lies so near us that 
 we can take it into our grasp by merely reaching 
 out a hand ; which is as close to us as the air and 
 the sunlight, has been by the sad, misguided efforts, 
 very often of the best and noblest-minded men, who 
 knew how precious a thing it was, so guarded, so 
 wrapped up, made so remote from, so alien to, life 
 and thought, that many people who live by its light, 
 and draw it in as simply as the air they breathe, 
 never even know that they have come within hail 
 of it. ' Is he a good man ? " said a simple Meth- 
 odist once, in reply to a question about a frien I. 
 ' Yes, he is good, but not religious-good." l*y 
 which he meant that he lived kindly, purely, and 
 unselfishly as a Christian should, but did not 
 attend any particular place of worship, and there- 
 fore could not be held to have any religious 
 motive for his actions, but was guided by a
 
 238 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 mere worthless instinct, a preference for unworldly 
 
 living. 
 
 Now, if ever there was a Divine attempt made 
 in the world to shake religion free of its wrappings, 
 it was the preaching of Christ. So far as we can 
 gather from records of obscure and mysterious 
 origin, transcriptions, it would seem, of something 
 oral and traditional, Christ aimed at bringing reli- 
 gion within the reach of the humblest and simplest 
 souls. Whatever doubt men may feel as to the 
 literal accuracy of these records in matters of fact, 
 however much it may be held that the relation oi 
 incidents was coloured by the popular belief of the 
 time in the possibility of miraculous manifestations, 
 yet the words and sayings of Christ emerge from 
 the narrative, though in places it seems as though 
 they had been imperfectly apprehended, as con- 
 taining and expressing thoughts quite outside the 
 range of the minds that recorded them ; and thus 
 possess an authenticity, which is confirmed and 
 proved by the immature mental grasp of those who 
 compiled the records, in a way in which it would 
 not have been proved, if the compilers had been 
 obviously men of mental acuteness and far-reaching 
 philosophical grasp. 
 
 To express the religion of Christ in precise 
 words would be a mighty task ; but it may be said 
 that it was not merely a system, nor primarily a 
 creed ; it was a message to individual hearts, be- 
 wildered by the complexity of the world and the 
 intricacy of religious observances. Christ bade men 
 believe that their Creator was also a Father ; that 
 the only wav to escape from the overwhelming 
 difficulties presented by the world was the way of
 
 RELIGION. 239 
 
 simplicity, sincerity, and love ; that a man should 
 keep out of his life all that insults ami hurts the 
 soul, and that he should hold the interests of others 
 as dear as he holds his own. It was a protest against 
 all ambition, and cruelty, and luxury, and self- 
 conceit. It showed that a man should accept his 
 temperament and his place in life, as gifts from the 
 hands of his Father ; and that he should then he 
 peaceful, pure, humble, and loving. Christ brought 
 into the world an entirely new standard ; He 
 showed that many respected and reverenced per- 
 sons were very far indeed from the Father ; while 
 many obscure, sinful, miserable outcasts found the 
 secret which the respectable and contemptuous 
 missed. Never was there a message which cast so 
 much hope abroad in rich handfuls to the world. 
 The astonishing part of the revelation was that it 
 was so absolutely simple ; neither wealth, nor in- 
 tellect, nor position, nor even moral perfection, 
 were needed. The simplest child, the most aban- 
 doned sinner, could take the great gift as easily as 
 the most honoured statesman, the wisest sage 
 indeed more easily ; for it was the very complexity 
 of affairs, of motives, of wealth, that entangled the 
 soul and prevented it from realizing its freedom. 
 
 Christ lived His human life on these principles ; 
 and sank from danger to danger, from disaster to 
 disaster, and having touched the whole gamut of 
 human suffering, and disappointment, and shame, 
 died a death in which no element of disgust, and 
 terror, and pain was wanting. 
 
 And from that moment the deterioration began. 
 At first the great secret ran silently through the world 
 from soul to soul, till the world was leavened. But
 
 2 4 o FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 even so the process of capturing and transforming 
 the faith in accordance with human weakness began. 
 The intellectual spirit laid hold on it first. Meta- 
 physicians scrutinized the humble and sweet myS- 
 tery, overlaid it with definitions, harmonized it with 
 ancient systems, dogmatized it, made it hard, and 
 subtle, and uninspiring. Vivid metaphors and illus- 
 trations were seized upon and converted into 
 precise statements of principles. The very mis- 
 apprehensions of the original hearers were invested 
 with the same sanctity that belonged to the Master 
 Himself. But even so the bright and beautiful spirit 
 made its way, like a stream ot clear water, refresh- 
 ing thirsty places and making the desert bloom like 
 the rose, till at last the world itself, in the middle 
 of its luxuries and pomp, became aware that here 
 was a mighty force abroad which must be reckoned 
 with ; and then the world itself determined upon 
 the capture of Christianity ; and how sadly it suc- 
 ceeded can be read in the pages of history ; until at 
 last the pure creature, like a barbarian captive, 
 bright with youth and beauty, was bound with 
 golden chains, and hidden, bewildered and amazed, 
 to grace the triumph and ride in the very chariot 
 of its conqueror. 
 
 Let me lake one salient instance. Could there, 
 to any impartial observer, be anything in the world 
 more incredible than that the Pope, surrounded by 
 ritual and pomp, and hierarchies, and policies, 
 should be held to be the representative on earth 
 of the peasant-teacher of (lalilee? And yet the 
 melancholy process of development is plain enough. 
 As th'- world became Clm.-tiani/ed, it could not be 
 expected to give up u- -ocial order, its ambitions,
 
 RELIGION. 241 
 
 its love of power and influence. Christianity un- 
 curbed is an inconvenient, a dangerous, a subversive 
 iorce ; it must be tamed and muz/led ; it must be 
 robed and crowned ; it must be given a high and 
 honoured place among institutions. And so it has 
 fallen a victim to bribery and intrigue and worldly 
 power. 
 
 I do not for a moment say that it docs not even 
 thus inspire thousands of hearts to simple, loving, 
 and heroic conduct. The secret is far too vital to 
 lose its power. It is a vast force in the world, and 
 indeed survives its capture in virtue of its truth 
 and beauty. But instead of being the most free, 
 the most independent, the most individualistic 
 force in the world, it has become the most autho- 
 ritarian, the most traditional, the most rigid of 
 systems. As in the tale of Gulliver, it is a giant 
 indeed, and can yet perform gigantic services ; but 
 it is bound and fettered by a puny race. 
 
 Further, there are some who would divide reli- 
 gion sharply into two aspects, the objective and the 
 subjective. Those who emphasize the objective 
 aspect, would maintain that the theory that under- 
 lies all religion is the idea of sacrifice. This view 
 is held strongly by Roman Catholics and by a large 
 section of Anglicans as well. They would hold that 
 the duty of the priest is the offering of this sacrifice, 
 and that the essential truth of the Christian revela- 
 tion was the sacrifice of God Himself upon God's 
 own altar. This sacrifice, this atonement, they 
 would say, can be and must be made, over and over, 
 upon the altar of God. They would hold that this 
 offering had its objective value, even though it were 
 offered without the mental concurrence ot those lor
 
 242 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 whom it was offered. They would urge that the 
 primal necessity for the faithful is that by an act 
 of the will, not necessarily an emotional act, but an 
 act of pure and definite volition, they should asso- 
 ciate themselves with the true and perfect sacrifice ; 
 that souls that do this sincerely are caught up, so 
 to speak, into the heavenly chariot of God, and 
 move upward thus ; while the merely subjective 
 and emotional religion is, to continue the meta- 
 phor, as if a man should gird up his loins to run 
 in company with the heavenly impulse. They 
 would say that the objective act of worship may 
 have a subjective emotional effect, but that it has 
 a true value quite independent of any subjective 
 effect. Thev would say that the idea of sacrifice 
 is a primal instinct of human nature, implanted in 
 hearts by God Himself, and borne witness to by 
 the whole history of man. 
 
 Those who, like myself, believe rather in the 
 subjective side, the emotional effect of religion, 
 would hold that the idea of sacrifice is certainly a 
 primal human instinct, but that the true inter- 
 pretation has been put upon it by the teaching of 
 Christ. I should myself feel that the idea of sacri- 
 fice belonged wholly to the old dispensation. That 
 man, when he began to form some mental picture 
 of the mysterious nature of the world of which he- 
 found himself a part, saw that there was, in the 
 background of life, a vast and awful power, whose 
 laws were mysterious and not, apparently, wholly 
 benevolent ; that this power sometimes sent hap- 
 piness and prosperity, soimtinu-s sorrow and ad- 
 versity ; and that thoii'^h to a crMam rxtcnt calami- 
 ties were brought about by uuhvidual misconduct
 
 RELIGION. 243 
 
 yet that there were innumerable instances in the 
 world where innocence and even conscientious con- 
 duct were just as heavily penalized as guilt and sin. 
 The apparently fortuitous distribution of happiness 
 would alarm and bewilder him. The natural in- 
 stinct of man, thus face to face with a Deitv which 
 he could not hope to overcome or struggle with, 
 would be to conciliate and propitiate him by all 
 the means in his power, as he would offer gifts to 
 a prince or chief. He would hope thus to win 
 his favour and not to incur his wrath. 
 
 But the teaching of the Saviour that God was 
 indeed a Father of men seems to me to have changed 
 all this instantaneously. Man would learn that mis- 
 fortune was sent him, not wantonly nor cruelly, 
 but that it was an educative process. If even so 
 he saw cases, such as a child tortured by agoni/ing 
 pain, where there seemed to be no personal edu- 
 cative motive that could account for it, no sense 
 of punishment which could be meant to improve the 
 sufferer, he would fall back on the thought that 
 each man is not isolated or solitary, but that there 
 is some essential unity that binds humanity together, 
 and that suffering at one point must, in some 
 mysterious way that he cannot understand, mean 
 amelioration at another. To feel this would require 
 the exercise of faith, because no human ingenuity 
 could grasp the method by which such a system 
 could be applied. Hut there would be no choice 
 between believing this, or deciding that whatever the 
 essential nature of the Mind of God was, it was not 
 based on human ideas of justice and benevolence. 
 
 The theory of religion would then be that the 
 crude idea of propitiatory and conciliatory sacri-
 
 244 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 fice would fall to the ground ; that to use the in 
 spired \vurds of the old Roman poet 
 
 " Aptissima quzcque dabunt Dl. 
 Carior cst illis homo quam sibi ; " 
 
 and that the only sacrifices required of man would 
 be, on the one hand, the sacrifice of selfish desires, 
 evil tendencies, sinful appetites ; and, on the other 
 hand, the voluntary- abnegation of comfortable and 
 desirable things, in the presence of a noble aim, a 
 great idea, a generous purpose. 
 
 Religion would then become a purely sub- 
 jective thing ; an intense desire to put the human 
 will in harmony with the Divine will, a hopeful, 
 generous, and trustful attitude of soul, a determina- 
 tion to receive sullering and pain as a gift from the 
 Father, as bravely and sincerely as the gifts of hap- 
 piness and joy, with a fervent faith that God did 
 indeed, by implanting in men so ardent a longing 
 for strength and joy, and so deeply rooted a terror of 
 pain and weakness, imply that He intended joy, of 
 a purified and elevated kind, to be the ultimate in- 
 heritance of His creatures ; and the sacrifice of man 
 would then be the willing resignation of everything 
 which could in any degree thwart the ultimate pur- 
 pose <>! ( iod. 
 
 That I believe from the depths of my heart to be 
 the meaning ot the Christian revelation ; and I should 
 look upon the thought of objective sacrifice as being 
 an unworthy survival Irom a time when men had 
 little true knowledge of tin- Fatherly Heart of God. 
 
 And thus, to mv mind, the only possible theory 
 of worship is that it is a deliberate act, an opening 
 of the door that leads to the Heavenly presence.
 
 RELIGION. 245 
 
 Any influence is religious which fills the mind with 
 gratitude and peace, which makes a man humble 
 and patient and wise, which teaches him that the 
 only happiness possible is to attune and harmonize 
 his mind with the gracious purpose of God. 
 
 And so religion and worship grow to have a 
 larger and wider significance ; for though the solem- 
 nities of religion are one of the doors through which 
 the soul can approach God, yet what is known as 
 religious worship is only as it were a postern by the 
 side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and 
 truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning 
 mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can 
 adore the splendour of noble actions, courageous 
 deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the 
 beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world, who 
 can be thrilled with ecstasy and joy by art and music, 
 he can at all these moments draw near to God, and 
 open his soul to the influx of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 Religion can only be of avail so long as it takes 
 account of all the avenues by which the soul can 
 reach the central presence ; and the error into 
 which professional ecclesiastics fall is the error of 
 the scribes and Pharisees, who said that thus and 
 thus only, by these rites and sacrifices and cere- 
 monies, shall the soul have access to the Father of 
 all living. It is as false a doctrine as would be the 
 claim of scientific men or artists, if they maintained 
 that only through science or only through art should 
 men draw near to God. For all the intuitions by 
 which men can perceive the Father are sacred, are 
 religious. And no one may perversely bind that 
 which is free, or make unclean that which is pure, 
 without suffering the doom of those who would
 
 246 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 delude humanity into worshipping an idol of man's 
 devising, rather than the Spirit of (lod Himself. 
 
 Now the question must he asked, how are those 
 who are Christians indeed, who adore in the inmost 
 shrine of their spirit the true Christ, who believe 
 that the Star of the East still shines in unveiled 
 splendour over the place where the young child is, 
 how are they to be true to their Lord ? Are they 
 to protest against the tyranny of intellect, of auth- 
 ority, of worldliness, over the (lospel ? I would say 
 that they have no need thus to protest. I would 
 say that, if they are true to the spirit of Christ, they 
 have no concern with revolutionary ideals at all ; 
 Christ's own example teaches us to leave all that 
 on one side, to conform to worldly institutions, to 
 accept the framework of society. The tyranny of 
 which I have spoken is not to be directly attacked. 
 The true concern of the believer is to be his own 
 attitude to life, his relations with the circle, small or 
 great, in which he finds himself. He knows that 
 if indeed the spirit of Christ could truly leaven the 
 world, the pomps, the glories, the splendours which 
 veil it, would melt like unsubstantial wreaths ot 
 smoke. He need not trouble himself about tradi- 
 tional ordinances, elaborate ceremonials, subtle doc- 
 trines, metaphysical definitions, lie must concern 
 himself with far different things. Let him be sure 
 that no sin is allowed to lurk unresisted in the depths 
 of his spirit ; let him be sure that he is patient, and 
 just, and tender-hearted, and sincere ; let him try 
 to remedy true allliction, not the affliction which 
 falls upon men through tlieir desire to conform to 
 the elaborate u ;a</e of soviet v, but the affliction 
 which seems to be bound up \\ith Clod's own world.
 
 RELIGION. 247 
 
 Let him be quiet and peaceable ; let him take freely 
 the comfort of the holy influences which Churches, 
 for all their complex fabric of traditions and cere- 
 mony, still hold out to the spirit ; let him drink 
 largely from all sources of beauty, both natural and 
 human ; the Churches themselves have gained, by 
 age, and gentle associations, and artistic perception, 
 a large treasure of things that are full of beauty ar- 
 chitecture and music and ceremony that are only 
 hurtful when held to be special and peculiar chan- 
 nels of holiness and sweetness, when they are sup- 
 posed to have a definite sanctification which is op- 
 posed to the sanctification of the beauty exterior to 
 them. Let the Christian be grateful for the beauty 
 they hold, and use it freely and simply. Only let 
 him beware of thinking that what is the open in- 
 heritance of the world is in the possession of any 
 one smaller circle. Let him not even seek to go 
 outside of the persuasion, as it is so strangely called, 
 in which he was born. Christ spoke little of sects, 
 and the fusion of sects, because He contemplated 
 no Church, in the sense in which it is now too often 
 used, but a unity of feeling which should over- 
 spread the earth. The true Christian will recog- 
 nize his brethren not necessarily in the Church or 
 sect to which he belongs, but in all who live humbly, 
 purely, and lovingly, in dependence on the Great 
 Father of all living. 
 
 For after all, disguise it from ourselves as we 
 will, we are all girt about with dark mysteries, into 
 which we have to look whether we dare or not. 
 We fill our life as full as we can of occupation and 
 amusements, ot warmth and comfort ; yet some- 
 times, as we sit in our peaceful room, the gust pipes
 
 248 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 thin and shrill round the corners of the court, the 
 rain rustles in the tree ; we drop the hook which 
 we hold, and wonder what manner of things we 
 indeed are, and what we shall be. Perhaps one of 
 our companions is struck down, and goes without 
 a word or sign on his last journey ; or some heavy 
 calamity, some loss, some bereavement hangs over 
 our lives, and we enter into the shadow ; or some 
 inexplicable or hopeless suffering involves one whom 
 we love, from which the only deliverance is death ; 
 and we realize that there is no explanation, no con- 
 solation possible. In such moments we tend to 
 think that the world is a very terrible place, and 
 that we pay a heavy price for our share in it. I low- 
 unsubstantial then appear our hopes and dreams, 
 our little ambitions, our paltry joys ! In such a 
 mood we feel that the most definite creed illumines, 
 as it were, but a tiny streak of the shadowy orb ; 
 and we are visited, too, by the fear that the more 
 definite the creed, the more certain it is that it is 
 only a desperate human attempt to state a mystery 
 which cannot be stated, in a world where all is dark. 
 In such a despairing mood, we can but resign 
 ourselves to the awful Will of God, who sets us 
 here, we know not why, and hurries us hence, we 
 know not whither. Yet the very sternness and in- 
 exorability of that dread purpose h;is something that 
 sustains and invigorates. \Ve look back upon our 
 life, and feel that it has all followed a plan and a 
 design, and that the worst evils we have had to 
 bear have been our faithless terrors about what 
 should be ; and then we led the strength that ebbed 
 from us drawing back to sustain us ; we recognize 
 that our present sufferings have never been un-
 
 RELIGION. 249 
 
 bearable, that there has always been some residue 
 of hope ; we read of how brave men have borne 
 intolerable calamities, and have smiled in the midst 
 of them, at the reflection that they have never been 
 so hard as was anticipated ; and then we are happy 
 if we can determine that, whatever comes, we will 
 try to do our best, in our small sphere, to live as truly 
 and purely as we can, to practise courage and sin- 
 cerity, to help our fellow-sulTerers along, to guard 
 innocence, to guide faltering feet, to encourage all 
 the sweet and wholesome joys of life, to be loving, 
 tender-hearted, generous, to lift up our hearts ; not 
 to be downcast and resentful because we do not 
 understand everything at once, but humbly and 
 gratefully to read the scroll as it is unrolled. 
 
 The night grows late. I rise to close my outer 
 door to shut myself out from the world ; I shall 
 have no more visitors now. The moonlight lies 
 cold and clear on the little court ; the shadow of 
 the cloister pillars falls black on the pavement. 
 Outside, the town lies hushed in sleep ; I see the 
 gables and chimneys of the clustered houses stand- 
 ing in a quiet dream over the old ivy-covered wall. 
 The college is absolutely still, though one or two 
 lights still burn in studious rooms, and peep through 
 curtained chinks. What a beautiful place to live 
 one's life in, a place which greets one with delicate 
 associations, with venerable beauty, at every turn ! 
 The moonlight falls through the tall oriel of the 
 Hall, and the armorial shields burn and glow with 
 rich points of colour I pace to and Iro, \Nondeiing, 
 musing. All here seems so permnnent, so still, so 
 secure, and yet we are spinning and whirling through
 
 250 FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW. 
 
 space to some unknown goal. What arc the thoughts 
 of the mighty unresting Heart, to whose vast ness and 
 agelessness the whole mass of these flying and glow- 
 ing suns are but as a handful of dust that a hoy 
 flings upon the air ? How has He set me here, a tiny 
 moving atom, yet more sure of my own minute 
 identity than I am of all the vast panorama of things 
 which lie outside of me ? Has He indcrd a tender 
 and a patient thought of me, the frail creature whom 
 He has moulded and made ? 1 do not doubt it ; 
 I look up among the star-sown spaces, and the old 
 aspiration rises in my heart, " Oh, that 1 knew where 
 I might find Him ! that I might come even into 
 His presence ! " How would 1 go, like a tired and 
 sorrowful child to his lather's knee, to be com- 
 forted and encouraged, in perfect trust and love, 
 to be raised in His arms, to be held to His heart ! 
 He would but look in my lace, and I should under- 
 stand without a question, \\iiliotit a word. 
 
 Now in its mouldering turret the old clock wakes 
 and stirs, moves its jarring wires, and the soft bell 
 strikes midnight. Another oi my few short days 
 gone, another step nearer to the unseen. Slowly 
 but not sadly 1 return, for I have been for a moment 
 nearer (jod ; the very thought that rises in my 
 mind, and turns my heart to His, comes from Him. 
 He would make all plain, if He could ; He gi\es us 
 what we need ; ~nd \shen we at la.-l auake \\e shall 
 be satisfied.
 
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 FIB 3 67