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BY 
 
 ARTHUR G. BENSON 
 
 FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 THE UPTON LETTERS 
 
 FROM A COLLEGE 
 WINDOW 
 
 BESIDE STILL WATERS 
 
 THE ALTAR FIRE 
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 AT LARGE 
 
 THE SILENT ISLE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 LEAVES OF THE TREE 
 
 CHILD OF THE DAWN 
 
 PAUL THE MINSTREL 
 
 THY ROD AND THY 
 STAFF 
 
 ALONG THE ROAD 
 
' ALONG THE ROAD 
 
 By 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 
 M 
 Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 
 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few/ 
 
 G. P. PUTNAH'S SONS 
 
 NCW YORK AND LONDON 
 tTbefcnicfierbocfter presd 
 
 1913 
 
B4-n 
 
 Copyright, 19 13 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 
 Ube IftnfclJerbocltec Uteee, Hew Sorft 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I THINK it is often a pity to collect and repub- 
 lish contributions to periodical literature, and 
 authors are apt to feel too tenderly, with a sort 
 of fatherly regard, about the little crops of their 
 own minds. Articles written for journals are apt, 
 of course, to be topiqal and occasional things, 
 composed very often, by the necessity of the 
 case, rapidly and hurriedly, on some momentary 
 subject. They are then little more than impro- 
 visations, spun out of impromptu materials, and 
 there has been no time for them to take shape in 
 the writer's mind. 
 
 But this does not apply to all such writing, 
 and I can honestly say that it does not apply to 
 the majority of the little essays which I have 
 contributed week by week to the Church Family 
 Xewspaper, under the heading of Along the Road, 
 I have for a long time had a good many articles 
 in stock, and even in proof, so that I have not 
 written from hand to mouth. The majority of 
 them are simply little essays, composed delib- 
 erately and carefully on subjects which occupied 
 my mind; and I have had so many letters from 
 unknown correspondents about these articles, that 
 
 28l5()4 
 
iv Preface 
 
 I think that some of my readers may like to have 
 a selection of them in a more permanent form. 
 I have omitted all articles which have been writ- 
 ten to order on some topic of the day, and all 
 of a purely controversial type, such as I have had 
 from time to time to write, not very willingly; 
 and all those which have aroused, however unin- 
 tentionally, the susceptibilities of readers. I be- 
 gan to write the series in a time of considerable 
 depression, when I was recovering from a long 
 illness, and when I w^as afraid that I might be 
 unequal to the task of regular composition; and 
 though I tried to write cheerfully, the shadow of 
 ill-health fell over some of the earlier ones — and 
 these I have omitted. 
 
 Let me say shortly what I have been aiming at 
 in the entire series. It seems to me that what we 
 Englishmen often suffer from is a want of interest 
 in ideas. I think that as a race we have some 
 very fine qualities, — a sturdy and kindly common- 
 sense, first of all, which permits us to view things 
 justly and reasonably, and keeps us both from 
 undue excitement and unbalanced depression, I 
 believe that we are peaceable, orderly, and la- 
 borious; and we have a real modesty, which 
 prevents us from dwelling too much on our 
 achievements and performances, and disposes us 
 not to be careful to claim credit for what we do. 
 And I think, too, that we try to live by principle 
 rather than impulsively. 
 
 But, on the other hand, we are conventional and 
 
Preface v 
 
 uuintelligeut, and think far too much of wealth 
 and position; we are averse to analysis and 
 speculation and experiments. We take certain 
 rather doubtful things for granted, and dislike 
 originality and enthusiasm. It seems to me that 
 we do not think enough about our daily life, and 
 do not ask ourselves enough why- we believe 
 things, or even if we do really believe them. In 
 moral matters we are really rather fatalistic, we 
 trust instinct more than reason, and do not suf- 
 ficiently regard the power we have, within certain 
 limits, to change ourselves. We are apt to make 
 up our minds about many matters early in life, 
 and we take a foolish pride in what we call con- 
 sistency, which often means little more than a 
 habit of rejecting all arguments and all evidence 
 which tell against our prejudices. We have, in 
 fact, very little flexibility of mind. Again, I 
 think that we are apt to neglect the wonderful 
 treasure of ancient and beautiful associations 
 which have accumulated in a land that has for 
 so long been uninvaded, and where we have con- 
 sequently been able to develop our own institu- 
 tions without interruption. I am often amazed, 
 as I explore England, to find hamlet after hamlet 
 with a fine church, an old manorial house, many 
 graceful dwellings, and obviously with a clear and 
 delicate history of its own, if only it were re- 
 corded ! All that we are apt to take as a matter 
 of course, and neglect in a dull and careless way, 
 as if it were not worth notice. 
 
vi Preface 
 
 So I have had these two aims very firmly in 
 view — to try in the first place to interest readers 
 in little problems of life and character, all the 
 clash and interplay of human qualities, so fresh, 
 so unaccountable, so marvellously interesting, 
 which spring out of our daily relations with other 
 human beings. The longer I live, the more won- 
 derful every day appears to me the infinite com- 
 plexity and beautA^ of human intercourse, and the 
 sense that some very great and noble problem is 
 being worked out by slow gradations and with 
 infinite delay. Civilisation has this potent effect, 
 that it does away with isolation and hostility; 
 it makes men and women feel that they cannot 
 guard themselves apart from others, or follow 
 selfishly their own designs, but that we are all 
 deeply dependent on each other both for en- 
 couragement and help; that our smallest actions 
 and our lightest thoughts can and must affect 
 other lives, and that good and evil alike must 
 go on seeding and flowering, till we are perfect 
 in patience and in love; and I have been struck, 
 too, the more I have known of men, to find how 
 often they are conscious,' in a dim and uncertain 
 way, of high and beautiful ideals, which they 
 yet seem pathetically unable to work out, in- 
 capable of applying to the facts of life, though 
 sorrowfully aware that they are not making the 
 best either of life or of themselves. This has 
 given me increasingly the sense of a very wonder- 
 ful and far-off future for mankind, — for all that 
 
Preface vii 
 
 live and strive, hope and sorrow, — not only upon 
 earth, but beyond the veil of mortality. That 
 future, I believe with all my soul, is a future of 
 joy, because joy is the native air of the spirit, 
 which cannot acquiesce in sorrow and pain, 
 though it can bear them, if it believes that they 
 are meant ultimately to minister to joy and 
 peace. The more that we study ourselves and 
 others, the more rich and complex does the pos- 
 sibility appear; and the more that we can keep 
 our hearts on the permanent and the spiritual, 
 and put what is temporary and material in its 
 right place, the better for us. The world seems 
 often full of misdirected feeling, grief, and dis- 
 appointment over things which are not worth the 
 emotion, bitter strife over paltry causes, stubborn 
 prejudices, and worst of all a harsh belief that 
 if i)eople will not try to be happy in what we 
 happen to consider the right way, they had better 
 not be happy at all. That is in my belief the 
 worst fault of the English character, the hard 
 insistence on our own fancies and theories, the 
 radical lack of sympathy and mutual understand- 
 ing; so I have tried my hand at attempting to 
 explain men and women to themselves and others, 
 and ju'essing on my readers, as far as I could, the 
 supreme worth of conciliation, appreciation, toler- 
 ance, and brotherly love. If I could but say or 
 express how infinitely I desire that! T do not 
 at all recommend a weak abandonment of our 
 own cherished beliefs; but it is possible to hold 
 
viii Preface 
 
 a view firmly and courageously, as the best for 
 oneself, without attempting to contemn and dis- 
 credit the sincere beliefs of others. 
 
 And secondly, I have tried to awaken the in- 
 terest, which we can find, if we only look for it, 
 in common and ordinary things, in the places we 
 see, in the words which we hear read week by 
 week, in the simple experiences of life. One of 
 the worst foes of all spiritual and mental energy 
 is the dulness that creeps over hard-working peo- 
 ple, the stolid comfortable acquiescence in daily 
 grubbiness, the apathy which sees the beautiful 
 lights of life going out one by one without an 
 attempt to rekindle them. One sees and hears 
 things so dully and incuriously; and yet if one 
 sets oneself to say " What does that mean? What 
 lies behind that? How does it come to exist so? " 
 Ave find a whole wealth of striking and tender 
 associations, reaching far back into the past, and 
 all most gently bound up with what we are. 
 
 Ideas and associations ! Those are the best and 
 dearest part of life, next to human relations. And 
 they are not outside of our reach. We only, many 
 of us, require to be taught how to begin, what 
 sort of questions to ask ourselves, what little ex- 
 periments in thought and feeling we can try. 
 That has been the simple task I have set before 
 me, and no one can wish more heartily than I 
 do,, that it had been better fulfilled. Because, as 
 T have said, I am daily more amazed and de- 
 lighted at the wonderful and incommunicable in- 
 
Preface ix 
 
 terest and beauty of life, the secrets that it holds, 
 the problems — some of them sad enon<!;h — that it 
 offers, and the marvellous hope in the mighty 
 purposes of God that lie behind it all. The 
 House of Life in which we abide, in the days 
 of our pilgrimage, can be made, with so little care 
 and trouble, into a great and gracious place; as 
 the old wise writer said, " Through wisdom is an 
 house builded, and by understanding it is estab- 
 lished, and by knowledge shall the chambers be 
 filled with all precious and pleasant riches!" 
 
 A. C. B. 
 
 The Old Lodge, 
 
 Magdalene College, Cambridge, 
 
 Aug. 5, 1912. 
 

CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Old England 1 
 
 An Autumn Landscape 9 
 
 St. Govan's 17 
 
 A Ruined House 23 
 
 St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 29 
 
 Antiquities and Amenities 34 
 
 Addington 42 
 
 Brent Knoll 50 
 
 Mr. Gladstone 56 
 
 Robert Browning • . 65 
 
 Newman 72 
 
 Archippus 82 
 
 Keats 90 
 
 Roddy 96 """^ 
 
 The Face of Death 101 
 
 The Aweto 109 ; i 
 
 The Old Family Nurse llP)jn2ll^ 
 
 The Anglican Clergy 124 
 
 xi 
 
 t 
 
xii Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Compulsory Greek 1^3^ 
 
 Gambling 140 
 
 Hymns 147 
 
 Preachers and Preaching 156 
 
 Art and Life 162^ 
 
 Sympathy . 172 
 
 ' Jealousy 179 
 
 Home Truths 188 
 
 ^^"Superstition . . 195 
 
 ^Better-Writing 204 
 
 ,^x Vulgarity 213 
 
 Sincerity 221 
 
 . yJlesolutions , 229 * 
 
 Biography . . . . . . . . 235 
 
 Gossip 243^ 
 
 ^^^.^-t^actfulness ........ 248 
 
 On Finding One's Level 252 
 
 The Inner Life 259 
 
 p'*'^;^ Being Shocked . . , . . . . 269 y 
 
 Homely Beauty 276 
 
 Brain Waves 285 
 
 Forgiveness 292 
 
 — ~^^V»elf-Pity 300 
 
Contents xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bells 309 
 
 Starlings 315 
 
 Mottoes 323 
 
 On Being Interrupted 330 
 
 Democracy 338 
 
 Absent-Mindedness 345^ 
 
 Peace 352 
 
 y^ Conversation 359 
 
 Work and Play 367 
 
 ^^iveliness 373 (, 
 
 Pride 380 
 
 Allegories 387 
 
 Publicity and Privacy 394 
 
 Experience 402 
 
 Resignation 410 
 
 The Wind 417 --* 
 
 The Use of Poetry 423 
 
 War 430 
 
 i On Making Friends 439 
 
 ^The Younger Generation 446 "jf 
 
 ^xi^eading 455 ^ 
 
Along the Road 
 
 OLD ENGLAND 
 
 We hear much said nowadays about the Empire, 
 and said wisely and bravely, too ; and we are told 
 to hold out hands of brotherhood, and to keep 
 our hearts warm towards our unknown friends 
 and fellow-citizens over the sea, and to be proud 
 of the great outward-beating wave of English life 
 and talk and thought which surges over the globe. 
 And, indeed, England may well rejoice in the 
 old blessing of the Psalms that she is truly a 
 joyful mother of children; though I sometimes 
 wish that it were all done and said a Jittle less 
 militantly, and that the happy family would think 
 and talk a little less of crowding out and keeping 
 in their corners the other children who have their 
 playground here, too, by the far-off purpose of 
 God. 
 
 But while we may wholesomely exult in the 
 generous pulse of English blood which thrills far 
 and wide through the earth, replenishing and 
 
Along the Road 
 
 subduing it, we may sometimes wisely turn our 
 thoughts homewards and inwards and backwards, 
 to the wonderful currents of history and tradition 
 that have moulded our island race and made us 
 what we are. We are apt to forget, we town- 
 dwellers, what an incomparable treasure of old 
 and beautiful things is hidden in our land, in 
 village and hamlet, in the forest clearings, and 
 the remote valleys and the foldings of the hills. 
 If one explores a bit of quiet England, and finds 
 leisure to look about for ruined castles and 
 priories, for old houses and nestling churches, 
 one comes to realise what long, quiet spaces of 
 homely life have been lived century by century, 
 in days before railways tied town to town, and 
 before the humblest labourer could read day by 
 day, as he can now in the newspaper, the whole 
 pageant of the life which the world has been 
 living the day before. 
 
 It is a mistake perhaps to live too much in 
 the past; one invests it all in the mind with a 
 romantic, golden haze; one forgets its miseries 
 and its cruelties, and one comes to sorrow feebly 
 over the ills about one, as though they were newly- 
 risen and fresh-engendered evils; as if the old 
 daj's were all full of peace and quiet and whole- 
 some labour; when, as a matter of fact, the con- 
 ditions of life for the mass of the population are 
 infinitely brighter, more decent, more sensible, 
 more comfortable than they used to be, and the 
 minds of far more men are bent on helping and 
 
Old England 3 
 
 cleansing and lifting up the souls and bodies of 
 those who have fallen by the wayside, and find 
 the great wheels of life running too tyrannously 
 past them. 
 
 But the old life had a beauty and a stillness 
 of its own, for all that, when there was less 
 motion and stir, less sound and foam; there was 
 less arranging how to live, and more acceptance 
 of life. Men whose range was more limited, con- 
 centrated, no doubt, a stronger emotion on just 
 the touches of grandeur and dignity and beauty 
 that the circle of the hills enfolded ; and the sight, 
 as one sees it, if one wanders afield day by dayj 
 of the beautiful churches and manor-houses, even 
 of the very cottages and barns, gives the feeling 
 that men in the old days had a stronger sense 
 of the fine simplicities and even statelinesses of 
 life, when they built with roof -tile and gable, with 
 mullion and timber-tie, than when they bring 
 slate and yellow brick in a straw-packed truck, 
 and run up a corrugated iron barn in the corner 
 of the high-walled byre. 
 
 Here is a little picture of what I saw one day 
 not long ago, as I traced the green valley of the 
 Windrush through the bare Cotswold hills. The 
 Windrush is as sweet a stream as its airy, ruffled 
 name suggests, full of clear pools and swift wind- 
 ings, with its long, swaying weeds, and bubbling 
 weirs, as it runs among level meadows, between 
 bare hillsides. 
 
 Over the fields we saw a tiny belfried church, 
 
4 Along the Ro^d 
 
 in a wide meadow ; a little path led to it ; and 
 when we were close at hand we could see that 
 it had a minute ancient chancel, of singularly 
 rude masonry, and a small Tudor nave tacked 
 on at a curious angle. Inside it was one of 
 the homeliest of sanctuaries, with its irregular 
 Georgian pews, faint traces of rusty frescoes, a 
 pretty Jacobean pulpit, and a poppyhead or two 
 of gnarled oak. But what a vista of age was 
 opened out, when one found the chancel to be 
 paved in places with a Roman mosaic, the bound- 
 ing lines of which ran close to the walls, and 
 left no sort of doubt that the chancel, even in 
 its very walls, were the remnants of the hall of 
 some Roman manor-house, converted, when dere- 
 lict, into the simplest of Norman chapels. It was 
 no doubt the home of some Roman settlers, and 
 clearly inhabited for several generations; pro- 
 bably not even fortified, so full are these valleys 
 of great wealthy Roman houses, with cloister and 
 colonnade and bath and hall, all testifying to a 
 quiet colonial life in fi peaceful land. What a 
 mystery hangs over it ali^ These great country 
 houses, no doubt, were one by one evacuated, as 
 the Roman legions were withdrawn, to crumble 
 down into decay among brushwood and gorse. 
 And then came the slow growth of kingdoms, and 
 the spread of the Faith, till the old ruin among 
 the thickets was repaired into a tiny Christian 
 church, who knows by what hands, or how many 
 dim years ago! 
 
Old England 5 
 
 Then we sauntered on, and presently came to 
 broad turfed terraces, in a pasture, with some 
 odd square pools below them, and so to a small 
 hamlet with a little church and a gabled manor- 
 house. The church was full of great monuments, 
 cavaliers, and knights, with kirtled spouses, lying 
 stiffly, their hands beneath their heads, their 
 ruddy painted faces, and their eyes looking tran- 
 quilly out into the church. There were brasses, 
 too, on the pavement, and later, more pompous 
 monuments, with weeping cherubs, and inscrip- 
 tions in flowing polysyllables, telling one of 
 nothing that one cared to know, except of the 
 eminent virtues which grief seems always to take 
 for granted. 
 
 The history of some great house was evidently 
 hidden here; the name of the family was Fetti- 
 ])lace. When I got back home, I looked it up, 
 and the strangest story was revealed. The Fetti- 
 y)laces were an ancient stock which grew slowly, 
 by inheritance and alliance, into extraordinary 
 wealth and station. They had land in sixteen 
 counties, and one of the heads of the family 
 actually married a Braganza, a daughter of a 
 King of Portugal. The family, for all its influ- 
 ence, never gave a single statesman or judge or 
 bishop or admiral or general to England. They 
 had no record of public service, only of great 
 and growing prosperity. Then they began to 
 dwindle; the baronetcy became extinct, the name 
 was still kept up in the female line, and then 
 
6 Along the Road 
 
 the great house went out in the snuff; ugly stories 
 were told of them; they became imbecile and 
 drunken, and at last the family became wholly 
 extinct. The great house, which had stood, with 
 its facade and cupolas, among the terraces we 
 had seen in the pasture, was pulled down, the 
 lands were sold, and the whole became a proud 
 and selfish and wicked memory of great oppor- 
 tunities thrown away, and vast revenues lavishly 
 squandered. 
 
 That seems to me a very sad and dreary old 
 story — the fall of a great house! One does not 
 want to be too solemn over it, but it is a sinister 
 warning enough that one had better not build 
 too much on the brave shows of life, pomp, and 
 property and house and influence; that the world 
 is not a place where it is well to scramble for 
 one's satisfaction, and waste what one cannot 
 use; and that it may be better after all to give 
 than to receive, though we most of us seem to 
 hold the contrary. 
 
 It did somehow seem to me th,at day, among 
 those high-piled, much-escutcheoned monuments, 
 that we many of us do pursue shadows ; that the 
 treasures of life are wholesome work and deep 
 affections, and the simple things that amuse and 
 occupy and uplift. Yet we pass over these things, 
 many of us, as commonplace and humdrum, and 
 set our minds on some silly ambition, some paltry 
 fame, some trivial distinction, and forget that the 
 true life is streaming past unheeded. 
 
Old England 7 
 
 Is this all a very threadbare philosophy? I do 
 not know. I can only say, very humbly, that it 
 has taken me fifty years of varied and interesting 
 life to perceive it, to sort the gold from the dross ; 
 to see how I have wasted my days in the excited 
 pursuit of shadows, and often despised the sweet, 
 simple, enriching, increasing things that lay all 
 about me, like the daisies on a green pasture. 
 
 I could not, in the presence of those stiff 
 knights and dainty ladies, in their arched and 
 emblemed niches, feel that we had got hold of 
 the right proportions of life. Perhaps the Fetti- 
 places, for all their estates and grandeurs and 
 eminent virtues, did live simple lives amidst it 
 all, loving the pure air that blew over the spare 
 hillsides, and the clear stream that gushed be- 
 neath their gardens, with their jolly boys and 
 girls growing up about them. Yet something 
 more ought to have come out of it all; some 
 sharing of good things, some example of neigh- 
 bourly life, some love and sympathy for poorer 
 brethren. One does not like to feel that these 
 virtues have been developed — for they have much 
 increased of late — out of pure terror at the rising 
 forces of democracy. It all ought to have grown 
 u]) spontaneously, and to have been generously 
 conceded; and I doubt if it was. 
 
 Indeed, if further proof were needed of some- 
 thing vile and ugly in the old life of that still 
 countryside, I saw a day or two later, hardly a 
 mile from the Fettiplace monuments, a solitary 
 
8 Along the Road 
 
 oak, standing far away from the coverts, with a 
 rough old path leading to it across the fields. 
 On the trunk, beneath a great horizontal out- 
 thrusting bough, were some initials scarred deep 
 into the wood, with a date more than a century 
 old. The gibbet tree! The initials are those of 
 two unhappy men, highway robbers, I think, 
 whose mouldering bodies must have dangled there, 
 knocking in an ugly fashion against the tree, as 
 the wind blew over the wood, with what horrors 
 of scent and corruption ! One thinks of the dread- 
 ful group gathered there ; the desperate man, with 
 the rope round his neck thrown over the bough; 
 the officers, the sheriff, the magistrates on horse- 
 back, the staring crowd; and then the struggling 
 breath, the inflated eyes, the convulsed limbs. 
 One must not put all that out of sight, as one 
 dreams over the honest, quiet, simple days of old ! 
 And what can we make of it all, the grass- 
 grown terraces, the Roman pavement, the solitary 
 tree — difficult pieces of a strange puzzle, to be 
 fitted together ? One thing, to my mind, emerges, 
 that one must not judge harshly, or hope hastily, 
 or believe tamely, or dream comfortably, but try 
 to see life whole, to face its harshnesses and its 
 horrors, and yet to hold very firmly to a vast 
 scheme, working itself out, with marvellous 
 patience and exactness, nothing wasted, nothing 
 slurred over, and all in the Mind and Heart of 
 God. 
 
AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE 
 
 I WAS walking the other day with a friend at 
 Cambridge along the road that runs up Mad- 
 ingley Hill. In most countries this would be 
 accounted a trifling undulation, but here in Cam- 
 bridgeshire it is a bold and conspicuous eminence, 
 commanding a wide view of the world. Beyond 
 the groves of Girton, far to the north, we could 
 see the dim towers of Ely, not" unlike a gigantic 
 locomotive, across the great Fen, with its rich 
 blues and greens, all mellowed and refined by the 
 thin autumnal mist; the pale fallows, the large 
 pastures sloped away pleasantly from our feet, 
 with here and there a row of elms, or a yellow- 
 ing s pinney . We halted at a gate by the edge of 
 the wood, and my friend said to me, " I wonder 
 what it is that makes all this so beautiful. There 
 is nothing wild or romantic about it; it has no 
 features; every acre has its simple use; it has all 
 been tamed and tilled. It would be hard to ex- 
 plain to any one what it is that is beautiful about 
 it; and yet I can fancy that if one were com- 
 pelled to live abroad, in a place as beautiful as 
 Florence, or even in some tropical landscape, one 
 
 9 
 
lo Along the Road 
 
 would revert in thought and even with a sort of 
 passionate longing to these level pastures and 
 tame woods, as to something almost inexpressibly 
 dear and delightful." 
 — " Yes," I said, " I can well imagine it ; but 
 would not that be partly just the sense of home 
 and familiar things, a countryside peopled with 
 men whose talk one could understand, and with 
 birds and plants whose habits and f6rms one 
 knew — a sort of revolt against things splendid 
 and striking, which had yet no happy and mov- 
 ing associations? So much of the beauty of 
 things, as well as of places, depends upon the 
 happy mind one carried about among them long 
 ago, when one read one's own inner delight into 
 tree and wall. I am sure that I love the elm 
 because of the playing-fields at Eton! The very 
 word elm calls up the look of the great trees, 
 with all their towering foliage, on a summer even- 
 ing beside the Thames, or the sight of them seen 
 through the open windoAvs of a schoolroom in a 
 spring morning — ^ the times,' as Tennyson said, 
 
 * When I remember to have been 
 Joyful and free from blame.' 
 
 We can't isolate ourselves and look at all things 
 impartially and dispassionately, however much 
 we try — and after all, who would try ? " 
 
 " Oh ! of course," he said ; " half the beauty of 
 it is memory and old delights; but there must be 
 
An Autumn Landscape ii 
 
 somethin": more than that. Ts it perhaps not a 
 sense of beauty at all, but an ancient, instinctive 
 sense of prosperity and husbandry — the well- 
 reaped field, the plentiful pasture, some of which 
 may come our way in the shape of loaves and 
 sirloins." 
 
 "No," T said, "that is really too horrible to 
 suggest. Come, let us take the landscape to 
 pieces, and see if we can detect its secret." 
 
 So we stood for a little by the gate and 
 measured it with our eyes, as the Romans used 
 to say. 
 
 " It is a good deal of it colour," I said. " First 
 of all there is the sky — we have not apportioned 
 that out, at all events, to landlords and syn- 
 dicates! There is something free and essentially 
 liberal about the sky; and that sapphire blue, 
 with a hint of golden haze about it, is not wholly 
 utilitarian. Those big, packed clouds down there, 
 like snow-clad bluffs, I have no particular use for 
 them, nor do I expect any benefits from them; 
 but they are vaguely exciting and delightful ; and 
 then the delicate curves and converging lines of 
 the fields are beautiful in their way, neither 
 disorderly nor too geometrical; and there is a 
 sense, too, that the whole thing is not hopelessly 
 deliberate. If this were a treeless expanse, 
 geometrically squared, it would not be so attrac- 
 tive. The whole thing has a history. The 
 hamlets signify wells and springs, the byways 
 meandering about stand for old forest tracks; 
 
12 Along the Road 
 
 that lane down there which gives a sudden 
 Avriggle, quite unintelligible now, probably means 
 a gigantic fallen tree which it was too much 
 trouble to remove. And then the straight lines 
 of the Roman roads— there is something invigor- 
 ating about them." 
 
 " But you are going back to associations," he 
 said, " and I don't deny them ; what about the 
 admixture of wildness in the whole scene? I 
 don't see much trace of that." 
 
 " Oh," I said, " there are little bits of dingles 
 everywhere, hedgerows unreasonably big, elms 
 where they are not needed; a nice pit there, 
 fringed with reeds and full of water, where gravel 
 was dug long ago. Some perfectly meaningless 
 pieces of old woodland, left there with a sense 
 of pleasure and shade, I think, and the trees 
 themselves, how charmingly irregular! I grant 
 that the great black poplars down there are awk- 
 ward enough, but look at the little gnarled, pol- 
 larded elms round the farmstead, and the big 
 sycamore in that close. There is just enough 
 liberty about, to emphasise the fact that it is 
 not all for mere use. But I grant you that it 
 is all impossible to define; one can't get behind 
 the joy of colour, and in England we care about 
 colour very much, and not much about form." 
 
 " Yes," said my friend, " 1 was told a curious 
 thing about that the other day. A young diplo- 
 mat said to me that he had been calling on a 
 small farmer in Japan, quite a poor man; on the 
 
An Autumn Landscape 13 
 
 centre of the table in his room lay a large flint 
 stone. It looked so unaccountable that he said 
 at last to the farmer, * What is that stone? There 
 must be some story about it, I suppose. Why do 
 you have it there?' The farmer said, * Why, of 
 course, you see what a beautiful stone it is? I 
 have it here to look at because it is so beautiful.' 
 ^fy friend had noticed in the garden outside the 
 liouse a little rockery of similar stones, and he 
 said, *Well, you have some stones outside in 
 the garden — this looks to me very much like 
 those.' * Oh, no,' said the farmer, * those are 
 quite common stones, useful enough, and some of 
 them even pleasant, but not beautiful like this 
 one. Come,' he added, *we w\\\ take it out and 
 look at it side by side with them.' He did so, 
 and pointed out all the superior grace and ele- 
 gance of the original stone. My friend said that 
 he simply had no idea what the farmer meant, 
 and it was as if some sense were wanting in 
 him. The farmer added, * It is a famous stone, 
 too! People come to see it from a long way 
 round, and I have even been offered a large price 
 for it. But I cannot part with it, it is too lovely. 
 When I come in tired with my work, I can forget 
 my weariness in looking at my stone and thinking 
 how fine it is.' " 
 
 "Yes," I said, "that is a good story; and one 
 hears, too, how workmen in Japan will keep a 
 flower by them to look at in the pauses of their 
 work, for refreshment, where an Englishman 
 
14 Along the Road 
 
 would need a pint of beer to make him a cheerful 
 countenance ! " 
 
 " I don't suppose," said my friend, " that any 
 one of the people who work about here in the 
 fields have any sense of the beauty of it at all? 
 They like the scene, perhaps, in a vague way, as 
 something they are familiar with. But I have 
 seen this very hill on which we stand, with the 
 long wood on the top and the broken mill, black 
 and solemn, with an evening sky behind it, all 
 transfigured with a sense of something that it is 
 just impossible to analyse or explain; and, of 
 course, the most ordinary places, at dawn or 
 sunset, if only they are quiet and simple enough, 
 and not disfigured by some smart and intrusive 
 piece of modernity, — like that corrugated iron 
 barn-roof there, or that row of admirable cot- 
 tages, — can take on a beauty of mystery and peace 
 which seems to come from some old and pure 
 source; and this quiet kind of beauty is perhaps 
 the truest of all, this * field-space and sky-silence,' 
 which can respond to a hundred different moods, 
 and gains all the mystery and depth of the true 
 symbol by not too insistently claiming a special 
 and peculiar loveliness of its own." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I am sure you are right about 
 this; and I always suspect the sense of beauty in 
 a man who goes in search of what is melodramatic 
 and romantic in scenery, and complains of the 
 dulness of the simple countryside. How one's 
 heart pines, among the snow-peaks and pine-clad 
 
An Autumn Landscape 15 
 
 gorges of Switzerland, for a row of elms and a 
 gabled farmstead I If one loves the unadorned 
 landscape, one may take a draught every now 
 and then of richer and more intoxicating scenery, 
 like that of our English lakes— and yet half the 
 beauty of that is its combination of great moun- 
 tain-shapes and rugged ridges with the sweet and 
 pastoral life that nestles in its dingles and green 
 valleys. Tlie joy of a mountain walk there is 
 the passing through the level pastures, with their 
 clear streams and tree-clad knolls, up into the 
 steeper valleys, where the brook comes tinkling 
 and dripping down among the thickets, with the 
 steeply sloping stone-walled meadows, the quaint 
 huddled hamlets propped at every kind of pleas- 
 ant angle, and so out on to the moorland and 
 up the green shoulders of the hill; and then the 
 return, dropping from the bleak, black mountain- 
 head down the wind-swept valley, till the trees 
 begin, and one is back again in the comfortable 
 range of humanity, with the sense of the old life 
 of the world all about one, and the people who 
 live their poetry instead of scribbling it down." 
 
 " But I should be very sorry," said ipy friend, 
 " if it were not sometimes scribbled down ! T 
 like to think of old Wordsworth, with his rustic 
 form and sturdy legs, his plain face gaining, as 
 his companions testified, an inspired solemnity of 
 aspect from the sight of the earth that he loved 
 so well — all that grows out of it, all that lived 
 upon it. The beauty of the earth and the beauty 
 
i6 Along the Road 
 
 of the human face — those are the only two kinds 
 of beauty that we in England understand and 
 express." 
 
 By this time we were far on our way; but we 
 halted once more, as we retraced our steps, on 
 the brow of the hill, to watch the mist beginning 
 to swim in faint veils and wreaths over the low- 
 lying fields, under a green frosty sky, fringed 
 with orange light; and farther yet the towers 
 and spires of Cambridge rose softly out of the 
 haze, the smoke drifting northwards in the 
 breeze, without a sound except the sharp cry of 
 some night-bird in the heart of the wood, and 
 the rhythmical beat of horsehoofs, now loud now 
 low, on the road that bore us back to the accus- 
 tomed hearth, out of the twilight fields and the 
 solitary hill. 
 
ST. GOVAN'S 
 
 The little rough lane, with its decrepit hedges 
 of turf and stones, ended suddenly in a broad 
 sheet of grass, closely combed and elastic. Two 
 hundred feet below lay the open Atlantic, its 
 green waves riding majestically landward before 
 the fresh wind. To left and right, over the high 
 pastures, headland after headland ran out sea- 
 ward. For miles on either hand the sheer grey 
 clitfs dropped precipitously to the breakers, 
 broken but twice or thrice by the inlet of creek 
 or haven or sand-fringed bay, with here and there 
 a toppling pinnacle of rock, cut off from the 
 mainland, rising grimly out of the boiling surf. 
 
 The cliff-edge was but a few yards away, and 
 seemed as abrupt here as elsewhere ; but on draw- 
 ing near, the head of a little ravine opened in 
 the turf, with steep, rocky sides, the tufts of sea- 
 thrift and shaggy grass clinging to ledge and 
 cleft; in the sparse soil appeared the head of a 
 rude staircase, made of little slabs of worn grey 
 stone, deeply set. A few steps downwards, and 
 there appeared, down below, the grey-slated roof 
 and rough belfry of a tiny chapel, hanging be- 
 
1 8 Along the Road 
 
 tween sea and sky, half-embedded in the ground, 
 and wedged between the steep rocks of the ravine 
 from side to side, like a nest in a thicket. It 
 looked strangely precarious there, with the wind 
 volleying over it and the billows roaring beneath, 
 as though a touch would have sent it bounding 
 in ruins down the slope. A farther descent, with 
 the crags closing in on either hand, brought one 
 to the low-arched door; the whole place was in- 
 credibly rude and ancient, built of roughly-shaped 
 limestone fragments. Indeed, the antiquaries say 
 that the masonry is Roman, and that it was evi- 
 dently a little fort to guard the landing-place, 
 which a hermit had restored and adapted to more 
 pious uses. The roof within, low-vaulted and 
 roughly plastered; the floor nothing but oozy 
 marl, red and miry, with the rain-water dripping 
 in pools by window and door. A single square 
 aperture, open to the air, looked seaward, and 
 the wind thundered through. There was a rude 
 stone altar, and a low stone seat on each side, 
 running the whole length of the chapel; at the 
 west a little door led out upon the steep seaward 
 track; beside the altar, another little door led 
 into a sort of cave in the limestone, half-open to 
 the sky; this was all rude and unshaped, except 
 for a rough, upright niche on the left just large 
 enough to contain the body of a man of moderate 
 stature. Tradition says, and there is no reason 
 to doubt it, that this is a place of penance. It 
 is strange indeed to think of the old anchorite, 
 
St. Govan's 19 
 
 with his wild hair and beard, crouching naked 
 in this drear}' cleft, hour by hour, with the wind 
 howling in the gully, and the rain dripping 
 through the crevices, quenching rebellious tempta- 
 tions, or expiating old light-hearted sins, and 
 offering his pain with a willing heart to the 
 pitiful Father of all living. 
 
 Yet it cannot have been a wholly lonely life. 
 The place was visited of old by hundreds of pil- 
 grims. A little farther down the steep seaward 
 track is a well, rudely arched over with rugged 
 masonry, the water of which was credited with 
 healing virtues. Even fifty years ago, it is said, 
 there were to be seen, thrust in among the 
 boulders, crutches and splints and bandages, 
 votive offerings from simple pilgrims who had 
 reason to think themselves cured by the sacred 
 waters. It is all a very bewildering and start- 
 ling mystery, not, I think, to be lightly dismissed 
 as a mass of unscientific tradition and gross 
 superstition. And in any case, the scene of so 
 much human emotion, such suffering, such hopes, 
 such gratitude, must have a pathos of its own. 
 Now the wind whistles in the cleft, and the thin 
 cry of the floating gull comes mournfully up, 
 while the breakers blanch on the rocks below. 
 In summer come parties of holiday-making folk, 
 who peer into the chapel, squeeze themselves 
 laughing into the hermifs niche, sip the waters 
 of the well, and feast pleasantly above the gently- 
 lapping sea; and perhaps it is better so; though 
 
20 Along the Road 
 
 one does not think that the hermit's penitential 
 groans and the feverish prayers of the sufferers 
 who dragged themselves so patiently down those 
 rugged steps were utterly wasted. We still 
 lament our faults, endure our pains, breathe our 
 hopes, though we do it more tentatively, and, 
 we claim, more reasonably to-day ! 
 
 It is strange that nothing should be known of 
 the hermit or the hermits that lived so hard a 
 life between the sky and the sea. The name St. 
 Govan does not even enshrine a sacred memory. 
 It is nothing but a corruption of Sir Gawain, the 
 nephew of King Arthur, and one of the most 
 sin-stained and treacherous of the knights of the 
 Round Table. It was said that he suffered ship- 
 wreck here, and that this great body was washed 
 ashore, bruised and shattered; and that at the 
 time of the Conquest his tomb was still to be 
 seen on the hilltop, a huge pile of hewn stone. 
 
 But dim and strange as the human memories 
 of the place are, the mind struggles backwards 
 through the centuries, feeling its way helplessly 
 across the tracts of time ; how tiny a fringe, after 
 all, of the real life of the place is the part that 
 it has played in human history and tradition! 
 I suppose that for thousands of years there has 
 been hardly a change in the aspect of the scene. 
 When Israel came out of Egypt, when the Greeks 
 fought round about Troy, when Romulus walled 
 his little upland fort among the clustered hills of 
 Rome, the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the 
 
St. Govan's 21 
 
 rollers thundered in upon the gorse-clad pro- 
 montory and the bleak cliff- precipices. The gulls 
 and the sea-snails of the place have an ancestry 
 that would put the pedigrees of kings and em- 
 perors to shame. The mystery of it all is that 
 these creatures of the surf and the cliff have lived 
 their blind lives, generation after generation, with 
 the passions and emotions of the day and the 
 hour; is it all for nothing that they have lived 
 and died? What has become of the life and 
 spirit which animated them? It must at least 
 be as lasting as the stone of the crag and the 
 boulder of the shore; and we know of no pro- 
 cess which should create either or bring either 
 to an end. And then at last comes man; and 
 here the amazing thing is that he can send his 
 thought backwards and forwards through the 
 ages, can imagine the endless procession of lives, 
 the generations of creatures that have dwelt here. 
 At my feet there crops out a piece of limestone 
 through the turf, close-set with the fossil fibres 
 of some prehistorfic madrepore, the sign of a life 
 embalmed and recorded, so ancient that the mind 
 can hardly wrestle with the thought. Yet it all 
 means something in the vast mind of God. And 
 here is the wonderful part, that to man alone is 
 it given to set himself as it were by the side of 
 the Creator, and survey the range and progress 
 of the eternal work; and then the thought flies 
 farther yet, to the stars that hang, unseen in 
 the noonday light, over sea and shore, each star 
 
22 Along the Road 
 
 with its planets, like our own, inhabited doubtless 
 by other creatures, with lives like our own, in- 
 telligences, emotions, spirits, with what miracles, 
 perhaps, of grace and redemption working them- 
 selves out for them, through the mercy and 
 loving-kindness of the Father of all. 
 
 It is true that the mind cannot live or breathe 
 or act at these altitudes; but for all that, there 
 are days and hours when such thoughts are in- 
 evitable and inspiring too, even though it may 
 bring home to us how brief and negligible a thing 
 is the opening of the windows of our own soul 
 Upon the daylight of the world. It is an awful 
 and overmastering thought, for it reveals the 
 almost ghastly insignificance of the single life; 
 yet it is inspiring too, for it reveals that, how- 
 ever small that life may be, it yet has a sure and 
 certain place in the Father's thought; that His 
 work was not complete without us, and that we 
 are eternally and utterly in His care. 
 
 Such was the message of the cliff-top and the 
 sea, so that the little chapel became a place of 
 visions, full of light, and resounding to the far- 
 off harmony of a heavenly music. Could one but 
 keep that music undimmed and pure ! 
 
 But the day begins to darken to its close ; the old 
 familiar tide of life sweeps up, and draws one back 
 to work and love, to joy and pain — yet that awe- 
 struck hope, that sense of far-off mystery is indeed 
 an earnest of the heavenly vision. " When I awake 
 up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." 
 
A RUINED HOUSE 
 
 I HAVE often wondered what can be the origin 
 of the pleasnre which human beings take in con- 
 templating a ruined building. One would think 
 that there must be something morbid in the de- 
 light of seeing the skeleton, so to speak, of an 
 ancient house or church, built for pleasure or 
 piety, a thing that stands for so much vanished 
 life, and faded pride, and vain expense; the 
 broken abode of so many hopes and affections and 
 joys, to say nothing of fears and sorrows. And 
 I suppose that the charm partly lies there — the 
 charm of " old unhappy far-off things," the sense 
 of the joyfulness of life, its brave designs, its 
 rich expectations; and then the brevity of it all, 
 its unutterable pathos, its lavish suffering, and 
 the dark mystery of its close. That is what 
 I)eople of experience and imagination find in the 
 sight of an ancient ruin; and yet when the 
 summer sun falls on ivied gable and mouldering 
 arch, there comes a sense of tranquillity and 
 content, as though death could not, after all, be 
 really a shadow upon Nature, or a sundering 
 flood, when decay itself can be so beautiful. 
 
 23 
 
24 Along the Road 
 
 I imagine that the whole emotion is a very 
 modern one, hardly more than a century old. 
 The strange thing is that the mediaeval builders, 
 whose ruined towers and choirs we go far to see, 
 had no trace of such a feeling. They frankly 
 preferred the new to the old. They thought 
 nothing of putting a new and gorgeous front on 
 an old and simple church, and they were always, 
 it seems, glad to pull anything down, if they 
 could replace it by a smarter substitute. As for 
 a ruin, it was simply a useless and uninteresting 
 heap of stones, a convenient quarry, a place of 
 perquisites. And then, too, we must remember 
 that from the time of the Restoration, till Horace 
 Walpole and Gray came on the scene, a Gothic 
 building was considered a hideous and barbarous 
 affair, to be replaced, if possible, by a neat 
 classical edifice, and if not, to be endured in 
 silence. No, the whole sentiment for what is old 
 and ruinous is a modern one, and I think a 
 tender one, good for heart and mind; though it 
 argues perhaps a want of manly confidence in 
 our own performances and improvements ; and is 
 partly responsible for the fact that we cannot 
 find a style of our own in architecture, but are 
 always trying combinations and reconstructions 
 instead of striking out a new line. 
 
 And then, too, for the present generation, a 
 ruin is so often connected with happy holiday 
 times, an expedition and a picnic; it stands for 
 plenty of adventure and laughter and good 
 
A Ruined House 25 
 
 humour and unusual food and pleasant relaxa- 
 tion of normal discipline. I recall the summer 
 jaunts of my childhood, and try to disentangle 
 what the charm of it all was. It certainly was 
 not in the least connected with any sense of what 
 was picturesque, nor had the imagination any- 
 thing to do with it. I never attempted as a child 
 to reconstruct any picture of the old life of the 
 ])lace, the armoured knights, the embowered 
 ladies, the rough merriment of the guard-room 
 or hall. I fancy that the pleasure was scram- 
 bling on broken stairs, looking over dizzy para- 
 pets, and peeping into dark vaults, combined with 
 a very constant hope that one might stumble on 
 some sort of buried treasure, a hoard of coins 
 in an earthen vase, or a ring encircling a mould- 
 ering finger bone. Such things had happened, 
 and why not to me? I was not at all of the 
 opinion of Matthew Arnold's eight-year-old son, 
 who was taken, it is recorded in his father's 
 letters, to a picnic at Furness Abbey. Budge was 
 the child's sobriquet. When the living freight of 
 the carriage had emptied itself into the ruins, 
 there were exclamations on every side, such as 
 might fall from the members of a highly culti- 
 vated circle, at the romantic charm of the place. 
 The wise Budge waited till the tempest of 
 aesthetic delight had spent itself, and then up- 
 lifted a clear childish treble, " What a nasty, 
 beastly place!" That unsophisticated opinion, 
 that dispassionate judgment, is what I believe 
 
26 Along the Road 
 
 the natural mind, complicated by no false sen- 
 timent, no cultured association, ought undoubt- 
 edly to feel at so melancholy, so wasteful, so 
 disorderly a sight as a great building falling 
 into decay. 
 
 And yet, from whatever intricate source it may 
 arise, that is not at all the thought of the mature 
 mind. I have been spending some days in Pem- 
 brokeshire, that marvellous bleak, wind-swept 
 land, with its winding sea-creeks, its fantastic 
 cliffs, its rocky islets. There is a paradise of 
 romantic buildings! Valley after valley has its 
 bastioned feudal fortress — Llawhaden, Carew, 
 Manorbier — the very names have a thrill ! Ham- 
 let after hamlet has an ivy-clad, stone- vaulted 
 stronghold, and one can hardly conceive what 
 conditions of life should have produced such a 
 proximity of stately, guarded dwellings. On hill 
 after hill there stands some low-arched, thick- 
 walled church, with a great loop-holed tower, 
 corbelled and machicolated, the high walls in- 
 clining gently towards the top — " battering " is 
 the technical term — which gives them a marvel- 
 lous grace of outline. 
 
 Here on a still winter afternoon, with a pale 
 gleam of sun, we came suddenly on a place, Lam- 
 phey by name, of which I had not so much as 
 heard, which seems to me one of the most in- 
 credibly beautiful things I have ever had the 
 delight of seeing. It was one of the seven great 
 houses of the Bishops of St. David's, but it was 
 
A Ruined House 27 
 
 alieuated from the see to Henry VIII. by Bishop 
 Barlow, wlio seems to have been one of the most 
 unsatisfactory prelates who ever bore rule in the 
 Church. He married the prioress of a disbanded 
 nunnery, Agatha Wellsburn by name, and his 
 five daughters all married bishops! I shrink 
 from recording the character of the bishop him- 
 self, as sketched by a near relative. He dis- 
 mantled the palace at St. David's, and sold the 
 lead of the roof; Lamphey he parted with to the 
 king, in favour of a godson of his own, a Dever- 
 eux, who was the founder of the house of Essex ; 
 in fact, the ill-fated Earl, the favourite and 
 victim of Elizabeth, spent his happy youth in 
 these towers. 
 
 Down in a pleasant valley lies the great ruined 
 house, by the side of a rapid, full-fed stream that 
 runs through wooded hills, by sedge-fringed pas- 
 tures and copse-clad dingles. The air is soft and 
 sweet. Big palms grow in the open air by the 
 ruined walls, and the ivy sprawls over the para- 
 pets with marvellous luxuriance. The pleasaunce 
 is now a high-walled garden, in the centre of 
 which stands a tower of exquisite proportions, 
 with a charming arched loggia at the top, a 
 favourite design of Bishop Gower, the fourteenth- 
 century Bishop of St. David's, who left this 
 beautiful feature of his art in most of the palaces 
 of the see. The building, which is wonderfully 
 complete, stretches away beside the stream in two 
 vast blocks of masonry, of all sorts of dates and 
 
28 Along the Road 
 
 designs, with its towers and bastions and gables 
 and buttresses, all wreathed in ivy, with a great 
 profusion of ferns and creeping plants, the cattle 
 stalled in its vaults, the garden implements stored 
 in its stately chambers. Here, in its green soli- 
 tude, with the stream swirling at its foot and 
 the wind whispering in the thickets, it crumbles 
 slowly to decay. 
 
 Well, it served its turn, no doubt, the great 
 house of Lamphey! One cannot help wondering 
 at the strange fortune that surrounded these 
 servants of Christ, these successors of the Gali- 
 lean fishermen, with all this secular splendour, 
 this feudal pomp and power! A Bishop of St. 
 David's, with his retinue of knights and his seven 
 castles, can have had but little leisure for apos- 
 tolical duties. But it was a reward, no doubt, 
 for all that the Church had done to Christianise 
 and civilise this rude corner of the world; and 
 it was just because the Church yielded to the 
 temptations of aggrandisement, of influence, of 
 wealth, that the fall and the spoliation followed. 
 God or Mammon? The choice was clear, the 
 warning was plain. As one looked at the great 
 pile, so noble even in its humiliation, it was hard 
 not to regret the vivid life, the stately splendour 
 of what had been. Yet the broken tower and the 
 ruined wall had their message too — ^that not by 
 might or power are God's victories won. 
 
ST. ANTHONY-TN-THE-FELLS 
 
 < Not long ago I visited an extremely curious and 
 interesting dmrch in the north of England. Its 
 official title is Cartmel Fell; but the church is 
 known in the neighbourhood by the more romantic 
 title of St. Anthony-in-the-Fells. It stands not 
 far from Kendal, in a wide valley sloping to the 
 sea ; a pastoral place, full of rich grass meadows 
 and woodland, and with old picturesque farm- 
 houses — nnillioned, stone-slated, rough-cast build- 
 ings, with round chimney-stacks and wooden 
 galleries — in the midst of no less venerable and 
 picturesque outbuildings. On one side of the 
 valley runs a great limestone blufif, with its pale 
 terraces and screes ; on the other, miniature crags 
 and heathery uplands. 
 
 The church itself is beautifully placed, just 
 where the low-lying copses and pastures break 
 into the open fell. The fields slope in all direc- 
 tions, and are full of little ridges and outcrops 
 of rock, fringed with tiny thickets. Here and 
 there, in a green dingle, a spring soaks out 
 among rushes, so that the air is musical with 
 the sound of dropping waters. The building it- 
 
 29 
 
30 Along the Road 
 
 self is low, half -sunk in the ground, and covered 
 with weather-stained rough-cast. The tower win- 
 dows are fitted with great rough slanting slates. 
 The church has not beauty of form or design, but 
 it looks like a living thing which has grown up 
 almost naturally out of the soil and site. From 
 porch to transept runs a low bench of slate, a 
 seat for gossips on a summer Sabbath morning, 
 for shepherds to sit " simply chatting in a rustic 
 row." Inside it is the quaintest place imaginable. 
 In the big, many-mullioned east window, there 
 is a congeries of old stained glass of the four- 
 teenth century, which seems to have been roughly 
 handled, and pieced together without much refer- 
 ence to design. Here and there is a patch of 
 gorgeous colour, rich red or azure, a crucifixion, 
 a mitred saint or two, St. Leonard with his chain, 
 and St. Anthony with a sportive porker hunched 
 up at the butt-end of his crozier. There is a 
 scene which seems to be a confirmation, and all 
 sorts of quaint fragments, such as an altar draped 
 and vested, with holy vessels set out upon it, with 
 square linen cards upon the chalices. I noticed 
 in the vestry a heap of broken bits of glass of 
 the same design, of finials and tabernacle-work, 
 rude but spirited. The church is paved with 
 irregular slabs of stone, all sloping slightly down- 
 ward from the west, following the dip of the hill. 
 A rudely-painted decalogue hangs on the eastern 
 wall. But the strangest feature of the church 
 is its pews, of all shapes and sizes, from huge 
 
St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 31 
 
 deal erections like loose boxes, to little gnarled 
 oaken desks with plain finials. Then, in order 
 to complete its unlikeness to any other place, on 
 one side of the church, near the east, is a real 
 state Jacobean pew, with panelled canopy and 
 pilasters; while on the other side stands what 
 Tiinst have been a screened chantry, finely-carved, 
 and with rich touches of colour l^ing on mould- 
 ing and panel, the heads of the saints depicted 
 having evidently been carefully deleted with some 
 sharp-pointed instrument, in an ecstasy of Pro- 
 testant devotion. 
 
 There stands the little place, a real historic 
 document from first to last, quaint, interesting, 
 curious, and beautiful with that kind of beauty 
 which can only come through age and association. 
 Of course it will have to be restored, and very 
 shortly too— that is the difficulty! On the one 
 hand there is the pity of destroying so strange 
 an accretion ; yet, on the other hand, it cannot 
 be called a seemly sanctuary. What is wanted 
 is the most delicate sort of restoration, trying to 
 keep everything interesting and characteristic, 
 and yet making the place warm and homelike 
 and solemn. T\liat of course is to be feared is 
 that enthusiastic subscribers and an ambitious 
 architect will want to make a " good job " of it, 
 which will end by making it just like any other 
 church ; for that is the sad thing about our Eng- 
 lish churches — I have visited a great many of 
 late — that though special features and interest- 
 
32 Along the Road 
 
 ing details are often carefully preserved, many 
 churches have been practically rebuilt; and peo- 
 ple do not seem to realise that a new church, 
 however closely imitated from an old one, has 
 only the interest of a copy, and is a skilful 
 forgery at best; while it has lost all the subtle 
 beauty of age, the half-tones, the irregularities, 
 the dented surfaces, the tiny settlements, the 
 weather-stains, which make the old building so 
 harmonious and delicate a thing, even though the 
 original design was of the simplest and plainest. 
 
 It is very difficult to adjust the various claims. 
 There is the perfectly natural and laudable de- 
 sign to make a church a credit to the village; to 
 make it an effective and comfortable building; 
 to make it represent a definite ecclesiastical 
 tradition. The last is perhaps the most perilous, 
 because the tradition is not a natural and pro- 
 gressive tradition, but a revived medisevalism, and 
 not a living development; yet after all, when all 
 is said, I supposed that the instinct to sweep 
 away, as debasing and offensive, all hint of what 
 is Georgian, and even Jacobean, out of churches, 
 means something, and is in its way historical, or 
 on its way to become so. But meanwhile, like 
 the gratitude of men, it leaves the philosopher 
 mourning. 
 
 Possibly the right principles to keep in view 
 in restoring a church are these. Everything 
 which is solid, costly, and of good workmanship 
 ought to be retained, even if it does not harmonise 
 
St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 33 
 
 with our present taste, whether it be monument, 
 window, or church furniture. The most that 
 ought to be permitted should be to move an 
 object which is inharmonious, or supposed to be 
 so, from a conspicuous to a less conspicuous posi- 
 tion. But even if the workmanship is inferior, 
 or if the object, whatever it be, is generally con- 
 demned, then it ought in any case to be carefully 
 stored, to await a possible revolution of taste. 
 
 Early in the last century, when Skipton Church 
 was restored, its splendid Tudor screen was con- 
 demned as barbarous and inconvenient. An old 
 relative of my own, resident in the town, begged 
 for the materials. They were gladly handed over 
 to him. He stored them in boxes in a warehouse. 
 Many years later, when the ecclesiastical revival 
 had taken place, and the church was once more 
 renovated, there were loud lamentations on the 
 loss of the screen. He produced it with modest 
 triumph, and it was joyfully resuscitated. But 
 what a lesson to zealous church-restorers, who 
 say confidently and with no sort of misgivings, 
 " Of course that frightful object must go ! " 
 3 
 
ANTIQUITIES AND AMENITIES 
 
 I HAD been travelling in Northumberland, and I 
 had spent a glorious morning, with a bright sun 
 and a cold wind, on the Roman Wall. It is, 
 indeed, a thing to stir the imagination. It runs 
 over hill and dale by crag and moor, for sixty 
 miles, from sea to sea. It is a double line of 
 fortification, a huge stone wall to the north, and 
 a great earth-work to the south. Inside the lines, 
 the strip varies much in breadth. Every three 
 miles lies a large fortified camp, with towers and 
 guard-rooms, praetorium and barracks. At every 
 mile is a smaller fort, with guard-towers every 
 three hundred yards. Many of these are gone, 
 having been used to build farms and walls and 
 to make roads. But many of them exist and 
 have been excavated. In fact the whole place 
 was one vast camp, sixty miles long and a few 
 hundred yards broad; no one knows who built 
 it. It may have been Hadrian, it may have been 
 Severus. It has been sacked at least once, and 
 repaired again; it was meant, no doubt, to keep 
 off the warlike and ruthless Picts, and to make 
 the south safe from their forays. 
 
 34 
 
Antiquities and Amenities 35 
 
 I had spent the morning at Borcovicus, a great 
 (iunp on the very bleakest and barest part of 
 tlie moors. It has aH been excavated, and one 
 cm see the colonnade where the daily orders 
 >\ere read, the great gateways, with the pivot- 
 holes of the gates, the guard-rooms, warmed in 
 some cases by hot air, the elaborate arrangements 
 for getting water, and for the disposal of sewage. 
 The custodian had just disinterred a fine bit of 
 sculpture, the bare feet of a Neptune, one resting 
 on a dolphin's back. 
 
 The whole place gave one the sense of a busy 
 and urgent life, lived at high pressure, and with 
 a stern purpose. The walls are of massive 
 quarried stone, and the labour which must have 
 been involved in quarrying and carving blocks 
 and columns and cornices, and dragging them 
 for miles over the moor, gives the idea of a 
 tremendous command of human energies. But 
 what a dreary life it must have been for 
 Roman soldiers pent up in this high hill-station! 
 One wonders what they could have done with 
 themselves. 
 
 There is, indeed, at Borcovicus, outside the 
 wall, a theatre hollowed in the turf, with a 
 special gate to reach it ; and I daresay the place 
 has seen some foul brutalities. There were, no 
 doubt, skirmishes from time to time. There was 
 hunting in the wild thicket-clad ravines for the 
 adventurous — the tusks of wild boars are often 
 found in the ruins — but it must have been a very 
 
36 Along the Road 
 
 unpleasant life ! The elaborate arrangements for 
 warming the houses show how much the Romans 
 must have dreaded the cold up there in the 
 snow-clad winter. 
 
 We went on to Chesters, where there is a 
 museum of curiosities found in the excavations. 
 There are a few beautiful things of bronze and 
 enamel, evidently brought from Rome. But the 
 native products are rude enough — altars, tombs, 
 sacred sculptures. Even here, there is a touch 
 of human joy and sorrow which makes itself felt 
 across the centuries. There is a votive altar to 
 Silvanus, set up by " the huntsmen of Banna," 
 there is an affectionate inscription to a young 
 freedman, a Moor, who died at the age of twenty, 
 and his graceful figure is depicted reclining above 
 the inscription, which says that his former master, 
 Numerianus, followed him with grief to the tomb. 
 There is an elaborate monument to the British 
 wife of a young officer, who lavished loving care 
 on her monument, himself a native of Palmyra. 
 And then there are all the signs of life and 
 activity — arrowheads, swords, spears, a curious 
 leather shoe, with elaborate straps, all the debris 
 of the daily round. Through the intense interest 
 of the whole there falls a mournful shadow, the 
 shadow of vanished human endeavour, the old 
 terror of war and violence. It was with a 
 strange sense of pathos and wonder that I turned 
 away. The river ran sparkling among its shingle, 
 the woods rustled in the cool breeze; and over 
 
Antiquities and Amenities 37 
 
 the hill, to left and right, one could see the deep 
 lines of the vallum and the broken base of the 
 wall, with the thorn-trees rooting in it, all so 
 peaceful now, in the track of ancient wars, fought 
 out fifteen centuries ago. 
 
 And then, in order that my day might not be 
 too happy, too sweet to be wholesome, Fate 
 dropped the least drop of bitter in the cup, a 
 dash of incivility; there is no more tonic drug 
 1 lian that, because it teaches a man that he must 
 de[)end solely on his ingratiating merits for 
 favour, and cannot win it by the coat he wears 
 — though it is true that my coat is not a very 
 impressive one — or by the money he can jingle in 
 his pocket. These Northumbrians, too, are so ex- 
 traordinarily kindly and courteous, in a dignified 
 way, that they spoil one. As a rule they talk to 
 one graciously and smilingly, as if half honoured, 
 lijilf amused by the rencontre, with that pleasant 
 broken burr, in the softest of voices, with a 
 peculiar silky texture which caresses the ear; 
 there is no servility of deference, but an equal 
 and good-humoured courtesy, as between friends 
 and brothers. 
 
 Now, however, it was very different; just as 
 I i)assed the stone gate-posts of a grange, I saw 
 a shepherd driving his flock out of a field hard 
 by. My way lay to the village of Four Stones, 
 across the hill. Just where I saw the shepherd, 
 there was an uncompromising road which went 
 solidly over the bluff. But on the map was 
 
38 Along the Road 
 
 marked a pleasant grass track a little farther 
 on. Now, I have always regarded a shepherd as 
 a lesser kind of angel. When I have talked to 
 them before, they have spoken in kind, high 
 voices, as of men who have struggled with winds 
 on weary mountain-heads, and they have had a 
 remote and secluded look, as of men who have 
 not much commerce with their fellows. But 
 they have always seemed to me men of patience 
 and gentleness — and indeed if the care of a flock 
 of hill-sheep does not give a man a chance 
 of becoming both, there is no discipline that 
 will! 
 
 But this shepherd was a pale, shrewish-looking 
 man, alert and aggressive, with bushy whiskers 
 and eyebrows, and, what disconcerted me most, 
 a strange resemblance to Mr. Ruskin about him, 
 which gave me that odd feeling of knowing the 
 man and being familiar with his thought. 
 
 I said to him, " Is there a footpath a little 
 farther on over the hill, to Four Stones ? " 
 
 He looked at me from head to foot with a 
 quick, bustling air, as if he thought it imperti- 
 nent of me to ask him a question, and made no 
 reply. I repeated my inquiry. 
 
 " I hear ye," he said. 
 
 I was vexed by this, and repeated my question 
 again. 
 
 " This is the road to Four Stones," he said. 
 
 " Yes," I said, " T know that. Here is the 
 sign-post! AYhat I want to know is whether 
 
Antiquities and Amenities 39 
 
 there is a footpath farther on. There is one 
 marked on the map." 
 
 " I don't know nothing about your map," he 
 said, wrinkling up his eyebrows. 
 
 "Yes, but is there a footpath over the hill?" 
 I said. 
 
 " I ^m thinking there '11 be none," he said. 
 
 " Yes, but do you know there is none? " I said. 
 
 " I tell ye I know there is none," he said, 
 raising his voice angrily. 
 
 " Well," I said, " I think you might have said 
 so before; and I will tell yon something, and 
 that is that you are the first man I have found 
 in Northumberland who is rude to strangers." 
 
 He gave me an ugly look, and I think he would 
 have liked to hit at me with his stick if he had 
 dared. I went off along the road, having shot 
 my bolt. A man does not like being told in his 
 own country that he is rude to strangers. Even 
 the Carinthian boor, who we know shuts his door 
 on a houseless stranger, would be accessible to 
 such a taunt. A long way up the road I turned 
 and looked back, and he was still standing where 
 I had left him, looking evilly after me. The man 
 was a Pict, no doubt, and it was in his blood to 
 resent intrusion. I dare say his ancestors had 
 had brushes fifteen centuries ago with well-fed 
 Roman soldiers; and he did not like strangers 
 who asked questions about the locality; he felt 
 that they meant mischief, and, I daresay, thanked 
 God that he was rid of a knave. 
 
40 Along the Road 
 
 But fortune was on my side, and was de- 
 termined, evidently, to vindicate Northumbrian 
 courtesy. As I came down into the village of 
 Four Stones, a dreary hamlet on the bank of 
 the Tyne, with a tall-chimneyed factory and heaps 
 of scoria?, I asked a little eager man, with a 
 small white beard, the way to the station. 
 
 " It 's hard by here," he said breathlessly, " I 
 will walk with you and show it you." We walked 
 together and discoursed of the weather. " Yes," 
 he said, " we want rain ; the river is low, and the 
 lands are burnt up; but we may be thankful that 
 it is better here than in the south." I told him 
 that I came from the south, and that the pas- 
 tures were all burnt brown. " Indeed ? " he said, 
 with much concern, " Yes, it 's been a hard 
 summer down south, no doubt." By this time 
 we were close to the station, and he pointed it 
 out to me. I asked if there was a train soon 
 to Gilsland. " Indeed, there is," he said, and 
 whipped out a watch, " in thirty-two minutes, 
 precisely." " Can I walk along the river," I said, 
 " till the train comes in? " " Yes," he said, " by 
 all means ; it 's a nice walk. I '11 show you 
 how to get there. I '11 walk with you and put 
 you in your way." He whisked round, and led 
 me to a level-crossing. " Y"ou may go through 
 here," he said. ^' You have twenty-nine minutes " 
 — he plucked out his watch. ^^ Now, mind," he 
 said, with an uplifted forefinger, ^^ the express 
 runs through first — don't you be alarmed if you 
 
Antiquities and Amenities 41 
 
 see it. Your train — that's the slow one — runs 
 in eight minutes behind — a pleasant walk to 
 you ! " 
 
 This energetic and friendly man set me right 
 with the world. I felt welcomed, introduced to 
 the country, made free of its pleasant places. 
 There was no Pictish blood in my white-bearded 
 friend! When I came back to the level-crossing, 
 he was waiting for me. " Have you enjoyed your 
 walk?" he said; ** that 's right— and now to the 
 station ! The express will just be coming through. 
 Have a care of it as you cross the line." 
 
ADDINGTON 
 
 How well I remember, on a hot September even- 
 ing nearly thirty years ago, how the carriage in 
 which four travellers were driving — all of them 
 weary and one of them considerably awed — 
 passed in at a lodge-gate, leaving suburban villas 
 and rows of brick-built villas behind, into the 
 cool, pine-scented gloom of a great park. What 
 a domain it seemed ! We passed between heathery 
 hills, among high thickets of rhododendrons, by 
 a lake, and then out into a spacious expanse of 
 grass with clumps of oaks and beeches, and saw 
 below us the long facade of a huge stone-built 
 house with a stately air of spacious dignity about 
 it. That was my first sight of Addington. 
 
 Moreover, I had the quite inexplicable convic- 
 tion, which darted in my mind as we drove, that 
 we should come to live there. How soon and how 
 unexpectedly that conviction was fulfilled! 
 
 The party consisted of my father and mother, 
 my elder sister and myself. Archbishop Tait was 
 lying ill ; but he had rallied so often from more 
 serious illnesses, that few even of those about 
 him realised that he was dying. * He had ex- 
 
 42 
 
Addington 43 
 
 j)re8sed a wish to see my father, and he had in 
 Ills mind a belief that my father would then, or 
 ultimately, succeed him. " I am worn out," he 
 had written about that time, adding: " the Bishop 
 of Truro will come forward and do a great work." 
 
 On that occasion I never saw him, though he 
 sent me and my sister an affectionate message. 
 We stayed there several days; the present Arch- 
 bishop was then acting as chaplain. It was a 
 quiet family party, and we were all made entirely 
 at home. 
 
 The house had been bought for the See at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century, and Man- 
 ners-Sutton was the first Archbishop who lived 
 there. He, together with Howley, Sumner, Long- 
 ley, and Tait, were all buried in the churchyard, 
 and the present Archbishop has just put up a 
 beautiful monument to their memory there. 
 There was an old archiepiscopal palace at Croy- 
 don, which still exists, with Laud's woodwork 
 in the chapel, now, I believe, an Anglican con- 
 vent. But it was an inconvenient house, on low- 
 lying and damp ground, and even then Croydon 
 was beginning to spread round about it. Ad- 
 dington was built by a Lord Mayor, Trecothick 
 by name. It had been a royal manor, held by 
 some quaint tenure of an annual present to the 
 Sovereign of a dish of sweet almond paste! The 
 house was largely added to when Archbishop 
 Manners-Sutton went to live there. The ground 
 falls so rapidly that one drives up in front of 
 
44 Along the Road 
 
 what is practically the first floor. It has no 
 great architectural merit, but it is a stately and 
 comfortable house with many large rooms, and 
 one of the most noble cedars on the lawn that 
 I have ever seen. 
 
 The old Croydon archiepiscopal estate passed 
 eventually into the hands of the Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners, and has become immensely valua- 
 ble; the unearned increment does not go to the 
 Archbishop, but into the common fund of the 
 Commission. That seems an equitable enough 
 arrangement where a merely ecclesiastical per- 
 sonage is concerned ! 
 
 I cannot honestly say that it ever seemed to 
 me a very appropriate house for an Archbishop. 
 It was convenient enough, being only thirteen 
 miles from Lambeth, but its great woods, full of 
 winding drives laid out by Howley, its enormous 
 stables and gardens, the beautiful and various 
 scenery of the park, are all too much in the style 
 of the grand seigneur. The life lived there by 
 the first Archbishops was quiet enough. Arch- 
 bishop Howley's daily letters just covered the 
 bottom of a china bowl which stood in the hall; 
 Archbishop Sumner used to make charming water- 
 colour drawings of trees in the park. My father 
 became deeply devoted to the place; but he had, 
 whence derived I know not, all the instincts of 
 a territorial magnate, and some of his happiest 
 days were spent in strolling about the woods 
 with the bailiff, settling which trees were to be 
 
Addington 45 
 
 cut down. But my father did not enjoy it 
 selfishly; he continued the hospitable custom of 
 the Taits, and issued a large number of tickets 
 of admission to the park to neighbours and resi- 
 dents, besides giving free leave to parties to 
 picnic there. But it used to vex him sorely to 
 find how visitors used to leave paper about, carry 
 away masses of flowers, and even dig up ferns 
 aud daffodils for their own gardens. I remember 
 how once he heard an unusual noise in the garden 
 outside his library, and on going to the window, 
 found a huge picnic party who had invaded the 
 private garden, were laying their lunch on the 
 lawn, and looking in at the ground-floor windows ! 
 
 There was a chapel there which my father 
 beautified with woodwork and frescoes, and in 
 which he took great delight. Indeed, so much 
 attached did he become to the place, and so im- 
 portant did he consider its mixture of seclusion 
 and convenience, that I have heard him arguing 
 the case for its retention, and convincing himself 
 by his own eloquence of its advantages, to such 
 an extent that he came to the triumphant con- 
 clusion that if either Lambeth or Addington 
 must be given up, it must be Lambeth rather 
 than Addington. 
 
 Archbishop Temple, however, came to the oppo- 
 site conclusion. The house was sold, as soon as 
 he succeeded, for a very inadequate price, to a 
 Mr. English, who enlarged and greatly beautified 
 the house; and owing to his decease it is again 
 
46 Along the Road 
 
 in the market. It will doubtless ultimately be 
 divided and cut up for building land. 
 
 I do not think that, much as he loved Adding- 
 ton, my father was ever very well there. His 
 temperament demanded activity rather than re- 
 pose. At Addington, though his work was 
 terribly heavy, he used to write a little at his 
 beloved Cyprian, and he greatly enjoyed riding 
 over the quiet country which stretched away to 
 the south. But my impression of him at Adding- 
 ton is that he was more often than not depressed 
 and anxious. Away from the stir of the London 
 life, and with more leisure to think, he used to 
 feel the stress of the great problems with which 
 he was confronted, and his own fancied inade- 
 quacy to deal with them. Yet the house is in- 
 separably connected with him in my memories. 
 I can see him with his cloak and soft hat, pacing 
 up and down on a sunny, frosty morning in the 
 garden terrace, looking up at the great cedars 
 which he loved. I can see him dressed for riding, 
 feeding the horses with bread and sugar at the 
 door, or strolling on Sunday with his canvas bag 
 of broken crusts for the swans on the pool, and 
 a Christian Year in his hand, which he would 
 read aloud to the party, sitting on a heathery 
 bank in the wood. Most clearly of all, I can see 
 him in his purple cassock after evening chapel, 
 sitting down to write endless letters till one or 
 two in the morning, looking up with a smile as 
 we came to say good-night, twitching the glasses 
 
Addington 47 
 
 off his nose to enjoy a few minutes of leisurely 
 talk. But for all that it is not to me, as I say, a 
 place of very happy memories, because my father's 
 spirits tended to be low there; and I never knew 
 any one whose moods, however carefully he 
 guarded them, so affected the spirits of the circle 
 by which he was surrounded. 
 
 He was very hospitable, and there was a con- 
 stant stream of visitors there, from high officials 
 of Church and State to relations and family 
 friends. There used to be dinner-parties of pleas- 
 ant neighbours, children's theatricals, toboggan- 
 ing-parties, and all the stir of a big country house. 
 But I never somehow felt it to be very real; we 
 were simple professional people, and there seemed 
 an artificial air of state about it all. But I do 
 not think my father ever felt that; he had a 
 natural princeliness both of mind and manner, 
 and Addington seemed a fit setting for his per- 
 fectly unaffected greatness. He took a great in- 
 terest in the people on the estate, and his 
 Christmas Day sermons, when he reviewed the 
 joys and sorrows of the village for the past year, 
 used to have an extraordinarily affecting quality 
 of simple and homely emotion. 
 
 The new palace at Canterbury, built under the 
 auspices of Archbishop Temple, is a singular con- 
 trast to Addington. It is an ingenious adaptation 
 of an old house, with some additions; but it is 
 shut in by buildings, close under the Cathedral ; 
 it has no stables, and a tiny garden. My father 
 
48 Along the Road 
 
 used to maintain that the Archbishop was better 
 away from Canterbury, and indeed, even on his 
 own accession to the See, I believe he actually 
 paid a customary fee to make himself free of the 
 place — the fact being that in old times the enter- 
 tainment of an Archbishop with his suite at 
 Canterbury was so serious an affair, from the 
 expense entailed, that matters had to be finan- 
 cially accommodated ! 
 
 Archbishop Temple behaved, I remember, with 
 extraordinary generosity, when my father died. 
 He took over the whole contents of Addington 
 by valuation, as we had done, though he was not 
 legally bound to do so, and had no thought ex- 
 cept to make things easier for us. The trans- 
 ference of the See-house to Canterbury was 
 warmly welcomed by the city and the diocese, 
 and it no doubt has some advantages, though 
 it necessitates the Archbishop having to pass 
 from one official life to another, instead of giv- 
 ing him some much-needed quiet and seclusion 
 after the ceaseless engagements of the London 
 life. 
 
 But the giving up of Addington is symbolical 
 of more than that. In my father's time it was 
 simply a survival of a state of affairs which 
 could not have continued. It marks the altera- 
 tion from the position of the Archbishop, who 
 was in the days of Manners-Sutton a great official 
 of State, with few duties and responsibilities, for 
 whom the setting of a great country house among 
 
Addington 49 
 
 woods and gardens was a perfectly natural 
 appanage, to the position which he now holds, 
 of the superintendence of enormous interests and 
 activities, combining with the duties of a huge 
 department of religious and social life. 
 
 My father's unbounded interest and vitality, 
 the way in which he threw himself into the 
 smallest details of his life, made it just possible 
 for him to continue the two positions. But the 
 old order has here rightly given place to the new, 
 and it cannot be restored. We may regret the 
 loss of picturesqueness, even of dignity; but a 
 Bishop is no longer a territorial magnate; his 
 income can no longer be used simply in keeping 
 up feudal state. He needs it, if he needs it, 
 for hospitality, and to give him the power of 
 initiating and supporting religious enterprises, 
 and not for mere magnificence. His dignity must 
 be the dignity which is earned by sympathy, and 
 efficiency, and commanding qualities of wisdom 
 and high-mi ndedness, and can no longer be the 
 mere reflection of mediaeval state and lordliness. 
 
BRENT KNOLL 
 
 It was on a fine, fresh January morning that we 
 raced merrily over the wide, alluvial plain of 
 Somersetshire, once a vast salt-marsh, to the great 
 green, high-standing bulk of Brent Knoll. It was 
 a very familiar object to me in my school-days, 
 the knoll, as I went and returned to Eton or to 
 Truro by the Great Western Railway. I used to 
 look out for it with pleasant curiosity. Seen 
 from the line it consisted of a high, round head, 
 with the line of ancient earthworks at the top 
 plainly visible, and below that a steep plateau, 
 with an almost geometrically flat summit, the 
 side of it intersected by narrow, parallel hedged 
 fields and orchards, running up from the strag- 
 gling village at the base. To-day we came to it 
 from the north, and halted first at East Brent, 
 where there is a big, perpendicular church with 
 a fine spire and a large rectory hard by, whence 
 for many years Archdeacon Denison issued his 
 ecclesiastical lightnings. I remember the little, 
 fiery, humorous man well. He was a brother of 
 the Speaker Denison, the moving spirit of the 
 Speaker's Commentary, I saw the Archdeacon at 
 
 50 
 
Brent Knoll 51 
 
 a Congress, fleliverinj? one of his shrill diatribes, 
 a jaunty little figure, looking as though he were 
 made of some irrepressible india-rubber, with ac- 
 (ive gaitered legs, a very short apron, and the air 
 of a militant cock-sparrow. His si)eech was a lively 
 one, full of good-tempered animosity and pre- 
 posterous exaggeration. His denunciations were 
 listened to with affectionate amusement, while 
 he threatened the impenitent world with disaster 
 and decadence, a sort of clerical Boythorn. 
 
 The church itself is a fine one, with a quaint 
 »lacobean gallery, the walls much disfigured by 
 crumbling modern sentimental frescoes. The only 
 thing I regretted was that a charming old brazen 
 sconce lay neglected in a gallery pew. Then we 
 sped round to the village of Brent Knoll, and 
 there, in a delicious combe with hanging woods, 
 we ate our sandwiches by a hedgerow filled with 
 hart's-tongue fern, while a sociable robin hopped 
 round us and loudly claimed his share of the 
 meal. His wish was gratified; but fate came 
 upon him in the form of a gaunt black hen, who 
 burst through a gate, and charged stamping 
 down, to take her share of the plunder. 
 
 We strolled up to the other church hard by, 
 restored out of all interest, with the exception 
 of a charming Caroline monument, carved and 
 painted, in three panels. In the centre is a jolly, 
 complacent cavalier, with slashed and ruffled 
 sleeves of dainty blue and white, and a fine red 
 gold-fringed sword-sash; below are displayed an 
 
52 Along the Road 
 
 ensign and a drum ; on either side of him are his 
 two buxom and plump wives; one blue-eyed and 
 smiling, with a great flapping hat ; the other more 
 demure, in a delicate brown kirtle. Here, too, I 
 mourned to see a splendid bit of Jacobean iron- 
 work, which must once have sustained a big 
 chandelier, stored uselessly in the vestry. Who 
 can fathom the mysteries of ecclesiastical purism? 
 
 This done, we addressed ourselves to the ascent. 
 In half an hour we were standing in the tumbled 
 grassy earthworks of the camp at the top. These 
 great bastioned British forts are rather a mys- 
 tery. They can never have been inhabited, as 
 there is no possibility of obtaining water, except 
 by dragging it up the hillside — unless the rain- 
 water was stored in a pool. They must only 
 have been used as camps of refuge in times of 
 danger, for the safety of women and children 
 and other live-stock — and what dreary, filthy 
 places they must have been! 
 
 The view was stupendous ; to the west were the 
 shadowy Quantocks, with a great tidal river 
 broadening to the sea. The hills of Wales were 
 dim in the haze beyond the Channel, and there 
 were several big steamers rolling and dipping 
 out to the open sea. To the south rose the Men- 
 dips, beyond the great green flat; to the north, 
 Weston-super-Mare lay out on the hillside, with 
 its long lines of trim villas, and the grey-green 
 ridge of the Bleadon Hills. In the calm after- 
 noon we could hear the crowing of cocks far 
 
Brent Knoll 53 
 
 below, and tlie horns of motors racing along the 
 Bridgwater road. 
 
 It is good for the body to climb the steep 
 slopes and breathe the pure air; it is good for 
 the mind to see the map of England thus fairly 
 unrolled before the eye; and it is good for the 
 soul, too, to see the world lie extended at one's 
 feet. How difficult it is to analyse the vague and 
 poignant emotions which then and thus arise! 
 There is first a sense of history; one thinks of 
 our rude and brutish forefathers, skulking like 
 conies into their hill-burrows at the sight of the 
 column of Roman legionaries, with clanking 
 horses and glittering spears. One has a sense, 
 too, of how the world was subdued and replen- 
 ished, and how the great salt-marsh by slow 
 degrees became the rich pasture with all its 
 dykes and homesteads. And then there comes, 
 too, a sense of the continuity and solidarity of 
 life. One thinks of the slow tide of humanity 
 ebbing and flowing in the great fields, and set- 
 ting homewards to the village street, with its 
 smoke going up in the still air. What do all 
 these little restless lives mean, so closely knit 
 to each other and to oneself, and all so sharply 
 separate? One thinks, too, of the romance of it 
 all; the boy and girl playmates of the village 
 green, the lovers wandering on June evenings 
 among the thickets in the steep combe; then the 
 lives of slow labour and domestic care, the genera- 
 tion renewing itself; and then the chair in the 
 
54 Along the Road 
 
 sunny cottage garden, and last of all the church- 
 yard and the tolling bell. One thinks, too, of the 
 old sailor, reared, perhaps, long ago in the village 
 at one's feet, as he plies up and down the Channel, 
 sees the breezy top of the knoll, and remembers 
 the boyish rambles in the old careless days at 
 home. No one can, I think, avoid such thoughts 
 as these, and though one cannot dwell on them 
 for long, yet it is good to let them dart thus into 
 the mind, as one sits on the grassy bastion, with 
 the wind rustling past, and the windows of far-off 
 farms glittering in the haze of the wide plain. 
 
 But the day began to decline, and we made 
 our way, in a smiling silence, down the steep 
 paths; how soon we were at the head of the 
 village street, among clustered orchards and deep- 
 littered byres; and the sun began to set as we 
 came to East Brent; the mist rose up in airy 
 wefts among the elms; the black shadow of the 
 knoll crept swiftly out across the plain ; and soon 
 we w^ere flying homewards in the dusk, with a 
 low orange sunset glaring and smouldering in the 
 west, by quiet lanes, with tall, high-chimneyed 
 farms standing up among bare elms, the cattle 
 loitering home in the muddy track, and great 
 white fowls going solemnly up one by one into 
 the boarded roost. 
 
 What a glad thing life would be if it were but 
 made up of such days, and if it could last thus! 
 It seemed terrible out there in the quiet dusk 
 to think of the men and women immured in 
 
Brent Knoll 55 
 
 crowded cities and in little slovenly rooms. But 
 even so, one knew that it was life that one de- 
 sired, life and work and companionship. These 
 vague reveries, so full of sunset light and slumber- 
 ous sound — the wind in the orchard boughs, the 
 trickle of the stream through the grass-grown 
 sluice — are sweet enough, but unsubstantial too. 
 They can be but an interlude in business and 
 care and daily labour. One would not, if one 
 could, fly like Ariel on the bat's back and swing 
 in the trailing flower. How one would crave for 
 the stir, the language, the very scent and heat 
 of life! But it is good, for all that, to get away 
 at times above and beyond it all, as in an island 
 above the rushing tide; to feel for a moment that 
 we are larger than we know, and that the goal 
 of our pilgrimage is not in sight. To live in the 
 past and in the future; to perceive that there is 
 a deep and gracious design in and beyond these 
 mysteries of light and colour, of sound and silence. 
 It is thus, I think, that we press for an instant 
 close to the heart of the world, catch a glimpse 
 of the deepest secret of life, the symbols of eter- 
 nity, and even of the glory that shall be revealed 
 to us, if we are patient and hopeful and wise. 
 
 That was what the green head of Brent Knoll 
 said to me this day, rising steeply among its 
 rough pastures and leafless thickets, with the pale 
 and wintry sunshine over all, and the smoke 
 drifting uj) into the stillness from the clustered 
 village at its feet. 
 
MR. GLADSTONE 
 
 Enough has been said and written about Mr. 
 Gladstone's political position and ecclesiastical 
 views ! I shall not attempt to touch upon either, 
 but I should like to draw, so to speak, a rough 
 sketch of my impression of his personality. I 
 met him a good many times, and saw him under 
 rather exceptional circumstances; and I formed 
 a very definite impression of him. It may be a 
 wrong impression; it may be that I only saw 
 him, as it were, in certain attitudes; but it is a 
 definite point of view, and may not be without 
 interest. 
 
 My first sight of him was when I was an Eton 
 boy; it was the custom for persons of eminence, 
 instead of taking their places in chapel with the 
 congregation, to walk in at the end of the pro- 
 cession with the Provost. The rule was for the 
 boys to remain seated until the entrance of the 
 dignitaries, and then to rise to their feet. When 
 Provost Goodford made his appearance — he was 
 himself a picturesque figure, a small man, with 
 a halting walk, in a voluminous surplice, with 
 very high collars, such as were afterwards asso- 
 
 56 
 
Mr. Gladstone 57 
 
 ciated with Mr. Gladstone himself, and a great 
 " choker " tied in a large irregular bow — side by 
 side with him came a sturdy figure in a grey 
 summer frock-coat, and carrying a white hat, with 
 a rose in his button-hole. The Provost motioned 
 to him to go up the steps leading to the stalls, 
 and with a low bow, Mr. Gladstone — T recognised 
 him at once — complied. I sat close beneath him, 
 and could not take my eyes off him. I remember 
 his pallor, the dark glitter of his eyes, and, above 
 all, the extreme reverence he displayed through- 
 out the service. That impression is as distinct 
 to me as on the day I received it, thirty-seven 
 years ago. 
 
 In later days I met him at Eton and at Lam- 
 beth, at parties and privately. I spent a Sunday 
 at Hawarden about 1887, and had a long talk 
 with him while walking in the park. The late 
 Lord Acton was staying in the house, and I was 
 present at a discussion which took place between 
 the two great men on some minute historical 
 point. Mr. Gladstone, it seemed to me at the 
 time, knew all about the subject that had been 
 known, but Lord Acton appeared to know all that 
 could ever be known, and the deference which 
 the politician paid to the historian was very 
 inii)ressive. 
 
 The one characteristic which dominated all 
 others was the sense Mr. Gladstone gave of enor- 
 mous vitality and equable strength. His rather 
 clumsily built, sturdy frame, his massive features, 
 
58 Along the Road 
 
 his large eyes, with that tremendous glance full 
 of fire and command, produced a sense of awe, 
 almost of terror. His voice was unlike anything 
 I ever heard, like the voice of many waters. It 
 seemed to have an indefinite reserve of strength 
 and thunder in it, and in talk it was like the 
 ripple of a great river. One felt that if he raised 
 it to its full extent, it might carry everything 
 away. I remember hearing him in church say 
 the responses to the Commandments with a 
 variety of intonation, and an intensity of earnest- 
 ness that made it unconsciously impressive as a 
 rhetorical display. And then, combined with all 
 this, was the noblest and sweetest courtesy that 
 can be imagined. He gave his whole attention, 
 and his profoundest respect, to any one with 
 whom he found himself. The result was a kind 
 of stupefying magnetism. That a man of such 
 note, such august force, should condescend to be 
 so much interested and pleased in the humblest 
 auditor seemed incredible, and yet patently true. 
 I recollect how once at a large dinner-party at 
 Lambeth, when the guests were going away, Mr. 
 Gladstone, who I did not suppose knew me by 
 sight, crossed the room to shake hands with me, 
 and to say in a kind of leonine whisper, " Floreat 
 Etona!'' 
 
 The result of all this was that his most trivial 
 remarks seemed to be the result of mature re- 
 flection, and to carry with them a sort of pas- 
 sionate conviction. I remember a trifling instance 
 
Mr. Gladstone 59 
 
 of tills. We were sitting at tea on the Sunday 
 afternoon at Hawarden in the oi)en air. Mr. 
 Gladstone was reading at intervals with profound 
 attention in a little book, bound in blue cloth, 
 which I can only describe as having been in ap- 
 pearance of the Sunday-school iype. Occasion- 
 ally he closed the book, and joined in the 
 talk. Something was said about the right use of 
 abbreviations in printed books, when Mr. Glad- 
 stone intervened, and said with passionate em- 
 phasis that by far the most important contribution 
 to the practical welfare of the world he had ever 
 made was the invention of two financial symbols 
 to express respectively a thousand and a million. 
 As far as I can recollect, the symbol for a thou- 
 sand was the letter M, for a million the letter M 
 surrounded by a circle. After a pause he added 
 in a melancholy tone, " But it was not taken up, 
 and the world has never profited by a discovery 
 that might have infinitely enriched it." We sat 
 aghast at the folly and indifference of the human 
 race. 
 
 Again, there is a story of how, at Hawarden, 
 the conversation once turned on walnuts; and 
 ^Ir. Gladstone, in a pause, said in thrilling tones: 
 " I have not eaten a walnut since I was a boy 
 of sixteen," — and then added in a cadence of 
 melancholy dignity, " nor, indeed, a nut of any 
 kind." The auditor who told me the story said 
 that the remark was received like an oracle, and 
 that he had for the moment the impression that 
 
6o Along the Road 
 
 he had been the recipient of a singular and 
 momentous confidence — such was the magnetic 
 force of the speaker. The effect, I used to think, 
 was augmented by the forcible burr with which 
 the letter R was pronounced, which gave a curious 
 richness to the whole intonation. 
 
 But the most memorable instance of the same 
 quality was afforded by a lecture I once heard 
 him give at Eton on " Artemis." The lecture was 
 kept private, and reporters were excluded. I was 
 asked to furnish a summary for The Standard, 
 and sat close to the lecturer. He spoke for over 
 an hour, with flashing eyes, magnificent gestures, 
 and splendid emphasis. At the time it seemed to 
 me one of the most absorbing and enrapturing 
 discourses I had ever heard. He described in the 
 course of it the Homeric adventure of a woman 
 — I forget the reference — who, Mr. Gladstone said, 
 " had grossly misconducted herself, in more than 
 one particular." We sat thrilled with horror at 
 the thought of her depravity — and when he pro- 
 ceeded to state that the irate goddess " beat and 
 belaboured her," we drew a breath of satisfaction, 
 and felt that the crime and punishment were 
 duly proportioned. Again, when he told us that 
 Artemis had special privileges in regard to cheese 
 and butter, we were profoundly affected. At the 
 end of the lecture, in reply to a vote of thanks, 
 Mr. Gladstone made a moving speech, comparing 
 himself, as a visitor to his old school, with 
 Antaeus drawing vigour from contact with his 
 
Mr. Gladstone 6i 
 
 native soil; and thus ended one of the most re- 
 markable displays of fascination exerted over a 
 8i>ell bound audience I have ever heard. But when 
 I came to draw up my report, I could not think 
 where the whole thing had vanished to. The force 
 and fragrance of the discourse had evaporated. 
 The conclusions seemed unbalanced, the illustra- 
 tions almost trivial. Not only could I not make 
 my account impressive, I could not even make it 
 interesting. 
 
 And this, I think, holds good of the quality 
 of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual force; it was im- 
 mensely strong, lucid, and copious; but it lacked 
 charm and humanity. His prose writings are 
 uninteresting; his Homeric studies are unreliable, 
 and give one a sense of logical conviction rather 
 than of imaginative perception; when one is re- 
 constructing the life of a period, it cannot be 
 done by a theory, however ingeniously poised on 
 existing details. A case can never be constructed 
 out of surviving details — the faculty of historical 
 imagination must complete the vision. And this 
 was what Mr. Gladstone could not do. He could 
 not travel outside the facts, and therefore de- 
 pended too much upon them. Facts must not be 
 ignored, but they must not be accepted as com- 
 plete. I even respectfully doubt whether his 
 speeches will continue to be read for their literary 
 qualities. They were astonishing manifestations 
 of logical lucidity and verbal copiousness. He 
 never hesitated for a word, and he wound up the 
 
62 Along the Road 
 
 most intricate sentences, containing parenthesis 
 within parenthesis, with unfailing certainty. But 
 they are rhetorical displays of mental force rather 
 than oratorical expressions of ideas and emotions ; 
 and they depended for their cogency upon the 
 personal background, the energy and grandeur of 
 the man. Again, Mr. Gladstone was too vehe- 
 mently and absorbingly in earnest for literary 
 achievement. He had little lightness of touch. 
 Tt has been debated whether he had a sense of 
 humour. The case may be argued in the affirma- 
 tive, but it can hardly be sustained. He told 
 stories humorous in intention, and his emotions 
 sometimes flowered in an epigram. But his tem- 
 perament, his sense of momentous issues, his 
 moral force, were inconsistent with humour in 
 its larger sense. It would have detracted rather 
 than added to his power. If he had possessed 
 humour, he could not ever have attained to the 
 art of noble and genuine self-persuasion, which 
 he undoubtedly practised. He has been ac- 
 cused of inconsistency; but he had what is 
 the truest consistency of all, the power of be- 
 ing able to reconstruct his opinions with entire 
 sincerity. 
 
 Whatever line of life Mr. Gladstone had chosen, 
 he would have been supreme. That magnetic 
 force, that intellectual vigour, sustained by 
 purity of heart and motive, and controlled by 
 courtesy, made him irresistible. He might have 
 made an immense fortune as a merchant; he 
 
Mr. Gladstone 63 
 
 might have been Lord Chancellor; he might have 
 been Pope. He could not have been obscure 
 and unknown; for he had a splendid and un- 
 embarrassed simplicity, a resistless force and 
 energy, that streamed from him as light from 
 the sun. 
 
 Yet, as one contemplates his triumphs, one 
 finds oneself recurring in memory to the beautiful 
 background of domestic quiet and stately dignity 
 in which he was as much or more at home than 
 in the public gaze. I can see him now in an old 
 wide-awake and cloak —trudging off in the drizzle 
 of an October morning to early service. I re- 
 member how, at Hawarden in 1896, on one of the 
 sad evenings after my father's death, I dined 
 alone with him and one other guest, and with 
 what beautiful consideration he talked quietly on 
 about things in which he thought we should be 
 interested — things that needed neither comment 
 nor response, and all so naturally and easily, that 
 one hardly realised the tender thoughtfulness of 
 it all. 
 
 And, last of all, I remember how I came one 
 evening at a later date to dine at Hawarden, and 
 was shown into a little half-lit ante-room next 
 the dining-room. It was just at the beginning 
 of his last illness, and he was suffering from dis- 
 comfort and weakness. There on a sofa he sat, 
 side by side with Mrs. Gladstone; they were sit- 
 ting in silence, hand in hand, like two children, 
 the old warrior and his devoted wife. It seemed 
 
64 Along the Road 
 
 almost too sacred a thing to have seen; but it 
 is not too sacred to record, for it seemed the 
 one last perfect transfiguring touch of love and 
 home. 
 
I 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 The published records of Robert Browning, for 
 all their care and accuracy, fail to cast a light 
 upon what is, after all, the central mystery of 
 Browning's life — the fact that, somehow or other, 
 as a figure and as a personality, he seems un- 
 interesting. There was little, to the ordinary 
 eve, that was salient or inspiring about his talk 
 or his views of life. He had the power of merging 
 himself, it would seem, in commonplace things in 
 a commonplace way. He exhibited, of course, a 
 thoroughly admirable and manly tone, optimistic, 
 sociable, simple, straightforward. He never in- 
 duljjed his griefs, he had no petty vanity or spite, 
 he was entirely wholesome-minded, sane, and 
 reasonable. His talk, one would at least have 
 thought, or his private letters, would have been 
 picturesque, fanciful, humorous, and perceptive; 
 and possibly in intimate tete-dtefe talk, which can 
 hardly be photographed or recorded, this was so. 
 But I confess to finding even his letters unin- 
 spiring. They are long-winded, elaborate, un- 
 graceful, not even spontaneous. 
 
 1 remember very well, as an undergraduate, 
 5 65 
 
66 Along the Road 
 
 going to meet him at breakfast. He was staying 
 with Sir Sidney Colvin, at Trinity, in the early 
 eighties. I was a devout reader and a whole- 
 hearted worshipper of the poet; indeed, I was 
 secretary of the then newly-founded Cambridge 
 Browning Society; and with what tremulous awe 
 and expectation I accepted the invitation, and 
 climbed the turret stair which led to Sir Sidney's 
 rooms, can be better imagined than told. The 
 party consisted, I think, of undergraduates only, 
 eight or ten in number. There came into the 
 room a short, sturdy man, with silky and wavy 
 white hair, a short beard and moustache, his 
 cheeks shaven, of a fresh and sanguine com- 
 plexion. We were presented to him one by one. 
 He shook hands with quiet aplomb and self- 
 possession, said a few words to me about my 
 father, whose guest he had been more than once; 
 and we sat down to breakfast. Our host, I re- 
 member, skilfully turned the talk on to matters 
 of ordinary literary interest. But the great man 
 rose to no conversational fly. He was perfectly 
 good-humoured, simple, and natural. He had no 
 pontifical airs, he did not seem to feel bound to 
 say witty or suggestive things, but neither was 
 he in the least shy or embarrassed. He just 
 talked away, readily and amusingly, as any well- 
 informed, sensible man might talk. But we had, 
 of course, expected that he would pontificate! 
 Tie had a slightly foreign air, I remember think- 
 ing, as if he were a diplomat, used to cosmopolitan 
 
Robert Browning 67 
 
 sdciety. But his simplicity, beautiful as it was, 
 was not impressive, because there was nothing 
 aj>pealing or impulsive about it. It did not seem 
 j»s if he were sparing himself, or holding forces 
 in reserve, but as if he were a good-natured, 
 almost bourgeois man, intelligent and good- 
 humoured, and with no sense that he might be 
 an object of interest to any one. There is a 
 conversation recorded in the Life, when he was 
 being received with intense enthusiasm by the 
 authorities and students of some Northern Uni- 
 versity. Some one asked him what he felt about 
 the applause and veneration he was receiving, and 
 he said something to the effect that he had been 
 waiting for it all his life. That does not seem 
 in the least in character with his ordinary atti- 
 tude. He did not seem to concern himself in 
 earlier days with his own fame, to be either dis- 
 appointed if it was withheld, or elated if it w^as 
 showered upon him. He did, indeed, display 
 some irritation with his critics when, in the 
 period following the publication of The Ring 
 and the Book, he suffered some detraction at 
 their hands. But as a rule he seems to have 
 taken criticism, favourable or unfavourable, with 
 equanimity, good-nature, and indifference. 
 
 Of course, one is thankful in a w^ay for this 
 simplicity, in contrast to the self-conscious vanity 
 from which even great poets like Wordsworth 
 and Tennyson were not exempt. But if one com- 
 pares Tennyson as a figure with Browning, there 
 
68 Along the Road 
 
 is no doubt that Tennyson had a splendour and 
 a solemnity of mien and utterance which pro- 
 duced upon his friends and contemporaries a 
 sense of awful reverence and deference, which 
 made him one of the stateliest and most impressive 
 figures of his time. 
 
 And yet the wonder is that when Browning 
 took pen in hand to write poetry, the whole 
 situation was utterly transfigured. In spite of 
 certain whimsical tricks and bewildering man- 
 nerisms, there came from that amazing brain and 
 heart, not only a torrent of subtle and suggestive 
 thought, but an acute and delicate delineation of 
 the innermost mind of man, in words so beauti- 
 ful, so concentrated, so masterly, that one can 
 hardly conceive the process by which the thing 
 was perceived, felt, arranged, selected, and finally 
 presented. The amazing richness of sympathy, 
 the marvellous intuition, the matchless range of 
 it all, is a thing which is stupendous to con- 
 template. For not only could he touch the stops 
 of the sweetest, most personal, most delicate emo- 
 tions, not only could he interpret Nature — a 
 flower, a sunset, a star — with the most caress- 
 ing fineness, but he could raise to his lips a 
 great trumpet of noble emotion, and blow huge, 
 melodious blasts upon it which made glad the 
 heart of man. One can be not only enraptured 
 by the sweetness of his touch, but carried off 
 one's feet in a sort of intoxication of hope and 
 joy. 
 
Robert Browning 69 
 
 " What 's life to me? 
 Where'er I look is fire; where'er I listen 
 Music; and where I tend, bliss evermore." 
 
 With lines like that ringing in one's ears, one 
 is bewildered as by the sudden telling of joyful 
 news. It transfigures life to find a man who can 
 look into it so deeply and so firmly, bringing 
 back such treasure out of the rush and confusion 
 of it all, and flinging it down so royally at the 
 feet of those who toil on their way. 
 
 And 3'et the sort of kindly and bluff simplicity 
 which Browning exhibited in daily life is just the 
 sort of quality about w^hich there seems nothing 
 adventurous or quixotic. One would have said 
 that he was a man who enjoyed life in its simplest 
 forms — walking, talking, dining-out, listening to 
 music — so directly that he w^ould not have time 
 or taste for any raptures, and so equably that he 
 would not feel the need of any far-off hope or 
 promise to sustain him or console him. One does 
 not see where it all came from, or where he got 
 all that complexity and intricacy of experience 
 from. It seemed as though he could not take 
 any but the obvious and rational view of* life, as 
 though he valued the ordinary conventions and 
 customs of society highly; and yet whenever it 
 came to verse, the thought broke out into music, 
 and the heart behind seemed all alive with pas- 
 sion and beauty and irrational nobleness. Very 
 possibly, if one had known him better, one might 
 
70 Along the Road 
 
 have caught the accent of the great secrets that 
 were beckoning and whispering in his mind; but 
 the more that is revealed about his ordinary 
 demeanour and the current of his days, the less 
 there seems to reveal or to linger over. One sees 
 his intense faculty of momentary enjoyment; but 
 surely there can be no man of comparable great- 
 ness, whose special gift, too, was an almost 
 shattering force of expression combined with an 
 exquisite delicacy of touch, of whom so few dicta 
 are preserved? He seems to have been able to 
 keep the two lives serenely and securely apart, 
 and to talk and gossip good-humouredly and 
 easily in the outer chambers, with this furnace 
 of emotion and excitement roaring and raging 
 within. It is not as if he had lived in remote 
 dreams and incommunicable romance, far off in 
 some untroubled and wistful region. His con- 
 cern was with the very sight and sound and scent 
 of life, a fact shown ever so clearly by the mar- 
 vellous catalogues of miscellaneous and nonde- 
 script objects which he crowds together on his 
 pages. And one cannot make a greater mistake 
 than by treating Browning, as he is often treated, 
 as merely the poet of a devout kind of optimism. 
 He is too often adopted as the prophet of vaguely 
 intellectual and virtuous people, who, because 
 they cannot see very far into life or unravel its 
 confusions, think it as well to shout a sort of 
 comprehensive Hallelujah over the good time 
 coming. Browning's optimism did, no doubt, 
 
Robert Browning 71 
 
 emerge triumphant over circumstance. He said 
 once to a man who complained that he found life 
 complicated and disheartening, that it had not 
 been so to him; and, indeed, his zest for life and 
 living was so great that he was not struck dumb 
 and melancholy by any catastrophe, because there 
 was still so much left that was worth doing and 
 saying. But there is a great deal in Browning 
 beside his optimism. He does not make a simple 
 melody out of life, he scores and orchestrates it; 
 and his own brave solution is made not exactly 
 out of life, but in spite of it. 
 
 But I find it very difficult to bring the two 
 ends of the puzzle together. It may not be so 
 with other readers of Browning, but it does seem 
 to me that very little of that supreme and over- 
 powering radiance, which gleams and flashes so 
 prodigally and gloriously in his poetry, shone 
 through into his life. He does not seem like a 
 man who guarded a secret source of inspiration, 
 but a man of small accomplishments, ordinary 
 interests, and average views; and then one opens 
 a volume of the lyrics, and the lightning flashes 
 and the thunder rolls and answers, while all the 
 while at any moment a glimpse of loveliness, a 
 ]»rosj)ect of heavenly beauty, opens upon the view. 
 And then in the front of that comes the quiet, 
 burly figure that I remember, easy and unaffected, 
 jingling the money in his pocket, not desirous 
 of any confidences of intimate relations, just a 
 comfortable citizen of the world. 
 
NEWMAN 
 
 I HAVE been reading Mr. Ward^s Life of Newman^ 
 a book which, by its fine candour and high 
 literary accomplishment, does credit both to the 
 skill and the disinterestedness of the biographer. 
 But it is somehow a deeply painful, almost I 
 had said, a heartrending book ! One feels that it 
 is like reading the life of an angel that has lost 
 his way. One ends with an immense admiration 
 for Newman's simplicity, sweetness, and stain- 
 lessness of character; but there is something 
 strangely ineffective, wistful, and melancholy 
 about his life. One feels that he was generally 
 being bullied by some one, or at all events feel- 
 ing that he was being bullied, disapproved of, 
 hampered, set aside, misunderstood. He was like 
 a child in the masterful hands of ambitious 
 diplomatists and ecclesiastical lobbyists, like 
 Manning and Talbot, both of them effective, 
 pushing, scheming men, essentially second-rate. 
 The whole impression given of the Papal Court 
 is disagreeable; it seems to have been manned 
 by unintelligent time-servers, ignorant oppor- 
 tunists, men who did not understand the pro- 
 
 72 
 
Newman 73 
 
 blems of the time, men singularly lacking in 
 apostolic fervour, and even, one would say, in 
 disinterested Christian qualities, men without the 
 wisdom of the serpent but not without the ser- 
 ]>ent^s venom. These fierce ultramontanes would 
 never allow Newman to take a hand in their 
 game, while they traded to the full on his great 
 reputation. 
 
 I remember once when I was staying at 
 Hawarden, I heard Mr. Gladstone, talking about 
 Manning, say that it must be always remembered 
 that Manning was before all things a diplomatist; 
 he added with great emphasis, " when it was a 
 question of policy, everything else" had to give 
 wa}^ — Plato, or the almanac, or truth itself!" — 
 and as one reads the Life of Newman, one feels 
 that this is not an unjust judgment. 
 
 But one ends by feeling a still greater respect 
 for Newman from the very fact that he never did 
 get involved in any of the intrigues that were spun 
 about him; he was used, when he was wanted; 
 but he was never wholly trusted, and never given 
 an independent sphere of action. It is clear that 
 he was an unpractical man ; he never brought off 
 any of his plans, such as the Roman Catholic 
 University in Ireland, or the College which he 
 devised for Oxford. He had a muddled habit of 
 doing business ; he never seems to have been quite 
 certain what he wanted, or to have made sure 
 of his ground. He seems to have been almost 
 deliberately allowed to make schemes for his own 
 
74 Along the Road 
 
 amusement, yet never permitted to carry them 
 out. One understands his depression, his help- 
 lessness, his consciousness of his ^' do-nothing 
 life," as he called it in a moment of bitterness. 
 
 But what does come out very clearly, beside 
 his weakness in practical things, is the strength 
 and tenderness of his temperament. I never 
 grasped clearly till I read this book what New- 
 man really was; but I now seem to understand 
 him. He was a poet, I believe, and an artist 
 before everything. He had a high conception of 
 moral beauty, but his adherence to Koman 
 Catholicism was not primarily, I believe, an 
 ecclesiastical matter. The Church of Rome ap- 
 pealed to him emotionally and artistically, with 
 its dim and venerable traditions, its august his- 
 tory, its splendid associations, its ceremonial 
 pomp, its roll of saints. The Church of England, 
 with the vigorous liberalism of the Reformation 
 dying down into Erastian and materialistic in- 
 dolence, could not give him what he wanted. He 
 desired something more ancient, more tender, 
 more beautiful, more inspiring. I do not think 
 that his intellectual power was very great. Car- 
 lyle said, coarsely and stupidly, that Newman 
 had the brains of a rabbit; but reading the Life 
 has made me see what Carlyle meant. Newman 
 was not a clear or a deep thinker; he did not 
 understand philosophy, and he dreaded all mental 
 speculation. He wanted rest, comfort, peace, 
 beautiful dreams, old memories, far-reaching emo- 
 
Newman 75 
 
 tions. He had a logical mind, but he was at the 
 , mere}' of superficial logic; his heart was con- 
 1 vinced and his mind followed suit. 
 I What he did possess was a matchless and in- 
 ' comparable power of expression. Everj^thing that 
 he wrote was soaked in personality. He had the 
 I)()wer, which he and Ruskin alone possessed 
 among the writers of the century, of thinking 
 I aloud in the most exquisite form. His writing 
 ; is like a limpid stream, and he could give i)erfect 
 form as he wrote to the tender, humorous, ardent, 
 sweet qualities of his mind and nature. Whether 
 it is a sermon, or a letter, or a memorandum, or 
 a record, it is always the same — a sort of in- 
 timate and lucid conversation, flowing equably 
 and purely out of heart and mind alike. That was 
 his supreme gift, his artistry; the delicacy, the in- 
 genuity, the studied unaffectedness, the perfume 
 of all that he wrote. It is that which makes the 
 Apologia so memorable a book, the power of wist- 
 ful self-analysis, the sense that one is face to 
 face with the very man himself in a kind of 
 intimate tcte-a-lcfe. Newman could say exactly 
 what he meant and what he thought, and as he 
 thought it. His mind moved exactly as fast as 
 his pen ; and because the Apologia was written 
 in tears, as he confessed, so one can hear the 
 accent of sorrow in the tone of the writer. 
 
 But there are many other things in the book 
 which confirm this view of Newman. He said 
 that the only thing he could write without any 
 
76 Along the Road 
 
 trouble was poetry; and we know, too, from the 
 Life, how he loved music, and how he suppressed 
 his taste for it for many years, out of some sort 
 of ascetic self-denial. But he added that music 
 was the only thing that calmed and inspired him 
 without fail, and the only thing which helped 
 him to write. We see, too, how his friends gave 
 him a violin when he was over sixty, and how 
 he delighted in playing it, hour by hour, in the 
 Oratorian country house at Kednal, where there 
 was no one to disturb. 
 
 And then, too, there is the romantic affection 
 which he bore to his friends, and to the well- 
 loved scenes of his life. He describes how when 
 he left Littlemore he kissed his bed and the 
 mantelpiece of his room. And one becomes aware 
 of his constant tearfulness, his agitated and emo- 
 tional visits to places which he had loved. What 
 could be more moving than the account quoted 
 of Newman's only visit to Littlemore twenty 
 years after he had left it? "I was passing by 
 the church at Littlemore," wrote the eye-witness 
 of the scene, " when I observed a man, very poorly 
 dressed, leaning over the lych-gate, crying. He 
 was to all appearance in great trouble. He was 
 dressed in an old grey coat with the collar turned 
 up, and his hat pulled down over his face as if 
 he wished to hide his features." That was New- 
 man, returning to see his old home! All this is 
 strangely affecting, and testifies to the almost 
 unbalanced sensitiveness and emotion of the man. 
 
Newman 77 
 
 And then further one sees, running all through 
 his life, the intense desire to be understood, loved, 
 appreciated, praised. He was childlike in his 
 horror of suspicion, of disapproval, of harshness. 
 The success of the Apologia made all the dif- 
 ference to his happiness, and his satisfaction with 
 the fame that it gave him is naively enough ex- 
 pressed. The reception of his Poems gave him 
 deep satisfaction. The Cardinalate, one feels, 
 was almost too deeply valued by him. It 
 was not enough that he should be secretly aware 
 of the purity of his motives, the devotion of his 
 life: it was a necessity to him that others should 
 know it, admit it, appreciate it. He wanted 
 honour, affection, and recognition. He could not 
 endure in silence; he had the natural egotism of 
 the artist; he wanted to tell his own story, to 
 explain his own thoughts, to express his own 
 convictions. In one sense he shrank from doing 
 this, but what he really dreaded was criticism 
 and discredit. No one can read the Apologia 
 without feeling that the writer tells his tale with 
 delight and interest; and it is the wistful appeal 
 for approval and esteem and sympathy which 
 makes the book what it is. 
 
 I do not say that Newman was not a man of 
 intense spiritual ardour: he was a moralist to 
 the inmost fibre of his being; but so were Ruskin, 
 Carlyle, and Tennyson ; and it is with these that 
 Newman is to be reckoned, and not with philo- 
 sophers, prelates, and ecclesiastical politicians. 
 
78 Along the Road 
 
 Of course, his temperament condemned him to 
 great suffering; and the impression left by the 
 Life is mainly that of suffering, in spite of his 
 occasional and tardy triumphs. The time be- 
 tween his joining the Church of Rome and the 
 publication of the Apologia gives one the impres- 
 sion that he was then a thoroughly disheartened 
 and dreary man, sinking deeper and deeper into 
 indolent despondency, as his attempts to do some 
 work for the Church failed one by one. The sun- 
 shine comes back at the end, but the pathos of 
 the intervening years is great; and the portraits 
 show this very clearly, as the rather prim and 
 hard features of the Anglican period lapse into 
 a sad, helpless, and rueful expression, with the 
 lines of weariness, hypochondria, and disappoint- 
 ment graving themselves deeply on his face. It 
 is very interesting to see how much Newman 
 thought, in his sad days, about his health, how 
 afraid he was of paralysis, how much he lived 
 under a premonition of death; and how all that 
 uneasy misery cleared off when he found himself 
 famous and honoured. 
 
 But of all the melancholy scenes of the book, 
 the saddest is the visit to Keble in 1865, where 
 Newman met Pusey. He had much desired to 
 see Keble, but he could not bear the idea of meet- 
 ing Pusey. He w^ent, however, and owing to some 
 misunderstanding Pusey appeared also. It was 
 twenty years since they had met. When New- 
 man arrived at the door, Keble was standing in 
 
Newman 79 
 
 the porch. They did not even recognise each 
 otlier, and Newman actually produced his card I 
 Keble was very much agitated at the fact that 
 Pusey was in the house, and said he must go 
 and prepare him for the meeting. When New- 
 man went in, he found Pusey in the study, shrink- 
 ing back, as he says he himself would have done. 
 He was startled, pained, and grieved by Pusey's 
 appearance, and was distressed by the way that 
 Pusey stared at him, and by the " condescending " 
 manner in which he spoke. They had a talk and 
 dined together, and Newman said that it was a 
 heavy pain to think that they were three old 
 friends, meeting after twenty years, " without a 
 common cause, or free outspoken thought — kind 
 indeed, but subdued and antagonistic in their 
 language to each other." Keble was delightful, 
 Newman said, though he was deaf, with impaired 
 speech, and slow of thought; and he adds that 
 Keble (lisi)layed much sympathy and interest 
 towards himself, but very little towards Pusey. 
 
 That seems to me a simply tragical meeting, 
 iind they never met again, though Keble wrote 
 afterwards to Newman, saying, " When shall we 
 three meet again? . . . when the hurly-burly 's 
 done." 
 
 It is indeed a melancholy thought. Here were 
 three men, the closest possible friends, who had 
 < hampioned a great cause together, and restored 
 vitality to the Church of England. Newman said 
 that he was aware that as far as regarded their 
 
8o Along the Road 
 
 faith, Keble and Pusey agreed with him exactly 
 on every point but one — the submission to the 
 authority of Rome. And yet for all the old days 
 of friendship, and for all their unity of faith, they 
 were suspicious, hostile, utterly separated. It is 
 liard not to feel that there is something tragically 
 amiss in all this. If the old friendship had just 
 shone through, touched with sadness at the in- 
 evitable separation; if they could have talked 
 and smiled and even wept together, it would 
 surely have been more Christian, more human 
 than this harsh mistrust. One feels the Gospel of 
 brotherly love must have been somehow strangely 
 misapprehended if it could not for once bring the 
 three old comrades' hearts together. Our Lord 
 indeed foresaw the dividing force of Christianity ; 
 but one feels that when He spoke of a man's foes 
 being those of his own household. He was surely 
 speaking of the conflict between the Faith and 
 Paganism, and not of disunion between devout 
 and sincere Christians ! 
 
 And it is this finally which casts a shadow 
 over the whole book, because it reveals the awful 
 gulf of sectarianism, the emphasis on points of 
 difference, the dreadful animosity kindled by 
 faith diversely interpreted and held. As systems, 
 doctrines. Churches develop, it seems as if the 
 only effect could be to plunge Christians deeper 
 and deeper into mutual hostility and further 
 away from the purpose and design of Christ. It 
 seems as though the Faith had evoked and en- 
 
Newman 8i 
 
 listed the stubbornness and self-assurance and 
 the evil tempers of political partisanship, and as 
 though the simplicity and loving-kindness of the 
 Gospel message were gone past recovery. And 
 thus, though one is strangely drawn to Newman 
 himself, because one discerns in him an affection 
 which did somehow outlast and overtop all con- 
 troversy and bewildered disunion, one is painfully 
 struck with the materialism, the secularity, the 
 self-seeking of ecclesiastical politics, and one 
 closes the book with a sigh. 
 
 6 
 
AKCHIPPUS 
 
 I SAT in my stall in the College chapel listening 
 to the lesson, read by a boyish reader from the 
 gilded eagle lectern. The crimson hangings of 
 the sanctuary filled the air with colour, the golden 
 organ-pipes gleamed above; the light came richly 
 in through the stained glass, and lost itself in 
 the gloom of the dark, carved roof. The rows of 
 surpliced figures sat still and silent, listening or 
 not listening, dreaming of things before and bo- 
 hind, old adventures, all they meant to do and 
 be, the thought perhaps taking on a gentler tinge 
 from the ancient beauty of the place. 
 
 Such homely advice, too, it all was! — advice 
 to husbands, wives, children, masters, servants, 
 shrewd enough and kindly; not losing sight of 
 daily life and its interests, and yet keeping in 
 view something noble and beautiful behind it all, 
 the unseen greatness of life, so easily forgotten. 
 
 My eyes strayed further down the page of the 
 Bible T held in my hand. I do not know any- 
 thing more touching, more inspiring than the 
 little personal messages and counsels sent to in- 
 dividual saints : mere names most of them ! How 
 
 82 
 
Archippus 83 
 
 little St. Paul himself dreamed, as he wrote in 
 prison, in discomfort and anxiety, what would 
 become of his letters! After advice faithfully 
 given, his mind would pass to the remembered 
 faces of his friends, simple people enough, and 
 he would fill his page with greetings and words 
 of love. Those names of men and women bring 
 the whole thing down on to such a tender and 
 human plane, speak with such a directness of love 
 and affection. 
 
 And they, too, who received the messages, if 
 they could have pictured such a place as this 
 chapel, its richness, its solemnity, what would 
 they have felt at hearing their homely names 
 thus read aloud, and the words of counsel and 
 love addressed to them? — and read, too, not in 
 one, but in thousands of great churches, which 
 to see would have been to them almost like a 
 vision of the courts of heaven, with the organ 
 music rolling under the vaulted roofs. Fame? 
 Yes, a kind of fame; nothing known of them, 
 nothing certain about them, like a name on a 
 headstone in a place of graves, with a date and 
 some faint record of virtues and graces — all else 
 forgotten. 
 
 Archippus! He is mentioned twice in Scrip- 
 ture; he is a "fellow-soldier" in the Epistle to 
 Philemon; and here he has a direct enough mes- 
 sage. " And say to Archippus, Take heed to the 
 ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, 
 that thou fulfil it." That was to be his business. 
 
84 Along the Road 
 
 Yet we know nothing of him, of his past or his 
 future; there is a faint old story of his martyr- 
 dom, possibly true enough ; but what the ministry 
 was and how he executed it, of that we know 
 nothing. 
 
 I sometimes wish that our splendid version of 
 the Bible had not won from use and ceremony 
 and from the very veneration paid it, quite so 
 solemn and stately a sound. As an epistle is 
 translated, with its " thou " and " ye," it has the 
 air of a princely document, such as a great bishop 
 might write from his magnificence to other stately 
 persons. When St. Paul speaks of the Epistle 
 to the Colossians being read to the Church at 
 Laodicea, and the epistle to the Laodiceans being 
 read to the Church at Colossse, one thinks of 
 some great ceremonial, with a parchment loudly 
 recited in a great building thronged with wor- 
 shippers. One forgets how homely it all was in 
 reality. It is a letter really to be read at a meet- 
 ing of very ordinary folk in a poor room, a letter 
 such as a mission-teacher might write to a few 
 old friends. And one forgets, too, the novelty of 
 it all. Now that Christianity has taken a place 
 among the forces of the world, and is mixed up 
 with so much that is powerful and conventional 
 and respectable, one forgets how new, how sus- 
 picious, how unconventional, how socialistic shall 
 we say, it all seemed — it was a handful of work- 
 ing people comforting themselves with a message 
 of utterly new and unexpected things. It had 
 
Archippus 85 
 
 none of the weight of the world behind it; it 
 broke awuy from all received ideas and prejudices. 
 These people who got this letter, with its advice 
 and words of love, were no doubt looked upon 
 by neighbours as fanatical, discontented, fantastic 
 persons, who could not take life for granted m 
 the old comfortable way, but must throw them- 
 selves into a wild, radical, restless fancy, taught 
 them by an insignificant, vehement, fiery -tem- 
 pered, wandering preacher, who came from no 
 one knew where, and was now justly in prison 
 for stirring up strife. Colossae was a decaying 
 town, its trade vanishing, its old importance 
 gone; yet how its easy-going, sensible citizens 
 must have desi»ised the new ideas that had seized 
 upon a few fanciful folk; how they must have 
 shaken their heads over the movement and mis- 
 trusted it! The people who took it up were 
 doing, they felt, an unpopular and unpractical 
 thing, and no good could come of it! That is 
 how we must look at it all. Christianity was 
 not then a beneficent, well-endowed, familiar 
 power, but something new, disturbing, danger- 
 ous. I daresay the Christians at Colossae had a 
 hard time of it, and needed all the affection and 
 advice which St. Paul could give them! 
 
 It is not only a comforting letter — St. Paul 
 was very anxious about a certain kind of teach- 
 ing, it is hard to say exactly what, which seemed 
 to be mixing itself up with the faith. He is 
 severe enough about that. It is not the letter 
 
S6 Along the Road 
 
 of a man who is wholly satisfied. Something is 
 very wrong; and neither can we feel that all the 
 very plain advice to husbands and wives, masters 
 and servants, came loosely out of St. Paul's mind. 
 He must have heard of misdoings and misunder- 
 standings. The seed was not growing up happily 
 and strongly; there were weeds in abundance, 
 and they must be rooted up. But the old affec- 
 tions come out at the end; and this is perhaps 
 the secret of the intensity of St. Paul's writings ; 
 the large heart that took men and women in so 
 readily, and never forgot them. He never con- 
 doned what was amiss; he wrote in anger, grief, 
 and indignation; but at the end, the recollections 
 of well-known faces and gestures and friendly 
 words crowd in upon him, and the last words 
 are always words of personal love. 
 
 It is very wonderful all this — more wonderful 
 than we often allow ourselves to believe, that 
 these old messages and greetings should stand 
 out to-day with such an absolute freshness, and 
 touch so many hearts even now. What St. Paul 
 says to Archippus he says to many. Archippus 
 had found a w^ork for which he was suited. He 
 must have grown a little tired of it, perhaps, 
 when the novelty and excitement had worn off. 
 St. Paul cannot feel perfectly sure of him, or he 
 would not have sent him so plain a message. He 
 had gifts; was he using them? 
 
 We need not apply the words too technically 
 to an office or a priesthood; the word used for 
 
Archippus 87 
 
 ministry means a service. It was probably a 
 very informal thing: a duty of speech, of care 
 for poorer Christians, of keeping a congregation 
 together. He had some sort of influence with 
 other people no doubt, a kindly manner, an 
 affectionate heart, some power of expressing what 
 he felt. Probably he had some business of his 
 own; he was a shopman, perhaps, a worker of 
 some kind; vet he was worthy to be St. Paul's 
 fellow-soldier, if not now, at all events later, when 
 the little anxious message had done its work. 
 
 And so the figure of Archippus gleams out 
 faintly for an instant on the background of the 
 past; a man who had a work to do, and could 
 do it, but was careless; and yet on whom the 
 reproof had its effect. He is a type of thousands 
 of lives, that do their work in their own little 
 circle, with no great reward, no escape out of 
 obscurity; and yet for all that Archippus has 
 written his name upon the world, as many great 
 generals and judges and statesmen have not 
 written it, by what we strangely call chance. 
 Reckon the chances, so to speak, that a letter 
 written from prison, and sent by faithful hands 
 over land and sea, to a knot of old friends, would 
 have perished utterly out of the records of the 
 world! It is something more than chance which 
 has preserved it, and brought it to pass that it 
 should be read, as I heard it to-day, through the 
 length and breadth of a land like our own, nearly 
 twenty centuries after. 
 
88 Along the Road 
 
 I think that if we could put some thoughts like 
 these more often into our minds when we hear 
 the Bible read in church, we should be more in- 
 terested, more amazed, more moved by the extra- 
 ordinary nature of it all. Yet we take it all 
 dully as a matter of course; perhaps we try to 
 give it a demure attention, and the name of 
 Archippus and the work he had to do just falls 
 like a ripple on minds full of plans and schemes 
 and hopes and interests, not mingling with them, 
 and certainly not changing them! Yet it needs 
 no great exercise of the imagination to think of 
 these things. They are in a score of books; we 
 have but to ask ourselves a question or two, and 
 we are back in the dark past, with Christian 
 light stealing into a dim world by a hundred 
 channels, confirming the hopes of thousands of 
 hearts, bringing them just the one thing needed 
 to put the cares of the world in their place, 
 whispering a secret of life and immortality. The 
 world is not soon changed; life and the cares of 
 life press heavily on most of us; and then there 
 comes a man sent from God, like St. Paul, and 
 shows that life is all knit together by invisible 
 chains from the friends and neighbours whom we 
 know so well, to the unseen persons who are fear- 
 ing and hoping as we are fearing and hoping; 
 and thus it passes back into the old records, and 
 shows us the long procession of humanity moving 
 through the years, straining their eyes and ears 
 for the light and sound of the message; and then 
 
Archippus 89 
 
 the thoughts and affections that bind us all to- 
 gether pass still further and deeper into the 
 darkness, to find their home in the heart of 
 God. 
 
KEATS 
 
 I BOUGHT at a bookstall a few days ago, before 
 a long journey, a volume of Keats's poems, and 
 read it through from end to end. Was there 
 ever such an astonishing performance? That a 
 man who died, after a long period of illness, at 
 the age of twenty-five, should produce such a body 
 of work, so much of it of the very finest and 
 purest quality, is surely an absolutely unique 
 phenomenon ! 
 
 There is much to be said for devouring a poet 
 whole like this. Of course, the right way to read 
 poetry as a rule is to sip it leisurely, to savour 
 it, to turn it over and over in the mind, to learn 
 it by heart. Thus one gets at the beauty of the 
 word and the phrase. 
 
 But if one is very familiar with a poet, it is 
 a good thing occasionally to gallop through his 
 works at a sitting. One gets a wholly different 
 view of him. It is like flashing through a scene 
 in a motor which one has explored only on foot. 
 I motored the other day through some country 
 with which I was familiar as a child, where T 
 had loitered with my nurse in a slow, childish 
 
 90 
 
Keats 91 
 
 caravan. It was a great revelation. In memory 
 I saw the little walks we took, in a series of 
 vignettes, but the whole lie of the landscape was 
 unfamiliar. Flying through it in a motor, I saw 
 all sorts of unsuspected connections and near- 
 nesses. What had seemed to me tracts of vast 
 and mysterious extent, lying between the range 
 of two familiar walks, resolved themselves into 
 little spinnej^s and belts of trees just dividing 
 road from road. What had appeared to me to 
 be two perfectly distinct forests were now 
 revealed as one and the same narrow belt of 
 woodland. 
 
 Thus in reading a poet quickly from end to 
 end, one sees that the lyrics and odes which 
 appeared to be so sharply differentiated are but 
 as separate flowers growing on the same plant. 
 One realises, too, the connection with earlier and 
 later poets, the genealogy of genius. I had never 
 seen before how closely allied Keats was, in 
 " Hyperion," to Milton — and with a shock of 
 surprise I saw what a prodigious effect Keats 
 had had ujion two subsequent poets so unlike as 
 Tennyson and William Morris. Perhaps there is 
 a little loss of mystery and distance, but that is 
 amply compensated for by the sense of unity and 
 personality which one gains. 
 
 And, after all, the mystery is as great as ever. 
 How did the marvellous boy with his bourgeois 
 surroundings, his very inferior friends, the un- 
 lovely suburban atmosphere which hangs even 
 
92 Along the Road 
 
 about his splendid letters — how did he manage 
 to soar above it all, to dream such remote and 
 delicate dreams? More marvellous still, how did 
 he contrive to express it all ? It makes one wonder 
 if there is not some secret pre-existence about the 
 human spirit, when one sees a boy using words 
 with this incredible ease and felicity, with no 
 practise behind him, no apprenticeship, no labour, 
 no training. The imaginative part of it is not 
 so- marvellous — indeed, " Endymion " reveals a 
 certain poverty of imagination — it is the technical 
 skill of craftsmanship, the instinctive art, which 
 is so utterly bewildering! 
 
 The little book which I read had gathered up 
 into it all the fragments and chips out of the 
 poet's workshop, the doggerel he spun off in his 
 letters, the dreadful play of " Otho," the simply 
 appalling '^ Cap and Bells," that heartrending 
 mixture of fantastic nonsense and vulgar hu- 
 mour. I do not think these things ought to be 
 reprinted, because people of uncritical minds get 
 muddled into thinking that it is all equally good. 
 I cannot help feeling the sense of horror and 
 shame which the poet himself would have writhed 
 under, at the inclusion of these trivial and abject 
 bits of writing into one and the same volume. 
 But I was glad that they were there for my own 
 sake, because they showed what a power of self- 
 criticism Keats had; and, moreover, they all cast 
 a certain light upon his mind — its exuberance, its 
 gaiety, its abandon. 
 
Keats 93 
 
 The life which it reveals is a very tragic one. 
 There can be no doubt that Keats sowed the 
 seeds of consumption by his devoted tendance of 
 his invalid brother, at a time when it was not 
 realised how contagious the malady was; and he 
 developed it by overtiring himself on his long 
 walking tour, in which he disregarded all rules 
 of diet and health. Then there comes in his 
 frantic passion for a commonplace and rather 
 inferior girl — somewhat of a minx, if the truth 
 must be told; and there follows the horrible 
 despair of the last voyage, and the terrible 
 struggle with death in the high house near the 
 noisy piazza in Rome, with all the tortures of 
 pent-up imagination and frenzied love to contend 
 with; and so he passes into the unknown, very 
 gallantly at last. 
 
 If one cares very much for poetry and the 
 beauty of thought and word, it is tempting to 
 lose oneself in a sad rebellion at the waste, the 
 ruthless snapping of so golden a thread of life 
 as this. But it must somehow be a very faithless 
 misunderstanding of the meaning of life, if one 
 permits oneself so to impugn its tragedies. If we 
 believe in immortality, if we trust that experi- 
 ence is somehow proportioned to the individual 
 need, we may shudder perhaps at the sharpness 
 of death ; we may feel with Dr. Johnson that after 
 all it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and 
 die; but we must go on to believe that there is 
 a very wonderful secret involved in so wild and 
 
94 Along the Road 
 
 mournful a prelude. One must be prepared to 
 think of Keats as rejoicing in his martyrdom, the 
 fiery corner once turned, and as thus gaining for 
 his spirit a joy which could be won in no easier 
 fashion. 
 
 But this is all in a region of faith and hope; 
 let us interrogate ourselves closely as to what it 
 is that Keats and such as Keats do for the world. 
 What is the meaning of this treasure of fame 
 and gratitude heaped by mankind on such a brief 
 life? Keats's songs go on being reprinted, his life 
 is written over and over again, the most trivial 
 of his letters are jealously edited, the most trifling 
 records are anxiously ransacked, to catch one 
 glimpse of him from the oblivious past. What 
 would the great personages of the day — the dukes, 
 the politicians, the soldiers, the courtiers — have 
 felt, if they could have certainly foreseen that 
 when their achievements and progresses and con- 
 versations had been consigned to blank indif- 
 ference and darkness, the world would still have 
 been greedy to hear the meanest gossip about the 
 consumptive medical student, sprung from the 
 livery-stable, with a taste for writing verse? 
 
 And what is the meaning of the extraordinary 
 fact? Why does the world cling so tenderly and 
 anxiously to the memory of its writers, to whom 
 it found no time to attend when they rose like 
 a star in the night, and take so little interest 
 in the personality of those whom at the time it 
 envied and respected? There must be something 
 
Keats 95 
 
 in ima^nation and expressive art which is very 
 dear to the heart of the world. It is surely that 
 the spirit of humanity is most deeply concerned 
 in finding, if it can, some refuge for its wearied 
 «elf from the harsh experience of the world? 
 However much the selfish materialist may deride 
 tlie eager pursuit of beauty as a dallying with 
 sentiment and emotion, yet the sense of the world 
 is ultimately on the side of emotion, and in favour 
 of all who can show us how to see and how to feel. 
 " Turn away mine eyes, lest they behold vanity," 
 said the Psalmist ; and a poet like St. Augustine, 
 after an exquisite apologue on the beauty of light, 
 " sliding by me in unnumbered guises," can only 
 end by praying that he may be delivered from its 
 RCMluctions. But even though one cannot rest in 
 tlie beauty of forms and colours, yet the more 
 that one looks into the heart of great moralists 
 like St. Francis of Assisi, the more one realises 
 that they did not see righteousness in the guise 
 of a strict tyrant, but as a power so utterly 
 beautiful that, having once seen it, one could 
 never wholly lose the love of it. 
 
 It is there, I believe, that the secret lies ; that the 
 soul must pass on through what seems brilliant 
 and charming to the love of what is true and pure, 
 until it can say, as Wordsworth said of duty : 
 
 ** Stern lawgiver! Thou yet dost wear 
 Thy godhead's most benignant grace; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face." 
 
.^ Ri^ U^ . 
 
 (^yM^ 
 
 RODDY 
 
 Only a dog, after all ! Yes, only the one member, 
 of the household who was never sick or sorry, 
 who was always ready for play or for companion- 
 ship, never resented anything, only claimed love; 
 who, if he was punished, never thought any- 
 thing but forgiveness, never lost patience, was 
 never injured or vexed; if one trod upon him by 
 accident, was sure that one did it for the best, and 
 came to be pardoned; who saw one depart with 
 sorrow and welcomed one back with overwhelm- 
 iiig joy. That is what it is to be only a dog ! 
 
 When Roddy came to us, a collie puppy, six 
 years ago, he had been roughly trained, and could 
 not believe at first that we meant him well; but 
 in six months he was the darling of the place, 
 with his hazel eyes, so full of expression, his 
 silky, brown hair, his wavy tail. He learned end- 
 less tricks, and was as anxious to make out what 
 was wanted of him as a child could be, and as 
 proud of showing off. He learned one or two 
 things that I never could comprehend, such as 
 distinguishing between the right and left hand, 
 however much one interlaced the fingers; and I 
 
 96 
 
Roddy 97 
 
 never saw a dog so f>erfectly obedient. He made 
 friends with cats and kittens, fowls and pigeons, 
 and even with the peacock — his only grief was 
 if any of them were taken more notice of than 
 himself. Then he pulled one's coat or licked one's 
 hand, and was overjoyed to be restored to favour. 
 He was a sensitive dog and extremely timid. 
 There were places in the roads all about, which 
 he would never pass, because he had once had 
 encounters with strange dogs there. He slipped 
 oflf, took a circuit, and joined one again, apolo- 
 gising for his absence. (T h u i u waa a -cottage gatc^ 
 close by, where he once/when walking with me, 
 put his head in, and was greeted with a bark 
 let off straight in his face, like a peal of thunder, 
 from a chained retriever, just round the palings.' 
 He came up to me, i)ale under his coat and 
 shuddering, with a look of horror at a world 
 where such terrors couldbe) There was even a 
 farmyard from which he had fled in hot haste, 
 pursued by an elderly hen. 
 V^ At one time he took to going off for a few days 
 at a time. He made friends, we thought, with a 
 family at a farm a little way off, and it amused 
 him to pay visits. But my sister sewed round 
 his neck a lettpr, in a canvas case, addressed "To 
 the people at the house where he goes," and the 
 next time he went off, he came back iji a twin- 
 kling. We could never make out that he poached 
 or hunted, but he did ramble in the woods, no 
 doubt, especially with a naughty little mongrel, 
 
 7 
 
98 Along the Road 
 
 who lived in a hutch in the stable-yard. So after 
 this was discovered, Toby went out for his run 
 in the morning, while Roddy was chained up, and 
 then Roddy was free for the day. 
 
 'iVnd so the happy life went on, year by year. 
 Joy and sorrow alike came to the house, passed 
 through it, left their mark on all but Roddy. He 
 alone knew nothing of it all ; and in days of grief 
 and unhappiness, it was a relief that his horizon 
 at least was unclouded, that he required his plate 
 to be filled, barked gently at closed doors, pleaded 
 for his walk. How often, in days of ill-health, 
 have T watched him lie at my feet, chin on carpet, 
 just following every motion with half -open, up- 
 turned e3^e, ready to spring into life at a word, 
 or resigning himself to slumber with a happy sigh. 
 
 One day, a month ago, he slipped off at night- 
 fall. The next day he was seen by the miller, 
 trotting demurely along the road; and that is 
 the last we know of him. 
 
 Now, I will not here be sentimental over what 
 has happened. Sentiment is the exaggeration of 
 things that are hardly sad, for the luxury of 
 pathos. But there is no luxury here. One simply 
 misses Roddy at every turn. I come back after 
 an absence, and he does not come scampering out 
 with a joyous outcry. His plate is put away on 
 the shelf. . His chain rusts in the stable. Yet as 
 I go out to walk, I glance round for him, check 
 his name on my lips, and at the covert edge turn 
 round to see if he is following. 
 
Roddy 99 
 
 What has happened to him ? Alas, T have little 
 doubt. I could almost bear to think he had been 
 kidnapped, because, wherever he is, he will love 
 and be loved, though perhaps a dim wonder may 
 trouble his brain as to what has become of his 
 old friends. 
 
 But all round us game is carefully preserved: 
 it is the time when the young pheasants are about, 
 when keepers are watchful and merciless. I think 
 of him as slipping into the wood. A rabbit bolts 
 from the fern and pops in at a sandy hole under 
 the bank. The chase is irresistible, and Roddy 
 sets to work digging in the soft soil, so intent 
 that he does not see the keeper approach through 
 the bracken. The gun is cautiously lifted. 
 
 Well, I hope that, if it had to be, the shot did 
 its work. He lies bewildered, quivering; perhaps 
 a little blood trickles from the hazel eye, sur- 
 prised and faint at the last passage; the sandy 
 I)aws twitch and are still. Then comes the speedy 
 burial, and the pretty brown limbs, so active an 
 hour ago, huddled limply together . . . earth to 
 earth. Roddy lies in the woodland he has loved, 
 and the star peeps over the covert edge; soon 
 the rain drips upon the mound, where the tangled 
 hair and mouldering bones settle down for the 
 last long sleep. 
 
 I suppose no one is to blame; a keeper but 
 obeys his orders, and a poaching dog Is a nuisance, 
 so all the love and sweet service are swept away 
 that a few sportsmen may shoot a rabbit or two 
 
100 Along the Road 
 
 more, and that the bag may be fuller. There must 
 be something wrong with the system that brings 
 that to pass, though it is hard to disentangle! 
 
 One ought not to keep dogs at all, I think. 
 One can't explain to them the strange and brutal 
 ways of men, outside the charmed circle of gentle 
 words and caresses. And they leave such a gap, 
 such a silence, such a sorrowful ache of heart! 
 A dozen times I stop, as I pace to and fro, re- 
 membering how Koddy came bounding through 
 the high-seeded grass. A dozen times I stand and 
 look, listen and hope in vain, by open door and 
 clicking garden-latch, by flower-border and sunny 
 lawn, where Roddy comes again no more. 
 
THE FACE OF DEATH 
 
 I WAS looking through an old diary to-day, when 
 I came upon the entry of an experience that befel 
 me in Switzerland a good many years ago. It 
 was nothing less than being face to face, for some 
 twenty minutes, not with the possibility but with 
 the certainty of death. I think it may interest 
 others to know what such an experience is like 
 from the inside. I will just tell the story as 
 simply and plainly as I can. The entry is so 
 full — it was made on the following day — that I 
 am adding no details; in fact, there are certain 
 unnecessary points which I shall omit. 
 
 I was staying at the Bel Alp in August, 1896, 
 with a friend, Herbert Tatham, who has since, 
 strange and sad to say, lost his life in the Alps. 
 We were doing a good deal of climbing, and were 
 in full training. I must add that a week or two 
 before there had been a fatal accident at the 
 same place; an elderly man, a lawyer I think, 
 whose name I have forgotten, lost his footing on 
 a steep rocky ridge not far from the hotel, and 
 was killed by the fall. 
 
 It was just at the end of our stay. We had 
 
 lOl 
 
i^^ Along the Road 
 
 got up early one moruiug and had climbed the 
 Unter-bachhorii, a little rock peak not very far 
 from the hotel. It was not a difficult climb. The 
 day was exquisitely fine, and we were in high 
 spirits. We left the rocks to cross the Unter- 
 bachhorn glacier, below which there was nothing 
 but grass slopes. The glacier is a very smooth 
 one, with no visible crevasses; just a surface of 
 slightly undulatuig snow and ice, but at a steep 
 angle. We were still roped, Clemens Ruppen, the 
 guide, in front, I came next, and Tatham was 
 behind. The snow was a little soft. We were 
 going at a good pace, when I saw by the marks 
 on the glacier, to left and right, that we were 
 crossing a concealed crevasse. At the same in- 
 stant the snow gave way under my foot. I gave 
 a spring, but trod short of the other side, and 
 swung down into the cavity like a sack. My first 
 thought was one of amusement, and I expected 
 to be jerked out in an instant. W^hen the snow 
 that came down with me had fallen past me, I 
 looked about to see where I was. I was hanging 
 at the very top of a huge wide blue crevasse, as 
 though I were dangling at the very summit of 
 the vaulting of a cathedral. I could see by the 
 rather dim light that the crevasse stretched a 
 long way — perhaps eighty yards — to my left, and 
 not very far to my right. There were great ice- 
 bridges spanning the gulf, perhaps ten feet below 
 me, but to my left and right — and there were 
 none immediately beneath. The upper part of 
 
The Face of Death 103 
 
 the crevasse was all a delicate blue colour, but 
 it ran down to a black fathomless gulf, with an 
 unseen stream roaring below. I made desperate 
 efforts to lodge my back against one side and 
 my feet against the other, but the crevasse was 
 too wide and sloped away from me, and the ice 
 was very hard and smooth. I could not get a 
 hold or a purchase of any kind. I tried to dig 
 my painted stick in, but the surface was too hard. 
 These exertions were very laborious, and, sus- 
 pended as I was by the rope under my arms, I 
 felt I could not persevere long. 
 
 I was hanging with my head about four or five 
 feet below the edge, and the guide hauled me up 
 to within a foot or two from the top, but I could 
 not reach the other side. Moreover, the ice 
 against which I was drawn overhung, so that 
 every tug jammed me against it. 
 
 The guide shouted to Tatham to cross the 
 crevasse. I heard him jump over, and a good 
 deal of snow fell on me. They then both pulled, 
 ^ly left arm, unfortunately, was caught between 
 the two lengths of rope. It was instantly numbed, 
 and was drawn up against the overhanging ice, 
 so that I thought it would break. The rope round 
 me kept tightcMiing as they pulled. I heard the 
 guide groan as he tugged ; they shouted to me at 
 intervals that it would be all right in a moment. 
 
 Then suddenly, without any warning, I became 
 horribly faint. My knee, which I had jammed 
 against the ice, slipped, and I swung down sev- 
 
104 Along the Road 
 
 eral feet. Again I was pulled up, again I got 
 my knee against the ice; again it slipped, and 
 I swung down. This happened four or five times. 
 
 Then they desisted for a moment, and Tatham, 
 coming nearer the edge, cut away the lip of the 
 crevasse with his axe. The snow fell upon my 
 upturned face, some of it into my mouth, which 
 refreshed me. But whether it was that the snow 
 filled up the space between my shirt and coat, or 
 whether the rope was tightened, I do not know; 
 but now my right hand became numb. My cap 
 fell off, and I could see my hand, which was on 
 a level with my face, grow white and rigid, and 
 the stick fell from it without my being able to 
 retain it in my stiffened fingers; and I then be- 
 came aware that I was strangling. I shouted 
 out to Tatham that this was the case, but either 
 he did not hear me properly or could not get 
 thl^^ide to understand, for the rope kept on 
 tightening. The danger, I afterwards learned, 
 was that they dared not go too near to the lip 
 of the crevasse, which was thin and brittle, for 
 if one of them had slipped in, the other could 
 not have sustained two of us, and we must all 
 have inevitably fallen to the bottom. 
 
 Suddenly it dawned upon me that I was 
 doomed. I saw that I should either die by 
 strangulation, or that I should lose conscious- 
 ness and slip through the rope, which was rising 
 higher and higher towards my arms. The strange 
 thing was that I had no sense of fear, only a 
 
The Face of Death 105 
 
 dim wonder as to how I should die, and whether 
 thefall would kill rae at once. I had no edifying 
 thoughts. I did not review my past life or my 
 many failings. I wondered that a second fatal 
 accident should happen so soon in the same place, 
 thought a little of my relations, and of Eton, 
 where I was a master, wondered who would suc- 
 ceed to my boarding-house, and how my pupils 
 would be arranged for. I remember, too, specula- 
 ting what death would be like. But I was now 
 rapidly becoming unconscious, with the veins in 
 my head beating like hammers, and I heard a 
 horrible snoring sound in my ears, which I dimly 
 understood to be my own labouring breath. Open- 
 ing my eyes, which I had shut, I saw the chasm 
 all full of my floating breath. All this time I 
 did not know what they were doing, when sud- 
 denly a shower of ice and snow fell on me and 
 around me. Then there was a silence. I '^tried 
 feebly to put my foot out again to the side, but 
 could not hardly move it. Then I think I did 
 become unconscious for a moment, my last 
 thought being a sort of anxious longing to get 
 tlie thing over as soon as possible. 
 
 I did not know and did not care what they 
 were doing above me, as I have said, if, indeed, 
 T was aware of anything but failing life and 
 swimming darkness; wiien suddenly the beating 
 in my head relaxed, and I knew that I was still 
 alive. There came a steady strain and a jerk; 
 I was drawn out of the chasm, and saw the 
 
i06 Along the Road 
 
 glacier and the plain beyond, and felt the sun. 
 I saw the two below me pulling desperately^ at 
 the ropesi I contrived to put my foot upon the 
 edge behind me and give a thrust, and next 
 minute I came out and fell prostrate on the ice. 
 The guide lost his own balance, and fell over on 
 his face at the sudden relaxing of the strain. 
 
 Then came the oddest experience of all. I was 
 not for a minute or two conscious of any relief 
 of mind or gladness; I had a sense of painfully 
 reviving energy, as of one awakened from sleep, 
 and indeed a half-wish that I had not been re- 
 called to life, as though interrupted in a nearly 
 completed task. I saw, too, by the pallor of my 
 friend and by the childlike emotion of the guide, 
 how far worse it had been for them than for me. 
 The guide moaned and shed tears, embraced me 
 and laid his cheek to mine, held me at arm's 
 length, and embraced me again. I found that 
 he had run a great risk to save me; he had come 
 close to the edge, and hewed it all away with 
 his axe ; without this I could not have been saved, 
 and a fracture of the ice or a slip would have 
 been the end of all three of us. I was stiff and 
 bruised, my hands very much cut from the edge 
 of the ice, my knees black and blue; and I car- 
 ried the pattern of the rope stamped on my back 
 for some weeks. I suppose that about twenty 
 minutes in all had elapsed since my fall. I did 
 not feel shaken, though thirsty and lan guid ; but 
 I addressed the guide as Felix — the name of a 
 
The Face of Death 107 
 
 former guide — for a minute or two; and in five 
 minutes we were descending the glacier home- 
 wards. The time had not seemed at all long to 
 me; and, as I have said, I had no touch of pain, 
 only faintness and discomfort, and no sense either 
 of dread or fear. It only gradually came upon 
 me what I ji^tid escajj gd. 
 
 Twasfeverish and uncomfortable in the even- 
 ing, but slept sound without any dreams; and I 
 have never been able to trace any evil effects or 
 any loss of nerve to the incident. I suppose that 
 the whole thing was so brief and painless that 
 the nerves really did suffer no particular shock. 
 The cuts on my hands healed with quite incredible 
 rapidity, owing, I was told, to the untainted 
 material — the purest ice — with which the wounds 
 were inflicted. I remember that Clemens came 
 the next day to see me, and told Tatham that 
 he had kept waking in nightmare and agita- 
 tion all the succeeding night, " in fear for the 
 lieber Herr, Erzbischofsohn, my friend, whom I 
 love." 
 
 That is the story of my taste of death. The 
 strange thing about it to me was its utter un- 
 likeness to anything that I should have imagined 
 such an experience to be, the simplicity of it, tlie 
 commonplace thoughts that came to me, the en- 
 tire absence of any tragic, or melodramatic, or 
 indeed emotional elements. I should have sup- 
 posed, indeed, that it would have been all emo- 
 tion; but I suppose that emotion comes with 
 
io8 Along the Road 
 
 reflection, and that we pass through the most 
 critical and tragic moments of life without any 
 immediate consciousness that they are either 
 critical or tragic at all. 
 
THE AWETO 
 
 I WAS dining the other night with some friends; 
 after dinner our host said that he had something 
 very curious to show us. He went out of the 
 room, and returned in a moment with a shallow, 
 blue box, which he opened very carefully. In- 
 side the box there was a dry and shrivelled cater- 
 pillar about three inches long; out of its head 
 grew a long horn, which must have been at least 
 twice as long as the caterpillar. Some one said 
 that the horn must be a very inconvenient ap- 
 pendage. Our host laughed and said that it was 
 a very inconvenient appendage indeed, but fortu- 
 nately the caterpillar had been unaware of the 
 inconvenience. He told us that it was a rare 
 specimen. It came, he said, from New Zealand, 
 and it is called the Aweto. It is a caterpillar 
 which lives underground. Its habits are mys- 
 terious. No one knows how it propagates its 
 species, or what it turns into. It lives on eating 
 seeds which it finds in the earth. There is one 
 particular seed or spore which it cannot resist 
 the temptation to eat, but it cannot swallow or 
 digest it. The seed sticks in its throat, and im- 
 109 
 
no Along the Road 
 
 mediately in that congenial position it begins to 
 sprout. The plant breaks out behind the cater- 
 pillar's head, and the roots grow into its body. 
 The plant comes up like a slender rush; little is 
 known of the plant either, but it does not appear 
 to be able to germinate unless it is found and 
 eaten by this particular caterpillar. I said that 
 it all reminded me of the Bread-and-Butter-fly in 
 Through the Looking Glass, which lived upon 
 weak tea and bread and butter. Alice asked the 
 Gnat what happened if it could not find any, and 
 the Gnat replied that it died. Alice said that 
 this must happen very often, to which the Gnat 
 replied, " It always happens." The whole story, 
 in fact, is so entirely whimsical that it seems to 
 suggest that Nature is sometimes actuated by an 
 irresponsible and rather cruel kind of humour. 
 Such an extraordinary chain of circumstances 
 can hardly come by chance, and yet so fortuitous 
 and uncomfortable an arrangement seems hardly 
 worth while inventing. Yet it goes on! The 
 plant presumably sheds its seed into the ground 
 in the hopes that some other Aweto may come 
 along and do what is necessary. While if some 
 more fortunate Aweto, in the course of its sub- 
 terranean existence, does not come across one of 
 these particular seeds, it may live a happy and 
 blameless life, and turn into whatever it has a 
 mind to become. 
 
 Our host said that he believed that the story 
 of the Aweto had once been used by a preacher 
 
The Aweto iii 
 
 before Queen Victoria, as an illustration in his 
 sermon, and that the Queen had been so much 
 interested in the story that she had asked to have 
 an Aweto sent for her inspection from some 
 Natural History Museum. I find it hard to 
 think what the application can have been. The 
 poor Aweto has got to live, and it can hardly 
 be expected to know, without being expressly 
 informed, that the particular seed in question 
 has such very unpleasant habits from the point 
 of view of the Aweto. Neither can it be expected 
 that the Aweto, on finding what it had done, 
 would leave its burrow and betake itself to the 
 nearest medical man for assistance, as the lion 
 with the thorn in its foot came to Androcles in the 
 old story. On the other hand, it would be highly 
 satisfactory if the Aweto knew of some other seed 
 which would act, let us say, as an emetic, and 
 more appropriate still if the Aweto were prudent 
 enough to carry a small store of medicinal seeds 
 about with it in case of emergencies ! 
 
 But I suppose that in a general way the story 
 may be taken to apply to the indulgence of some 
 fault, of a kind which seems harmless and natural 
 enough; because the essence of the situation is 
 that the Aweto does not appear to know, as most 
 animals do, that the particular seed is not good 
 for it to eat. 
 
 It seems to me very much like the failing to 
 which good people are prone — the tendency to 
 enjoy finding fault with others. It seems at first 
 
112 Along the Road 
 
 sight that this is rather a noble and conscientious 
 thing to do; if you are quite sure that you are 
 right, and have a strong belief in the virtuous 
 and high quality of your own principles, you 
 begin to practice what is called dealing faith- 
 fully with other people, pulling them up, check- 
 ing them, drenching them with good advice, 
 improving the tone. Such people often say that 
 of course they do not like doing it, but that they 
 must bear witness to what they believe to be 
 right. Of course, it is sometimes necessary in 
 this world to protest; but the worst of the cen- 
 sorious habit of mind is this, that it begins with 
 principles and then extends to preferences. The 
 self-righteous man begins to feel that the hours 
 he keeps, the occupations he follows, the recrea- 
 tions he enjoys, the food which agrees with him, 
 are not matters of personal taste, but things that 
 are virtuous and high-minded. If he likes jam 
 with his tea, he will say that fruit is always 
 wholesome, and that the taste for jam is a sign 
 of a simple and unspoilt palate. If he does not 
 like jam with his tea, he will say that it is waste- 
 ful and luxurious, and that people ought not to 
 tamper with their digestions. If he likes going 
 to the theatre, he says that the drama is an in- 
 spiring and ennobling thing; if he does not like 
 the theatre, he will say that it is a waste of time 
 and a pernicious and distracting influence, beset 
 with moral dangers. As life goes on he becomes 
 an intolerable person with whom no one can feel 
 
The Aweto 113 
 
 at ease. One cannot say what one thinks be- 
 fore him, for fear of incurring his disapproval. 
 The head of the rush is beginning to show above 
 ground, and the roots are spreading into the body! 
 Tlien perhaps the censorious person marries, and 
 improves his family out of all sympathy with 
 \v!iat is fine and generous, by making goodness 
 into a thoroughly disagreeable thing, which is 
 never comfortable unless it is making some one 
 else uncomfortable. 
 
 The pity of it is that the censorious man is 
 80 often a fine character spoiled by egotism. One 
 of the things which it is absolutely necessary to 
 do in life is to distinguish between principles and 
 preferences ; and even if one holds principles very 
 strongly, it is generally better to act up to them, 
 and to trust to the effect of example, than to 
 bump other people, as Dickens said, into paths 
 of peace. 
 
 It is often said by people of this type that 
 praise is unwholesome, and that in bringing up 
 a child one must never commend it for any un- 
 selfishness or self-restraint or perseverance, be- 
 cause people ought not to get to depend upon 
 I>raise. But, on the other hand, it may be said 
 that a child who is always being scolded and 
 never has the sense of its parents' or teachers' 
 approval gets into a stupefied and disheartened 
 condition and gives up the game in despair, be- 
 cause whatever it does it is sure to be put in 
 the wrong. I found, in my twenty years' experi- 
 
114 Along the Road 
 
 ence as a schoolmaster, that well-deserved praise 
 was the most potent factor of improvement in 
 the world; to neglect it is to throw away de- 
 liberately one of the strongest and most beautiful 
 of natural and moral forces. . . . 
 
 Well, we have drifted far enough away from 
 the poor Aweto and its ruthless invader. It is 
 a pity to run one's metaphor too hard; and it 
 is a mistake, I think, to draw analogies too freely 
 between natural processes and moral processes. 
 The essence of the natural process is its inevi- 
 tability and its inflexibility. No species of edu- 
 cation could be devised for the Aweto which could 
 lead it to exercise a wiser selection of food ; while 
 the essence of the moral process is that there is 
 a faculty of choice, limited no doubt by circum- 
 stance and heredity, but still undoubtedly there. 
 But the poor Aweto is a parable, for all that, of 
 many sad things which happen about us day by 
 day; while if we choose to invert the image, and 
 to consider the question from the point of view 
 of the rush, we may consider the Aweto to be 
 the type of a fine kind of unselfishness which 
 gives itself up without calculation or reluctance, 
 and lays down its life that some root of beauty 
 may send a growing head of greenness and 
 freshness into sunshine and air. 
 
THE OLD FAMILY NURSE 
 
 1 Ji:th, as we called her, and as her name is written 
 in many hearts, was born in 1818. She had a 
 little simple teaching at a dame's school; the 
 small children were tanght to spell and read; 
 the elder girls sewed and read alond. She was 
 v(»ry happy at school, she used to say ; but where 
 ^v as Beth not happy? It was a slender outfit, 
 hut it was enough for all she had to do. 
 
 When she was sixteen, in 1834, she went to 
 l)e nursemaid in the family of my grandfather, 
 the Hev. William Sidgwick, Headmaster of Skip- 
 ton Grammar School. He was a delicate man 
 and died young; my grandmother was left a 
 widow with six little children, of whom two died 
 in infancy, and eventually settled at Rugby. 
 Beth brought them all up— William Sidgwick, 
 formerly tutor of Merton; Henry Sidgwick, the 
 Cambridge Professor; Arthur Sidgwick, the 
 Rugby master, afterwards tutor of Corpus Col- 
 lege, Oxford ; and my mother. My father went 
 to Rugby as a master in 1852, and lived with the 
 Sidgwicks, who were his cousins; he married in 
 1859, and went to Wellington College as Head- 
 "5 
 
ii6 Along the Road 
 
 master ; Beth came on there as nurse in 1860, 
 and brought up all of us, going on with us to 
 Lincoln and Truro, and coming on to Lambeth 
 as housekeeper. Since my father's death she had 
 lived on with my mother, full of activity and 
 energy till she had passed her ninetieth year. In 
 the last eighteen months she w^as confined to bed 
 and sofa. Even so her illness was not unhappy; 
 she could enjoy reading and talk, and welcome 
 with smiles her many visitors. On May 5, 1911, 
 she just breathed away her life, dying like a 
 tired child. 
 
 Thus she had been nearly seventy-seven years 
 in one family, and wholly identified with its in- 
 terests and affections. Her room was a little 
 gallery of pictures and photographs, the many 
 scenes of her long life, and the faces of those 
 whom she had tended and loved. There seems 
 hardly any affection that is closer than that, with 
 no tie of blood behind it, but yet having shared 
 every experience and association, every sorrow 
 and joy with us; everything told to her, every- 
 thing confided to her, her whole heart and memory 
 a mine rich in the secrets of love and life. 
 
 She was a slight, spare Yorkshire woman, with 
 the perfect health that comes of a strong consti- 
 tution and a mind always occupied with the 
 thought of other people. She had severe illnesses 
 in her later years, but rallied from them. Her 
 face, strong and expressive, and with a touch of 
 austerity, even severity as I first knew it, had 
 
The Old Family Nurse 117 
 
 softened into one of the sweetest and moat 
 radiant of expressions I ever saw, full of tran- 
 (luil goodwill; and in her later years, free from 
 nursery responsibilities, she had developed a 
 gaiety and a childlike zest in the little incidents 
 of life that was even surprising. She loved to 
 be made fun of, and to have her old strictness 
 recognised, and she was full of shrewd repartees 
 mid homely epigrams. She had a very shrewd 
 and even stern judgment of character, but for 
 those whom she loved she had a perfectly un- 
 critical and unquestioning affection. She kept 
 her opinions of people to herself, unless there 
 was need to speak; and even so she was always 
 on the side of example rather than precept. Her 
 displeasure, in nursery days, was very slow in 
 coming, and silent and sorrowful when it came; 
 but if Beth had reason to feel ashamed at some- 
 thing one had done or said, there was nothing 
 that one would not attempt to regain her good 
 opinion. She never scolded, never interfered; she 
 hardly ever even played with us; sometimes she 
 could be persuaded to tell a little story, but it 
 was always of real life. She was always at work 
 for us, always ready to provide anything for us, 
 or to clear anything away, stopping the nursery, 
 racket, if it became unbearable, by a word, and 
 never severe except to unkindness or quarrelsome- 
 ness; she never lectured or indulged in moral 
 reflections ; she made us many presents, and loved 
 giving pleasure more than anything else in the 
 
ii8 Along the Road 
 
 world ; she made no parade of her qualities, aud, 
 indeed, never compared herself with any one. It 
 was, I think, inconceivable to her that any one 
 should be selfish or dishonest or unkind. She 
 enjoyed her work, and she never seemed tired or 
 fretted; neither was she ever unemployed. Her 
 work done, in the later years, she would trot 
 about the house, look after the clothes of any of 
 her children who happened to be at home; and 
 if something was lacking, it would be found that 
 Beth had as often as not supplied it out of her 
 own pocket. So it went on day after day, the 
 same perfectly faithful, unobtrusive service, never 
 claiming the least gratitude or honour — just glad 
 to be with those she loved, and happy to spend 
 herself, her time and thought, in tending and 
 pleasing them. 
 
 She had a great natural dignity of manner and 
 speech; she was just as much at home in the big 
 households of Lambeth and Addington as she had 
 been in the old, simple days, and she was re- 
 garded by every one with natural affection and 
 respect. She was brought into contact with 
 many distinguished people, and behaved to them 
 all with a perfectly unaffected directness and 
 courtesy. She received Queen Victoria in the 
 Wellington College nursery, and answered her 
 kind questions with simple straightforwardness, 
 giving her the title of "My Majesty"; and in 
 later years she would do the honours of her little 
 room to a bishop or a dean with the same perfect 
 
The Old Family Nurse 119 
 
 sweetness and naturalness, taking people as they 
 were, and not as they were called. She never 
 claimed the time or the attention of any one. 
 If one was at home, she would come in just for 
 a word and a look to satisfy herself that the 
 nursling had returned to the nest. She said 
 good-bye with tears, and my last vision of home 
 for many years, on departure to work, has been 
 the sight of Beth waving her handkerchief at the 
 little casement of her room, to return to her work 
 with a thought of love and sorrowful farewell. 
 When, after my father's death, we were all for 
 a time dispersed, she was staying with her York- 
 shire relations, suffering much from home-sick- 
 ness and the absence of dear faces, and hearing 
 that my youngest brother was to pass through 
 town on his way to his curacy, she came up alone 
 to a London terminus, just to get a sight of him, 
 had a few half-tearful, half-joyful words with him, 
 and gallantly returned. 
 
 The wonder of it all! Fresh as I am from a 
 sense of her loss, and with the thought of all 
 the old days of tendance and affection breaking 
 on the mind in waves of memory, I do not want 
 to exaggerate or to say more than I believe; but 
 it does seem to me one of the most perfect lives 
 that could be lived, in its humility, its sweetness, 
 its devotion, its dutifulness, and in its abounding 
 love. The materials so simple, the outfit so 
 slight, the worth of it so pure and true. There 
 is something amazing about the entire absence 
 
I20 Along the Road 
 
 of personal claim, the generosity, the fulness of 
 it all. She was one of the few people I have 
 ever known who really foiimLit more blessed to 
 g4ve^han to receive, who only asked of life that 
 she might work, and love, and be loved. 
 
 It was all so fine in its quality ; her clear judg- 
 ment, her love of beautiful things, her splendid 
 sense and calmness, her perfect helpfulness in 
 sorrow or trouble, the utter absence of any 
 morbidity or self-pity, of any reference to her 
 own rights or needs. She did not draw a line 
 round her work, or claim any leisure or ease ; she 
 simply never thought about herself at all; if 
 there was work to be done, she enjoj^ed doing 
 it; if there was time disengaged, there was some 
 one whom she could please; and her simplicity 
 about it all was not the effort of a sincere nature 
 striving against complacency; it was simply the 
 instinctive gratitude for life, its homely duties 
 and its dear cares. It was not as if she had not 
 tastes and preferences; she loved travelling, and 
 was transported by scenery. She came with us 
 more than once to Switzerland, and on first catch- 
 ing sight of snow-mountains, " Is it seen with 
 the eye ? " she said. She loved, too, the beauty 
 of words, enjoyed poetry and good books; and 
 the only difficulty in reading to her in later life 
 was that she could not bear to hear of anything 
 unkind or unhappy. 
 
 I do not know what her religious faith was; 
 she could not have explained it; but she knew 
 
The Old Family Nurse 121 
 
 the meaning of the large words of life — pardon, 
 love, and peace — and she lived so entirely in the 
 spirit of Christ that she had little need to think 
 about points of doctrine. The last things she 
 cared to hear were simple old hymns, which she 
 repeated softly to herself with the reader, till 
 the day when my mother said to her, " You are 
 sleepy, Beth; you would like to go to sleep?" 
 " Yes, to sleep, and to forget everything!" with 
 a tired smile. 
 
 Well, it is all over and done, and the worn-out 
 body sleeps in a little Sussex churchyard. I shall 
 never see her again, slipping lightly down to greet 
 me, -as the wheels grated on the gravel, or see her 
 waving farewell through her tears. But neither 
 can I think of her as at rest. Even when the 
 body that had toiled so faithfully gave way at last, 
 the mind and the spirit, the desire to serve and 
 love, were just as strong and fresh as ever. The 
 dear hands, once so worn with work, grew soft 
 and white in those last months, and she would 
 look wonderingly at them, as if surprised at their 
 lack of strength and use ; but one feels of a spirit 
 like hers that it must pass refreshed and renewed 
 to some further heavenly service. If there are 
 souls to serve and love, Beth will somehow find 
 them out to tend and comfort them! 
 
 And how such a life puts to shame one's de- 
 signs and hopes and ambitions and claims! It 
 teaches one how entirely happy life could be, 
 lived on the simplest lines, if only one cared for 
 
122 Along the Road 
 
 others rather than for oneself, and took a natural 
 joy in work, instead of thinking of it as some- 
 thing troublesome and tedious, to be discharged 
 and put aside; and it shows one, too, how the 
 personal relation, the brimming-over tenderness, 
 the absorption in others, is what matters most 
 of all, and survives when all other hopes and 
 desires decay. It is surely the one thing that 
 does matter. If all enjoyed work and lived for 
 love, like Beth, the world would be a simple and 
 a happy place. She never resisted sorrow, nor 
 repined at any loss or trouble; she did not dwell 
 on her right to be happy. If others were suffer- 
 ing, she simply poured her healing love and care 
 into the gap; and all this with no sense of recti- 
 tude, no rigid adherence to principle; her prin- 
 ciples were, with her, what sustained life and 
 conduct, not things to be used to correct and 
 terrify others with — and the motive of all was 
 love. One must believe that temperament has yet 
 its varied work; but by seeing and feeling the 
 beauty of such a life, in one's sorrow for the 
 loss of it and one's gratitude for the gift of it, 
 one may surely get a little closer to the truth. 
 
 She was the first human being of whose love 
 I was directly conscious, and her tender care has 
 enveloped my whole life, as boy and man; the 
 beloved nurse, and the dearest friend I have ever 
 known or shall know. I mean to be better, purer, 
 and simpler for her life and example, and with 
 a sure and certain hope of reunion. Her spirit 
 
The Old Family Nurse 123 
 
 will find ours out, if she has to journey to meet 
 us; and I feel of her something of what John 
 Wesley said of his friend Whitefield, when he 
 J) reached what seemed to be erroneous doctrine, 
 and some poor, carping disciple said to Wesley, 
 hoping for a grim answer : " Do you think, sir, 
 that when we get to heaven we shall see Mr. 
 Whitefield? " " I doubt, sir," said the old evan- 
 gelist, " for he will be so near the throne, and 
 we so far off, that we shall scarce get sight of 
 him." 
 
THE ANGLICAN CLERGY 
 
 It is always, I think, amusing to be criticised as 
 one of a class. When I read the other day, in 
 a speech about the House of Lords — I forget 
 whose, but I rather think it was one of Mr. 
 Winston ChurchilFs conciliatory orations — ^that 
 the only people who took an interest in the con- 
 stitutional aspect of the question were uni- 
 versity dons and the sort of people who read 
 the Spectator, I was not displeased, because 
 I knew that, though I was a don, I was singularly 
 free from all the prejudices and foibles of the 
 class. So I am not afraid of writing about the 
 clergyman from the point of view of the layman, 
 because I am sure that no one will feel person- 
 ally aggrieved. It is not either as though I had 
 anything at all satirical or wounding to say. I 
 was brought up among the clergy, and I lived 
 for a considerable part of my life in close touch 
 with ecclesiastical circles. Some of my best and 
 dearest friends are clergymen ; and I think I may 
 fairly claim to have known a great number of 
 clergy and a great variety of clergy. As a school- 
 master and as a don I lived mainly among lay- 
 124 
 
The Anglican Clergy 125 
 
 men; but a man is not easily detaclied from his 
 class, and to this day my heart, like Words- 
 worth's, rather leaps up when I behold a clergy- 
 man. I like what I may call clerical shop ; I enjoy 
 talk about clerical costume, church music and 
 furniture, ecclesiastical politics and promotions. I 
 am a connoisseur of clerical humour, which is 
 often very good of its kind — a mild, dry beverage, 
 with a delicate ethical flavour, and with a lam- 
 bent irony that plays innocuously about arch- 
 deacons and rural deans. But it requires, as Mr, 
 Shorthouse once wrote about the High Anglican 
 position, an initiation to comprehend ; and one 
 must be bred up in it to realise its peculiar and 
 pleasant characteristics. 
 
 I am often surprised at the view which what 
 I may call men of the world are apt to take 
 about our clergy. They look upon them as rather 
 feminine, narrow-minded, officious men, with poky 
 interests and fussy tendencies. Some go further, 
 and allow themselves to think and speak of the 
 clergy as men with whom insincerity has become 
 a second nature, as people who are in the un- 
 happy position of having to preach and accept 
 doctrines and modes of thought in which they 
 do not really believe. The other day I had occa- 
 sion to remonstrate with an academical friend 
 who talked in this vein. T was compelled at last 
 to say that the only possible explanation of his 
 talk was that he simply did not know any of 
 the clergy well enough to form an opinion. The 
 
126 Along the Road 
 
 outside opinion of a class is almost always a 
 belated one, and is generally true of the worst 
 specimens of the class as it was about forty years 
 before; and it is true to say that a very great 
 change has passed over the three professional 
 classes with which I am best acquainted — clergy, 
 schoolmasters, and dons. The fact is that they 
 have all three become very much less professional 
 than they were. The clergy have no desire to 
 take a superior line or to improve the occasion, 
 the don does not in the least desire to deride the 
 ignorance of others, nor does the schoolmaster 
 thirst to impart elementary information. The 
 clergy have become a part of the national life 
 in the last thirty or forty years to a marked 
 extent. In novels, in comic papers, on the stage, 
 a certain amount of mild fun is poked at them, 
 bat the frequency of their appearance is a very 
 clear proof that they are a real social factor. 
 The fact is that the sense of responsibility has 
 enormously increased among the clergy, and with 
 it their influence and status. I believe that they 
 wield great and increasing power, and do so with 
 wonderful modesty and moderation. There are 
 constant complaints about the dearth of clergy. 
 That is the inevitable result of a very real and 
 deep improvement in the standard of character 
 and the sense of vocation. I was constantly sur- 
 prised when I was a master at Eton by the way 
 in which parents used to express a hope and a 
 desire that their sons might take orders; but a 
 
The Anglican Clergy 127 
 
 boy was never briskly consigued, so to speak, to 
 the clerical profession ; it was always understood 
 that no sort of pressure was to be applied. 
 
 Then, too, there is the organisation of clerical 
 training, which in the last forty years has turned 
 what was often a very amateurish business into 
 a real and sensible si)ecialism. There is no sort 
 of doubt that the clergy are infinitely better 
 equipped for their work than they were. 
 
 Now the result of all this is that when one 
 encounters, say as a stranger in a strange place, 
 a clergyman, what does one expect to find? I 
 will say frankly what I expect to find, and gen- 
 erally do find. I find first a man of real courtesy, 
 kindness, and consideration, surely the best note 
 of the pastor. I want to emphasise this point 
 because it is true and important. I am aston- 
 ished at the unfailing courtesy of the clergy 
 whenever and in whatever capacity one meets 
 them. They have not a monopoly of this, of 
 course; but while the ordinary English layman 
 is a pleasant, bluff, sensible person, he often gives 
 you the feeling of a certain aloofness, and shows 
 that he is not particularly interested in your 
 affairs. But the kindness of the clergy is a real 
 and eager kindness, a desire to be personally 
 pleasant and useful and companionable; it is not 
 an obtrusive courtesy or a desire for mutual 
 recognition; it is the benevolence of a man who 
 thinks it is his business to help and serve, and 
 who does it with all his heart. The exceptions 
 
128 Along the Road 
 
 to this are so rare as to be negligible; and I 
 think that it is perhaps the most distinguishing 
 characteristic of the clergy. No matter how petty 
 or tiresome one's requisitions may be, one finds 
 a clergyman always ready and anxious to do 
 whatever he can. And I think they add to this 
 another high quality, and that is the virtue of 
 common sense. I am going to make one excep- 
 tion to this later on, but as a rule I am struck 
 with the shrewd and tolerant judgment they dis- 
 play of men and things, and the real knowledge 
 that many of them have of human nature. This 
 is a thing which can only come by experience, 
 and it is in itself a strong testimony to their quiet 
 and laborious work among human beings. And 
 further, I am sure that they are distinguished, 
 as a rule, by what I can only call conspicuous 
 good breeding. They get this from having to mix 
 on intimate terms with all sorts of people, high 
 and low; and our clergy are accordingly both 
 well-mannered, in the best sense, and unaffected. 
 They do not vary their manner with reference 
 to social position ; they are respectful, genial, and 
 simple with all alike. Of course, there are in- 
 dividuals who may fail in these qualities. But 
 I am sure that any one who has seen a large 
 variety of parsons will agree with me that what 
 I have said is in no way excessive. 
 
 Now, having said thus much in grateful and 
 sincere recognition of the merits of our clergy, 
 may I add a few small criticisms? I think that 
 
The Anglican Clergy 129 
 
 the clergy do not do themselves full justice in 
 two points. The first point is a complicated and 
 flifticult one; it is that they display a certain 
 timidity of mind in the discussion of religious 
 questions. There is no doubt that religious 
 oi»inion among the laity, at all events, is advanc- 
 ing very rapidly upon more or less liberal lines. 
 Tliere is an amusing story which may illustrate 
 my point. It is said that when a certain Bible 
 dictionary was being compiled, the editor asked 
 a prominent ecclesiastic for an article on the 
 Deluge. It was rather late in arriving, and when 
 it came the editor found that it was too advanced 
 and heterodox for his purpose. So to gain time 
 he put under the word " Deluge " the reference 
 ** see Flood," and hastily requisitioned another 
 article from another contributor. But when that 
 arrived, it seemed also too liberal in its tend- 
 encies ; so he put " Flood, see Noah," and took 
 time to consider. But when he reached "Noah" he 
 found that public opinion had changed, and that 
 the original article on the Deluge was now ortho- 
 dox enough, and inserted it accordingly. 
 
 Tlie clergy are so anxious — and, indeed, it is 
 their business-^to conciliate all shades of opin- 
 ion, and so desirous not to offend the most 
 scrupulous of consciences, that they give the im- 
 pression, I often think, of being more retrograde 
 than they are. I do not know how this difficult^' 
 is to be met; I suppose it will cure itself. But 
 the result is that, instead of the clergy taking 
 
130 Along the Road 
 
 the lead in religious thought, and giving the kind 
 of guidance that thinking people require, they 
 frighten people into silence by an appearance of 
 antiquated reserve on vexed questions. I am not 
 speaking about the essential and fundamental 
 doctrines of Christianity, but upon the large 
 fringe of accessory points which surrounds the 
 central truths ; and thus a thoughtful layman, in- 
 stead of feeling that a clergyman is the right per- 
 son with whom he can discuss religious problems, 
 thinks of him as a person who is easily shocked, 
 as a man who cannot face the development of 
 Christian thought. 
 
 And then, too, I am sure that the clergy lose 
 ground b}^ being too much in earnest about what 
 a rude layman would call millinery. The de- 
 velopment of Church ceremonial and tradition is 
 in its way a beautiful and attractive thing, but 
 if it is too prominent in a clergyman's mind, it 
 develops a sort of impatience in the lay mind. 
 It is rather easy for a clergyman to deceive him- 
 self in the matter ; for there are in every congre- 
 gation a certain number of people whose interest 
 in such things is sincere and genuine; but they 
 are not always the most robust of the flock; and 
 if a clergyman allows himself to pay undue at- 
 tention to these matters, he is in danger of for- 
 feiting masculine allegiance. Most people like 
 the service of the sanctuary to be solemn and 
 dignified; but the ordinary Englishman does not 
 care for what is symbolical — my father used to 
 
The Anglican Clergy 131 
 
 say that even the Baptismal Service was too 
 dramatic for a certain type of British mind; and 
 if a clergyman allows his interest in such mat- 
 ters to become too pronounced, he will have to 
 part company with what is perhaps the most 
 vigorous section of his flock. And in this con- 
 nection may I mention a small point which T 
 think is sincerely to be deplored, and that is the 
 unhappy intonation, which is supposed to be de- 
 votional, but which is often both slovenly and 
 pietistic, which is too common in our churches, 
 especially in the reading of Scripture. No one 
 desires reading to be melodramatic; but I declare 
 that I heard the other day one of the most fla- 
 grant and brutal passages of the Old Testament, 
 the death of Jezebel, which is a piece of desperate 
 and hideous tragedj', read in church as though it 
 were the amiable musings of some contemplative 
 hermit. This does give a layman a sense of un- 
 reality and absurdity combined; and instruction 
 in restrained dramatic elocution should be a part 
 of every theological course. 
 
 I do not say these things in at all a captious 
 or ungracious spirit. I think that they are points 
 deserving of serious consideration. I will only 
 repeat what I believe to be the simple truth, that 
 we have in the Anglican Church a body of men 
 who in social standing, devotion, and true pas- 
 toral virtue are incomparably higher and finer 
 than the clergy of any other communion. They 
 have won, under severe criticism and even disdain 
 
132 Along the Road 
 
 — the shadow of the old dreary and sleepy Eras- 
 tian times — the respect and affection and trust 
 of their countrymen. For a paltry wage, in a 
 career which gives but small opportunity to 
 worldly ambition, they live uprightly and purely 
 and beneficently ; and their children — I say this 
 from personal experience of them at school and 
 college — are some of the wholesomest and sim- 
 plest specimens of English growth. I look with 
 dread upon any legislation which would in any 
 way imperil the energy and efficiency of a class 
 whose services and labours are of incalculable 
 benefit to the nation. 
 
COMPULSORY GREEK 
 
 i'liEBK has been another controversy in the Times 
 on the subject of Compulsory Greek. The de- 
 fence has been mainly conducted by Professor 
 Murray, who has perhaps done as much to inter- 
 I)ret the Greek spirit as any other living Briton. 
 l*rofessor Turner, the great astronomer, leads the 
 attack, and Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, the emi- 
 nent scientist, has dealt some shrewd blows. The 
 gist of the controversy is this: that Oxford and 
 Cambridge, alone of our universities, make it 
 practically impossible for any one to enter with- 
 out a modicum of Greek. It is not seriously 
 contended that this amount of Greek does the 
 possessor of it any particular good; it certainly 
 is not enough to enable him to have any very 
 intimate |>erception of Greek literature and Greek 
 thought. One hears of the most grotesque de- 
 vices being resorted to in order to creep through 
 the fence. The other day a young friend of mine, 
 who is a promising engineer, wishing to enter 
 at Cambridge, and knowing no Greek, learned 
 by heart the English translation of a Greek play, 
 trusting to knowing just enough of the language 
 
 133 
 
134 Along the Road 
 
 to be able in the examinatioD to write down the 
 correct passage. No one can pretend that such 
 a process is anything but an irritating interrup- 
 tion to his real work. But the grounds on which 
 this regulation is defended are the following. It 
 is alleged that if Greek is not kept compulsory 
 at some universities, the study of it will perish, 
 because there will not be enough boys learning 
 it at smaller schools to have a Greek master; 
 and it is further alleged that universities which 
 desire that their studies should be, in a general 
 way, of a literary type, should do all they can 
 to preserve the study of what is undoubtedly the 
 finest flower of culture in the world; and the 
 defenders of Greek go on to urge that if students 
 of science are allowed to specialise entirely in 
 science, their mind loses its intellectual balance, 
 and becomes narrow and one-sided. 
 
 I am myself wholly of opinion that it would 
 be a great misfortune if the study of Greek were 
 abandoned; and I think it is perfectly true that 
 s])ecialism in science is a dangerous thing; it is 
 imi)ortant, on many grounds, that men of science 
 should possess some literary culture; but I am 
 equally sure that the retention of compulsory 
 Greek under present conditions is a hindrance 
 rather than a help to the advanced study of the 
 language ; while for scientific students compulsory 
 Greek not only does not give literary culture, 
 but actually consumes the time which might be 
 given to it, because Greek, learnt as it is, does 
 
Compulsory Greek 13S 
 
 not present itself to the average boyish mind as 
 literature at all. 
 
 Then there comes the case of the ordinary pass- 
 man. Now here, I think, it is a great misfortune 
 that the defence of Greek is as a rule conducted 
 by literary giants, so to si>eak ; men to whom 
 Greek never presented any intellectual difficulty, 
 and to whom the beauty of Greek literature ap- 
 pealed from the very first. These defenders of 
 Greek are perfectly sincere; they cannot under- 
 stand how anything which seems to them so per- 
 fectly and entirely majestic and beautiful as 
 Greek literature should not have a beneficial 
 effect upon the minds of those who have to 
 learn it. 
 
 Personally, I approach the subject from a dif- 
 ferent point of view. As an old schoolmaster I 
 taught, first and last, at Eton, about two thou- 
 sinid boys, of all ages and attainments. And I 
 unhesitatingly declare that the number of boys 
 to whom Greek appealed as literature was a very 
 small percentage indeed. I am quite sure that 
 the hours devoted to classics — ^by far the larger 
 share of the hours of work — were not only wasted 
 hours, which might have been given to stimu- 
 lating and intelligible work, but worse than 
 wasted, because they taught boys to dislike and 
 to despise intellectual pursuits altogether. The 
 average boy at the end of an elaborate classical 
 education is often in the miserable i)osition of 
 knowing no classics, and not having had the time 
 
136 Along the Road 
 
 to learn anything else. Nowadays, when com- 
 petition is so severe, an education which does 
 not put a boy in a position to earn his living is 
 not only a wasted education — it is a fraud ! And 
 too many boys find themselves stranded on this 
 account. A boy who knows French and Ger- 
 man, can calculate correctly, can express himself 
 in English, and can write a good hand, is in 
 a position to earn his living; there is plenty of 
 time to teach him these things, and to give him, 
 as well, some elementary science, some history 
 and geography, and some sound religious teach- 
 ing. But there is not time for all these things 
 and for the classics as well. Moreover, a boy 
 educated on modern lines would be capable of 
 understanding what is going on in the world; 
 and it is ridiculous to say that his intellectual 
 interests could not be stimulated by the above 
 programme. What does happen is that his in- 
 tellectual interests are not stimulated by classics, 
 and he is often rendered inefficient as well. 
 
 Moreover, such a boy ought not to be excluded 
 from Oxford or Cambridge on the grounds of an 
 ignorance of classics. There are many reasons 
 — social reasons, reasons of tradition and associa- 
 tion — why parents who can afford it should send 
 boys to Oxford and Cambridge. The two Univer- 
 sities have a special tone of their own, and a 
 very fine tone. What I feel that the Universities 
 ought to do is to offer as wide a choice as pos- 
 sible of alternative subjects, encourage all their 
 
Compulsory Greek 137 
 
 men to take up a congenial subject, and raise the 
 standard of performance in these subjects. At 
 present it is confessed that the intellectual stand- 
 ard demanded of the passmen is deplorably low; 
 and why all this waste of power, this manufacture 
 of inefficiency should be permitted, just because 
 tlie abolition of compulsory Greek might possibly 
 endanger the interests of one special subject, I 
 cannot conceive. It seems to be a monopoly and 
 a tyranny which ought to be resolutely resisted. 
 
 The other day an official high in the Civil 
 Service said to me that he had a number of 
 appointments to make. " I wanted," he said, " to 
 securfe public school and university men if I 
 could, because the type is such a good one in 
 every w^ay, and I made special efforts to secure 
 them. I interviewed a large number of candi- 
 dates; the men of the kind I wanted were in 
 general ways the best ; but they simply were use- 
 less for my purpose. They could not, many of 
 them, write a respectable hand; they could not 
 express themselves in English, they could not 
 calculate accurately, they knew no French and 
 German, and they did not even know their 
 classics." That seems to me a very deplorable 
 indictment, but it is true. And the pity of it 
 is that the machinery for producing good results 
 is all there, but it is working on the wrong lines. 
 
 The defenders of compulsory Greek seem un- 
 aware how much conditions have altered in the 
 last fifty years. The world has passed through 
 
138 Along the Road 
 
 a period of immense expansion. An attempt has 
 been made to meet this at schools by introducing 
 new studies, but the effect of them has been 
 nullified by trying to keep the classics as well. 
 Tt has become a farce, and a dangerous farce; 
 and it ought not to be allowed to continue. 
 
 I am glad to see that the pressure of public 
 opinion is producing an effect. We have lately 
 at Cambridge taken a step which reduces our 
 position to an absurdity. We demand Greek for 
 entrance to the University, but we do not require 
 that a man shall do any more Greek when he has 
 once entered. That, is to say, we acquiesce in a 
 boy^s time being wasted at school in learning a 
 subject which we do not insist on his continuing 
 at the University. What then becomes of our 
 ideal of culture, and of the necessity of putting 
 men under the influence of Greek thought? Of 
 course it is very difficult to break down a system 
 which has been long in use; there is a conserva- 
 tive tendency in academical circles, and there are 
 vested interests as well. But it is not good citi- 
 zenship to let this block the way to a great and 
 desirable reform. 
 
 I have often been amused in the course of the 
 controversy to recall the three reasons, attributed 
 I think to Dean Gaisford of Christ Church, for 
 the study of Greek. The Dean is supposed to 
 have said that the first reason was that a know- 
 ledge of Greek gave a man a proper degree of 
 contempt for men of lesser acquirements. That 
 
Compulsory Greek 139 
 
 does not seem to me to ])e a spirit which it is 
 desirable to cultivate, and in any case the pass- 
 man's store of Greek is hardly an adequate basis 
 for any form of intellectual pride. The second 
 reason was that it enabled a man to study the 
 words of our Saviour in the original tongue. I 
 suppose that it is now generally admitted that 
 our Lord probably spoke Aramaic, but in any 
 case a man who was not impressed by the teach- 
 ing of the Gospel in the English version could 
 hardly be supposed to derive much additional 
 benefit from studying the Greek Testament; 
 though, of course, in any such reform as I have 
 indicated, the interests of the theological faculty 
 would be carefully safeguarded. 
 
 The third reason, and the most conclusive, was 
 that it led to situations of emolument ; so it does, 
 no doubt, for the few who have the privilege of 
 continuing to teach Greek. But for the ordinary 
 man I would affirm that so far from compulsory 
 Greek leading him to situations of emolument, it 
 is the principal factor in our English education 
 which leaves him at the threshold of life without 
 a prospect of any situation at alL 
 
GAMBLING 
 
 I LISTENED the other day to an earnest and elo- 
 quent sermon against gambling and betting, 
 which left an unsatisfactory impression on my 
 mind. No one, of course, has any doubt that 
 gambling is responsible for a great deal of crime 
 and misery, and that it is in a large number of 
 cases an entirely reprehensible and pernicious 
 practice. But the difficulty about it is that it 
 seems impossible to lay down absolutely cogent 
 and conclusive moral reasons against it. The 
 same is not the case with things like theft or 
 cruelty, which" can be condemned root and branch. 
 No amount of sophistical argument could justify 
 the theft of a threepenny-bit, or deliberate cruelty 
 to the smallest and humblest of insects. But it 
 would take a very stringent moralist to condemn 
 a bet of sixpence between two millionaires as to 
 the correctness of a disputed date, and few people 
 would be found to condemn on moral grounds 
 the playing of a rubber of whist by well-to-do 
 people for penny points. It seems to be a ques- 
 tion of degree and expediency, and possibly of 
 example. The preacher said that one of the rea- 
 
 140 
 
Gambling 141 
 
 sons against betting was that it was not honest 
 to take money that one had not earned. But 
 this plea cannot be for an instant sustained, be- 
 cause it would do away with the possibility of 
 accepting all gifts or legacies, or the increment 
 of a fortunate investment; and are there any 
 moralists so strict as to think themselves bound, 
 if a perfectly bona fide investment turns out 
 well, to pay the proceeds to the State, or to the 
 company, or to devote it all to charitable uses? 
 Moreover, what becomes of such a thing as a 
 life-insurance? There is nothing which is con- 
 sidered to be more virtuous or prudent or well- 
 regulated than for a young man to insure his 
 life. Yet the transaction is nothing more nor less 
 than a bet. If you insure your life, you are bet- 
 ting on your death, while the insurance company 
 is betting on your life. If you die young, your 
 wife and children have the benefit of a sum of 
 money which has certainly not been earned, and 
 w^hich is paid by your fellow-insured who do not 
 die. 
 
 If a man who can afford it bets, and does not 
 bet beyond his means, on the ground that it 
 amuses him, it is very difficult to say where the 
 moral guilt comes in. No one could say that all 
 money spent on amusement is misapplied. No 
 one would say that it was morally wrong to keep 
 a yacht, or to take a shooting, if you have the 
 money to pay for it, and if you think the amuse- 
 ment worth the outlay. It is all, in a sense, a 
 
142 Along the Road 
 
 waste of money, but it is the purest socialism, 
 and socialism of an advanced tj^pe, to say that no 
 one has a right to spend more than he requires for 
 the bare necessaries of life. 
 
 The mere fact that money should change hands 
 is not in itself reprehensible, if both parties tc 
 the arrangement concur in the process. 01 
 course, it is wrong if you lose money that you 
 cannot pay, or money which ought to be devoted 
 to reasonable thrift, or to the education of child 
 ren ; but this would apply to innumerable things, 
 not in themselves wrong, but which become wrons 
 simply by the force of circumstances. I knew a 
 worthy little tradesman once who had a passion 
 for buying books. The desire in itself was in 
 nocent enough, but he ruined himself and reduced 
 his family to beggary by indulging his hobby 
 and it is difficult to see that he was less culp 
 able than if he had brought about the same 
 result by betting. 
 
 Then the preacher said that all gambling 
 vitiated and weakened the moral fibre; but this 
 again is not the case. It is perfectly true o1 
 people who succumb to the passion for gambling 
 but I have known many worthy men who have 
 played whist for small points two or three times 
 a week for the greater part of their lives, who hav( 
 certainly exhibited no traces whatever of mora 
 deterioration. I read, indeed, in a book the othei 
 day an eloquent plea put in the mouth of a bet 
 ting agent to the effect that one ought not t< 
 
Gambling 143 
 
 deny to poor people the only method they have 
 of indulging the pleasures of imagination and 
 bo[)eI This, I think, is an entirely sophistical 
 plea — there are few vices which one could not 
 defend upon similar grounds; and it may be urged 
 as a purely practical consideration, that healthy 
 and well-balanced natures do not need that form 
 of amusement, and that if a nature is not healthy 
 and well-balanced, it is a dangerous pastime at 
 best. 
 
 There is one perfectly reasonable argument 
 which may be urged against the whole practice, 
 and this is the enormous waste involved. If the 
 end of all betting and gambling were that certain 
 foolish persons had a little more money than they 
 had earned, and certain other foolish persons a 
 little less, it would not be so wasteful. But this 
 is not the case. Out of the money that changes 
 hands, a large class of persons — betting and gam- 
 bling agents of all descriptions — are supported. 
 (Jranted that the whole system is defensible on 
 moral grounds, no doubt many of these people 
 earn their money honestly and laboriously; but 
 the class is an unnecessary one, to say the least. 
 They produce nothing, they are supported at the 
 expense of the community, and they live on money 
 which many of the losers cannot spare. 
 
 And then there comes in the fact, which is the 
 one strong and absolute argument against the 
 whole thing: that betting and gambling are, as I 
 have said, undoubtedly responsible for an im- 
 
144 Along the Road 
 
 meuse amount of wretchedness and privation, and 
 even of crime. The passion for gambling is a 
 vice which lays an irresistible grip upon people, 
 and too often upon people who begin by thinking 
 that it is in their power to stop whenever they 
 choose. That, I think, is th,e consideration which 
 ought to be invariably urged in the matter : that 
 no one can possibly tell, until he has tried, 
 whether he may not be liable to the contagion; 
 and that if he once contracts it, it is well-nigh 
 impossible to cure; and, therefore, it is a practice 
 which all sensible and conscientious people who 
 have the welfare of society at heart should set 
 their faces against, and give no encouragement 
 to, lest they cause their brethren to offend. It 
 is not a practice against which, as I have said^ 
 obvious and conclusive moral reasons can be 
 urged, and it damages the cause of those who 
 disapprove of gambling to fulminate against it 
 as though it were an utterly reprehensible and 
 abominable thing. Such a course savours of 
 fanaticism, and sets moderate people against a 
 good cause. But the evil is so insidious, so far- 
 reaching, so horribly destructive in its develop- 
 ments, that it must be met sensibly and tranquilly. 
 It may be the only cure for excess that all 
 moderate people should abstain; and in any case 
 gambling is not a practice that can be included 
 among normal, natural, and innocent pleasures. 
 The State, by stopping lotteries and making bet- 
 ting with all who are under age a criminal offence. 
 
Gambling 145 
 
 lias shown a sense of responsibility in the matter. 
 Further than this it is doubtful whether, in these 
 democratic days, it would be possible to go, for 
 there is little doubt that one of the attractions 
 of public athletic contests is the gambling that 
 accompanies them; and whether a nation which 
 indulges so largely as Englishmen do indulge in 
 betting would consent to tie their hands in the 
 matter is questionable. A serious politician with 
 whom I was discussing the subject the other day 
 said that, to his mind, one of the strong reasons 
 for granting female suffrage was that he believed 
 that far more stringent laws on the subject of 
 gambling would result, because he said that 
 women did not indulge in gambling, and were 
 the part of the community that suffered most in 
 consequence of it. I do not know that I should 
 go as far as this; and it would, of course, be a 
 far better solution if the evil could be cured by 
 voluntary abstention rather than by legislation. 
 
 The preacher maintained that the nation at the 
 present time showed grave signs of decadence and 
 moral deterioration. That, I believe, to be wholly 
 untrue. I think there is every reason to believe 
 that, as a nation, we are more healthy, more 
 vigorous, more sensible by far than we were a 
 century ago. T do not believe that the increase 
 of gambling is a sign of decadence, but a proof 
 that the working-classes have more money and 
 leisure than they used to have. One wishes, of 
 course, that it did not manifest itself in that 
 
146; Along the Road 
 
 particular way; but I am glad, on general 
 grounds, that the democracy should realise that 
 it has the right and the time to be amused. In 
 any case, gambling cannot be suppressed by lec- 
 turing or scolding, or the expression of pious 
 horror. That is only exorcising the evil spirit, 
 and leaving its dwelling-place empty and gar- 
 nished. The only way is to encourage a taste 
 for better and more innocent pleasures, and thus 
 the evil would insensibly disappear. 
 
HYMNS 
 
 I HAVE been reading the new Oxford Hymn-book, 
 with more interest, it mnst be confessed, than 
 satisfaction. The principle of the book has been 
 to restore as far as possible the original read- 
 ings. T say "as far as possible " becanse I have 
 not tested more than a certain number of in- 
 stances, but in all these cases the original has 
 been restored. 
 
 Now this is a theory which it is very easy to 
 justify in principle, but not so easy to carry out 
 in practice. It may be asked, by those who de- 
 fend the restoration of the original text, what 
 right any one has to alter, without the express 
 leave of the writer, the words of his hymns, and 
 to print those hymns with the names of the 
 authors appended, as their work, when in many 
 cases the alterations are numerous and consider- 
 able. No one, it may be urged, would venture 
 to treat any other form of literature in this 
 fashion. Of course that argument at first sight 
 appears to be unanswerable. But a good many 
 considerations may be brought forward on the 
 other side. If hymns were merely a form of 
 
 147 
 
148 Along the Road 
 
 poetry, and if a hymn-book were only a sacred 
 anthology for private reading, alterations are 
 certainly not justified. But a hymn-book is a 
 great deal more than that. It is a service-book; 
 that is to say that, in the first place, hymns are 
 to take their place in the worship of the Church, 
 and to be sung to music ; and in the second place, 
 what is far more important, the worshippers are 
 not merely required to study the thoughts and 
 utterances of the writers, but to adopt them as 
 their own. They are required to take the words 
 on their own lips, to sing them in concert with 
 others, and to use them as the expression of their 
 own beliefs and emotions and aspirations. 
 
 This at once introduces a new feature into the 
 case; one cannot only consider the rights, so to 
 speak, of the original writers, but one has to 
 consider the rights of the congregations who will 
 have to use the words. Hymns, indeed, may be 
 said to pass out of the possession of the writers, 
 and to become the inheritance of the users. 
 
 Let us take a very simple case first. If a word 
 were to acquire some horrible or even flippant 
 association, it would be absurd to insist on its 
 continued use in a hymn-book, if it were to pain 
 or amuse the congregations that used it. It 
 would surely be right to substitute a less of- 
 fensive word. The use, for instance, of the word 
 " bloody " in eighteenth-century hymns is a case 
 in point. The word has acquired low and pro- 
 fane associations. It may be regretted, but it 
 
Hymns 149 
 
 is the fact. Surely no one would object to 
 some innocuous word like " crimson " being sub- 
 stituted? Again, in Rock of Ages there occurs, 
 in the original, the disagreeable expression: 
 " When my eyestrings break in death," which is 
 a touch of ghastly realism. The Oxford book 
 restores this, but to my mind there is something 
 I)edantic and even irritating in expecting people 
 who have learned to love the simple and solemn 
 alteration, ** when my eyelids close in death," to 
 substitute for it the earlier version; I would go 
 further, and say that there is something really 
 shocking in the idea of ex|)ecting a congregation 
 of hundreds of persons to sing the dreadful words 
 in public together. 
 
 It may freely be admitted that the compilers 
 of Hymns Ancient and Modern went further than 
 they need have done in altering hymns, and 
 showed an unreasonable terror of expressions 
 that were in the least degree quaint or uncon- 
 ventional. But the fact remains that Hymns 
 Ancient and Modern has now been used for 
 many years by thousands of worshippers, and 
 that the very alterations are now invested with 
 countless sacred and beautiful associations. It 
 seems to me a harsh and even stupid thing 
 deliberately to set aside and ignore that fact 
 in the interest of what is only a piece of literary 
 recension. The general and decided disapproval 
 \\ ith which the latest revision of Hymns Ancient 
 and Modern has been received ought to have been 
 
150 Along the Road 
 
 a lesson to all revisers. In that last revision, 
 certain familiar and favourite tunes which people 
 had learned to love, and to connect with solemn 
 and affecting occasions, were wantonly omitted, 
 because they did not come up to the musical 
 standard of a few purists. In matters which 
 concern emotion, one cannot venture on such dic- 
 tation; and to make strict taste the arbiter in 
 a matter of the kind is a gross violation of a 
 much more important kind of taste. The same 
 principle applies to the words of hymns and songs 
 which generations of men and women have 
 learned to love. It is the emotion they evoke 
 that matters, not the literary quality of them. 
 Hymns and tunes alike become a national pos- 
 session, and one may no more eject them from 
 manuals meant for general use, on grounds of 
 strict taste, than one might cast out monuments 
 from Westminster Abbey because they were not 
 in consonance with the Gothic design. 
 
 Now let me quote a few examples, taken quite 
 at random. In Charles Wesley's hymn, " Hark ! 
 the herald angels sing. Glory to the new-born 
 King," the original ran: 
 
 " Hark how all the welkin rings 
 Glory to the King of Kings." 
 
 There was possibly no need to alter this, though 
 the word " welkin " is not in use, and it is a 
 pity to have to use, in a hymn for a universal 
 
Hymns 151 
 
 festival, a word which has no associations. More- 
 over, tlie word ^^ welkin " has not in itself a very 
 dijrnified or harmonious sound. But the altera- 
 tions are quite innocuous — indeed beautiful. And 
 further they are old alterations, only fourteen 
 years subsequent in date to the original. If the 
 original had been the altered form, the suggestion 
 to substitute "Hark how all the welkin rings" 
 for " Hark ! the herald angels sing " would have 
 been received with indignation and derision. And 
 since generations have grown up with some of 
 its brightest and happiest associations connected 
 with the later form, it seems to me injurious to 
 insist on restoration, like cutting down a beauti- 
 ful creeper to show an old wall. It is so strange 
 that people do not understand that accretions 
 and associations form half the beauty of an an- 
 cient thing, whatever it be, a poem in words or 
 a poem in stone. 
 
 Again, in Milman's hymn for Palm Sunday, 
 " Ride on, ride on in majesty," one of the original 
 lines was " Thine humble beast pursues his road." 
 It is a poor and undignified line. " Humble 
 beast " suggests " humble vehicle," and the para- 
 phrase for an ass is essentially a journalist de- 
 vice. A reviser very sensibly substituted : 
 
 " Saviour meek, pursue Thy road," 
 
 which is a very unexceptionable alteration, and 
 may well be left in possession. 
 
152 Along the Road 
 
 In the old hymn (1565) " O Lord, turn not 
 thy face [away] from me," the second line, as 
 revised in 1708, runs " who lie in woeful state '• 
 — not a very effective line, but quite in keeping 
 with the archaic character of the hymn. But the 
 Oxford revisers must needs restore the original 
 line, " From him that lieth prostrate," which from 
 a musical point of view is most objectionable, as 
 it involves an ugly slur on " lieth " and a shifting 
 of accent on " prostrate," which is now accented 
 on the first syllable. But worse than this. There 
 was a stanza most judiciously omitted, containing 
 the impossible line: 
 
 " I am sure Thou canst tell." 
 
 And this has been solemnly restored, though by 
 any musical notation which throws the accents 
 on to " am " and " Thou " the line becomes simply 
 grotesque. 
 
 Again, in the hymn, " As now the sun's de- 
 clining rays," the original ran : 
 
 " Lord, on the Cross Thine arms were stretched 
 To draw us to the sky," 
 
 which is both unpoetical and unreal. One cannot 
 be drawn upwards by extended arms, but by 
 hands extended downwards. The first revisers 
 substituted the simple and beautiful line, "To 
 draw Thy people nigh " ; but this line, which is 
 
Hymns 153 
 
 ail improvement from every i)oint of view, and 
 familiar as well, has been ejected for the sake of 
 the unfortunate original. 
 
 In Ken's evening hymn, one of the original lines, 
 in the stanza " Teach me to live," ran: 
 
 " To die, that this vile body may 
 Rise glorious on the awful day." 
 
 " Vile body " is a false note, and a conventional 
 phrase. The alteration: 
 
 " Teach me to die, that so I may " 
 
 is one of those simple alterations which improves 
 the balance of the stanza, and which one cannot 
 help fancying would have even commended itself 
 to the author. Nothing whatever can be gained 
 by restoring the original text, and no one can 
 be either edified or pleased by the change. 
 
 Let me give one more instance. In Faber's 
 beautiful hymn: 
 
 " O come and mourn with me awhile," 
 
 the original second line was : 
 
 " See Mary calls us to His side." 
 
 This line might easily appear objectionable to 
 congregations with certain traditions, and the 
 alterations, 
 
 "O come ye to the Saviour's side," 
 
154 Along the Road 
 
 which is in itself more dignified and beautiful, 
 as not in any way diverting the thought from 
 the central idea, is a good one in every way. 
 
 Throughout the same hymn, Faber wrote in 
 every case, ^' Jesus, our Love, is crucified." This 
 refrain, though beautiful in itself, would not be, 
 perhaps, acceptable to people not familiar with 
 the tone of the ancient hymnology, and might 
 seem to have a sentimental tinge, not in thought 
 perhaps or contemplation, but when applied to a 
 hymn for public worship. No objection could be 
 raised to the substitution of " Jesus, our Lord," 
 and the restoration of the original phrase is very 
 questionable. Then, in the last stanza, the original 
 hymn ran : 
 
 "A broken heart Love's cradle is; 
 Jesus, our Love, is crucified." 
 
 This is a beautiful thought beautifully expressed ; 
 but the metaphor is not a simple one, while the 
 expression may be held to be rather of a literary 
 or poetical type, fit for reflection rather than 
 ascription. It seems to me that the alteration : 
 
 " Lord Jesu, may we love and weep, 
 Since Thou for us art crucified," 
 
 is simpler and even more moving, and I can well 
 understand that any one who had grown familiar 
 with it would greatly resent the reintroduction 
 of the original phrase. 
 
Hymns 155 
 
 It would be easy to multiply inst«auces, but I 
 have said enough to illustrate the principle I wish 
 to enunciate, which is of a democratic and even 
 socialistic type; that when the use of a thing is 
 established, it cannot be tyrannously interfered 
 with by privileged i>ersons. We may regret the 
 accident which led to an alteration becoming 
 ])ublic property, but we can no more restore pri- 
 vate rights than we can alienate a right-of-way. 
 Hymns cannot be treated like ordinary literature, 
 but have to be regarded as a little part of social 
 life, in which custom and use justly override both 
 literary and artistic canons. Thus we have to 
 realise that while we may learn lessons from the 
 past, and do our best to prevent mistakes in the 
 future, we must accept the past, and profit by 
 it as far as we can. We have to recognise, in 
 dealing with hymns, that we are in the presence 
 of the forces of tradition and association, which 
 are stronger and more important than literary 
 maxims, and questions of artistic propriety and 
 impropriety. 
 
PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 I REMEMBER reading a description of a famous 
 preacher of the seventeenth century, whose ser- 
 mons as a rule took an hour and a half to deliver, 
 whose chief merit was that he kept the congrega- 
 tion in a perpetual " twitter," or, as we should 
 say, in an agreeable condition of interested ex- 
 pectation; and I recollect, too, a caricature of a 
 famous eighteenth-century preacher, who is repre- 
 sented craning out from his cushions, with his 
 arms uplifted over a terror-stricken and gaping 
 congregation, with the words, " Ye shall be slain, 
 all the sort of you," issuing from his mouth. 
 
 Underneath were the words : " Mr. gives 
 
 his congregation a good shaking over the pit." 
 Perhaps the reason why sermons are not so much 
 appreciated nowadays is that they are too polite, 
 too amiable. They result neither in twitter nor 
 in panic. I do not know that I should wish for 
 the old methods back again, but I feel that the 
 duty of boldly rebuking vice is not perhaps suf- 
 ficiently kept in view. A friend of mine was 
 once talking to an old family butler about a son 
 of the house who had lately taken orders, and 
 156 
 
Preachers and Preaching 157 
 
 gone to be a curate in a colliery village. The 
 old man said: " Mr. Frank has got himself into 
 sad trouble by preaching against drunkenness; 
 now 'e should 'ave stuck to the doctrine, sir. 
 That would 'ave done no 'arm ! " Perhaps the 
 great defect of sermons at the present day is that 
 they are lacking in practical shrewdness, and aim 
 at doing no harm. After all, it is easy to be 
 critical, but the difficulties of the situation are 
 great. As with services, the problem is not acute 
 in urban districts. With a staff of clergy, and a 
 large and possibly shifting congregation — many 
 of whom are hardly known to each other — and, 
 moreover, with the possibility of obtaining the 
 lielp of neighbouring clergy, the difficulties are 
 reduced to a minimum, though no doubt the diffi- 
 culty of obtaining time for adequate preparation 
 still remains. In a town parish there is, or need 
 be, no lack of novelty — and familiarity is the 
 fruitful mother of inattention — and, moreover, 
 there are no social complications to fear. But 
 in a country parish, where every one knows all 
 about every one else's affairs, it is a serious thing 
 to expect a man to deliver a discourse twice a 
 Sunday, year in and year out, and to bring the 
 Gospel home to his neighbours. It was easy 
 enough for a man like Charles Kingsley, burning 
 with zeal, brimming over with human interest, 
 and with a perpetual flow of vigorous and racy 
 language, to make truth vital and inspiring. But 
 how is a man in a country parish, with no great 
 
158 Along the Road 
 
 gift of speech, and perhaps no great knowledge 
 of human nature, to be expected to deliver in the 
 course of the year a number of discourses that 
 would amount, if printed, to more than one bulky 
 octavo volume, and yet to preserve any freshness 
 of presentation, any moral or spiritual stimulus? 
 The difficulty is increased by the fact that if he 
 preaches directly and forcibly against some moral 
 fault, he will be supposed to have some particular 
 person in view; and the mischief is that he is 
 sure to have some one in view, for where is he 
 to make his sermons if not out of his own experi- 
 ence? The only way is to speak with tenderness 
 as well as indignation, and without personal 
 anger or bitterness — and this is not an easy 
 matter. 
 
 I should like to make a few practical sug- 
 gestions as to how the difficulty might be met. 
 In the first place, I cannot see why the clergy 
 should not at once be relieved from the duty of 
 preaching twice on a Sunday. The sermons might 
 be alternately in the morning and the evening. 
 This would certainly be welcomed as a great 
 relief by many of the clergy, and possibly even 
 by some of the congregations ; for I have observed 
 that the highest praise that can be given by many 
 laymen to a clergyman is that he preaches short 
 sermons ; and to have to listen Sunday after Sun- 
 day to a preacher whose eloquence one can neither 
 stem nor controvert is a real trial in these restless 
 days to the fidgety layman. But if this change 
 
Preachers and Preaching 159 
 
 is impossible, I think it is a great pity that the 
 morning sermon is not more often made a 
 simple exposition of Scripture. I believe that if 
 the clergy went quietly through the Bible, read- 
 ing a good deal and expounding a little, saying 
 just enough to make the circumstances clear and 
 the narrative or the prophecy intelligible, it 
 would be much welcomed by many congregations. 
 The other sermon ought, I believe, to be entirely 
 practical — an application of the principles of the 
 Gospel to tne thousand and one little problems 
 of daily life. * A man ought to speak plainly 
 about grave faults, for people, even well-meaning 
 people, get very drowsy over their faults, and 
 very apt to draw their own picture with the lines 
 and shadows left out; and he might speak, too, 
 of such things as talk and reading, of punctuality 
 and orderliness, of courtesy and good-humour, of 
 sorrow and sickness, of money and work, and all 
 the endless adventures and qualities that weave 
 the web of life. Of course, it is diflScult to speak 
 of these things very strikingly and forcibly — 
 but that is not needed ; the point is to speak from 
 experience, and not out of books. And it would 
 be well, too, if the clergy practised more ex- 
 tempore preaching. The spoken word, however 
 halting and imperfect, has a power that no 
 written discourse ever has. 
 
 I believe that one w^ay in which matters of 
 conduct might be brought home to people with- 
 out giving personal offence — which is a very real 
 
i6o Along the Road 
 
 danger in little societies — would be by using 
 biographical materials. 
 
 I have heard of late a good many sermons in 
 out-of-the-way places, and I must frankly confess 
 that on the whole I have wondered to find them 
 as good as they are, considering all the diffi- 
 culties ; for no doubt the attitude of the ordinary 
 layman in the matter is both captious and exact- 
 ing. He is apt to expect a mild, conventional, 
 almost feminine, line from a clergyman. He 
 grumbles at that; and when the clergy are vigor- 
 ous and stimulating, he shakes his head and talks 
 about Revivalism. There are faults on both sides, 
 no doubt. But I have often thought that there 
 can be few more disagreeable and humiliating 
 things in the world, than for a clergyman who has 
 spent time and trouble on a sermon, and who 
 desires to bring home what he has to say to his 
 flock, to see one or more of his hearers deliberately 
 compose themselves to sleep before his eyes. I 
 have felt sometimes that were I in the pulpit 
 I should publicly remonstrate against such 
 discourteous usage. Yet I have never heard an 
 offender apologise for such a breach of decorum, 
 except in a perfunctory way, as though the act 
 was both natural and humorous. 
 
 My conclusion, then, would be this: If a man 
 has the art of impressive statement, or if he has 
 the subtler charm of originality which enables 
 him to present old truths in a new and arresting 
 light, the thing is easy; for it must not be for- 
 
Preachers and Preaching i6i 
 
 gotten that it is not enough for a pastor to warn 
 and startle — he must also be able to attract and 
 guide and build up; but if he has not this power, 
 as long as he is sincerely and genuinely in earnest, 
 and as long as he is content to try his best, care- 
 fully observing when he succeeds in commanding 
 the attention of his hearers, and when he fails 
 and why, he may sow the seed of truth. But 
 perhaps the best consolation of all is that ex- 
 ample is better than precept, and that work tells 
 even more than words; so that the result may 
 be, as Browning says : 
 
 " You are a sermon, though your sermon 's nought." 
 
 It was to such a sermon that I once listened 
 as an undergraduate — the fumbling utterance of 
 a nervous but sincere preacher. Coming out, I 
 said jocosely to a friend : " Do you feel the better 
 for that?" *^ No," he said gravely, looking at 
 me ; " I feel a great deal worse." And then I was 
 ashamed of my question, and knew that the 
 preacher had not spoken in vain. 
 
ART AND LIFE 
 
 I HAVE an old friend who is a writer, I was going 
 to Baj like myself, but I ought rather to say un- 
 like myself. We often discuss the dreadful and 
 delightful business of writing — dreadful or de- 
 lightful according as you are rowing against the 
 stream or with it. I do not mean that we dis- 
 cuss our tools and habits — whether we work with 
 pen or pencil, sitting up at a table or sprawled 
 in an arm-chair. But we discuss the craft, or 
 rather the art, of it all. The conclusion which 
 he always draws — perhaps I do not wholly agree 
 with him — is that I am only a craftsman, while 
 he is an artist; or, possibly, it is rather that I 
 am an amateur, while he is a professional. He 
 certainly tells me some very astonishing things 
 — that he has an absolutely exact plan in his 
 mind, for instance, before he begins to write, and 
 that he knows to a page, and almost to a line, 
 how much he is going to write. Now, I have a 
 general scheme in my head, of course, but I never 
 know till I actually write how long my sections 
 are going to be. He derides me when I say this, 
 and he asserts that it is like a sculptor saying 
 
 162 
 
Art and Life 163 
 
 that he never knows till he begins a statue how 
 big the limbs are going to be, and whether one 
 of the legs is not going to be twice as long as 
 the other. To that I reply that I am of the 
 opinion of President Lincoln, when his Army 
 Council was discussing the right proportions of 
 a soldier. One of the party said, " How long 
 ought a man's legs to be?" "If you ask my 
 ojjinion," said Lincoln, " I believe they ought to 
 be long enough to reach to the ground I " 
 
 Then he laughs, and tells me that this is the 
 whole art of writing, to estimate one's material 
 exactly and to use it all up; and that the words 
 must follow the writer, not the writer the words. 
 To which I reply that with me the thing, what- 
 ever it is, conies up like a flower, and makes its 
 own structure; and then he says that I have no 
 respect for form. 
 
 I have, as a matter of fact, a gi*eat respect for 
 form. I think that everything depends upon how 
 one says things. Writers are permanent or tran- 
 sitory in virtue of style, and style only. Great 
 and deep thoughts confusedly or clumsily ex- 
 pressed have not a quarter of the chance of be- 
 ing read, or of lasting, as light and delicate 
 thoughts beautifully and charmingly expressed. 
 The thoughts of poets, for instance, are not only 
 not, as a rule, new or intricate thoughts, but they 
 are rather thoughts of which we say, when we 
 read them embalmed in fine verse, " Yes, I have 
 thought that vaguely a hundred times, but could 
 
1 64 Along the Road 
 
 not put it into shape! " And the greatness of a 
 writer depends almost entirely upon the extent 
 to which he can make people recognise their own 
 thoughts, and see in a flash how beautiful they 
 are, when they have seemed homely and common- 
 place before. We most of us can recognise the 
 beauty of a face or of a form, when we see it 
 adorned and bravely apparelled. But the poet 
 is the man who can see the beauty of the simplest 
 folk through the stains of toil and the most 
 workaday costume. 
 
 I suppose that I think more of the beauty of 
 language than the proportions and balance of 
 thought. And, indeed, a certain wildness and 
 luxuriance of shape and outline is pleasant to 
 me. If the form of a piece of writing is too 
 apparent, it seems to me like a clipped yew tree. 
 I had rather see a tree growing like a tree, than 
 cut and carved into the shape of a peacock or 
 a vase. 
 
 Our neighbours the French have got a much 
 stronger sense of literary form than we in Eng- 
 land have. But in their stories and novels, 
 though I can often see a certain masterly hand- 
 ling of the form, I am often more oppressed than 
 pleased by it. It seems to me that they lose the 
 freedom and the naturalness of life thereby. Life 
 and character do not conform to artistic pro- 
 portions, and if one sits down to depict life and 
 character in a book, one ought, I feel, to follow 
 the natural laws of life and character. If the 
 
Art and Life 165 
 
 book gives me tlie feeling of the author's con- 
 trolling hand, then I begin to feel that it is a 
 show of puppets which dance on wires tied to 
 the showman's fingers. It is a pretty perform- 
 ance, and wonderful in a way; but I am not in 
 search of that kind of wonder. It is the mystery, 
 the inconse<pience of life, that I admire, not the 
 deftness of the performer's conjuring. And thus 
 I like great loose, vivid books, like Tolstoy's 
 novels, which give me no cramped feeling of form, 
 but seem like the pageant of life itself. I do 
 not want everything accounted for and wound 
 neatly up. I want the thing to be as big, as 
 ragged, as untidy as life itself, or at least to 
 give me a sense of bigness and untidiness. 
 
 It seems to me that it is a very useless busi- 
 ness making literary rules. These rules are, after 
 all, only rules deduced from the work of great 
 authors; and then a new author api)ears and 
 knocks the old rules to pieces, and the critics 
 set to work and make a new set of rules. Take 
 the case of Ruskin. When he was writing his 
 early books, full of close arguments and neat sub- 
 divisions, with here and there a burst of elo- 
 quence, flashing and curdling like a falling billow, 
 he was doing excellent work no doubt. But those 
 earlier books have not a quarter of the charm of 
 Foi\<i Clavigera or Prwterita, where there is no 
 sense of form at all, and which ebb and flow with 
 a delicious and unconstrained beauty, like the 
 actual thoughts of a man unfolding before one's 
 
i66 Along the Road 
 
 eyes. Of course, by that time, Ruskiu was a 
 great master of words; but the charm of the 
 later books consists in their perfect vitality and 
 reality. In Fors Clavigera, which must be the 
 despair of artists, he set down just what came 
 into his head, and as it came; and not only did 
 he not know, when he sat down to write, the 
 exact proportions of his chapter, he often did not 
 know, I think, what he was going to say at all. 
 
 What I really believe makes the difference 
 between artistic writers and natural writers is 
 this. The artistic writer is thinking of his per- 
 formance, of its gracefulness, its charm, its shape ; 
 and T think he must have in his mind the praise 
 of the trained critic, though he obeys, no doubt, 
 his own artistic conscience. A great writer who 
 had a touch of cynicism about him said that the 
 people who thought that authors w^ote for the 
 sake of applause made a great mistake — that what 
 they wrote for was money, and that applause 
 was only valuable because it showed that you 
 might be going to take up a good collection. 
 
 There is truth in this, because, if the artist is 
 thinking of his performance, then he is like any 
 other professional — the pianist, the conjuror, the 
 dancer — who is bound, above all things, to please; 
 and he knows that too much originality is a 
 dangerous thing, because people are more pleased 
 by seeing and hearing what they expect to see 
 and hear than by seeing or hearing something 
 that they do not expect to see or hear. But 
 
Art and Life 167 
 
 the other kind of writer is thinking more of 
 what he is going to say, and the possible effect 
 of it upon the minds and hearts of others. He 
 has, of course, to study charm and impressive- 
 ness, but he does that, not for the sake of the 
 charm or the impressiveness, but for the sake of 
 the thoughts that he cannot withhold. Perhaps 
 he has seen some delicious place, and wants to 
 share his sense of its beauty with others ; or some 
 idea flashes into his mind which seems to link 
 together a number of scattered thoughts and in- 
 terpret them; and then he wishes others to have 
 the same delight of intuition. Or else he sud- 
 denly finds, in the light of experience, that some 
 hard, dry maxim is terribly or beautifully true 
 after all, and he realises that the old proverb is 
 not simply a dull statement, but a crystal shaped 
 from a thousand human hopes and fears. 
 
 My own feeling about writing is that it is all 
 a sharing of joy or sorrow with other hearts. Of 
 course, if one were absolutely simple and un- 
 affected, one could talk of such things to friends, 
 or even to the people one meets in railway- 
 carriages or on farm-roads. But they might not 
 understand or care; or they might think me im- 
 pertinent or crazy. And then their looks and 
 remarks would disconcert me to such an extent 
 thaf I should think myself crazy too. But one 
 can put all the glory and wonder of these things, 
 and, indeed, all the sorrow and bitterness too, 
 into a book, and hope that it may fall into the 
 
i68 Along the Road 
 
 right hands. Though, of course, one runs the 
 risk that it may fall into the wrong hands ; and 
 some reviewers may tell you their opinion, as 
 many reviewers have told me at different times 
 and with very varying degrees of courtesy, that 
 I am a fool for my pains — and that I am quite 
 prepared to believe. But such rebukes never dis- 
 concert a writer who believes in what he has to 
 say and desires to say it, because he knows he 
 cannot please everybody, and he simply perceives 
 that the book has fallen into the wrong hands. 
 1 wrote a book the other day, and a reviewer in 
 the Guardian^ which is a very sensible and re- 
 spectable paper, headed his review, " More about 
 Mr. Benson's Soul," and said that it was a literary 
 indecency and a literary crime, and an insult to 
 my readers to write such books. Well, I am 
 sorry that the reviewer should feel insulted. If 
 I knew his name I would gladly express my re- 
 gret. But he need read no more of my books, 
 and I am afraid that I cannot pretend that I 
 shall cease to write them. I wish, indeed, that 
 he would tell me more about Ms soul, and then 
 I might be persuaded to adopt his much higher 
 ideal of literary decency. I might even think him 
 reasonable, instead of thinking him, as I do now, 
 rather elaborately rude. But I do not for a mo- 
 ment dispute his right to be rude, for I spoke 
 first; and if one speaks in a book, there are sure 
 to be ill-bred people within hearing! 
 
 But I fear 1 have gone all wrong about form 
 
Art and Life 169 
 
 again ! I am not using up my material properly, 
 and the figure is all out of shape. \Miat I was 
 going to say is that what I myself value in a 
 book more than anything else is a sense of vitality 
 and reality. I like the feeling of contact with 
 another human soul, and I even value this in 
 the Guardian review, because the writer is cer- 
 tainly speaking his mind. But, of course, one 
 likes one's company to be congenial, and the sort 
 of soul that I like to feel myself in contact with 
 is one who is full of the wonder and mystery of 
 all life, even if it be a little oppressed and be- 
 wildered by it; one that desires beauty and 
 gentleness and peace and order and labour and 
 good-humour and sense to prevail. I do not care 
 so much about being brought into contact with 
 self-satisfied and confident people, who use the 
 world as a kind of bath to splash about in, and 
 scoff at the idea of not seizing and enjoying what- 
 ever one is bold enough or strong enough to take 
 away from weaker or more timid persons. I 
 have had a very fortunate life myself, and more 
 prosperity than I have deserved, though I hope 
 not at the expense of other people. But still I 
 have been confronted, not once or twice, with 
 very grim, severe, terrible, and sorrowful things, 
 some of which have eventually done me good, but 
 some of which have simply crushed and maimed 
 me. I have not found any explanation of these 
 things except in a faith that has learned, however 
 faintly and tremblingly, to believe that the end 
 
170 Along the Road 
 
 is not yet. And I have seen horrible calamities 
 in others' lives of which there seems no reasonable 
 or hopeful interpretation. And what I desire 
 most of all is that men and women who have suf- 
 fered themselves and have seen others suffer hope- 
 lessly, and who yet have found some great and 
 beautiful explanation, should tell us what that 
 explanation is. 
 
 Among such thoughts as these, no doubt one 
 does grow careless, and culpably careless, of form 
 and proportion, and all the other things on which 
 the literary artist sets so much store. And there 
 is no excuse for carelessness ! 
 
 I was reading the other day a curious and 
 interesting passage of Suetonius about the Em- 
 peror Nero. Nero was an artist at heart, who 
 had, so far as we know, little power of expression, 
 and was insane, too, with inherited insanity. We 
 all know what a shipwreck he made of his own 
 life and his empire alike. But in this passage 
 we read how he had just been told of a great 
 revolt in Gaul. He saw the artistic aspect of it 
 all. He was sitting after dinner very comfort- 
 ably with some of his abominable friends, and he 
 said in a kind of ecstasy that he had made up 
 his mind, and he was going out at once to the 
 province; that the moment he got there he would 
 go out unarmed between the opposing hosts, and 
 do nothing but weep, and that the rebels would 
 be so touched that they would at once submit; 
 and that on the following day they would all 
 
Art and Life 171 
 
 liave a thanksgiving together, and sing an ode, 
 wliich he would write — and that he would go 
 away at once and write it. 
 
 I do not know that anything came of the pro- 
 ject or of the ode; but that seems to me a magni- 
 ficent instance of a person who cares more about 
 the artistic part he was himself going to play 
 than about the result he wanted to achieve. There 
 is the danger of the artistic point of view; and 
 though I enjoy fine craftsmanship with all my 
 heart, and can be set all aglow by an ode, I do 
 not want to think that this is the end of art. 
 The thing must be said beautifully and impres- 
 sively, because people will not listen if it is not. 
 But the end of it is the criticism of life, the 
 comparison of experience, and the sharing of joy. 
 
SYMPATHY 
 
 There is nothing that differentiates men and 
 women more than the extent to which they need 
 the sympathy of others, and the use which they 
 make of it. With some people, under the shadow 
 of loss, disaster, discredit, or illness, the sym- 
 pathy of others sustains and consoles them, pours 
 balm into the wound. But there are other spirits, 
 not by any means necessarily more brave or self- 
 sufficient, who do not under such circumstances 
 either require or desire sympathy. Their one in- 
 stinct, in the presence of a catastrophe which is 
 irreparable, is to forget it as far as possible, to 
 combat remorse and grief, not by facing the 
 situation, but by distracting themselves from 
 dwelling upon it, and by flinging themselves as 
 far as possible into normal activities. Person- 
 ally, I find that, if I am in trouble of any kind, 
 the most helpful companions are not those who 
 by word and look testify their sympathy. It is 
 only an added burden of sorrow to think that 
 one's own private cares are lying heavy on other 
 hearts ; while the sympathy one receives tends to 
 turn one's thoughts upon the hurt, which is often 
 
 172 
 
Sympathy 173 
 
 trying to heal in its own way. The most sus- 
 taining influence at such times is that of tran- 
 quil people, to whom one knows that one may 
 appeal for practical help, if one requires it, but 
 who will otherwise tacitly ignore the background 
 of anxiety, and behave in a perfectly normal and 
 natural manner. Because the best tonic of all 
 is that one should try to behave normally too, 
 and to act so that the shadow of one^s own suf- 
 fering should not rest upon other lives. Of 
 course, there are times, in grief and anxiety and 
 pain, when it is an immense comfort to be able 
 to speak frankly of what is in one's mind. But 
 one wants to choose one's own times of need for 
 doing that, and not to be encouraged to do it 
 to the detriment of the wholesome distractions 
 which relieve the weight of care. 
 
 This difference comes out most strongly in the 
 case of illness. There are some people who like 
 to be inquired after, to detail their symptoms, to 
 indulge their sense of discomfort. I do not think 
 that this tendency is one that ought always to 
 be repressed, because people of that type, if they 
 are silenced, are apt to exaggerate their pains 
 by solitary brooding. On the other hand, there 
 are people who like to be told that they look 
 well, when they are feeling ill, and on whom such 
 a statement acts like a suggestion, restoring the 
 hope and energy with which they battle with 
 malaise. 
 
 Of course, there are times, as in the case of a 
 
174 Along the Road 
 
 bereavement, when the danger is that men and 
 women feel drearily and hopelessly the loneliness 
 and isolation that the loss of a dear one brings ; 
 then undoubtedly the love that such a sorrow 
 evokes and makes audible does flow with healing 
 power into the gap. Those first days of grief, 
 when the mourner, in the grey dawn, has to face 
 the desolation and the silence, are very hard to 
 bear without the tangible presence of human 
 sympathy. But even thus sympathy should be 
 as a medicine and not as a diet. As we are 
 constituted, a burden must be borne alone; it 
 cannot be shifted, it cannot be carried vicariously. 
 The loss is there, and the duty of others is not 
 to minimise that loss, but to keep clearly before 
 the sufferer the fact that all is not lost; that 
 there are other claims and duties, other hopes 
 and joys felt, which no sorrow must be allowed 
 to obliterate. 
 
 The difficulty, of course, both for the sufferer 
 and for the friends who would help if they knew 
 how, is to decide at what point the indulgence 
 becomes unwholesome. To demand of a man or 
 a woman that they should at once, after some de- 
 vastating stroke or under a grievous anxiety, 
 resume their place in the world and bear their 
 accustomed burdens, is sometimes simply putting 
 an additional strain on the wounded spirit. It 
 is like insisting on a sprained limb being used 
 too soon. I often think of the splendid words 
 of Sir Andrew Barton in the old ballad : 
 
Sympathy 175 
 
 " I '11 but lie down and bleed awhile, 
 And then I *11 rise and fight again." 
 
 The most that one^s best friends can do is to 
 sii*j:<2:est and encourage a return to activity; they 
 ninst know when to hold their hand. Instinct is 
 a good guide up to a certain point. The wise 
 physician, the perceptive friend must try to 
 discern when the natural grief becomes a morbid 
 indulgence. 
 
 I think that men are sometimes wiser than 
 women at seeing when the ordinary activities 
 ought to be resumed, perhaps because their sym- 
 pathies are more limited. The heart of a woman 
 goes out much more instinctively to anything 
 that sorrows and suffers — indeed, the normal man 
 tends, perhaps, rather to dislike and to shun the 
 presence of anything maimed and broken. He 
 will often be generous enough in cases where prac- 
 tical help can be given, but has not the instinct 
 of tending to the same degree; and the sight of 
 suffering often gives him a vague and helpless 
 uTihappiness, so that he longs to get out of an 
 atmosphere which mars his own tranquillity with- 
 out enabling him to be effective. Most men like 
 to do their work in a half-humorous spirit, and 
 humour is a quality which is apt to have an ugly 
 and a cynical look in the presence of sorrow. But 
 the woman 
 
 " whose instinct is to wreathe 
 An arm round any suffering thing," 
 
176 Along the Road 
 
 is sometimes so solicitous, so pitiful, so unutter- 
 ably tender-hearted, that the bracing element dis- 
 appears. The fact is that we need both sympathy 
 and firmness; and the difficulty is to know when 
 we must rise to fight again. 
 
 The great truth which lies behind Christian 
 Science is not the unreasonable attempt to treat 
 the phenomena of grief and suffering as unreal, 
 but the noble truth which underlies it that the 
 victory remains with hope and joy. The spirit 
 must fight suffering with its own weapons, and 
 call the vigorous forces of life into play. Most 
 of us, even in weakness and defeat, are capable 
 of more endurance than we feel. 
 
 What is undoubtedly a far harder business for 
 most of us is to sympathise generously and sin- 
 cerely with joy and happiness and success. We 
 are apt to feel that happiness is so delightful a 
 thing that it needs no sympathy; and thus we 
 often tend to spoil our friends' triumphs and 
 joys by giving them but a brief and formal recog- 
 nition, and turning to more congenial things. It 
 is a great strain to some to live cheerfully with 
 a very robust and cheerful person, especially if 
 he demands an audience for his ecstasies. But 
 to show sympathy with the joys of others, even 
 if they need it less, is a very necessary piece of 
 self -discipline. In reading the lives of great men, 
 I do not think there emerges any quality quite 
 so splendid as that of generous and ungrudging 
 admiration for the successes of others. We most 
 
Sympathy 177 
 
 of us, I suppose, in our hearts desire some sort 
 of influence and power; it is wonderful what 
 strange paths we choose to arrive at that goal! 
 Many of us think that harsh and derisive critic- 
 ism of the perfornmnces of others gives the 
 hearers a sense of our own superiority ; but even 
 from the lowest motives of insincere diplomacy, 
 many a man who gets nothing but discredit and 
 dislike for his disapproval and depreciation of 
 otliers' i>erformances, could stride swiftly into 
 influence by a royal distribution of applause. 1 
 do not, of course, mean that we should acquire a 
 liabit of bedaubing everj^thing with disingenuous 
 unction; but, in criticism, there is very little to 
 be said for ingenious fault-finding. Poor work 
 in all departments finds its own level with won- 
 derful rapidity ; but we should be eager to recog- 
 nise with ready impartiality and sincere approval 
 any particle of pure gold. 
 
 But, of course, the real difficulty, as in all 
 spiritual things, lies deeper yet. If a man has 
 cause to recognise, by mistakes and failures, that 
 he is cold and ungenerous by nature, what is he 
 to do? It surely makes matters only worse to 
 add hypocrisy to his other deficiencies? Is he 
 daily to pretend to a generosity which he does 
 not possess? Is he insincerely to praise what he 
 sincerely despises? 
 
 Well, if a man could answer that question, he 
 w^ould hold the secret of life in his hand. The 
 most one can say is that it is something to know 
 
178 Along the Road 
 
 and recognise one's deficiencies, and still more 
 to hate and mourn them. So we advance slowly ; 
 and, better still, there is an old-fashioned thing 
 called the Grace of God, which we can, if we will 
 try, admit to our narrow hearts, as the lake pours 
 into the confined stream-channel. To do all we 
 can, and yet not to feel that we have only our- 
 selves to depend upon, that is the simple secret 
 which has turned weak spirits before now into 
 men valiant in fight. 
 
JEALOUSY 
 
 The word jealousy is one that has changed its 
 meaning in the last three hundred years. It has 
 acquired an almost wholly evil sense, and is ap- 
 plied in most cases to matters of affection. If 
 one describes a dog, for instance, as a jealous 
 dog, one means that it resents any notice being 
 taken of other dogs, and even dislikes seeing its 
 master or mistress pay attention or give caresses 
 to other human beings. If one says that a man 
 or a woman is of a jealous nature, it would be 
 understood to mean that they desired to con- 
 centrate the affections of their circle exclusively 
 upon themselves. And it so undoubtedly now 
 implies a mean, sinful, and undesirable quality 
 that I have sometimes thought that it is almost 
 a pity that it should be allowed to stand in 
 Scripture as an epithet applied to God. In the 
 Second Commandment, for instance, " For I the 
 Lord thj' God am a jealous God," the words refer 
 to the Divine indignation against idolatry; and 
 when Elijah uses the word of his own feeling 
 against the worshippers of Baal, it is used with 
 no sense of personal resentment. And it still can 
 179 
 
i8o Along the Road 
 
 be used in that particular sense, as when a man 
 says that he is more jealous for some one else's 
 honour than he is for his own. Still, it seems a 
 pity that a word should stand as an epithet ap- 
 plied to God, when one would seldom apply such 
 an epithet to another human being without the 
 intention of implying censure on an odious and 
 deplorable moral weakness. Of course it is al- 
 ways difficult to express Divine qualities except 
 by transferring terms which represent human 
 emotion; it may be said in this particular case 
 that a simple explanation is all that is needed. 
 Rut people who have become perfectly familiar 
 with an expression do not always remember to 
 furnish an explanation to those who are not so 
 familiar with it; and the fact remains that one 
 acquiesces in a word being applied to God in 
 Scripture which one would rarely use of a man 
 without suggesting that it represented a feeling 
 of which he ought to be ashamed. 
 
 Jealousy is not one of the faults which are 
 only the shadow of intelligence and reason; it is 
 part of the animal inheritance of man. Faults 
 such as untruthfulness, insincerity, irreverence, 
 cynicism, are faults which come from the misuse 
 of reason and imagination. But jealousy is 
 simply a brutish fault, the selfish and spiteful 
 dislike of seeing others enjoy what one would 
 wish to enjoy oneself. It even goes deeper than 
 that, and becomes, when deeply rooted, a mere 
 dislike of seeing other people happy, even though 
 
Jealously i8i 
 
 one is happj' oneself. There are people who like 
 to spoil the grace of a gift by giving it gnidgingly 
 and conditionally; and worse still, there are \^eo- 
 ple who like, if they can, to throw cold water 
 over the enjoyment of others, and belittle or ex- 
 plain away their successes. One of the most 
 curious of well-known instances is the case of 
 ^fr. Barrett, the father of Mrs. Brdwning. He 
 was a man who was passionately attached to his 
 children; he desired their love to such an extent 
 that he could not bear to see them care for any 
 one else. He refused his consent to his daughters' 
 marriages, on the ground that it was ungrateful 
 of them to wish to leave him. When Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, knowing that it was impossible to hope that 
 he would consent to her marriage with the poet, 
 married him clandestinely, and went away to 
 Italy, hoping that she might ultimately be for- 
 given, her father never opened any of her letters, 
 refused ever to see her again, and kept to his 
 word. It was an intense grief to Mrs. Browning, 
 but she never took a morbid view of the situation, 
 and realised with supreme good sense that no 
 human being has the right to cripple another's 
 life, and to deny another the paramount gift of 
 wedded love. In Mr. Barrett's case jealousy al- 
 most amounted to a monomania, though we are 
 perhaps too ready nowadays to excuse the desper- 
 ate indulgence of some one pernicious fault in a 
 character, otherwise sane and balanced enough, 
 on the grounds of some mental or moral warp. 
 
1 82 Along the Road 
 
 One may perhaps so excuse it, if one finds a man 
 acting constantly in some misguided manner, not 
 only in defiance of principle, but against his own 
 better aims and wishes. But it never seems to 
 have occurred to Mr. Barrett, that he was acting 
 unworthily or unjustly, or that he ought to have 
 regulated his conduct by the principles of ethics 
 or religion. 
 
 When one sees jealousy manifested in the case 
 of animals, it has its pathetic and even its beauti- 
 ful side. Some friends of mine had an extraor- 
 dinarily affectionate and devoted collie. One of 
 the daughters was married, and when her first 
 baby was born, she brought the child back to her 
 parents' house on a visit. Poor Rover could not 
 understand what had happened. A horrid little 
 object, with no semblance of humanity, that could 
 only sleep and squeak and bubble, that could not 
 pat him, or walk with him, or throw sticks for 
 him, had become the object of general attention 
 and worship on the part of the whole household, 
 previously so harmonious. The result was that 
 after unavailing attempts to regain the affection 
 he had somehow forfeited, after sitting hour by 
 hour on the outskirts of the absorbed group 
 wagging his tail, bringing sticks and envelopes, 
 looking appealingly from one to the other, he 
 despaired; and when at last the dreadful change- 
 ling was put down on a sofa, he went and bit 
 its arm, not severely, but enough to show that 
 he himself must not be entirely neglected. I am 
 
Jealousy 183 
 
 thankful to say that my friends realised that 
 they had sinned against constancy and affection ; 
 and instead of having Rover destroyed or given 
 away, they recognised his claims to attention; 
 and he lived long enough to be the pet and faith- 
 ful companion of the once-detested infant. 
 
 But when the same sort of quality is indulged 
 and encouraged by a reasonable human being, 
 who ia in a position to make his ill-temper felt 
 by his circle, it becomes a very Satanic fault 
 indeed. The worst of it is that it is a failing 
 which often goes in the first place with a sen- 
 sitive and deeply affectionate nature; and in the 
 second place, it is a quality which friends and 
 relations are apt to minister to, by giving way to 
 it and by trying to remove occasions of offence; 
 for the simple reason tliat the jealous person can 
 often be so infinitely charming, when the fiend 
 is not aroused, and can plunge a whole household 
 into agitated depression, anxious conferences, and 
 uncomfortable silences, if his suspicions are once 
 kindled. 
 
 Our complacent indifference to, and even our 
 unconfessed pleasure in, the lesser misfortunes of 
 other people is a very dark and evil inheritance. 
 The other day I was out walking on the out- 
 skirts of Cambridge, and a man just in front of 
 me in the road had an accident with his bicycle; 
 he tore his clothes, and he so dislocated his 
 machine that portions of it projected in an ab- 
 surd and grotesque manner. He was, moreover, 
 
1 84 Along the Road 
 
 gifted by nature with a rueful and disconsolate 
 visage. He wheeled his bicycle into the town, 
 and I followed close behind him; for nearly half 
 a mile I did not see a single person who observed 
 him who did not undisguisedly smile or even 
 laugh at the spectacle. Yet I have no doubt that 
 most of those who saw it were naturally good- 
 humoured and kindly people enough. They would 
 have taken endless trouble to help the ma.n if he 
 had been seriously hurt. They saw well enough 
 that he was uncomfortable and discomposed ; that 
 he had probably hurt himself, had incurred delay 
 and possibly expense. They knew, no doubt, that 
 they would themselves have greatly disliked, in 
 a similar plight, being laughed at by every 
 passer-by, and yet the instinct, combined with 
 the absence of active imagination, was too strong, 
 and the sight undoubtedly afforded them pleasure. 
 It is this fact which undoubtedly^ lies at the 
 base of ordinary jealousy — the dreadful and 
 humiliating fact that most of us are not genuinely 
 pleased at the good fortune of others, or grieved 
 at their calamities, but the other way. Of course, 
 this does not hold true as a rule of one's inner- 
 most circle, because the sorrows of those very 
 near to us, even if we do not love them parti- 
 cularly, are bound to overshadow us, or at least 
 to inconvenience us; while if a golden shower 
 falls upon them, a little of it is apt to splash over 
 upon ourselves. I remember, indeed, when I was 
 a boy, that I was told that one of my younger 
 
Jealousy 185 
 
 brothers had been left a small fortune. It turned 
 out afterwards not to be the case, as the legacy 
 in question was shared between him and several 
 others. But I recollect that my first feeling — 
 and at the same time I must do myself the jus- 
 tice to say that I was ashamed of it — was not 
 one of pleasure. The unregenerate heart's first 
 thought is, "Why him and not me?" I do not 
 think so ill of human nature as to say that we 
 are most of us deliberately pleased to hear of a 
 misfortune happening to an acquaintance, but 
 the feelings which it arouses are not as a rule 
 those of unmixed sorrow; even the best people 
 have a comfortable sense of heightened security 
 resulting from the news, or at leairt a sense of 
 thankfulness that the misfortune has not befallen 
 themselves. But to be whole-heartedly glad of the 
 success or good fortune of an acquaintance is a 
 sign of a really generous and kindly nature. We 
 do most of us need to discipline ourselves in the 
 matter, and we ought to encourage and nurture 
 by every means in our power the sense of shame 
 and self-contempt which, after all, we do feel on 
 reflection at the thought of how little we are 
 affected by pleasure at others' good fortune, or 
 by sorrow at others' calamities. The apostolic 
 command to rejoice with those that rejoice and 
 to weep with those that weep is by no means a 
 platitude, but a very real and needful counsel of 
 Christian conduct. 
 
 Of course, the whole thing is largely a matter 
 
i86 Along tfk Road 
 
 of temperament; but it is a dangerous thing to 
 excuse oneself by saying, *' That is how I am 
 made." The point is how to unmake oneself, how 
 to change oneself! 
 
 A friend of mine told me that he once went to 
 pay a call at the house of a well-known man. 
 He found in the drawing-room his host's wife and 
 her unmarried sister, who lived with them, both 
 gifted, accomplished, and delightful women. They 
 had a very interesting talk. Suddenly the front 
 door opened and shut rather sharply below. A 
 silence fell on the two charming ladies. Presently 
 the sister-in-law excused herself and went out of 
 the room. She came back a few moments later 
 with rather an uneasy smile, and said in an under- 
 tone to the wife, " He says he won't have any tea. 
 Perhaps you would just go down and see him." 
 The wife went down, and remained away for some 
 minutes. She came back and gave a little glance 
 to her sister-in-law, who again slipped out of 
 the room, and the conversation continued in 
 rather a half-hearted manner. My friend decided 
 that he had better go, and departed, aware that 
 his departure was a relief. He said to me that 
 it gave him a great sense of depression to think 
 of the constant repetition of similar scenes. The 
 husband w^as a man of moods, jealous, irritable, 
 self-absorbed, and the sense of his possible dis- 
 pleasure lay like a cloud in the background of 
 the lives of these delightful women. He was apt 
 to be vexed if things did not happen exactly as 
 
Jealousy 187 
 
 he wished, while at the same time he was annoyed 
 if any notice was taken of his moods, or if he 
 thought he was being humoured and arranged for. 
 What distresses one about such a case is the silly 
 waste of happiness and peace that such a dis- 
 position can cause, in a circle where there are 
 all the materials for the best kind of domestic 
 content. Yet the case is not a very uncommon 
 one, and the cause a mere lack of self-discipline. 
 
 The only hope for such temperaments is that 
 they should become aware, early In life, of all 
 the unhappiness they can create, and determine 
 that, whatever they feel, they will behave with 
 courtesy, justice, and kindness. The difficulty is 
 that the most trivial incidents tend to confirm and 
 increase such irritable suspicions, and there is, 
 moreover, in jealous people, a sense of compla- 
 cency in the thought of how much they can affect 
 and influence the emotions of their circle. But 
 such power is a very mean and selfish business. 
 The worst of it is that it is perfectly possible 
 for a man to despise and to condemn such con- 
 duct in others, and yet to do the very same 
 thing himself and to justify it, not without a 
 certain contemptible pride in his own superior 
 sensitiveness. 
 
HOME TKUTHS 
 
 It is a question of great difficulty to what extent 
 it is a privilege or a penalty of friendship to tell 
 a friend of his faults. A great many people have 
 one or more rather patent and obvious faults, not 
 very serious perhaps — faults of temper, manner, 
 demeanour, irritating tricks, disagreeable ways, 
 tiresome economies, which cause friction and un- 
 pleasantness, quite out of proportion, it may be, to 
 the motive or quality which lies behind them. I 
 once knew a man, for instance, who resorted to the 
 most transparent devices in order not to pay his 
 share of a vehicle or a hotel reckoning. He was 
 a wealthy man, and I suppose that the habit was 
 rooted in a desire for economy; but I am sure 
 that he did not know that it was observed or 
 commented upon, and if he had realised what very 
 disagreeable remarks were made on the subject 
 by his acquaintances he would have taken very 
 good care to amend matters. And again, there 
 are little habits, like the use of certain scents, 
 insufficient ablutions, the flourishing of tooth- 
 picks, hawkings, and throat-clearings, which may 
 grow by mere habit highly offensive to one's com- 
 
 i88 
 
Home Truths 189 
 
 paiiious. And then there is a whole range of 
 faults of manner, roughnesses, rudenesses, con- 
 trad ictorlness, snappish ness, domestic fault-find- 
 ing conducted in public, personal preferences 
 imposed upon guests — all the things which arise 
 l»artly fiom want of observation, and partly from 
 petty selfishness — things not very serious in them- 
 selves, but the removal of wliich would add im- 
 mensely to the pleasantness and ease of life in 
 the particular circle involved; and then, again, 
 there are things like snobbishness, inquisitiveness, 
 untrustworthiness, violations of privacy, blabbing 
 of secrets, ostentation, censoriousness, which may 
 not afl'ect a man's virtue or honour, but which 
 make otlier people uncomfortable or on their 
 guard in his company. 
 
 The question is whether it is a plain duty for 
 a friend to represent the facts, and to testify to 
 the offender on such points if the offender is a 
 friend. It is often quite clear that a man is un- 
 conscious of such faults. They have grown upon 
 him in all probability from small beginnings; and 
 if he is unsensitive and unobservant, he is pro- 
 bably wholly unaware of the prominence which 
 they have assumed. 
 
 Now let me tell a simple story to illustrate 
 what may happen in such a case. An acquaint- 
 ance of mine developed a kind of curious grunt- 
 ing noise, which he interjected into all his 
 remarks, and with which he punctuated all 
 silences. It became both ludicrous and offensive. 
 
190 Along the Road 
 
 His family circle debated the question, and it 
 was at last decided that a near relative had better 
 inform him of the fact. The relative did so. The 
 offender was very much annoyed, volubly denied 
 it, and added that he would desist from the prac- 
 tice. He did so for a short period, and then took 
 to it again as badly as ever. He was thus in 
 the position of believing that he had cured himself 
 of a trick, and he never quite forgave the relative 
 for his interference. 
 
 A friend of mine once developed a very in- 
 genious scheme. He held that the need for people 
 to be told of their faults was an urgent one, but 
 that their friends could not be expected to do it. 
 So he suggested that there should be a small 
 Government department, with a staff of inspectors 
 or Truth-tellers, to whom a report of the circum- 
 stances could be referred. If the report was ade- 
 quately backed, and the office considered the case 
 a suitable one, after the payment of certain fees, a 
 Truth-teller would be sent down to the offender, 
 to inform him without bias or animus, in a purely, 
 judicial, and if possible, judicious way, of the 
 fault. This system, my friend affirmed, would 
 do more for household peace than much social 
 legislation. 
 
 But, speaking seriously, the difficulty is great. 
 Fortune sometimes sends one a direct oppor- 
 tunity. A friend may consult one in such a way 
 that one's course is clear. A friend of my own 
 did once ask my advice about a painful situation 
 
Home Truths 191 
 
 in which he found himself, owing to his having 
 given great offence to a relation of his own by 
 his remarks upon a private incident. He asked 
 nie to tell him quite frankly and candidly whether 
 he was to blame. The fault was in this case a 
 fault of manner, arising from a habit he had 
 formed of expressing himself with an extravagant 
 vehemence and intemperance of comment which 
 was often quite out of proportion to the cause. 
 T did tell him quite plainly what T believed to 
 be wrong; he was not only grateful, but the in- 
 cident served to confirm and strengthen our 
 friendship, while he contrived quite successfully 
 to combat the tendency. 
 
 And then, occasionally, one is given an oppor- 
 tunity of saying the necessary truth in a moment 
 of anger, justifiable or unjustifiable. There was 
 an eminent judge, who had got into the habit, 
 after a game of whist, of commenting very irri- 
 tably and offensively on his partner's play. 
 " Don't you see that if you had played the queen 
 you would have had them at your mercy? It is 
 simply incredible to me that you could throw 
 away all our chances — oh, the tricks we have 
 lost ! " The man who effected the reformation was 
 an unskilful player, and a quick-tempered person 
 as well. At the conclusion of one of these tirades 
 he said, "You seem to think, Sir, that you are 
 still in your beastly old police-court!" 
 
 It was said with straightforward anger, and it 
 is hard to say that the anger was not justifiable; 
 
192 Along the Road 
 
 and I must add that I believe it was entirely 
 effectual. 
 
 But this is, of course, a social matter. The 
 thing is far harder when it is an ethical ques- 
 tion. If one sees a man giving a wrong im- 
 pression of himself, vitiating his own effectiveness, 
 causing misunderstanding and ill-feeling, it does 
 sometimes appear to be a duty for a f^^iend to 
 remonstrate. But one is obliged to look facts in 
 the face, to remember that people are human, and 
 that one must risk, if one does think it necessary 
 to speak, not only a disagreeable interview, which 
 it may be a duty to face, but what is a much 
 more serious thing, losing a man's friendship and 
 confidence. Of course, a man ought to regard a 
 fiiend who has told him an unpleasant truth 
 with increased affection and respect; but the 
 flesh is weak, and it must be confessed that it 
 is very hard to be at ease in the presence of a 
 man who has unveiled to oneself a thoroughly 
 disagreeable trait. 
 
 And thus the question resolves itself into this : 
 Is one bound to risk losing a friendship for the 
 sake of trying to effect a moral improvement in 
 a friend? If one reads the Gospel, one finds 
 there is a good deal about loving other people 
 and supplying their needs, but there is very little 
 indeed about the duty of finding fault or lec- 
 turing them or improving them. There is a bless- 
 ing on the pure-hearted and on the peacemaker, 
 there is no beatitude for the reprover and for 
 
Home Truths 193 
 
 tlie rebuker. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, 
 the father is, of course, the hero of the story. It 
 is a pity tliat the parable was ever called the 
 Prodigal Son, because he is quite a subsidiary 
 character, and his motives for repentance are 
 f lankly deplorable. But the father has not a 
 word of blame for the sufferer: the poor wretch 
 has been punished enough, and the father leaves 
 it there; he does not rub in the heavy lessons 
 of experience, or even express a hope of seeing 
 a real amendment. Without blame, without ques- 
 lion, without exhortation, he takes the unhappy 
 (feature back to his heart, and bids the minstrels 
 <](> their best to cheer the simple feast. The only 
 IK^rson who expresses perfectly just and natural 
 indignation is the elder brother, and even for him, 
 ungracious and detestable as he is, the father has 
 no word of blame. He only begs him to banish 
 ail thoughts except a natural and kindly joy. 
 rhe secret of the parable is that by loving people 
 ilirough thick and thin, if one can, the real vic- 
 tories are won; and that the only improvement, 
 tlie only regeneration which is worth anything, 
 comes that way. The fees of experience, as 
 Stevenson says, are apt to be heavy — that can- 
 not be avoided I If men will not hear Moses and 
 the prophets, they will not listen even to one 
 risen from the dead. Remorse and regret are the 
 shadow of sin, but they have no healing power. 
 The only restorative is to see the beauty and the 
 happiness of unquestioning love; even the casting 
 13 
 
194 Along the Road 
 
 out of evil is worse than useless, unless its place 
 is supplied by a stronger and a sweeter force. It 
 may not be the creed of the Puritan, but it is 
 the creed of Christ — that nothing must stand in 
 the way of love. The only thing that called forth 
 Christ's bitter denunciation was the unloving 
 rigidity of the self-righteous; and there can be 
 no sort of doubt that an absolutely uncritical 
 and unquestioning love is a far higher and more 
 heavenly thing than any enforcement of moral 
 standards, however lofty, if they are not rooted 
 in love. Nothing can be done by mere disap- 
 proval; but the love that hopes and expects and 
 believes that the thing, whatever it be, in each 
 of us, that evolves love and is worthy of it will 
 somehow triumph and prevail; that is what calls 
 out effort and strength, and purifies while it 
 uplifts, and because it uplifts. 
 
I 
 
 SUPERSTITION 
 
 1 REMEMBER ODce Hs a boj — it must have been in 
 the year 1870 — sitting on the seat of a diligence 
 which was scrambling along a high road in Nor- 
 mand3% through open agricultural country — wide 
 fields and tree-embosomed farms, with here and 
 there a clustered village of white houses. On the 
 seat beside me sat Westcott, then a Cambridge 
 Professor, who was taking his summer holiday 
 with us, dressed in rough black, with an old soft 
 wide-awake on his head, wrapped up in his in- 
 variable grey plaid shawl, and with the accus- 
 tomed sketch-book in his hand. He sat silent, 
 rather hunched up, his mouth compressed, his 
 brows contracted, and with those wonderful ex- 
 ])ressive eyes of his looking fixedly at the moving 
 landscape. Every now and then he raised his 
 hat as if in salute. I watched him for a long 
 time, and then ventured to ask him why he took 
 off his hat so often. He gave a characteristic 
 little start, smiled very intently, and then blushed. 
 Then he said, "It's those magpies!" The coun- 
 try, indeed, seemed full of them; three or four 
 at a time would rise balancing and poising, and 
 then sail off to the shelter of the nearest holt, 
 
 195 
 
196 Along the Road 
 
 with long tails jauntily extended. Westcott, after 
 a silence, added, " I got into a foolish habit, as 
 a boy, of always raising my hat to a magpie, and 
 I can't give it up. There 's another ! " and his 
 hat went off again. 
 
 I have often recalled that pleasant scene, and 
 the ingenuous shame with which the Professor 
 confessed to the little superstitious reverence, 
 which he could not justify or give up. Indeed, 
 I admit that I never see magpies myself without 
 repeating the old rhyme: 
 
 " One for sorrow, 
 
 Two for mirth, 
 Three for a death, 
 
 Four for a birth; 
 Five, you will shortly be 
 In a great company." 
 
 The last two lines have a delicious sort of mys- 
 tery about them. But I allow that I would 
 always rather see two or four magpies together 
 than one or three. 
 
 The odd thing about these little superstitions, 
 and I suppose we have most of us got some two 
 or three that we cherish, is that we regard, as 
 a rule, the incidents which arouse them with a 
 sense of momentary and even pleasurable excite- 
 ment. It is very difficult to analyse the feeling. 
 Do we regard the incidents as the cause of the 
 disaster that is supposed to follow them, or 
 merely as warnings of an impending misfortune 
 
Superstition 197 
 
 which we are powerless to avert? Some few 
 superstitions have their antidote. If one spills 
 salt, one may set all straight by throwing a 
 ]nnch of the offending substance with the right 
 hand over the left shoulder. I always do it my- 
 self! It is supposed, I fancy, that one's good and 
 evil angels are constantly in attendance — the good 
 angel on one's right, and the evil angel on one's 
 left; and that by throwing the salt, the spilling 
 of which has put one momentarily in the power 
 of the evil influence, with the right hand over the 
 left shoulder, one flings it in the eyes of the evil 
 spirit. But as a rule there is, in the case of 
 most superstitions, nothing so practical to be 
 done. One can only sit and shudder, after break- 
 ing a mirror, or seeing the new moon through 
 glass, till the impending stroke falls. Some 
 superstitions, like walking under a ladder, I al- 
 ways set deliberately at defiance; but I suppose 
 that the origin of that is simply precautionary, 
 that one may not be struck by falling tiles ? But 
 no doubt the whole raison d'etre of those old fears 
 is that they date from a time when men believed 
 that the world swarmed with unseen malicious 
 spirits, who took advantage of any lapse to set 
 upon the offender. The odd thing is that the 
 offences seem such trivial and harmless things! 
 If it were the commission of some deliberate sin 
 that gave evil its opportunity, it would be more 
 intelligible; but the things which incur the hos- 
 tility and invite the assaults of these uncanny 
 
198 Along the Road 
 
 powers seem to be so fortuitously and grotesquely 
 selected. 
 
 Neither is it as if the only people who in- 
 dulged in these superstitious fancies were anxious, 
 weak-minded, and foolish persons. A strong vein 
 of superstition is often found in connection with 
 highly robust and reasonable temperaments. I 
 have a near relation, one of the most healthy 
 and sensible people in the world, who is the prey 
 of many of these fancies. One winter evening 
 he came into my room. I was writing by the 
 light of three candles. He rushed at the table 
 and carefully extinguished one. I remonstrated. 
 " Well, I don't mind if you will only have four,'' 
 he said, "but three — that's most unlucky!" 
 
 Another odd point is that the most superstitious 
 people never think of investigating the subject 
 carefully. If, whenever they violated one of their 
 principles, they carefully noted down the results, 
 whether disastrous or not, they could, one would 
 think, either confirm or dispel the theory. But 
 that they will not do. I pointed out once to a 
 votary of the superstition about thirteen sitting 
 down to a meal, that it was only a question of 
 percentage, and that if it was true of thirteen, 
 it must be still more true of fourteen or fifteen. 
 She — it was a singularly lively and intelligent 
 woman — said, " Oh ! that is the tiresome habit 
 you men have of rationalising! It is not true of 
 fourteen, and I have proved it many times by 
 asking in the Vicar to dine when I was threat- 
 
Superstition 199 
 
 ened with a party of thirteen — and nothing has 
 ever happened." 
 
 Two of the most curious instances in history 
 of the superstitious temperament are those of 
 Archbishop Laud and Dr. Johnson. Every one 
 remembers Laud's dreams, such as the one where 
 all his teeth fell out except one, which he " had 
 much ado to hold in its place with both hands," 
 and how he prayed it might portend no evil. 
 That is a good instance of confusing the cause 
 and the sign. Either the dream caused the evil, 
 in which case there was nothing to be done but 
 to wait for the sequel; or else it was a kindly 
 and a timely warning. But to pray that it might 
 not portend evil shows a curious confusion of 
 mind. Laud, too, was constantly on the lookout 
 for warnings and prognostications in psalm and 
 lesson ; all of which things show that in spite of 
 his actiWty and decisiveness and his disregard of 
 others' feelings, he was of a nervous and anxious 
 temperament. With Dr. Johnson the thing is not 
 so strange, because underneath his robust hu- 
 mour and his supreme common-sense there lay a 
 (lark vein of hypochondria. WTio can forget his 
 anxious care to go out of doors with his right 
 loot first, his touching of posts, his murmured 
 I)rayers and ejaculations? 
 
 Of all the old superstitious stories, I think one 
 of the most interesting is that told by Cicero, 
 because it not only illustrates the habit of mind, 
 but throws a curious sidelight upon the pro- 
 
200 Along the Road 
 
 nunciation of Latin. He was at Brundisium, I 
 think, about to start by sea for Greece. A vendor 
 came along the quay, crying Caunean figs for 
 sale. ** Cauneas ! Cauneas ! " Of course, said 
 Cicero, I decided at once not to go, and took 
 measures accordingly. The fact is that Cauneas 
 was the usual pronunciation — thus much is clear 
 — of the Latin words. Gave ne eas (" Mind you 
 don't go"). But the odd thing is that it does 
 not seem to have occurred to Cicero to warn his 
 fellow-passengers of the prognostication. He only 
 considered it as a sign which he had been fortu- 
 nate enough to be able to interpret. And this is 
 very characteristic of the general attitude. Pro- 
 vidence is regarded, not as a just dispenser of 
 good and evil, but as powerless to avert a cata- 
 strophe, and only able to intimate to a favoured 
 few, by very inadequate means, the disasters in 
 store; and it is this that makes the whole thing 
 into rather a degrading business, because it seems 
 to imply that there is a whimsical and malicious 
 spirit behind it all, that loves to disappoint and 
 upset, and to play men ugly and uncomfortable 
 tricks, like Caliban in Setebos, 
 
 " Loving not, hating not, just choosing so." 
 
 I suppose that the spread of education tends 
 to sweep all this away; but more of the old feel- 
 ing probably lingers in out-of-the-way places and 
 dark corners of the country than it is pleasant 
 
Superstition 201 
 
 to admit. At Cerne Abbas, in Dorsetshire, there 
 is a great figure, over 200 feet, I think, in length, 
 traced in the turf of a chalk down, called the 
 Man of Cerne. It represents a giant, holding 
 in his hand a ragged club. It is of uncertain 
 date, but it is certainly many years anterior to 
 the Roman conquest of Britain. It is no doubt 
 one of those figures of which Cjesar speaks, upon 
 which captives, bound with osiers, were burned 
 alive, with horrible rites. The monks tried to 
 consecrate the religious awe investing the figure 
 by rechristeuing it St. Augustine, and explain- 
 ing the club as the representation of a fish, to 
 show that he had crossed the sea — though why 
 one should therefore land with a large John Dory 
 in one's hand is not so clear! But there is no 
 doubt that very ugly and vile superstitions did 
 attach to the figure, and that most barbarous 
 rites were practised there till a comparatively 
 recent date. And it is certain that in remote 
 jKirts of the country a good deal of the old black 
 art prevailed till very recent times — if, indeed, 
 it is altogether dead. One hears very well- 
 authenticated stories of wax figures stuck with 
 pins being found hidden in uncanny places within 
 the last few years. How is one to banish these 
 dismal traditions? It is hard to run them to 
 earth at all; and no amount of intelligent argu- 
 ment will prevail over minds which have in- 
 herited an instinctive belief in such practices 
 from long generations of ancestors. 
 
202 Along the Road 
 
 But among educated people the whole thing is 
 on a difiPerent footing. They regard superstitious 
 beliefs and practices with an outspoken amuse- 
 ment, though there is also a vague sense in the 
 background that there may be something in it 
 after all, and that it is better to be on the safe 
 side. My own feeling about such things is that 
 the only rational motive for avoiding incidents, 
 with which ill-omened consequences are connected, 
 is that, if by some unhappy coincidence disasters 
 do follow their occurrence, it is such a bad ex- 
 ample for weak-minded people, whose belief in the 
 inauspicious character of an event is far more 
 surely confirmed by a single instance of disaster 
 following it than by a hundred instances when 
 no such disaster occurs. And yet by avoiding 
 such incidents one seems tacitly to concur with 
 those that ^^ hold of superstitious vanities*" 
 
 But we have still a few things to learn, a few 
 steps to climb, and we cannot be too much in 
 a hurry. It is a fault with benevolent and sen- 
 sible people, who see clearly what the truth is, 
 to be impatient if other people will not give up 
 unreasonable ideas the moment that they are told 
 what is true. It is the old contest between in- 
 stinct and reason, and the victories are slow. 
 But just as the wicked old baronial strongholds, 
 which represented so much that was tyrannical 
 and abominable, have now crumbled down into 
 picturesque ruins, and make a goal for summer 
 pilgrimages, so these old dark forces seem to be 
 
Superstition 203 
 
 transforming themselves into nothing worse than 
 jiretty and silly observances, about which it is 
 difficult to believe, so harmless and interesting 
 have they become, that men were ever really 
 swayed and moved by them. There are such 
 mysterious and terrible things in the world that 
 it is easy enough to be bewildered ; but there can 
 be no reason why we should add to the burden, 
 ;ind torment ourselves by causeless and imaginary 
 fears, only to combat them by grotesque and 
 meaningless ceremonies. 
 
LETTER-WRITING 
 
 A HUNDRED years ago, I suppose that an Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury wrote possibly half a dozen 
 letters a day, and perhaps not even every day. 
 Nowadays, the correspondence of the Archbishop 
 needs a staff of secretaries, and probably averages 
 between forty and fifty letters a day all the year 
 round. The facility of communication has two 
 sides to it, and as my father used to say, " The 
 penny post is one of the ordinances of man that 
 we have to submit to for the Lord's sake." The 
 result of all this multiplication of correspondence, 
 combined with the fact that people move about 
 much more, hold more interviews, and see more 
 of each other, is that the old leisurely sort of 
 letter- writing has, to a great extent, gone out. 
 One can see this from modern biographies. 
 Letters tend more and more to be business com- 
 munications, and to deal with definite points. 
 In days when postage was expensive, and when 
 there was less going and coming, a letter was 
 a friendly interchange of thought and news, and 
 covered much of the ground that is now covered 
 by talk. When Dr. Balston was headmaster of 
 
 204 
 
Letter- Writing 205 
 
 Eton, he used to say that leave for boys to go 
 home must only be granted if applied for by letter 
 or personally, adding ** A telegram is a hasty 
 thing!" That is the characteristic which seems 
 insei)arable from modern civilisation — it is all a 
 hasty thing. If one reads a book like Stanley's 
 Life of Aniold, one realises how much more of 
 himself a busy man like Arnold, with a great 
 school on his hands and a big book on the stocks, 
 contrived to put into his long and elaborate 
 letters than a public man can afford to do now- 
 adays. There may, of course, be leisurely people 
 in secluded corners with a taste for expression, 
 who are writing letters of the old humours and 
 entertaining kind, with a literary flavour about 
 them. But when one reads such letters as Lamb's 
 or Byron's or FitzGerald's or Buskin's, one can- 
 not help feeling that the art has been or is being, 
 killed by the conditions of modern life. It is not 
 that the taste for expression has gone out, but 
 what is written is written as a rule for publica- 
 tion; and there can be few people who do as 
 J. A. Symonds used to do, when he wrote a letter 
 of the elaborate kind — namely, copy it into a 
 notebook with room for amplification and anno- 
 tation ! There are, indeed, stories which prove 
 what a trouble letter-writing is to busy men. 
 There was a well-known dignitary of the Church 
 whose unanswered letters used to accumulate in 
 such numbers that he was supposed at intervals 
 to fill a portmanteau with them and take it abroad 
 
2o6 Along the Road 
 
 with him. Somehow or other the portmanteau 
 disappeared. It was darkly hinted that he had 
 been seen with his own episcopal hands to tip 
 it over the bulwarks of a steamer into the sea, 
 and that a notice used afterwards to appear in 
 the papers that his lordship had unfortunately 
 lost a bag containing letters, and would be glad 
 if those of his correspondents who had received 
 no reply would communicate with him again. 
 " By which time," the great man would say, with 
 a humorous smile, " most of the letters in question 
 had answered themselves." 
 
 I have myself very decided theories as to letter- 
 writing and letter-answering. Somehow or other 
 I contrive to have a very large correspondence. 
 There are three or four institutions with which 
 I am connected, which bring me a good many 
 business communications. Then I have many 
 letters from relations, friends, and old pupils; 
 and, lastly, I receive a great many letters — it 
 will hardly be credited how many — from unknown 
 people all over the world about my books. The 
 result of it all is that so large a part of every 
 day is spent in writing letters, that it is the 
 rarest thing in the world for me to find time to 
 write a letter spontaneously. It is not that T 
 dislike writing letters — rather the reverse ; but it 
 is so difificult in any one day to get to the bottom 
 of the pile, that there simply is no opportunity 
 to indulge in leisurely correspondence. I have a 
 strong sense of conscience about answering letters 
 
Letter-Writing 207 
 
 politely. I'erliaps that is rather too dignified a 
 term to use: but it is no more possible for me 
 not to answer a civil letter than it would be 
 [)ossible for me, if a courteous stranger spoke to 
 me in a hotel or a railway carriage, to turn my 
 back and give no reply. The letters which reach 
 me from unknown correspondents are decidedly 
 interesting, kind, and often beautiful, sometimes 
 extremely touching and pathetic; some writers 
 tell me very curious things about themselves, and 
 often give one a very surprising picture of life 
 and thought; or they raise a point, or ask for 
 an explanation. Then one receives controversial 
 letters and severe letters; and occasionally very 
 impertinent ones, though even these are often 
 obviously dictated by a good motive. Another 
 odd thing is the number of people who ask for 
 copies of books. One would not write to a tailor 
 or a shoemaker for a coat or a pair of boots, 
 because one happened to like the style and 
 appearance of their wares. But I suppose that 
 I)eoi)le think that an author is supplied with 
 any number of copies of his books gratis, and 
 is only too glad to get them into circulation! 
 Then there are begging letters, and those I 
 now generally harden my heart about and 
 send no reply; for the simple reason that when 
 I have investigated the circumstances, I have 
 generally found that the case has not been 
 fairly stated, that facts have been concealed, 
 and that in more cases than one the writer 
 
2o8 Along the Road 
 
 makes a professional income by his epistolary 
 labours. 
 
 Edward FitzGerald used to hold that every 
 letter ought to be answered at exactly the same 
 length as it was written, and reach down to the 
 same place on the page. I do not at all feel that, 
 and should be sorely puzzled to carry it out. 
 There are long letters which need short answers, 
 and short letters demanding long answers; but I 
 practically answer everything; and though I sup- 
 pose one has a right not to do so, yet I should 
 do it as a simple matter of courtesy, unless it 
 took up too much time. 
 
 The result, however, is that the letters which 
 one would most like to write — full and leisurely 
 budgets to friends — get pushed into a corner. 
 Sometimes I have been forced to call in a short- 
 hand writer and dictate replies; but in that case, 
 if the letters are at all private, I am careful to 
 put in no names and leave out anything that 
 could lead to identification, filling up the gaps 
 afterwards. I have not personally any sense of 
 privacy about letters. As far as I am concerned 
 I should not mind any one reading any of the 
 letters I receive or write. 
 
 The test, I think, of a good letter is a very 
 simple one. If one seems to hear the person 
 talking as one reads the letter, it is a good letter. 
 Of course a letter can be good for other reasons, 
 because people's hands do not always work as 
 fast as their brains. But if the letter gives one 
 
Letter-Writing 209 
 
 a sense of the writer's personalitv, that is the 
 first test. Some people, whose minds are active 
 and whose conversation is pungent, write very 
 uninteresting letters; and vice versa. Some of 
 the most entertaining letters I ever read were 
 from an old Scotch bailiff, who used to put the 
 most delightful humorous touches into everything 
 he wrote; but in talk he was shy and inarticulate. 
 And there are some people who have the art of 
 putting some characteristic touch into the briefest 
 business note. 
 
 As a rule, I think people write very readable 
 hands, though elegant handwriting is gone out. 
 But one of the oddest things is that many people 
 who write legibly enough will put a most illegible 
 scrawl for the address, and a still more un- 
 decipherable hieroglyphic for the signature. I 
 have been reduced to copying a name, stroke by 
 stroke, on an envelope, and I have sometimes 
 wished to cut a signature out and gum it on; 
 but that has an air of discourtesy. There is one 
 man, a secretary of an important institution, 
 whose signature I have kept to show people. I 
 have never known two people decipher it alike, 
 and never any one at all who has come near to 
 the correct interpretation. Again, one of the 
 oddest facts is that I have more than once had 
 letters from unknown women who have signed 
 simply Christian name and surname; there has 
 been nothing in the letter to indicate whether 
 they were married or unmarried, and yet they 
 14 
 
210 Along the Road 
 
 have written to me to remonstrate with me for 
 not addressing them correctly. But I am told 
 that on the whole it is better to address such 
 letters as Mrs. rather than as Miss. 
 
 I know authors who make it a rule never to 
 answer a letter from an unknown correspondent. 
 But that seems to me inhuman. What can be 
 more agreeable to an author, who writes for peo- 
 ple in general, than to find that far-off readers 
 have been interested, amused, or touched by what 
 he has written? And my own experience has 
 been that when I have been really moved by a 
 book, and have felt it an act of simple gratitude 
 to write to the author, known or unknown, I 
 have always, or nearly always, received a kindly 
 and friendly reply. In this mysterious and be- 
 wildering world, where so much is dark and sad, 
 it seems to me intolerable not to return a smile 
 by a smile, a word by a word; not to grasp a 
 kind hand held out, but to put one's own hands 
 behind one's back. To call or to think such com- 
 munications intrusive or impertinent seems to 
 me to be like the man in the shipwreck who w^ould 
 not accept a share in a floating spar proffered 
 him by another passenger because he had not 
 been formally introduced to him. Of course, if 
 an author found that his work was being seri- 
 ously hampered by having to answer letters of 
 a trivial kind from innumerable correspondents, 
 he could abstain from doing so, because he would 
 rightly feel that he was doing his best to help 
 
Letter-Writing 21 1 
 
 things along by his deliberate writings, and that, 
 his answer to inquirers lay there. Yet, even if 
 I were in such a position, I should send a printed 
 form of acknowledgment, unless such a course 
 made serious inroads on my income. 
 
 But I do not think that our Anglo-Saxon race 
 is likely to err on the side of effusiveness. One 
 may be fairly certain that if one hears from an 
 unknown person, that person is for some reason 
 or other in earnest. I suppose i)ossibly that a 
 really famous or eminent author might be pestered 
 by people who only desired to secure his auto- 
 graphs. For I well recollect staying with a 
 famous public man, and how one evening after 
 dinner his secretary came in, said with a smile 
 that the autographs had run out, and produced 
 a packet of half-sheets of paper. The great man, 
 with a tired smile and an apology, produced a 
 stylograph and signed his name again and again. 
 " At the top of the paper, you observe," he said 
 to me, "so that nothing can be written above it; 
 and then only when people send an addressed 
 and stami)ed envelope." That sort of thing, T 
 confess, bewilders me; it seems to me to be human 
 veneration reduced to its barest formula, its least 
 common multiple. 
 
 What I rather feel on the whole subject of 
 letters is that we tend, by inherited instinct, I 
 expect, to look upon letters as more important 
 and more costly things than they really are. 
 There are many people who practically never 
 
212; Along the Road 
 
 write to old comrades and friends, because tliey 
 have a feeling that if they write at all they must 
 write at length. But that is a great mistake; 
 and by this indolent reticence many good ties are 
 broken. The point is the letter, not the length 
 or literary quality of the letter. And it is pitiful 
 to think that a few words scribbled on a scrap 
 of paper three or four times in a year might 
 save many a good friendship, which perishes list- 
 lessly from lack of nutriment. 
 
VULGARITY 
 
 T HAVE sometimes wondered whether there is, or 
 ever has been, a man or a woman in the world 
 who knew and recognised himself or herself to 
 be vulga r.^ I suppose the truth is that, with a 
 rather vague term like vulgar, every one's inner 
 definition of the word is framed so as somehow 
 to exclude himself. As a matter of fact, I doubt 
 if any but morbid peo])le ever admit even to 
 themselves that they can be frankly classified 
 under some one evil designation. We do not 
 mind confessing in a general way that we are 
 sinners; but we prefer not to have our sins 
 particularised by other people. A malicious man 
 merely thinks that he is quick to detect the low 
 and selfish motives by which most of his acquaint- 
 iiices are actuated. The rude person prides him- 
 self upon his candour. The drunkard thinks that 
 a certain amount of alcohol is agreeable to him 
 :i!id innocuous, and that he could always stop 
 consuming it if he chose. Rut imagine the 
 ignominious tragedy of the moment if a man in 
 the solitude of his own room should smite his 
 hand upon his forehead and say, " I am a snob, 
 213 
 
214 Along the Road 
 
 a vulgar snob." Yet there is no doubt that most 
 people would far more resent the epithet vulgar 
 being unhesitatingly applied to them by others 
 than they would resent being labelled under 
 decidedly graver moral offences. The code of 
 honour, whatever its origin, is much more in- 
 stinctive than the Christian code, and I fear there 
 is no doubt that many men feel that the code of 
 honour is their own affair, but that unpleasant 
 moral failings are, to speak plainly, the affair of 
 God. A man convicted of ^Tilgarity or of snob- 
 bishness would not readily excuse himself on the 
 ground that he was made so, though that con- 
 solation is often self-applied to even grosser 
 tendencies. 
 
 The word vulgarity is, as I have said, a some- 
 what difticult word to define, because it is applied 
 on the one hand to a superficial set of qualities, 
 matters of breeding and education, questions of 
 demeanour and dress and pronunciation; and on 
 the other hand, it covers some very grave and 
 disagreeable faults indeed, which no one would 
 with equanimity admit. In its ordinary sense 
 the word is so much a question of comparison 
 that no one would ever be likely to apply it to 
 himself, because he would always have the com- 
 fort of thinking that there were persons below 
 him in the social scale, to whom the term would 
 be more truly applicable. It is, for instance, 
 commonly applied to things which are after all 
 merelv matters of social ritual and observance. 
 
Vulgarity 215 
 
 We oiipjht, I suppose, in these democratic days, 
 to write and speak as if there were no such things 
 as social distinctions. One man is just as good 
 as another — indeed, a shade better. But the word 
 vulgarity is applied by a man with equal force 
 both to i)eople whom he sees to have more advan- 
 tages than himself in the way of money and 
 society, as well as to people whom he considers 
 to have fewer advantages than himself. In the 
 first case it means pretentious, and in the second 
 it means common. I remember once being told 
 by a lady who did a great deal of philanthropic 
 work that the most curious etiquette prevailed 
 in some of the houses she used to visit about 
 behaviour at meals. At one house, in drinking 
 tea, the spoon liad to be put in the cup and 
 held firmly against the side of it with the fore- 
 finger, while the little finger had to be held out 
 away from the cup with an air of graceful de- 
 tachment. At another house, when you had drunk 
 all the tea you cared to drink, you turned your 
 cup upside down in the saucer. The two house- 
 holds appeared to be of exactly the same social 
 standing; but my friend found out that the spoon- 
 holders considered the inversion of the cup to be 
 ^iilgar, while the inverters thought spoon-holding 
 to l)e pretentious. The odd thing is that one 
 should be amused by this, and think both prac- 
 tices alike absurd, when one is oneself just as 
 exacting in the use of the knife. I should con- 
 sider that it would be a sign of inferior breeding 
 
2i6 Along the Road 
 
 for a man to shovel green peas into his mouth 
 with a knife, however convenient; and I suppose 
 that a man who naturally used his knife so would 
 consider my prodding and dawdling with a fork 
 under the same circumstances to be simply 
 affectation. 
 
 But the vulgarity, if it can be called vulgarity, 
 which attaches to the ritual of social observance 
 is a very superficial and harmless thing. It is 
 merely, to employ ecclesiastical terms, a question 
 of a different use, like the Sarum Use and the 
 Bangor Use. It is just a symbol of a different 
 tradition, and is practically indicative of nothing 
 but wealth and social standing. 
 
 But there is a vulgarity which is a very dif- 
 ferent affair, a rank and deep-seated quality of 
 soul. This vulgarity is an ugly pretentiousness, 
 an attempt to prove and assert superiority. Even 
 here there are two kinds of pretentiousness. No 
 one thinks a child vulgar if he has been tipped 
 a half-sovereign, and goes about confiding the 
 news of his astounding accession of fortune to 
 every one in the house. And it may be unrefined, 
 but it is not necessarily vulgar, when a man is 
 so frankly delighted with his own good fortune, 
 with his house, his wife, his man-servant and his 
 maid-servant, his ox and his ass, that he cannot 
 forbear speaking of such things in a good- 
 humoured and joyful spirit, and showing them 
 off to others. That may become very tiresome, 
 because it is tiresome to be continually called 
 
Vulgarity 217 
 
 upon to admire tilings, especially if you do not 
 really admire them. But the mischief comes in 
 if the possessor of these fine things is pleased 
 with them not so much because he enjoys them, 
 as because other people are not so fortunate. 
 Some of the most innately vulgar people I have 
 known have been people of irreproachable cour- 
 tesy and demeanour ; but one gradually perceives 
 that their standard is all wrong, that they put 
 the wrong values on people, that they do not 
 like men and women because they are likeable 
 or interesting, but because they are important. 
 The man who keeps one kind of geniality for a 
 (oiintess and another for a farmer's wife is very 
 hard to respect. There is no sort of reason why 
 ;i man should migrate from one class to another. 
 If he is born an earl, there is no harm in his 
 consorting with earls; but he must not treat an 
 offensive earl with courtesy, and an inoffensive 
 farmer with discourtesy. There is a pleasant old 
 story of a duke who got into a railway compart- 
 ment occupied by another duke and a commercial 
 traveller. He talked affably with both. When 
 he got out, the commercial traveller, impressed 
 by the respect with which the stranger was re- 
 ceived at the station, inquired of one of the 
 porters who he was, and on hearing the fact, 
 said genially to the other duke, " Now, that 's 
 what I call a gentleman! To think of his sitting 
 here, hobnobbing with a couple of snobs like you 
 and me." One only wishes that one could have 
 
2i8 Along the Road 
 
 lieai'd his further reflections when his other fel- 
 low-traveller left him, and he discovered his 
 identity as well. 
 
 Vulgarity seems to lie not so much in a certain 
 kind of action as in the motive that underlies 
 the action ; not so much in what you do and say, 
 but in how you do it and say it. If you have 
 a famous and distinguished relative, it is vulgar 
 to tell stories about him, if your object is to 
 glorify yourself; it is not in the least vulgar to 
 tell stories about him if they are designed to be 
 and are obviously interesting to your company. 
 I have seen the thing done in both ways. May 
 I tell a curious little adventure which happened 
 to myself? Some years ago I sat next a stranger 
 at a hotel table-d'hote, who paraded rather need- 
 lessly his acquaintance with well-known ecclesi- 
 astics. He made an erroneous statement about 
 Lambeth, and appeared to be going on to criticise 
 its recent occupants. I thought he might regret 
 having committed himself, and demurred to his 
 statement. He looked at me, and said rather 
 impertinently, " May I ask if you know Lam- 
 beth ? " *" Yes," I said, " I lived there for a good 
 many years." After which he treated me with 
 much increased civility. It was this latter trait 
 Avhich appears to me to have been vulgar, but 
 it is quite possible that he considered me vulgar 
 too for obtruding my experience. 
 
 The worst of vulgarity is that it is so insidious 
 a fault; and I fear it is true that the more apt 
 
Vulgarity 219 
 
 one is to detect ^1llgarity in other people, the 
 more likelj it is that one sufifers from the fault 
 oneself. The root of it is a false sense of dignity 
 and a settled complacency. Sometimes, as I have 
 said, that complacency is so strong and deep that 
 the vulgarity of it all is difficult to detect, because 
 the offender is so conscious of his superiority that 
 he does not even think it worth while to assert 
 it. There is a delightful old picture in Punch of 
 two intensely feeble, brainless, and chinless peers, 
 standing together at a reception in some big 
 house. In the background, dimly outlined, looms 
 the mighty form of Tennyson. One says to the 
 other, " By the way, I hear that What ^s-his-name, 
 that poet feller, is going to become one of us." 
 When complacency reaches this stage, it is on 
 so colossal a scale as to be almost magnificent, 
 though when Tennyson was made a peer there 
 were, no doubt, a good many people who con- 
 sidered it an honour bestowed on literature rather 
 than an honour conferred upon the peerage. 
 
 Like all secret faults, vulgarity is difficult to 
 detect; but a man may suspect that he is in 
 danger, if he finds himself inclined to compare 
 himself favourably with other people, and if he 
 is inclined to take credit to himself rather than 
 to feel gratitude for any success he may have 
 achieved. Tlie fault may exist with high genius. 
 It can hardly be denied that Byron was vulgar, 
 and that Napoleon was vulgar. On the other 
 hand. Nelson and Wordsworth, both of whom 
 
220 Along the Road 
 
 were fully conscious of their high gifts, had not 
 the least touch of it. They were proud, while 
 Byron and Napoleon were vain; and vanity is 
 almost certain to display itself in vulgarity. The 
 essence of vulgarity is not so much to succeed as 
 to wish to be known to succeed ; not to be better 
 than others, but to wish to seem better than 
 others; not to possess greatness, but to wish to 
 be envied for your greatness. And it may be said 
 that any man who cares more about his work 
 than about himself cannot possibly be vulgar; 
 while a man who cares about his work as giv- 
 ing a pedestal for his own statue is almost 
 inevitably so. 
 
SINCERITY 
 
 Sincerity is one of the virtues which we all 
 adiiiire when we see it, but which is very hard 
 to practise deliberately, for the simple reason 
 that it disappears, like humility, the moment 
 that it becomes self-conscious. Uriah Heep, in 
 David Copperfield, was for ever asserting his 
 humility; but as soon as a man becomes proud 
 of being so humble, he is humble no longer. 
 Similarly, the man who is preoccupied with his 
 own sincerity, is well on his way to become in- 
 sincere, because his sincerity has become a pose. 
 The essence of sinceritj' is simplicity, and sim- 
 plicity conscious of itself is one of the most com- 
 plicated things in the world. The old definition 
 of sincere used to be sine cera, " without wax," 
 and it was supposed to be a metaphor from honey 
 strained off pure and translucent from the comb. 
 A pretty, though wholly fanciful, etymology; but 
 the idea is a true one — the rich, authentic, crys- 
 talline, fragrant substance of the soul, without 
 any cloudy or clogging intermixture; it would 
 be simple enough if all souls were like that! 
 But the difficulty for most of us is that we are 
 
 221 
 
222 Along the Road 
 
 painfully conscious of a duality, even a multi- 
 plicity, of elements, a sad jumble of qualities, 
 even of opposite qualities, stored in our spirits, 
 like the contents of some ancient lumber-room. 
 What is the practical issue of it all? If we want 
 to be sincere — and it is. a quality that we all 
 admire and most of us desire — does it mean that 
 we are to exhibit all our wares? If we are irri- 
 table, mean, jealous, selfish, is it sincere to parade 
 these things, or at all events to make no effort 
 to conceal them? Are we bound to say, like the 
 Master of Ballantrae, in words which contain 
 perhaps the sincerest confession of self ever put 
 in the mouth of a character in fiction, " I am 
 a pretty bad fellow at bottom "? Is it hypocrisy 
 to attempt to hide our faults? Sometimes that 
 is the most eft'ectual way of getting rid of them. 
 It would be absurd to say that if a man felt 
 irritable, he was hypocritical if he did not show 
 it, or that if he was conscious of being of a 
 jealous disposition, he was bound to approve and 
 applaud instances of jealous behaviour in other 
 people, for the sake of being consistent. The 
 curious thing about English people is that they 
 tend, if anything, to be hypocritical about their 
 virtues rather than about their faults. I know 
 several people who are ashamed of appearing to 
 be as generous and as tender-hearted as they 
 really are. We are naturally an emotional and 
 a sentimental nation, and we are desperately 
 afraid of betraying it. We like sentimental 
 
Sincerity 223 
 
 books and plays and sermons, but we are very 
 hard on sentimental talk. We like things that 
 make us cry, better than things that make us 
 langh. John Bull, for all his top-boots and his 
 ample waistcoat, is a very tender-hearted old 
 fellow, and heartily dislikes to be thought so. 
 We despise other nations for their courtesy and 
 excitability, and think their display of emotion 
 generally to be ridiculous and affected. Yet we 
 ourselves are the victims of a deep-seated habit 
 of posing. We pretend to be bluff and gruff, when 
 we are really only shy and amiable. I had an 
 old friend once who carried this to an almost 
 grotesque degree. He was a friendly, rather soft- 
 hearted man, but he got it into his head, early 
 in life, that it was manly to be rough; he stamped 
 about the house in enormous boots, and spoke 
 what he called his mind on all occasions, though 
 in reality he was only saying the sort of things 
 that he imagined were appropriate to a man of 
 the tj'pe that he had adopted. I went with him 
 once to call on a distinguished lady. He was 
 horribly shy, and showed it by sitting down on 
 a chair the reverse way, holding the back between 
 his knees, and agitating it to and fro as if he 
 were riding a rocking-horse, while he criticised 
 the luxury of the upper classes in a highly offen- 
 sive way. He desired to give the impression of 
 being totally unembarrassed, but wholly in vain, 
 because his behaviour was merely supposed to 
 be the result of an almost frenzied nervousness; 
 
224 Along the Road 
 
 and, after all, it is not moral cowardice to be 
 decorously respectful at the right time and place. 
 
 That is really the worst of the situation, that 
 we do, in England, too often confuse roughness 
 with sincerity, and offensiveness with candour; 
 while in reality the essence of sincerity is that 
 we should mean what we say, not that we should 
 say all that we think. There is a story of Tenny- 
 son standing by the tea-table, while his wife and 
 a distinguished authoress were exchanging some 
 meaningless but harmless compliments, and gaz- 
 ing down upon them in silence, till a pause 
 occurred, when he said in his most portentous 
 tones, " What liars you women are ! '^ That was 
 not sincerity, but something like brutality; for 
 after all it is no more insincere to conceal your 
 thoughts than it is insincere to wear clothes. 
 
 We tend to limit the application of the word 
 insincere almost wholly to matters of conversa- 
 tion, and curiously enough we limit it further 
 almost entirely to the people who say pleasant 
 and agreeable things. If a man tells an un- 
 pleasant truth, we say that he is frank; if he 
 tells a pleasant truth, we say that he flatters. 
 The best combination of urbanity and directness 
 I know was afforded by an old friend of mine 
 who took a lady in to dinner, and asked her many 
 questions about herself and her relations in a 
 way which showed he was intimately acquainted 
 with her performances and family traditions. She 
 said at last smilingly, " Well, it is a pleasant 
 
Sincerity 225 
 
 surprise to find oneself so famous ! How did you 
 
 know all this, Mr. ? " An insincere man 
 
 would have bowed, and murmured that some 
 l>eople were public property, and so forth. But 
 my friend, with a twinkle in his eye, replied, " I 
 asked." 
 
 No one would, however, consider it to be in- 
 sincere not to talk about anything which hap- 
 I>ened to be in his mind at the time. The difficulty 
 rather is with people of genial and sympathetic 
 temperament, who are apt in the excitement of 
 the moment to say more than they mean, and to 
 seem to undertake more than they can carry out. 
 There are some people to whom it is absolutely 
 natural to wish instinctively to stand well with 
 the people in whose company they find themselves, 
 and whose egotism takes the form not of talking 
 about themselves, but of desiring themselves to 
 be felt and appreciated, and to establish a per- 
 sonal relation with the particular people they 
 happen to be thrown with. Some people at first 
 sight seem to be extremely sympathetic, and the 
 interest they feel may be temporary, but it is 
 often at the moment quite genuine. The disap- 
 pointment comes afterwards, when one finds that 
 they have forgotten all about one, and make no 
 attempt to follow up the relations which seemed 
 to be happily established. Personally, I am glad 
 of civility and interest and sympathy on any 
 terms, and I do not claim an indefinite continu- 
 ance of such favours. One should take exactly 
 
 IS 
 
226 Along the Road 
 
 what people are prepared to give, and not demand 
 more. But it is a difficult matter to know what 
 people who suffer from a plenitude of superficial 
 sympathy ought to do. It is difficult to advise 
 them to cultivate an indifferent and unsym- 
 pathetic attitude. They must, however, expect 
 to have to pay for the pleasure they both give 
 and receive; they must be prepared to meet 
 further claims, and to be criticised as insincere 
 if they cannot meet them. " Too sweet to be 
 wholesome," as an old Scotch keeper said to 
 me of a lady whose adjectives outran her emo- 
 tions. Yet the sincerity or the insincerity of 
 such behaviour does greatly depend upon the 
 motive that lies behind it. !lf there is in reserve 
 a genuine good-will, and a sincere instinct for 
 desiring to see and to make others happy, the 
 unfavourable criticism is rarely made. I know 
 more than one public man who has the blessed 
 knack of making the most insignificant person 
 in his company feel that he is the object of his 
 sincere and active benevolence; and such persons 
 are no more blamed for not prolonging their 
 attentions in absence, than the sun is blamed for 
 not shining at the bottom of a coal-pit. One feels 
 that the sun is in his place, and can be depended 
 upon to shine at the right season and under the 
 right conditions. JBut the people who do get 
 labelled insincere are those whose aim is not the 
 happiness of other people, but their own comfort; 
 who are sympathetic because they want to give 
 
Sincerity 227 
 
 an irapression of sympathy and kinrlness for their 
 own satisfaction. And these are the hardest of 
 all to enlighten, because they do not recognise that 
 there is anything amiss, or perceive tliat their 
 action is based on selfishness; and even if they 
 do realise it, it is very hard for them to act other- 
 wise, because one becomes unselfish through im- 
 pulse and not through argument. One can cure 
 oneself of a fault by discipline, but no amount of 
 discipline will create a generous virtue. 
 
 Sometimes the world is startled by the revela- 
 tion of the private wrong-doing of men of great 
 outward respectability; of course if that wrong- 
 doing is deliberate, and the outward pretence of 
 virtue a mere mask donned for convenience, there 
 is nothing to be said ; that is the hypocrisy of 
 the Pharisees. But a man who yields to evil from 
 weakness does not necessarily desire to sin, and 
 still less does he wish others to do so; a man 
 who does wrong may be most sincerely on the 
 side of the right, and even more intensely than 
 othei's, if, as may well be the case, he realises 
 ihe misery of his sin. Sincerity does not neces- 
 itate that every one should make public con- 
 fession of everything, or that no one should ever 
 dare to recommend a virtue which he cannot 
 always practise. If we all lowered our pro- 
 claimed standard to the level of our private prac- 
 tice, we should merely countenance and encourage 
 evil. Of course the truest sincerity is to amend 
 our faults, and not to preach anything which we 
 
228 Along the Road 
 
 do not honestly try to practise. And even in 
 the worst cases of all, it is in itself a comfort 
 to recognise that, as an old writer says, hypocrisy 
 is, after all, the homage paid by vice to virtue. 
 
 What really makes all the difference is a deep- 
 seated and conscious singleness of aim. A man 
 may have many and patent faults. He may act 
 inconsistently and even unworthily on occasions, 
 and yet may be perfectly sincere, if he is not 
 trying to fight on both sides in the battle. Fail- 
 ure matters little; it is the intention that shines 
 through. The man who cannot be sincere is the 
 man who gets all the pleasure that he safely can 
 out of evil, and professes a belief in what is good, 
 for the sake of the convenience it brings him. 
 
 And therefore, as I say, sincerity is a virtue 
 that can hardly be directly cultivated. It is 
 rather like a flower which follows naturally and 
 in due course, if the right seed be sown. 
 
RESOLUTIONS 
 
 In the year 1781, when he had somewhat more 
 than three years of life remaining to him, Dr. 
 Johnson wrote in one of his little memorandum 
 books : 
 
 August 9, 3 P.M., setat. 72, in the summer-house at 
 Streatham. 
 
 After innumerable resolutions formed and neglected, 
 I have retired hither to plan a life of greater diligence, 
 in hope that I may yet be useful, and be daily better 
 prepared to appear before my Creator and my Judge, 
 from whose infinite mercy I humbly call for assistance 
 and support. 
 
 My purpose is to pass eight hours of every day in 
 some serious employment. 
 
 Having prayed, I purpose to employ the next six 
 weeks upon the Italian language for my settled study. 
 
 There is something, T always feel, very gallant 
 and adventurous about this. The old lion was 
 near his end; he was suffering from a painful 
 complication of disorders; the thought of death 
 was, as it always had been, a grievous and over- 
 shadowing dread to him; and yet here is the old 
 man on his knees, planning a new and practical 
 229 
 
230 Along the Road 
 
 scheme of life, including eight hours a day of 
 serious employment and six weeks devoted to the 
 study of Italian! There is no evidence that the 
 scheme was ever carried out; he wrote nothing 
 after this date except a refutation of the authen- 
 ticity of the Ossianic poems ; and there is no reason 
 to think that he applied himself to Dante ; indeed, 
 an extreme dislike of all regular employment had 
 been from the earliest days one of Johnson's most 
 besetting infirmities ; yet there is something splen- 
 did in the hopefulness, the candour, the humility 
 of the whole entry. No one ever made and broke 
 so many vows as Dr. Johnson, and yet it never 
 occurs to one to doubt his rugged sincerity, his 
 fervent aspirations after perfection. No one ever 
 abased himself so profoundly before God, or 
 lamented his faults so vehemently, or judged his 
 own performances so severely ; and yet there was 
 nothing sentimental about his piety; he neither 
 cringed nor crawled before his fellow-men; he 
 had no washy tolerance for the faults and foibles 
 of others ; he did not spare his fellows ; he argued 
 just as vehemently, he silenced his opponents just 
 as peremptorily, he laid down the law just as 
 overbearingly, as if he had never known what it 
 was to be penitent and contrite. How different 
 from the piety of poor Coleridge, snivelling over 
 his cup of cold tea at Highgate, and crying out 
 lamentably, " But it is better than I deserve " ! 
 The point is to take your punishment like a man 
 when it comes, and not to whine about it. If 
 
Resolutions 231 
 
 you glory in it, you make the punishment 
 palatable by increasing your consciousness of 
 meekness and patience. Who does not remember 
 the self-righteous old servant in The Master of 
 Ballantrae, who took to his bed and bore himself 
 like an afflicted saint? "But the root of his 
 malady, in my poor thought," says the shrewd 
 Mackellar, " was drink." 
 
 Yet on the other hand, there is something to 
 be urged against ceaseless privately conducted 
 scrutiny into one^s own conduct. Half the danger 
 of pet faults is that they are so ingeniously 
 screened from their owner. There are many 
 faults which are the seamy side of virtues; the 
 ill-tempered man seems to himself to be bluflf and 
 outspoken, the tactless man to be frank and can- 
 did, the mean man to be strenuously economical, 
 the poor-spirited man to be patient and unworldly. 
 I have never derived so much benefit from intro- 
 spection as T have derived from the unconsidered 
 utterance of a blunt friend or an offensive enemy ; 
 and a secret process, where one is judge and jury 
 and advocate and prisoner and executioner all at 
 once, generally results in a plea of justification 
 or extenuating circumstances. 
 
 It may fairly be maintained that much making 
 of little resolutions, with the inevitable sequel of 
 much breaking of them, is neither a very fruitful 
 nor a very wholesome process. It is not very 
 wholesome, because it implies a good deal of 
 raking in the rubbish-heaps of the soul ; and there 
 
232 Along the Road 
 
 is a good deal to be said for the old mystical doc- 
 trine called Transcension, which means nothing 
 more than a very practical abbreviation of the 
 period of repentance. The idea is that prolonged 
 and wilful self-abasement is not a very inspirit- 
 ing process, and that one's moral failures are 
 best interred as speedily as possible. Dr. John- 
 son was, in fact, a very prompt and sane Tran- 
 scensionist, though he would no doubt have re- 
 volted from it if he had known its technical and 
 scholastic name. Again, the process of resolu- 
 tion-making and resolution-breaking is not, as I 
 have said, a very fruitful one; it is weakening 
 to the fibre of the soul to be for ever taking 
 pledges which one has only a very feeble hope 
 of fulfilling. The practice is somewhat stuffy; 
 it wants ventilation; it needs a little crude pub- 
 licity. One is not likely to be very much ashamed 
 of not keeping a promise made to oneself, which 
 one only feels it would be convenient, if possible, 
 to perform. As a common-sense friend once said 
 to me, talking about the whole subject : " No, 
 I don't make resolutions ; if I think I am capable 
 of doing what I want to do, I don't need a 
 resolution; if I think I am incapable of carry- 
 ing out an intention, it only makes things worse 
 if I take a resolution without expecting to keep 
 it." 
 
 In fact, I am disposed to think that if a matter 
 is serious enough, and if one is conscious enough 
 of weakness to distrust one's own powers of self- 
 
Resolutions 233 
 
 reformation, the only thing to do is to take some 
 wise and kindly person into confidence, and to 
 pledge oneself to state, at some fixed future date, 
 how things have been going. That can be a real 
 assistance, because it introduces the external ele- 
 ment which well-intentioned but weak-minded 
 I)eople stand in need of. And, in any case, the 
 thing ought to be done solemnly and seriously, 
 and not too often. It is undoubtedly a wise 
 thing to do to take stock, so to speak, at inter- 
 vals. One cannot cure a fault in a week or de- 
 velop a virtue in a month. Rut if one surveys 
 a considerable period, it is possible to see whether 
 one has advanced or retreated. 
 
 But, like all personal things, it is largely a 
 matter of temperament. If the making of resolu- 
 tions is a practice that helps people, there is no 
 conceivable reason why they should not have re- 
 course to it. Even then, the danger is of trying 
 to make i)rogress in details, of making a fussy 
 and a petty business of the whole thing, instead 
 of advancing on large lines. I have often mis- 
 trusted the old proverb about looking after the 
 ]>ence, and letting the pounds take care of them- 
 selves. That generally seems to me to result in 
 great discomfort and little accumulation. Much 
 more substantial fortunes are made by looking 
 after the i)onnds, and not fretting over the jDence. 
 
 The thing is to have a line of one's own; to 
 be sensible, hopeful, and courageous, rather than 
 to be in a perpetual condition of scrupulous self- 
 
234 Along the Road 
 
 accusation and morbid discouragement; and to 
 remember that, if it is indeed true that hell is 
 paved with good resolutions, it is no less true 
 that heaven is roofed with them! 
 
BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tt is a very interesting question as to how 
 biographies ought to be written, and what are, 
 or ought to be, the precise limits of discretion 
 and indiscretion permitted to a biographer. The 
 primary difficulty is this: It is easy to tell 
 nothing but the truth about a man, and yet to 
 give a thoroughly erroneous idea of him. Yet if 
 a biography is written soon after the death of 
 its subject, it may be impossible, with due regard 
 for the feelings of sur\ivors and relatives, to tell 
 the whole truth. On the other hand, it is prac- 
 tically inevitable that a biography should be 
 issued soon after a man's death. If it is deferred, 
 it may be deferred for ever. In these days, when 
 rapidity is a notable characteristic of the age, our 
 memories are short. The kaleidoscope shifts fast, 
 and the personality of to-day becomes a shadowy 
 memory to-morrow. What, then, is a biographer 
 to do? Is he to submit his biography to every 
 one who has the least right to be consulted? 
 And if so, is he bound to defer to the preferences 
 and prejudices of those whom he consults? And 
 then there comes in a further difficulty. In the 
 
 235 
 
236 Along the Road 
 
 life of men who have played a considerable part 
 in the world, there are sure to be episodes and 
 controversies which have a considerable tempo- 
 rary interest, but the interest of which is bound 
 to expire before very long. To what extent is 
 the biographer bound to devote large tracts of 
 his book to these affairs ? It is certain that there 
 will be a good many people who will expect such 
 episodes to be treated fully, and will pronounce 
 the book to be incomplete unless a good deal of 
 space is thus occupied. But the result of this 
 upon the general reader — the man who is more 
 interested in the personality than in the detailed 
 work of the hero — will be that the book will con- 
 vey an impression of heaviness and dulness. Are 
 these technicalities to be introduced for the sake 
 of technical students, or are they to be merely 
 summarised and popularised for the sake of the 
 general reader? These and similar difficulties 
 have all to be faced by the biographer. 
 
 The worst of the position is that the people 
 who have what is called a right to object, do 
 not, as a rule, object to the right things. There 
 are a good many picturesque incidents and ad- 
 ventures which may happen to a man, which are 
 not really material to his biography. They may 
 be interesting enough, but often the interest they 
 possess is not derived from the illustration they 
 afford of the personality of the hero, but because 
 they cast light upon some other interesting per- 
 sonage. These can be safely and fairly omitted. 
 
Biography 237 
 
 But the points which the relatives of a man often 
 object to are i)icturesque, humorous, vivid details, 
 which they think display him in an undignified, 
 impatient, vehement, or inconsiderate light. Peo- 
 ple are apt to lose all sense of humour in the 
 presence of death; and the unfortunate thing is 
 that the more vivid and impetuous a man is, 
 the more of these incidents are likely to be on 
 record. The result of such a biography, where 
 too much deference is paid to the wishes of rela- 
 tives, is that there is what Jowett described as 
 a strong smell of something left out. One gets 
 a stately, dignified, statuesque, saintly kind of 
 portrait, which is to intimate friends nothing 
 more than a sickening caricature, and bears as 
 much resemblance to the true man as his features 
 viewed in a spoon. 
 
 I suppose it may be admitted that Bos well's 
 Johnson is probably the best biography ever 
 written. But here there w^ere some very marked 
 advantages which simplified the situation. John- 
 son was a childless widower, and had no very 
 close circle of relatives to be deferred to. More- 
 over, though there were plenty of incidents and 
 occasions on which Johnson displayed neither 
 the courtesy of a gentleman nor the forbearance 
 of a Christian, yet there were far more numerous 
 instances of noble generosity, splendid courage, 
 and fervent piety. The result of BoswelPs book 
 is that we get the very heart and mind of a great 
 man ; and therefore it may be fairly said that if 
 
238 Along the Road 
 
 a biography is meant to interest posterity, a con- 
 siderable degree of what is called indiscretion is 
 not only permissible but necessary; and more 
 than that. The enormous merit of Boswell as a 
 biographer is that he knew that many of the 
 things that are usually dismissed as trivial are 
 really the things in which the human mind is 
 most deeply interested. There is a story told 
 somewhere, of certain elderly ladies who enjoyed 
 reading biography. Their method was a simple 
 one. When they saw before them such words as 
 " policy " or " progress " they hastily turned the 
 page; when they encountered such words as 
 *' smallpox " or " pony " they devoured every syl- 
 lable. The biographer must keep this fact in 
 view, or, rather, he must have an instinctive 
 knowledge of what interests himself, rather than 
 a theory of what ought to interest the well- 
 regulated mind — a type of mind which is in 
 reality as uncommon as it is intolerable. 
 
 Let me take a few instances of recent bio- 
 graphies, and indicate the qualities by which 
 they succeeded or the reverse. The Life of Lord 
 Macaulay, by Sir George Trevelyan, is one of the 
 best Lives of the last century. It is neither too 
 technical nor too minute. But then Macaulay 
 was a very amiable man, and a decidedly pic- 
 turesque figure, thoroughly human and pleasantly 
 gay, so that there was little possibility of offence, 
 and infinite scope for a truthful biographer. 
 
 The Life of Tennyson, by the present Lord 
 
Biography 239 
 
 Tennyson, is a collection of extremely interesting; 
 and vivid material. Tennyson had the quality of 
 personal impressiveness. As the life of a poet, 
 it is admirable. But there was another side, 
 which kept Tennyson, in spite of his genius, in- 
 (cnsely human: he had no petty qualities, except 
 ])erhaps his vanity, but he had unrestrained, 
 homely, frank, full-blooded moods — perhaps but 
 ! a rely displayed to his son — the absence of which 
 ill the biography renders the picture incomplete. 
 He could never have been anything but dignified, 
 l)ut his dignity was not quite on such pure and 
 e([uable lines as the book conveys the impression 
 of, and it was perhaps a larger and a finer thing, 
 because of the very conflict which the book hardly 
 reveals. 
 
 The Lives of Morris and Burne-Jones, by Pro- 
 fessor Mackail and Lady Burne-Jones respec- 
 tively, are both beautiful and admirable books, 
 because they reveal so much of the inner spirit 
 of the two men. In form, I think that the Life 
 f)f William Morris has been rarely surpassed. Its 
 proportion is exquisite, and the tale is told with 
 I masterly unity and an equable progress. The 
 f/(fe of Burne-Jones is notable for a charming 
 simplicity and na'ivetS of presentment, which 
 seems to bring one into direct touch with the 
 'vtist himself. Yet I have heard each Life criti- 
 
 sed by intimate friends of the two men. I have 
 lieard it said that a certain hardness of character, 
 ;in unsympathetic self-absorption in his own work. 
 
240 Along the Road 
 
 which characterised Morris, was not sufficiently 
 indicated; and that in Burne-Jones there was a 
 certain freakishness of disposition, a petulance 
 of spirit, of which the book gives little idea. I 
 am not in a position to estimate the truth of these 
 criticisms. But it is certain that a man of in- 
 tense energy and will-power, such as Morris pos- 
 sessed, cannot pursue a very definite line of work 
 without collisions with dissimilar natures; while 
 a nature like Burne-Jones's is liable to reactions 
 of weariness and depression, which are bound to 
 play a part in his life. 
 
 In a biography of a different kind, the Life of 
 Lord Randolph Churchill^ it seems to me that the 
 balance is very judiciously and faithfully pre- 
 served. Mr. Winston Churchill there exhibited 
 the rare gift of never allowing his critical sense 
 to be overpowered by filial admiration and sym- 
 pathy. He contrives to be amazingly dispassion- 
 ate and impersonal. The result is that the book 
 displays to the full the strength and the gener- 
 osity of its subject, while it clearly reveals the 
 impulsiveness of temperament which was fatal to 
 stability and sturdlness of character and career. 
 The book is candid, vivid, and just, and holds a 
 high place among contemporary biographies. 
 
 One other book I would here mention, because 
 of all recent biographical studies it is almost 
 supreme in psychological interest. Father and 
 ^on was hailed by many readers, apart from its 
 exquisite literary skill, as a record of extraor- 
 
Biography 241 
 
 dinary subtlety, pathos, and humour; and what 
 was felt by such readers to be its consummate 
 beauty was that the biographer never either ex- 
 alted or spared himself in tracing the lineaments 
 of a character in many respects so alien to his 
 own; and thus it appeared to be an almost tri- 
 umphant combination of critical observation and 
 tender devotion. Yet, on the other hand, there 
 were critics who held it to be a violation of 
 domestic piety and filial duty! We cannot dis- 
 regard such criticism as being merely reactionary 
 :ind stupid ; it has, no doubt, a wholesome element, 
 and as long as humanity exists there must always 
 be a conflict between reverence and candour, 
 between emotion and art. 
 
 The difficulty, then, is ultimately insoluble. 
 On the one hand, if a biographer is not intimate 
 with his subject he cannot give a lifelike por- 
 tiait; if he is intimate, he may hesitate to be 
 frank, or if he is frank, he will be accused of 
 impiety. And, again, we suffer under the defects 
 of our quality; for English writers have been 
 ] ire-eminent for the seriousness with which they 
 liave treated moral ideas in art. There is thus 
 :i tendency on the part of the public to demand 
 tliat a book must be edifying; and so a com- 
 ])romise seems almost essential. If the lives of 
 all great men were invariably edifying, there 
 would be no difficulty — yet no one has ever ac- 
 ( used St. Augustine of being indiscreet! The 
 only rule would seem to be that the biographer 
 
 z6 
 
242 Along the Road 
 
 must not suppress or omit essential features of 
 life and character; and that he must trust to 
 the whole effect being ultimately inspiring and 
 edifying. The real weakness of the idealising 
 biographer is this : that we are most of us frail ; 
 and that it encourages us far more, in reading 
 the lives of great men, to see them regretting 
 their failures, fighting against their temptations, 
 triumphing over their unworthy qualities, than 
 to read the life of a man which seems to be merely 
 an equable progress from strength to strength, 
 a prosperous voyage over serene seas to a haven 
 of repose and glory. 
 
GOSSIP 
 
 It was said of Queen Victoria by one who knew 
 her well that the conversation she liked best was 
 conversation that was personal without being 
 gossipy. That is only another of the many in- 
 stances in which the Queen in matters of prac- 
 tical conduct instinctively drew the line in the 
 exact place, and made the right distinction. To 
 be able to do this is only possible to people who 
 possess a sui)renie combination of fine feeling and 
 perfect common-sense. It is extrpinply difficult to 
 lai_ dpwn principles in the matter of conversation . 
 or to regulate the use and abuse o f '^^hi^l ih mr. 
 re ntly called gossip . It is not a question simply 
 ^of what one listens to, and what one says, but 
 whom one listens to, and to whom one talks. To 
 lay down a general rule that one ought not to 
 discuss other people is to be a preposterous prig. 
 If human beings are not to be interested in each 
 other's acts and words, and are not to discuss 
 them, it is very hard to say what they may dis- 
 cuss. It is equally unreasonable to say that one 
 ought not to discuss one's friends behind their 
 back, or that one ought not to say anything 
 243 
 
244 Along the Road 
 
 about an acquaintance that one is not prepared 
 to say before him, because it is not by any means 
 always good for people to know the truth about 
 themselves, whether it be palatable or unpala- 
 table. Thejclifficulty a bout the w hole question is 
 that we all of us do and say^ th ings that we~ot[ght 
 not _toI3o~oiFsay, of which we are or oughtTol)e~~ 
 ashamed, and which we do not wish to be in- 
 cluded in the impression which we should like 
 others to form of us. Another practical diffi- 
 culty is that there are many things which may 
 fairly be said, which may not fairly be repeated, 
 and that some listeners are naturally leaky. 
 They may hear a thing in confidence, and even 
 if they are not seized with a burning desire to 
 proclaim it, because every one likes to astonish 
 and surprise and interest others, they soon 
 forget that it was confidential, and impart it as 
 naturally as they impart all they know. 
 
 We most of us lead an exterior life which is 
 public property, and which any one may legiti- 
 mately discuss, and an interior life which we 
 share with our circle of intimates. But it is not 
 fair to say that we have no right to make public 
 what we learn through intimacy. There are 
 many people who make a less agreeable impres- 
 sion on the world than they do on their friends, 
 and if the friends are not to endeavour to correct 
 and improve that impression, their friendship is 
 not worth much. Again, to say, as I have heard 
 worthy people say, that one ought only to speak 
 
Gossip 245 
 
 well of others, makes both for dulness and in- 
 sincerity. Hometimes it is a plain duty, if one 
 knows evil of a man, to warn an inexi)erienced 
 l)erson who may be drifting into intimacy with 
 him; and apart from that, we all of us have 
 faults and foibles, not of a serious kind, which 
 may be fairly and not even uncharitably discussed 
 by friends and foes alike. It is perhaps fair to 
 ]M)stulate that we must not say, either maliciously 
 or thoughtlessly, things, however true, which tend 
 to make a person more odious or more ridiculous 
 than he need be. But it is not human to Main- 
 tain that if a notoriously vain or rude person is 
 mentioned, no one is under any consideration to 
 mention salient instances of his vanity or rude- 
 ness. What a kindly person instinctively does is 
 to mention at the same time instances of the more 
 agreeable traits of such characters, which may 
 tend to escai)e observation. The one thing that 
 is really unpardonable is to tell a person who 
 lias been the subject of discussion what his critics 
 or foes have said about him. It is, of course, 
 conceivable that such a thing may be done from 
 ^^ood motives, or at all events a tale-bearer pro- 
 l)ably as a rule deceives himself into thinking 
 that his motives are good. But heaven guard us 
 from such motives ! I have known the thing done 
 <»ften enough, and I have never known it to do 
 anything but cause pain and suspicion and morti- 
 lication. Personally, I do not care in the least 
 what anyone, friend or foe, says of me behind 
 
246 Along the Road 
 
 my back, as long as I am not told of their critic- 
 isms. I am quite aware of my faults, and 
 anxious to get rid of tliem. To know that they 
 are discussed by others is only humiliating; to 
 believe that they are not observed, or charitably 
 viewed by others, encourages me to try to do 
 better. There are, of course, people in the world 
 whose temperament seems to have turned sour. 
 Tt is not wholly their fault. Sometimes ill-health 
 is the cause, sometimes dull and petty surround- 
 ings, sometimes a lack of close human relation- 
 ships, or an absence of normal activities. In such 
 hands as these, gossip undoubtedly becomes a 
 corroding and malignant process. I sat the other 
 day in a hotel close to a party of three elderly 
 ladies, sisters, I thought, who were travelling, it 
 seemed, in search of material for conversation. 
 But on the particular evening in question thej^ 
 were indulging in a species of anatomical demon- 
 stration. They laid friend after absent friend 
 upon the block and dissected each mercilessly 
 and minutely. It was rather a terrible display 
 of human nature, and, like the poet, I looked at 
 the ladies " and did not wish them mine." 
 
 But when all is said, the thing must be a 
 matter of instinct and grace rather than of prin- 
 ciple and effort. A good-humoured and tolerant 
 man may say things without a suspicion of offence 
 which in the hands of a malicious and unkindly 
 person would seem like a shower of mud; gossip 
 is, after all, but the natural outcome of interest 
 
Gossip 247 
 
 in other human beings; and it is better that we 
 should be interested in each other, even at the 
 expense of some sharpness of criticism. There is 
 a fine apophthegm which sums up the whole 
 matter — and in passing may I say that I wish 
 I could discover the source of the quotation? 
 
 " There 's so much good in the worst of us, 
 There *s so much bad in the best of us, 
 That it ill beseems any one of us 
 To find much fault with the rest of us." 
 
 That is large-minded enough for anything — a 
 finer maxim than the deliciously cynical remark 
 made by one of the characters in Mr. Mallock's 
 \'ew Republic, w^ho justifies scandal on the ground 
 that it is a thing based on one of the most sacred 
 of qualities — truth, and built up by one of the 
 most beautiful of qualities — imagination. 
 
TACTFULNESS 
 
 It was only a conversation, and we came to no 
 conclusion, like the talkers in Plato's dialogues. 
 The subject of tact came up, I do not know how, 
 and one of the party said : " Who is the most 
 tactful person you know? " There was a silence, 
 and then the same speaker said triumphantly, 
 " Can you mention any one whom you consider 
 really tactful?" A name was mentioned. "Oh, 
 
 no!" said another; "A is not tactful — ^he is 
 
 only discreet; he talks about things and questions 
 and facts, and never mentions people; he runs 
 no risks. It is not tactful to keep out of hot 
 water yourself. The point is to keep other people 
 out of hot water." This was agreed to, and an- 
 other name was mentioned. " Oh dear no! " said 
 the same objector ; " he is tactful in the sense that 
 he is full of tact; but he is too full. It is as 
 though he used too strong a scent, and too much 
 of it. He always reminds me of a story of the 
 late Master of Trinity. Someone, speaking of a 
 popular preacher before him, said : ' I like his 
 sermons ; he has so much taste.' * Yes,' said the 
 Master, ^ and all of it so bad.' " This gravamen 
 248 
 
Tactful ness 249 
 
 was accepted, and a third name was mentioned, 
 to which our critic said : " No, he is not quite 
 right either; the really tactful man should pour 
 
 in both oil and wine. Now, B supplies the 
 
 oil freely, but forgets the wine; he mollifies, he 
 does not stimulate." 
 
 One of the party then said very gently : " Well, 
 we are talking frankly, and I will say that I 
 consider myself a tactful person." There was a 
 silence, while the circle reflected, and the chief 
 critic said meditatively : " Dr. Johnson said once 
 that he considered himself a polite man." There 
 was a laugh at this, and we gave up trying to 
 discover tactful people. 
 
 The conversation then became general and im- 
 personal, and though we came to no conclusions, 
 we indulged in many brisk and inaccurate gen- 
 (M-alisations, the chief of which I will try to 
 summarise. 
 
 The fact is that tactfulness, like humility, is 
 one of the virtues the very existence of which 
 depends upon its escaping observation. The mo- 
 ment that it becomes conscious of itself, or that 
 others become conscious of it, it either evaporates, 
 or becomes almost offensive. It must be unsus- 
 ])ected, like the onion in the salad ; if it is de- 
 tected, it is ipso facto excessive. It is very 
 difficult to say in what tact exactly consists. 
 Like all other subtle qualities, it is an instinctive 
 gift; and though it can be imi)roved upon, if it 
 is there, it can hardly be acquired. The tactful 
 
250 Along the Road 
 
 person, by some secret grace, keeps a hundred 
 things in his mind, and applies them all. It is 
 not that he says to himself, " This topic will not 
 
 do because A will not like it"; nor does he 
 
 say, " This subject will interest the party and 
 
 enable B to shine, so I will start it." He 
 
 does not determine not to give offence, nor does 
 he wish to draw people out, or to reconcile them. 
 He is merely perfectly natural and kindly; he 
 does not desire to please ; he simply wants every- 
 one to be comfortable and natural too. The re- 
 sult is that guests leave a party at which a tactful 
 person has held the reins, not saying, " How 
 well our host directed the conversation," but 
 merely feeling that they have themselves been at 
 their best; and thus tactfulness does not as a 
 rule earn praise and gratitude; it only increases 
 happiness and expansiveness. It cannot be noticed 
 at the time, for the tactful person is the person 
 with whom you feel instinctively at ease. The 
 tactful person does not horrify the shy specialist 
 by asking him, in a silence, a leading question 
 on his subject; while if a dangerous topic is in- 
 troduced, he does not interrupt, but steers the 
 talk delicately into safer waters. He modulates, 
 so to speak, out of the key; he does not crash 
 in some inharmonious chord. 
 
 Tactfulness does not by any means aim at 
 producing a kind of sunset effect on a conversa- 
 tion, a harmonious golden light over everything. 
 The tactful person will often provoke an argu- 
 
Tactful ness 251 
 
 ment, and even encourage a heated controversy, 
 if he knows the antagonists can be trusted to 
 use the gloves good-humouredly. He sees fair play 
 and is tirae-keei)er as well as referee. And he sees, 
 too, when a party is inclined to listen rather 
 than to talk, and has the power of talking gen- 
 erally but unobtrusively — unobtrusively, because 
 the essential point is that he should never arouse 
 jealousy, or create a suspicion that the situation 
 is being handled, still less adroitly handled. And 
 thus the tactful person can hardly be enthusiastic, 
 because enthusiasm implies a certain combative- 
 ness; but he must be able to appreciate en- 
 thusiasm in other people, and, what is more, to 
 interpret and harmonise enthusiasm in such a way 
 as to make it seem natural and agreeable, in- 
 stead of appearing, as it often does, superior and 
 fanatical. And the real reason why the tactful 
 person is so rare is that tactfulness implies a 
 union of a great many qualities, quick observa- 
 tion of tones of voice and facial expression and 
 little gestures, a good memory, genuine sympathy, 
 <i:ood -humour, promptness, justice, and a consider- 
 able range, not only of intellectual interests, but 
 of current interests of every kind. And this 
 combination is not a common one. 
 
 Such was our talk, amusing enough, and not ex- 
 hausting. We picked upsomepretty thoughts by the 
 way, and we separated under a vow that we would 
 search like Diogenes for tactful persons, and when 
 we had found them be careful not to betray them. 
 
ON FINDING ONE'S LEVEL 
 
 It always makes me very suspicious of a man's 
 perception or knowledge of the world to hear him 
 generalise easily about people. A man who says 
 that children always know at first sight who loves 
 them, and who does not, and that all boys are 
 generous and all young men confident and all 
 women unselfish, is a person from whose conversa- 
 tion I do not expect much benefit. The more one 
 knows of people, the more mysterious and un- 
 accountable they become. But there is one feel- 
 ing which I think is common to most human 
 beings towards the end of their time of education, 
 when they are about to enter the world. By that 
 time, after a strict course of examination, we 
 know fairly well where we stand intellectually. 
 We know how well we play games, we have few 
 delusions about our personal appearance, except 
 a vague idea that we look rather well at certain 
 angles and in a subdued light. But we almost 
 all of us believe that we are interesting and effec- 
 tive in our own way. We think that if we could 
 describe our views and opinions, they would be 
 seen to be sensible, and to have a certain charm ; 
 
 252 
 
On Finding One's Level 253 
 
 and we many of ns believe that, under favourable 
 circumstances and with the right material, we 
 have a degree of real effectiveness. One does not 
 wish to deprive peofde too quickl}^ of their illu- 
 sions, because they produce a certain sunshine of 
 the mind, without which happy and contented 
 work is hardly possible. But, curiously enough, 
 it is not, as a rule, the gifted i)eople who are 
 (omplacent and conceited. They are generally 
 clever enough to see that their best is not very 
 good, and to perceive their many deficiencies. 
 Complacency is not a thing which depends upon 
 applause or admiration : it is a quality of mind, 
 and often robustly independent of all results and 
 comparisons. But even if we are not complacent, 
 we most of us take up our work in the world with 
 a vague presage of success, for the simple reason 
 that successfulness is not by any means the result 
 of commanding qualities, but a quality in itself, 
 a blend of tenacity and tact. The work of the 
 world does not for the majority of people require 
 commanding ability or ornamental gifts. It re- 
 (jnires good-humour and patience and industry 
 and the power of taking pains. 
 
 Well, we shoulder our burden and go out into 
 the world, and at once the process of sorting 
 begins. A few people have a stroke of luck at 
 the outset. They slip into a good opening; they 
 get an appointment which is rather better than 
 they deserve; they know some one with influence, 
 who makes the first step an easy one. But most 
 
254 Along the Road 
 
 of us find ourselves with a perfectly ordinary and 
 commonplace task, with an income to earn and 
 a place to make. Perhaps for a few years we arc 
 not wholly contented; we think we have not had 
 quite a fair chance; and then we find that it 
 needs all our powers even to do our own simple 
 piece of work satisfactorily; we begin to see that 
 we must not hope for any great recognition, and 
 that strokes of luck are not things to be depended 
 upon. Then the years begin to fly past us like 
 telegraph posts. We settle into our work, we 
 marry, the income has to be increased; if pos- 
 sible, the children have to be educated. We have 
 been in the habit of considering ourselves, on the 
 whole, young people, with a good many pos- 
 sibilities ahead. Suddenly we awake to the fact 
 that we are five and forty, a little stiffer in the 
 joints than formerly, with streaks of grey in our 
 hair, or perhaps a tendency to baldness. And 
 then we realise with a shock that our prospect 
 of any great development of life and fortune is^ 
 over; we are ordinary citizens, undistinguished 
 persons, with our position and our income and 
 our abilities perfectly clear to every one, and 
 Avith no particular hope of being or becominjj 
 anything else than what we are. 
 
 It is then, I think, that the great strain of life 
 falls upon a man. He can be interesting and 
 romantic no longer; he has lost his vague am- 
 bitions. There are no more worlds to conquer, 
 and he would not know how to set about con- 
 
On Finding One's Level 255 
 
 quering them if there were. He is at the dividing 
 of the ways. He cannot even persuade himself 
 that he is particularly effective at his own job. 
 He can do it, perhaps, conscientiously and faith- 
 fully; but he cannot hope to be told to take 
 dominion over ten cities. 
 
 It is then, I believe, that the real great choice of 
 life is made. If a man is sensible, good-humoured, 
 and right-minded, he shrugs his shoulders with a 
 smile, and reflects that though he has not made 
 a great splash, he has found an abundance of 
 good things by the way. He has a loving wife, 
 perhaps, and a handful of healthy and well-con- 
 ducted children. He has all sorts of human ties, 
 with friends, colleagues, servants. He has a com- 
 fortable home, enough leisure, a pleasant hobby 
 or two. Life has not been a startling or a sur- 
 prising thing; he has not been crowned or vene- 
 rated; he has not made a fortune nor become 
 famous ; but he has a perfectly well-defined place, 
 and an honest bit of work behind him and before 
 him. There is nothing splendid about it, but 
 there need be nothing sordid either. He has had 
 his share, no doubt, of cares, griefs, anxieties; 
 and they have taught him, perhaps, that he must 
 not count on continuance ; and he is happier still 
 if he has found the need and proved the worth 
 of faith, to look beyond the visible horizon for 
 a further dawning. And then if he is wise he 
 settles down with a certain restfulness to life and 
 duty and kindliness. The love of the little circle 
 
256 Along the Road 
 
 multiplies and throws out fresh tendrils. He sees 
 that the glitter and brightness that at first allured 
 him, the hope of marvellous successes and great 
 surprises, was not really that of which he was 
 in search. He has found his level at last, and 
 with it peace. 
 
 But it sometimes takes a man in a very dif- 
 ferent way. He begins to think he has had no 
 luck, to envy and malign his contemporaries who 
 have made what he calls a better thing out of it 
 all. He begins to be withdrawn into himself in 
 a sort of listless bitterness, to call his friend the 
 Canon a windbag, and his acquaintance the 
 Member of Parliament a time-server. He begins 
 to think that it is in virtue of his own candour 
 and rugged honesty that he is stranded, and that 
 the world only rewards quacks and opportunists. 
 In these unwholesome exercises he loses all the 
 zest and flavour of life; he gets particular about 
 his little comforts, tyrannical in his family. He 
 becomes a man with a grievance, and when he is 
 shunned as a bore, he puts it down to snobbery. 
 He thinks that the world is against him, when 
 it is he that is against the world. 
 
 Now the question arises how this melancholy 
 kind of business can be ayoided, and it is very 
 difficult to give an answer. Is it inevitable that 
 the world should turn out a dreary place for a 
 good many people: for disappointed, ill-paid men; 
 for lonely and loveless women; for all suspicious 
 and cross-grained and ill-conditioned persons? 
 
On Finding One's Level 257 
 
 The approaches of dreariness are so insidious, and 
 so much of it comes from physical causes, want 
 of exercise and congenial occupation, and, worst 
 of all, from want of hopefulness. When people 
 have drifted into this condition it is hard to 
 see what can uplift them. The cure must be- 
 f(in, if it begins at all, long before the need for 
 it is apparent. The mischief arises, in the first 
 place, from a low kind of ambition, a desire for 
 material success and comfortable consideration ; 
 and it arises in the second place, from living by 
 impulse rather than by discipline, from behaving 
 as one is inclined to behave, and not as one knows 
 one ought to behave. If a man could find a medi- 
 cine for middle-aged discontent, it would be the 
 greatest discovery in the world. Some people 
 find it in religion, and it may be said that in 
 religion only, using the word in its largest and 
 noblest sense, can the cure be found. If a man 
 or a woman in that frame of mind can but believe 
 that the life and the soul of all mortals is indeed 
 dear to God, if he can lay hold of the blessed 
 fact that in a real surrender alone can strength 
 be found, then peace can creep back into the 
 shattered hoi)es and the broken designs. The only 
 thing we can do is to realise that we are here 
 to learn and apprehend something, and that peace 
 lies in this alone — not in the fortune we have 
 made, or the renown that we have won. Those 
 are pleasant and sunshiny things enough, but if 
 one has once been confronted with a desperate 
 
258 Along the Road 
 
 sorrow, one knows that they have not the smallest 
 power to distract or sustain. And in the sur- 
 render itself there is indeed a secret joy. The 
 soul folds its tired wings and waits for the truth 
 that it has missed to be shown to it; then, and 
 not till then, the smallest moments and incidents 
 of life begin to have a significance; the message 
 comes fast, when the soul's complaint is hushed 
 into silence. It matters then little how we are 
 placed, how humble our work may be, because we 
 begin to taste not the praise of men but the gifts 
 of God. Then the little stream, fretted and 
 broken in rocky places and narrow channels, 
 creeps out into the bosom of the lake, where 
 sound and foam no longer are heard; and so the 
 true level is found at last. 
 
THE INNER LIFE 
 
 Spring came on ns to-day in the deep conntry 
 with a sudden leap. It has been a long and 
 dreary winter here, sullen, rainy weather, and 
 the earth seems soaked like a sponge. Where- 
 ever one goes, in the fields, in the lanes, there 
 are runnels and water-breaks that I have never 
 seen before. The flowers have been doing their 
 best to appear, but the coverts and hedges are 
 very leafless as yet, though I saw yesterday that 
 lovely empurpled flush over a great wood of 
 birches that veils a wild moorland tract, which 
 tells of mounting sap and life revived. Yesterday 
 the wind, which has been buffeting and volleying 
 up from the south-west, died down, and to-day 
 the sun shines out, and everything seems glad to 
 be alive. It is not wholly delightful to one who, 
 like myself, has the constitution of a polar bear! 
 The languor of spring is a doubtful pleasure. It 
 wrung from Keble, in The Christian Year, the 
 only almost petulant complaint which that very 
 controlled writer ever indulged in. He writes : 
 
 " I sigh, and fain could wish this weariness were 
 death!" 
 
 259 
 
26o Along the Road 
 
 I do not feel that! There is something deli- 
 cious about it, if one is not hard at work. But 
 I am so wedded to what I call my work, that 
 I half grudge these days when one cannot attend 
 to business; and yet if one goes out, one knows 
 what Homer means when he says that a man's 
 knees and heart are loosed. One is unstrung, 
 undecided, vague. I do not at all like the languor 
 about three degrees this side of faintness, which 
 Keats said was one of the luxuries of spring; I 
 like to be judiciously and temperately frozen, 
 when all that one does is sharp-set and has a 
 keen edge to it. But that is only a private and 
 personal opinion. 
 
 Yet to day, as I walked in country lanes and 
 among copses, I became aware that something 
 very beautiful and wonderful was going on. The 
 birds fluted deliciously, the primroses peeped like 
 stars from the mossed roots of hedgerow trees, 
 the pretty lilac cuckoo-flower pushed up freshly 
 beside the runnel. The annual miracle was being 
 performed, and oh, how swiftly and sweetly I 
 Everything glad to live, the tree unfolding its 
 green tufts, the flower spreading itself in the sun. 
 The children whom I met had their hands full- 
 of blooms. I am afraid that as I get older, I 
 like that less and less. I cannot help feeling that 
 the flower has a dim consciousness of its own, 
 and that the unfurling of the bud must be a joyful 
 excitement. It must hurt, I think, to have one's 
 arrangements interfered with and one's pretty 
 
The Inner Life 261 
 
 limbs torn away. Even if the broken stem does 
 not actually ache, it must be a disappointment 
 not to have the sun in one's face, and to have 
 all one's cheerful plans for getting to the light 
 swept away by little hot fingers. I hate to see 
 woodland corners strewed with withering flowers, 
 just picked for a whim, their sweet breath inhaled, 
 and then dropped to wither. 
 
 Then, too, I think as I walk, how, as the years 
 go on, the springs begin to race past one, like 
 telegraph posts in a train ! How immensely long 
 the seasons of childhood were, yet now a year 
 seems to count for nothing; and I love life so 
 much that it is rather terrible to have the beauti- 
 ful days race away so fast. I spent last Easter 
 in the Cotswolds with two perfectly cheerful and 
 good-tempered younger friends. It was one of 
 those rare holidays when everything went well 
 from start to finish ; day after day entirely happy 
 and delightful; and, what is more rare still, I 
 knew that it w^as delightful; and yet it is gone 
 and can never come back ; and when one is fifty, 
 and finds oneself heavier, slower, more elderly 
 every year, one knows that those blessed intervals 
 are precious things indeed. 
 
 That is one of the puzzles, why one is pushed 
 and driven along so fast through the days, with 
 everything hurrying and hastening to some un- 
 dreamed-of goal. The strange part of it is that 
 one is given the power of imagining that it might 
 be permanent and everlasting. One sits in the 
 
262 Along the Road 
 
 sun, the breeze coming sweet through the sweet- 
 briar bush, talking idly with the friend, who un- 
 derstands perfectly, of memories and plans, of 
 things and people. The kitten wanders about 
 exploring the laurels with a fearful joy, and com- 
 ing back at intervals for a little sympathy. A 
 chaffinch on the ivied wall chirps and chuckles 
 at intervals, with a tiny torrent of song. So 
 surely it might be for ever? A carriage drives 
 up, some one crosses the lawn; one has to go 
 and be civil to some callers to whom one has 
 nothing to say; the post comes in and there are 
 a pack of letters to answer. Is it always to be 
 so? Can one never have the peace one dreams of? 
 Well, I do not know ! On a day like this, when 
 I walk in the quiet woods, I am conscious of a 
 strangely double nature at work within me. On 
 the surface there is a busy brain, full of ideas 
 and plans and work, thinking out little problems, 
 devising replies to troublesome questions, doing 
 other people's business, finding endless things to 
 do, struggling to put ideas into shape. Much of 
 it does not seem particularly worth doing, I con- 
 fess. A good deal of it seems like the trouble 
 which nations take in increasing armaments in 
 the hope of never having to use them. If one 
 could clear away all the unnecessary work of the 
 world, be content with simple shelter, well-worn 
 clothes, inexpensive meals, a few good books, one 
 would have time to live; and then suddenly, as 
 one reflects, one becomes aware of a self which 
 
The Inner Life 263 
 
 lies far deeper than the busy brain; a self which 
 goes quietly and slowly on its way, doing its own 
 secret business; something very old and simple 
 and straightforward, which listens to one's rest- 
 less plans and schemes as one listens to the talk 
 of a child, and knows that its real life is not 
 there. That deeper, inner self is what loves and 
 lives; it does one's feeling for one; those strange 
 deep attractions which one feels, not too often, 
 for other people, which seem so inevitable and 
 instinctive, so far removed from any question of 
 duty or reason, these come from the inner self; 
 and that dt^eper self, too, is what cares with a 
 kind of intent i)assion for certain scenes and 
 places. If I go, for instance, to beautiful moun- 
 tain country, m}' upper mind is stirred and 
 pleased and amused by the strange forms of the 
 hills, their craggy faces, their sweeping moor- 
 lands, their falling streams, but the inner self 
 is silent and unmoved ; and yet when I come to 
 walk as I walk to-day in English country, with 
 wooded valleys, broad ploughlands, pleasant home- 
 steads, old cottages, the inner sense is all alive, 
 loving the scene with a quite unintelligible pas- 
 sion, crying out constantly with a deep emotion ; 
 and yet I can give no sort of reason for its fancy. 
 I have no associations with the spot, except that 
 I have lived there for a few years; yet the inner 
 sense seems at home, and embraces all the circle 
 of the hills with a hungering kind of love that 
 would kiss the very soil, so dear it is. ^ 
 
264 Along the Road 
 
 That inner self is the spirit of man, I think, 
 with a long life behind it and before it; one can- 
 not mould it or control it; it is oneself; it com- 
 mands and does not obey, it lives and does not 
 reason. I do not care if my brain dies, if I lose 
 even my treasure of memories and hopes, if I 
 forget my labour and suffering; for the inner self 
 hardly suffers at all; its joy and its serenity are 
 troubled by the sorrows and pains of the body, 
 but only as the wind ruffles the surface of the 
 sleeping lake. 
 
 When it comes to the deeper thoughts of the 
 soul, it is the outer self which investigates, per- 
 ceives, argues, weighs, presents its case; but it 
 is the inner self which chooses, and which knows 
 what belongs to its peace. Why we go astray, 
 why we are suspicious, contentious, ill-humoured, 
 wrathful, is because we learn, too many of us, to 
 live in the outer part of our minds. Much of 
 our unhappiness in the world comes from mis- 
 taking where our real life lies. It is easy to 
 make this mistake, if our outer thought is vivid 
 and strong; and the unhappiest people are those 
 who are always urging the suggestions of the 
 outer thought against the dictates of the inner 
 soul. What we have to try to do is to live more 
 in deep, strong, satisfying things; to live more 
 by instinct and faith, and less by argument and 
 scheme. For it is certain that to live too much 
 in our outer consciousness is to lose time, to 
 delay our progress; we must dare to trust the 
 
The Inner Life 265 
 
 inner serenity, to act as our heart tells ns to 
 act, not to be afraid of quiet and simple life, not 
 to let our reason and our imagination terrify us. 
 Tlien our life attains its true proportions; and 
 we can heal the fret of life, by a wise passivity, 
 a recei\ing of quiet impressions, by trusting the 
 strong and untroubled soul within. 
 
 I was talking only yesterday to a wise and 
 tender-hearted physician, who has been a true 
 friend to me for many years. He was telling 
 me of a talk he had been having with a brilliant 
 man of science about the origin and development 
 of life. " 1 said to him," said my friend, " that 
 he might push back the process of life to the 
 ultimate jelly of protoplasm, the cell which just 
 multiplies itself and does no more; there you 
 have it, the primal vital impulse — the indestruc- 
 tible force of life! One cannot trace it back 
 further, but it is there, and no thought can ob- 
 literate it. It exists — it cannot end or begin; it 
 is just the thought of God." 
 
 These words came into my head as I walked 
 to-day ; it was the thought of God ! It was round 
 me on every side, in the woods and fields, in the 
 air and light, that vast force of life: I was of it, 
 included in it, moving with it. How vain was 
 ray reluctance, my timidity, my forecast of death, 
 my output of schemes and plans! Every single 
 power and quality that I had, it was all a gift, 
 .1 thing made and moved forward, a force im- 
 perishable and indestructible. Could I not re- 
 
266 Along the Road 
 
 joice in the thought, in the richness of experience, 
 the beauty, the interest, the emotion, the energy 
 of it all? ^^Yes, a thousand times!" said the 
 spirit within me. " Move onwards serenely, cast 
 aside regret, cleanse and purify life, only be un- 
 dismayed and hopeful, as you turn page after 
 page of the revelation of God. That is the mean- 
 ing," said the soul, " of the infinite desires jow 
 feel, the emotion that would embrace everything, 
 the love that you would offer to all hearts, if you 
 could but draw near to them." 
 
 And I think that my spirit spoke truly, for T 
 realised that it was a larger voice that I heard 
 than any message of my own that I could devise. 
 
 And here I think that one's will can help one; 
 one can determine to cast out of one's life the 
 petty and distracting cares that bring one down 
 so low; one cannot avoid them, of course; but 
 one can look through them and past them, not 
 linger over them, not get entangled in them. One 
 must take life as it comes; but one must not be 
 taken in by it, must not make claims or recrimina- 
 tions, must not be dissatisfied or jealous or 
 solemn about it; it is easy to feel that one has 
 missed opportunities, easy to grudge the successes 
 of one's comrades, easy to think one has not had 
 fair chances ; but that is all a false valuation ; 
 it is part of the deceit which the outer self weaves 
 over its work, like the web of a spider over a 
 window-pane. Every one has the chance of ex- 
 perience, and the simpler the materials are, the 
 
The Inner Life 267 
 
 less temptation is there to be deceived. We are 
 here to learn rather than to teach to perceive 
 our losses rather than to reckon our gains. 
 
 " Yes," a reader may say, "it is easy enough 
 for a comfortable and well-to-do person, in a 
 quiet country house, to write thus. What does 
 he know of life's difficulties and troubles?" 
 Well, I can only say quite plainly that I have 
 had plenty of tragic material in my life — sorrows, 
 failures, long and disabling illness, disappoint- 
 ments, fears, miseries. I believe that poverty is 
 the only human trouble I have not had to bear. 
 I have not found life easy or triumphant; and 
 I may say humbly that the only ease I have ever 
 had is the sense that I have been borne along, 
 with all my little dilemmas, all my faults and 
 failures, in the great and merciful hands of God ; 
 and now I am not happy so much as interested, 
 because I do believe with all my weak heart in 
 the richness and greatness in store for every 
 single one of us that moves beneath these dark 
 skies and through these uncertain days. 
 
 Yet here I am in the springtime with every- 
 thing jubilant, thoughtless, deliciously alive about 
 me. Wliat folly, nay worse than folly, to cloud 
 the soft and serene air with regrets, question- 
 ings, repinings! If we can but pierce through 
 the outer crust of things, we shall find the clear 
 water of life moving below; we are in the city 
 all the time, made musical with the sound of 
 waters, whose foundations are wells of living 
 
268 Along the Road 
 
 light, if only we have eyes to see it. Here and 
 now is our joy, in every act and word, if we 
 can but trust the inner life, the inner heart; if 
 we can but neglect the voice of fear and the 
 deceitful whispers of the world, and see that 
 what matters is that we should fill up with 
 wise patience the little gaps of hope, as we 
 walk together, quietly and cheerfully, along the 
 heavenward road. 
 
ON BEING SHOCKED 
 
 Many years ago I hacJ a friend with whom I used 
 to discuss all sorts of things with entire freedom 
 — books, iKJOple, places, events, ideas. But soon 
 after we left the University, a change took place 
 in him. He fell under certain influences — I need 
 not say what they were; but I became gradually 
 aware, in meeting him, that it was becoming in- 
 creasingly diflicult to talk over questions with 
 him. He began, I thought, to draw a line round 
 many things. If it was a question of talking 
 about events, he would say that he did not like 
 gossip; if a person was mentioned, he would say 
 that So-and-so was his friend, and he would rather 
 not criticise him; if ideas came up, he would 
 say, with obvious emotion, that the particular 
 thought was a very sacred one to him, and that 
 he must be excused from arguing about it. This 
 was not done dogmatically or fiercely, but gently 
 and even shamefacedly. The result, however, was 
 that our intercourse lost all its frankness, and 
 for me most of its pleasure, and faded away, as 
 pleasant things must sometimes fade. I do not 
 think our mutual regard was altered. I would 
 
 269 
 
270 Along the Road 
 
 have trusted him implicitly, and, if need had been, 
 I would have made an}^ call upon his friendship, 
 dictated or allowed by affection, with a perfect 
 confidence that it would be generously met; and 
 I am sure he would have done the same with me. 
 
 But the freedom of talk, of discussion, of state- 
 ment was gone, simply because I was always 
 afraid of wounding some MBtotibility or touch- 
 ing some shrinking emoti(^|^ 
 
 I do not say this to prove that I have retained 
 an open mind, and I am quite prepared to be- 
 lieve that he is right and that I am wrong. The 
 question really is not to what extent one is en- 
 titled to hold things sacred, because I do not 
 dispute any one's right to do that; but to what 
 extent one is entitled to claim the silence of 
 others, or their assent to what one holds sacred. 
 The point is whether one loses or gains by such 
 a process, and whether one may claim to hold 
 opinions in such a way as to entitle one to 
 disapprove of or to be pained by any species of 
 disagreement. 
 
 Of course, it is all a question of where the line 
 is to be drawn. No one could possibly claim to 
 hold all his own beliefs, opinions, and views so 
 sacred that he could not bear to have any of them 
 disputed or called in question. I doubt myself 
 whether it is wise or right to hold any opinion 
 at all so sacred as to claim that no one shall 
 venture to disagree with it; there are many things 
 in the world that must be only a matter of sub- 
 
On Being- Shocked 271 
 
 jective opinion, and of which no objective proof 
 is possible. Some of the best things in the world 
 — religion, beauty, affection — are of that nature. 
 One may have a serene and unshaken conviction 
 on these points, and one may desire with all one's 
 heart that others may share one's conviction. 
 But, after all, they are only deductions from 
 one's own experience, and others may have dif- 
 ferent experiences and draw different deductions. 
 It seems to me that no advance is possible, if 
 any one can claim to be infallible. When it 
 comes to discussing an opinion, I am disposed 
 to give full weight to anything which may be 
 urged against it, and I wish to hear any valid 
 objection to it. I may be converted and per- 
 suaded, but I do not mean to be dictated to. I 
 do not think it is desirable, on any subject in the 
 world, to make up one's convictions into a bundle, 
 as early in life as possible, and to admit of no 
 rearrangement or addition. The true consistency 
 is not to hold to an opinion, but to be ready to 
 change it, if one sees reason to do so. 
 
 Many of the things that my friend said to me 
 in the old days were true and fruitful ; I saw his 
 point of view, and perceived that he had reasons 
 on his side; but one never arrives at any com- 
 prehensiveness at all if one cannot admit of any 
 compromise. I remember one argument I had 
 with my friend when the ground was getting 
 limited. I said to him, " 1 do not agree with 
 your opinion, as I understand it. If you will 
 
272 Along the Road 
 
 explain it, perhaps I shall feel differently." 
 ^' No," he said, " I can't explain it. The thing 
 seems to me so unquestionable and so sacred that 
 I cannot even risk speaking of it to any one who 
 does not share my conviction. It would be a 
 kind of profanity to express my thoughts on the 
 subject." 
 
 That seems to me like a deliberate sacrifice of 
 all frankness, a decision that one will not share 
 or compare one's experiences at all. We must 
 be all agreed that there is a great and deep ele- 
 ment of uncertainty and mystery about life. 
 One's own experience must be limited; and the 
 only hope of getting at anything real is not to 
 measure everything by one's own rule and -line, 
 but to see how others make their measurements. 
 The people I have got most out of in every way 
 are the people with clear minds, who are willing 
 to listen to one's own views, and to say frankly 
 what they themselves think. Impatience, con- 
 tempt, derisiveness, are the qualities which hinder 
 and obstruct. What helps things along is frank 
 sympathy, and the recognition of the right of 
 others to differ from oneself. 
 
 But then it may, of course, be said : " Oh, but 
 if one feels strongly about a subject one must 
 be allowed to express oneself strongly — that is 
 how moral victories are won ! " I do not believe 
 it. It may be good for a weaker nature to follow 
 in the track of a stronger will for a time. But 
 the essence of life and progress is some time or 
 
On Being Shocked 273 
 
 other to have real opinions of one's own^ and not 
 to have adopted the opinions of others wholesale. 
 
 And so I believe that if a man finds himself 
 increasingly impatient of opposition, more in- 
 clined to accnse of stupidity and irreverence 
 those who hold different views, more liable to 
 be shocked, he should not welcome it as a sign 
 of a firmer grasp of principles, but as a sign that 
 he is losing the power of brotherly and Christian 
 sympath}'. The danger and the injury of dogma- 
 tism is so awful, the power it has of alienating 
 others, the selfish withdrawal into some private 
 stronghold of thought which underlies it, are so 
 disastrous, that its apparent gains are riot to be 
 reckoned in comparison with its inevitable losses. 
 
 Hut will not, it may be said, this attempt at 
 comi)rehensive sympathy weaken our decisiveness 
 and our resolution? Not at all! It is the high- 
 est sign of strength to be chivalrously gentle; 
 and in order to be potent, strength should be 
 unconscious of itself. The moment that we feel 
 that we can bend others to our will, that we can 
 silence them, that we can make them act as we 
 wish, that moment we are in the grip of a terrible 
 temptation; and what makes it the more subtle 
 J I ttMMptation is that we may be so conscious of 
 uiir own pure and high intentions. We maj^ have 
 to act decisively and firmly, but if we extort sub- 
 mission, we must be careful to give our reasons; 
 and if it is sometimes inevitable that we should 
 insist upon obedience, we ought to recognise 
 
274 Along the Road * 
 
 that it is obedience and not agreement that we 
 demand. 
 
 And then, too, what havoc it makes of real 
 relations with people if this closeness of thought 
 prevails! I am not speaking of mere acquaint- 
 ances, with whom some reticence must probably 
 be practised; but even there I am not sure; I 
 think that the closer one can get to all people, 
 the more one can open one's mind and heart to 
 them, the better for us all. What a comfort it 
 is to meet a man or a woman, and to find that one 
 can dispense with all the posturing and fencing 
 and the other practices of polite society, and talk 
 at once openly and frankly about the things for 
 which one cares. People who can do that have 
 a simply marvellous power of evoking the best 
 out of other people. No one wants to live in an 
 unreal world ; the caution and timidity which we 
 feel and show is all an old survival from the time 
 when life was made up of strife and enmity, and 
 when one dared not say what one felt or thought 
 from a savage kind of fear that it might be used 
 against one. A certain amount of this reticence 
 is inevitable in the case of young people, because 
 young people are more merciless and more deri- 
 sive, and altogether more uncivilised than older 
 people. But as one gets older, the more one can 
 dispense with false shame and selfish caution and 
 mistrust of others the better. 
 
 I sat the other night at dinner next a famous 
 man; he was perfectly courteous and kindly, but 
 
On Being Shocked 275 
 
 he would not show me what was in his mind at 
 all; perhaps he thought me impertinent or in- 
 discreet for trying to turn the talk on to matters 
 of intimate belief and opinion. I do not know! 
 but he uttered no sort of personal preference and 
 made no frank admissions ; till I felt at last that 
 T might as well have sat by a fine statue, all 
 marble within. And then, as good fortune would 
 have it, I fell in after dinner with another man, 
 famous too, w^ho engaged with ease and humour 
 and zest in a pleasant discussion about the due 
 balance of society and solitude, and said a whole 
 host of refreshing and charming things, which 
 did me good to hear, and some of which I hope 
 to remember. He did not give me the impression 
 of reflecting whether I was too unimportant a 
 person to be made the recipient of his confidences. 
 He just made the most of an easy human prox- 
 imity, and shared his experiences and beliefs 
 frankly and charmingly, so that I recognised at 
 once a fellow-pilgrim, who knew himself to be 
 bound upon the same interesting, wonderful, de- 
 lightful, mysterious journey as myself, and who 
 was ready to beguile the tedium of the way with 
 discourse of adventures and hopes and desires. To 
 meet others cheerfully, directh^ unsuspiciously; 
 not to be anxious to make one's own opinions 
 ])revail — that is the secret of all the influence 
 worth having. 
 
HOMELY BEAUTY 
 
 Our code and schedule of beauty is, I often feel, 
 a very formal affair. Either we are afraid or 
 ashamed to differ from received opinions, or we 
 have never thought of revising the code we 
 adopted in our youth, or we do not really look 
 at things, or we do not care about beauty at all. 
 For one or other of these very insufficient reasons, 
 we go on dully and tamely, trying no experiments, 
 indulging heavy habits of thought. I, who hold 
 inconsistency to be a high virtue — by which I 
 mean the power of changing one's mind for suf- 
 ficient reasons— think it a real duty to try to 
 have new points of view, and to be constantly 
 taking stock of opinions, to see if I really hold 
 them, if they really grow there, or if they have 
 only been stuck into my mind, like flowers into 
 a vase. 
 
 Now Ruskin made such an outcry against all 
 factories and foundries, all places where labour 
 is applied on a large scale, involving high chim- 
 neys and torrents of smoke, that the average 
 Briton takes for granted that the whole thing is 
 ugly and horrible. I am inclined to believe that 
 276 
 
Homely Beauty 277 
 
 this is a gigantic mistake, and that there is a 
 \in-y real majesty abont these big structures, 
 with their volleying chimneys, their long rows 
 of windows, their grumbling and rattling gear. 
 'IMiey are quite unpretentious, in the first place. 
 They make no attempt to conceal that they are 
 doing the work of the world. It may be dirty 
 work, but it has to be done, and thus they have 
 the first beauty of appropriateness. They are 
 like great fortresses of industry, and have all 
 the solemn effect of size. I do not think they 
 \v<^u]d be imi)roved by having rows of Gothic 
 \x indows and a chimney built like Giotto's cam- 
 T nnile, because they would be pretending to 
 something else. It rather sickens me when I 
 . i'nr enthusiastic people compare the tower, let 
 ns say, of the town hall at Siena to a lily on its 
 stem. It is a tower, and it ought to be like a 
 tower, and not like a lily, the architecture of 
 which is quite a different affair. I think it is 
 (jiiite fair to put a little ornament into a chimney, 
 and a smooth cylinder of white brick, a mere tube 
 set up on end, is almost too business-like an 
 affair, though I am not at all prepared to con- 
 cede that it is necessarily hideous. There is a 
 (himney in London, of some electrical works, I 
 think, near Regent's Park, which has a graceful 
 floriation of masonry at the top, which I think 
 is a very fine thing indeed; and on a sunshiny 
 morning in London, when it is volleying steam, 
 and stands up over that soft golden haze which 
 
278 Along the Road 
 
 one sees only on a bright day in a many-chimneyed 
 town, it has a charm about it which one need 
 not go to Italy to capture. 
 
 But I should like to take a much more homely 
 and workaday affair than that. If any one who 
 reads these lines knows the London and North- 
 western Railway well, he Avill remember, on pass- 
 ing out of Carnforth Station, an immense factory, 
 which I believe to be an iron-foundry. It is a 
 collection of great iron towers, stained and 
 streaked with red dust, with strange congloba- 
 tions of huge tubes, wheels whirring on lofty 
 stages of spidery rods, high galleries, long shoots, 
 towering scaffolds, all rising above clustered sheds 
 and sidings and piles of ore and shunted trucks. 
 At night it is ablaze with great fires roaring 
 and streaming into the air. The place by day is 
 grim, gaunt, filthy, laborious-looking. To a mild 
 literary man like myself, it is an entirely mys- 
 terious building; I have no idea what all the 
 tubes, cisterns, wheels, scaffoldings mean; but it 
 is plain that something very real and vigorous 
 is going on there. It seems to me to have a 
 beauty of a very real and impressive kind. It is 
 enormously big and imposing, the shapes are gro- 
 tesque, bizarre, almost terrifying. It has a real 
 solemnity — I had almost said sublimity — about 
 it, with its plated iron towers and its frenzied 
 apparatus. It stirs many emotions — wonder, 
 amazement, and the fear, as Ecclesiastes says, 
 " of that which is high." The very outlines of it 
 
Homely Beauty 279 
 
 have a majesty of tlieir own. I only know that 
 1 look out for it with delight, and rivet my gaze 
 upon it as long as it is visible. 
 
 When I aired these views to an accomplished 
 woman of my acquaintance who lives In the Lake 
 < ountry, and who has a real passion for hills and 
 (lags and running waters (to which I also lay 
 (laim), she shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and 
 said I was too fond of being paradoxical. I could 
 not i)ersuade her that I meant what I said. She 
 finally alleged that the fumes killed the vegeta- 
 tion all round, to which T replied that the entire 
 earth was not meant to be covered with vegeta- 
 tion, and that after all it was only what farmers 
 (lid in a different way. 
 
 I do not mean, of course, that I want to intrude 
 iron-foundries into all the loveliest places of the 
 earth. Such a building would not look well be- 
 tween Rydal Water and Grasmere; but that is 
 because it would interfere with the harmony of 
 the scene. But such buildings have their place, 
 and I contend that in their place they are, or 
 (an be, beautiful. 
 
 I travelled the other day on a misty morning 
 f?om Cambridge to St. Pancras. At Cambridge, 
 (lose to the station, is an immense mill, consisting 
 of two many-storied buildings of white brick, now 
 much weathered, connected by a high gallery. 
 The architect has put a little finish into them, 
 and one of the buildings terminates with a 
 classical pediment which has real grace. But I 
 
28o Along the Road 
 
 am sure that the building has a fine quality of 
 its own, given by its height, its size, its purpose- 
 fulness. At least I feel the beauty of it — I sup- 
 pose that is the most one can claim — and I think 
 that other people would find it beautiful too, if 
 it were not the dull fashion to think otherwise, 
 and therefore never to look at it with the idea 
 of being pleased by it. All that journey was full 
 for me of the same sort of beauties. The great 
 black mouths of tunnels, solid-arched, low-hung, 
 with the steam floating about them, the huge gas- 
 reservoirs, standing up inside the filigree screens 
 of ironwork ; the vast span of St. Pancras station 
 — and I am sure, by the way, that the St. Pancras 
 Hotel is a building which with an added touch 
 of age will be a thing which travellers will come 
 from far to see; all these things in the misty air 
 had a real grandeur, and grandeur not diminished 
 for me because they stood for work and life and 
 energy, and were not lazy, luxurious, artistic 
 affairs, built to please the eyes of leisurely 
 persons. 
 
 There is a huge factory near the line — I do 
 not remember exactly where — which has a pro- 
 digious tower of wood, stained and streaked with 
 the drippings of some boiling fluid, which seems 
 to me to be a really magnificent affair in outline, 
 structure, and texture; and I believe that if one 
 only can regard it candidly and expectantly, one 
 can detect, and be impressed by, its artistic 
 quality. 
 
Homely Beauty 281 
 
 I do not mean that one should exactly set up 
 factories as rivals, for aesthetic sensation, to 
 (lothic cathedrals. Ely, rising on a spring morn- 
 ing above its apple-orchards, is a lovely object 
 enough, though I am barbarous enough to object 
 to its fussy lantern, and to believe that nothing 
 at all can justify and nothing but age make 
 tolerable, rows of Gothic pinnacles — spikes of 
 stone grotesquely and fretfully crocketed. The 
 vast western tower of Ely, so quiet and dark 
 Mud simple, is worth fifty churches in the dec- 
 orated style, which I believe to have been truly 
 decadent in its avoidance of plain spaces, and its 
 ])acking of every inch with restless and often un- 
 meaning ornament. And at Ely I can see a real 
 beauty in the great polygonal brick water tower, 
 with its intricate arches and severe outlines. 
 
 I am sure it is a dilettante business to confine 
 our sense of beauty to Gothic vaultings and 
 traceries, lovely as they often are. I believe in 
 my heart of hearts that classical architecture, 
 such as St. Paul's, is a finer, nobler, more stately 
 thing, in its solid appropriateness to human need, 
 its grave dignity, than any Gothic building, which 
 is often in fact a kind of confectionery in stone. 
 As one gets older one loves plainness, simplicity, 
 proportion, stillness, usefulness, better and better, 
 jind comes more and more to mistrust ornament 
 and decoration. But the point is to enlarge and 
 extend our sense of what is beautiful and 
 grand. Of course when one is dealing with things 
 
282 Along the Road 
 
 like pictures, stained-glass, wood-carving — all the 
 minuter and more delicate works of the human 
 hand and mind, one is face to face with a dif- 
 ferent question. They are deliberately ingenious 
 and fanciful things, and grace is the first quality 
 we demand of them. But when it comes to build- 
 ings, we are brought into touch with a different 
 range of emotions; we must think what they 
 mean, what they stand for, what part of human 
 life "and toil they represent. And I for one think 
 an old homestead, among its ricks and barns and 
 byres, a far more beautiful and moving thing 
 than an elaborate manor-house or villa, in park 
 or garden, because the latter stands for idle 
 leisure, and the former for human life and work. 
 The things that are made for use are what please 
 best, and not the things that are made for pleas- 
 ure; and if the homely things have just enough 
 touch of beauty about them to show that the 
 maker loved his work, and took a pride in it, and 
 desiied to make it seemly as well as useful, then 
 I think we have the most moving quality of all. 
 
 When one sees, in Northern or Western river 
 valleys, old factories of mellowed brick, with 
 quaint wooden galleries above the stream, with 
 white casements, and perhaps a pretty pillared 
 cupola for the bell, one sees at once that they 
 are altogether pleasing and harmonious things, 
 and the dirt and litter of them a perfectly natural 
 and not ungraceful mess ; I suppose that the cul- 
 tured dilettantes of the day, when such places 
 
Homely Beauty 283 
 
 were built, turned up their noses at them and 
 thought them horrible. We are, of course, very 
 much at the mercy of- antiquity just uow, and 
 i'ven if we build a new building, we do all that 
 we can to render it old in hue and shape; but 
 I think that is a false and mean standard. If a 
 )>lace is solid, strong, and perfectly adapted to 
 its purpose, there is no reason whatever why it 
 should not be beautiful; and I am not being in 
 the least paradoxical when I say that as I pass 
 tlirough the manufacturing districts of England 
 r see many buildings of a perfectly commonplace 
 kind, huge cubes of brick, with tiers of windows 
 and a great chimney towering over all, which 
 give me a sense of real pleasure and satisfaction, 
 because the thing is there for a purpose, and has 
 been planned and built with that purpose in mind. 
 I do not hope to convert every one to this view; 
 but T claim to have this advantage, that I have 
 a wider range of pleasure thus than if I simply 
 thought the whole abominable and hideous, and 
 pined for waterfalls and peaks. Let me be more 
 lionest still, and say that though mountain scenery 
 lias an ineffable charm, it seems to me to have 
 also a certain intoxicating quality which is not 
 I)urely wholesome; I weary of it far sooner than 
 I weary of a simple pastoral country, with woods 
 and pastures and hamlets. Of that T cannot con- 
 ceive ever wearying at all. The English village, 
 as one sees it here in Cambridgeshire, with its 
 orchards, its white-walled thatched cottages, its 
 
284 Along the Road 
 
 simple church, its manor-farm, with the pastures 
 all about it, and the pure line of the low wold 
 above it, seems to me the sweetest and tenderest 
 kind of thing that one can see anywhere, because 
 it has all grown up so gently and naturally out 
 of human love and toil, in the quiet places of the 
 earth. But even so, I stick to my factories too, 
 because they have grown up naturally enough, 
 and are knit up with human life and endeavour. 
 This is not a plea for one sort of beauty as against 
 another; it is only a plea for men and women to 
 use their eyes and hearts a little more simply; 
 not to be deluded into thinking that beauty lies 
 only in costly splendour and elaborate ornament, 
 but in the frank expression of use and order and 
 work, and all the other simple elements which 
 make up life and peace and happiness. 
 
BRAIN WAVES 
 
 I WAS sitting a short time ago reading a letter 
 in an arm-chair. Close to me at my left hand 
 was sitting a friend at a desk, writing. I said 
 to him, " I have just had a very interesting and 
 
 pathetic letter from B ." He stared at me 
 
 for a moment, with a look of such surprise, that 
 I said, " What is the matter? " He said : " This 
 is really too extraordinary; I had not thought of 
 
 I* for months. But the moment you began 
 
 to speak, before you mentioned his name, it 
 darted into my mind." 
 
 This is only a rather striking instance of a 
 phenomenon which probably most people have, at 
 one time or other, experienced; a direct com- 
 munication of thought, without any verbal inter- 
 change, with some friend or acquaintance. The 
 particular form in which I often experience it is 
 to think persistently and without any obvious 
 reason of some friend whom T perhaps have not 
 seen for weeks, and on the following day to re- 
 ceive a letter from him. But it takes place most 
 frequenth' when one is in close proximity, and 
 many people must know how one often, in talking 
 
 285 
 
286 Along the Road 
 
 with a friend, anticipates his unuttered thought. 
 This latter phenomenon may no doubt partly 
 arise from familiarity with a friend's method of 
 thought, and be of the nature of unconscious 
 inference. 
 
 I think it may be said that no reasonable per- 
 son who cares to study the transactions of the 
 Psychical Society can possibly doubt that this 
 force, which is now scientifically called telepathy, 
 exists, though at present we know very little 
 about it. It seems clear that if several people 
 attempt to focus their thought upon some pre- 
 determined object, and to read it into the mind 
 of one who possesses the telepathic faculty, the 
 latter can reproduce a sketch of the object which 
 is unmistakable, even though the person acted 
 upon may not be aware what he or she is draw- 
 ing. There is one recorded experiment, which 
 appeared to me, when published, to be entirely 
 convincing. The party agreed upon the object 
 which they wished to have reproduced. The 
 medium, a girl, was then introduced. In a mo- 
 ment she drew on her paper a thing like a melon, 
 with an elongated stalk. She then drew four 
 parallel lines roughly down the centre of it. She 
 then hesitated, and finally drew, on each side of 
 the melon, but outside of its boundary line, a 
 large capital S. She had not the least idea what 
 it represented. But the object which had been 
 agreed upon was a violin. The melon and stalk 
 were the instrument, the four lines were the 
 
Brain Waves 287 
 
 strings, and the letter S was the cuts, which 
 are roughly like that letter, and are to be seen 
 in any violin placed on each side of the strings, 
 for the sake of resonance. One could imagine 
 the unpractised operators going over the de- 
 tails in their minds. " There is the violin and 
 its handle; there are the strings; there are the 
 two cuts, like the letter S, on each side of 
 the strings." The point is that though the 
 scrawl was in itself unintelligible, yet all the 
 salient features of the instrument were rudely 
 reproduced. 
 
 The thing itself is not nearly as antecedently 
 incredible as the telephone or the Marconigram. 
 If a man had prophesied a hundred years ago 
 that one could hear a friend's voice through a 
 wire across the Atlantic, or that without any 
 connecting wire an electrical message could be 
 shot into the air and picked up by another iso- 
 lated machine many miles away, he would have 
 been considered a ridiculous romancer. And yet 
 it is not inconceivable that, if the laws of tele- 
 pathy are developed and investigated, two people 
 may some day be able to exchange thoughts at 
 a distance without visible or audible symbols. 
 The appearances of people to their friends at the 
 moment of death, a phenomenon the recurrence 
 of which is quite beyond the possibility of scien- 
 tific doubt, is a manifestation of the power. We 
 know nothing of the medium of communication, 
 or of the conditions under which it is possible, 
 
288 Along the Road 
 
 but it would seem that some harmony or sym- 
 pathy of thought is an essential basis, a fact 
 which has its material complement in the har- 
 mony of the Marconi apparatus. 
 
 When the first experiments in electricity were 
 made, there were a number of scattered phe- 
 nomena, such as the lightning, the attraction of 
 rubbed amber, the sparks of the cat's back, which 
 were all familiar and all unexplained. No one 
 had ever thought of attributing all of these to 
 one common cause, while no one dreamed of the 
 possible adaptability of the underlying force to 
 human uses. If some one had suggested that the 
 force evolved from the rubbing of amber, for 
 which the Greek word is -^XsxTpov, would some 
 day drive engines, light houses, and transmit in- 
 stantaneous messages from continent to conti- 
 nent, he would have been considered a mere 
 fantastic dreamer. It may well be that phenomena 
 quite familiar to us now, such as national move- 
 ments, the panics that spread like lightning 
 through a crowd, the therapeutic influence of 
 suggestion, the effects of mesmerism, may all be 
 the result of some extensive spiritual force, the 
 developments of which may have extraordinary 
 and momentous effects upon the human race. I 
 have no sort of doubt myself that we are on the 
 eve of very curious discoveries in the psychical 
 legion, which may ultimately revolutionise our 
 ideas of character-development and race-progress. 
 But, on the other hand, I think that the investiga- 
 
Brain Waves 289 
 
 tion of these deep secrets must be left to trained 
 scientific intellects. They are not things for 
 amateurs to dabble in. All the ill-advised tam- 
 pering with occultism, all attempts to arrive at 
 conclusions by impulsive short-cuts, all rash ex- 
 l)eriments with psychical forces seem to me not 
 only risky, but positively dangerous. It resembles 
 tlie meddling of children with corrosive acids and 
 deadly poisons. It is very easy indeed for a 
 weak and credulous nature to bemuse itself into 
 a condition of fantastic susceptibility, which may 
 wreck both intellect and happiness. The forces, 
 whatever they are, are deeply mysterious, but 
 their exact limits will probably some day be 
 known and defined. They are not ascertained, 
 but they are doubtless ascertainable. I believe 
 myself that all tampering with the phenomena 
 of so-called spiritualism by unscientific and sen- 
 sitive j)eople is both a symptom or a cause of 
 morbidity, and should be, as far as possible, re- 
 sisted and checked. On the other hand, I think 
 that honour is due to tliose of trained observa- 
 tion and well-balanced minds, who set themselves 
 seriously to obtain and investigate such evidence 
 as is available. 
 
 On the other hand, it is perfectly justifiable 
 for people of special temperament, not indeed 
 to court such experiences, but to record them 
 as faithfully as they can. Indeed, if a psy- 
 chical exi)erience befalls an entirely sane and 
 normal person, it is advisable that it should be 
 
290 Along the Road 
 
 carefullY noted and sent to the Psychical So- 
 ciety, which undertakes the investigation of these 
 problems. 
 
 My own belief is that just as our globe has a 
 material connection, so that the displacement of 
 the smallest particle has an actual effect upon 
 the whole mass, there is probably also a spiritual 
 connection, so that every thought we think and 
 every idea we conceive has some effect upon the 
 whole spiritual community. We can no more be 
 isolated in mind than we can be isolated in body; 
 we feel, indeed, our own separate existence; but 
 every individual's bodily frame is acted upon by 
 a whole host of attractions and vibrations of 
 which the individual is not conscious. If I raise 
 my finger, the world is different from what it 
 was a moment before. So in the spiritual region. 
 If I think a good thought, or if I think an evil 
 thought, the benefit and the mischief are not con- 
 fined to myself, but the thought sends a ripple, 
 however inconspicuous, through the spiritual 
 horizon. The limitations of will, of impulse, of 
 thought, of prayer, are unknown to us. But how- 
 ever fruitless the thought or the prayer may seem, 
 its vibration passes on its viewless flight through 
 the spiritual substance of eternity. We dare not 
 say that every prayer must find its material ful- 
 filment ; the interplay of spirit and matter is too 
 complex for that; but it cannot fail of its spirit- 
 ual effect, whatever that effect may be. And 
 if the loneliest soul on earth, lying in darkness 
 
Brain Waves 291 
 
 of spirit and pain of body, breathes one voice- 
 less prayer upon the night, the world can never 
 be the same as though that prayer had been 
 unprayed. 
 
FORGIVENESS 
 
 I HEARD a sermon preached in a parish church 
 the other day by a young curate, one of the most 
 beautiful sermons in feeling and in form, both 
 for its fine emotion and for its restraint of lan- 
 guage, which I have heard for a long time. But 
 the preacher took up a position which I will not 
 say that I contest, but which I cannot understand. 
 
 It was a sermon on forgiveness. God, said the 
 preacher, freely and entirely forgives the sinner, 
 and yet He exacts the full penalty for sin. 
 
 I found myself wondering whether the word 
 forgiveness could apply to such a transaction. 
 Forgiveness, in the human sense of the word, 
 means precisely the opposite. It means that in 
 spite of some offence, the man offended against 
 does not exact his due; that he forgets and puts 
 out of his thoughts the offence, and reinstates the 
 offender, just as though the offence had never 
 been committed. To forgive a man a debt is to 
 release him from the necessity of payment; and 
 I cannot call it forgiveness if a man says to a 
 debtor, " I freely and frankly forgive you the 
 debt, but of course you will have to pay every 
 292 
 
Forgiveness 293 
 
 penny of it." That does not seem to me the kind 
 of forgiveness indicated in the Oosi)el. In the 
 I)arable about the lord and the debtor, when the 
 man says, " Have patience with me, and I will 
 pay thee all," he is not merely given extra time 
 in which to pay his debt, but he is at once and 
 entirely forgiven the whole debt without the sug- 
 gestion of repayment. But when the man, in- 
 stead of showing mercy, extorts his own petty 
 debt from his own humble debtor, then he is 
 penalised indeed! The words of the Lord's 
 Prayer closely correspond to this : " Forgive us 
 our trespasses, for we also forgive them that 
 trespass against us." It cannot surely mean that 
 God forgives us our sins, if we forgive those who 
 sin against us, but that He exacts the whole 
 penalty for sin, while the essence of our forgive- 
 ness is that we should not exact it? It cannot 
 be that our human forgiveness is meant to be 
 absolute, while God is justified in conceding only 
 a moral forgiveness? Should we hold up as a 
 type of Christian forgiveness the case of a man 
 whose son, we will say, had stolen some of his 
 money, if the father were to say to the son, " I 
 forgive you the theft, but I shall hand you over 
 to the police, and the law must take its course " 
 — should we call that forgiveness? 
 
 And then, too, as far as the world goes, no one 
 can maintain that sin is evenly and justly pun- 
 ished. Carelessness is often very heavily punished 
 indeed, while deliberate cruelty, if it be carefully 
 
294 Along the Road 
 
 concealed, may escape all punishment. The cau- 
 tious and hardened sinner may avoid detection, 
 and even the consequences of sin in this world, 
 while some foolish and ignorant boy may commit 
 a single sin, the results of which may blacken 
 all his life and blast all his prospects. I have 
 met with such a case myself, and all I can say is 
 that if that sin deserved so awful a punishment, the 
 punishment in store for cold-blooded, deliberate, 
 and prudent sinners must be something too terrible 
 to contemplate. Nature, of course, does not always 
 punish sin; what she does punish is excess; and 
 she punishes the ignorant transgression of her 
 laws just as sternly as she punishes a deliberate 
 infringement of them; and yet we must believe 
 that the law of Nature is a law laid down by God. 
 Consider, too, the case I have just cited; the 
 wayward boy drifts into sin, and finds his 
 life is to be maimed and overshadowed by the 
 consequence of it. He begs and implores God 
 for forgiveness. What is the comfort, if he is told 
 that God says, " Yes, I forgive you if you repent, 
 but you must go through life suffering shame and 
 misery for your offence"? Perhaps he has been 
 led into sin by more hardened offenders, whom he 
 sees living in tranquillity and prosperity, and how 
 can he believe in the justice of that? How, in fact, 
 are we to reconcile the truth that God, in Nature, 
 punishes some careless single sins, and even some 
 trifling neglects so terribly, and yet seems to have 
 no wrath for a sinner who is wary and prudent? 
 
Forgiveness 295 
 
 I think it is a great and a fatal mistake not 
 to face a problem like this. It is not the least 
 use to pass it over in the mind, and to lay hold 
 of some vaguely comforting assurance. If we act 
 thus we are apt, when we are really confronted 
 with the problem in a concrete form, to find the 
 whole of our faith crumbling down about us, and 
 leaving us helpless and not certain of anything. 
 
 I think that the only way to meet it is, in the 
 first place, not to compare our own case with 
 the case of others at all. Our own case is the 
 only case of which we know the data and the 
 circumstances; and it is rare, I think, to find 
 people who, as a matter of fact, feel that they 
 have been unjustly treated by God. It is rather 
 the other way; and I have often been surprised 
 at finding people whom I should have expected 
 to murmur against the disi)ensation of God, tran- 
 quil, and even grateful for their sufferings, when 
 they have seemed to myself unduly severe. 
 
 And, in the second place, we must try with all 
 our might to believe that the chastening of God 
 is not a cruel or fortuitous chastening, and that 
 in all suffering we can find an opportunity of 
 gaining something for our souls which we can 
 gain in no other way. I do not know anything 
 which I have more certainly derived from observa- 
 tion and experience than the amazing benefits, 
 not only in character but also in actual happiness, 
 which suffering brings to people. The patience, 
 the courage, the sympathy which spring from it I 
 
296 Along the Road 
 
 And then, too, the soul has a most blessed power 
 of obliterating even the recollection of past suf- 
 fering, as if it had never been. One looks back 
 to a time which was full of anxiety and even 
 pain, and can remember nothing of it but the 
 joyful and beautiful things. 
 
 And thus we must hold on fast to the fact that 
 God's forgiveness is a very real thing, and not a 
 mere dramatic thing; and that if we have to 
 suffer what seems a disproportionate penalty for 
 our fault, it is not sent us because God is merely 
 an inflexible exactor of debts, but because by ex- 
 acting them He gives us something that we could 
 in no other way attain to. 
 
 Where we go wrong is in comparing God to a 
 human disciplinarian. If a father says to a son, 
 ^^ I forgive you, but I am going to punish you 
 just the same," we may frankly conclude that he 
 does not know what forgiveness means. The fact 
 that he punishes merely means that he does not 
 really trust the son's repentance, but is going 
 to make sure that the son's repentance is not 
 merely a plea for remission. We have to act so, 
 or we believe that we have to act so, on occasions, 
 to other human beings; but it is only because we 
 cannot really read their hearts. If we knew that 
 a repentance was complete and sincere, we should 
 not need to exact any punishment at all. But 
 with God there can be no such concealments. If 
 a man repents of a sin and puts it away from 
 him, and if none of the dreaded consequences do 
 
Forgiveness 297 
 
 befall him, he may be grateful indeed for a gra- 
 \ cious forgiveness. But if the consequences do 
 fall on him, he may inquire of himself whether 
 his repentance had indeed been sincere, or only 
 a mere dread of contingencies; while if he is 
 penalised, however hardly, he may believe that his 
 sufferings will bring him a blessing, and that by 
 no other road can he reach peace. 
 
 What is hardest of all to face is when the sin 
 of a careless father or mother seems visited upon 
 an innocent child. That does indeed seem a thing 
 behind and beyond all human conceptions of jus- 
 tice. But it would not be so if we could look 
 upon suffering as a gift of God. We must indeed 
 use all human skill and knowledge to abate and 
 remove remediable suffering, or else we can be 
 landed in sad sophistries, and even think our- 
 selves justified in inflicting suffering on others 
 because of its beneficial results. 
 
 And the last mistake we make is that though 
 we most of us profess a faith in immortality, we 
 do not really believe it. We confine our ideas of 
 the justice of God to the tiny brief span of human 
 existence. If we could only realise that it is all 
 a much larger and wider and more remote matter, 
 we should take our difficulties and troubles 
 much more tranquilly and serenely, and learn to 
 wait. 
 
 And for practical action, we must, if we would 
 be like God, forgive frankly and completely. If 
 we act as though we believed in the entire sin- 
 
298 Along the Road 
 
 cerity of a man's repentance, we do more for him 
 and for ourselves, even if we are disappointed a 
 dozen times, than if we say we will make sure, 
 and exact our due. That is not the forgiveness 
 of Christ at all. We must not say, " I have for- 
 given you a dozen times, and each time you have 
 offended again; this time I can trust you no 
 more." We must rather bring ourselves to say, 
 ^' I have been disappointed a dozen times, but this 
 time I trust your repentance." It may be said 
 that this is mere weak sentiment, but it is wholly 
 false and base to describe it so. It may be foolish- 
 ness to the world, but it is the power which wins 
 souls. I do not mean that it must be done with- 
 out any common sense and wisdom ; but even when 
 it is so done, it is a nobler and a purer thing 
 than a suspicious mistrust. The considerations 
 that we ought to punish for the sake of example 
 and deterrence, that the offender will be better 
 for punishment, and so forth, must be very care- 
 fully and sincerely scrutinised, that we may be 
 quite sure that our own personal vindictiveness 
 is not dressing itself up in specious reasons. I 
 remember well at school being punished for some 
 infraction of discipline by a master who dis- 
 claimed all sense of personal offence, but who was 
 yet, I felt sure, glad to punish because he was 
 revenging himself on me for his own sense of 
 injured annoyance. It gave me a feeling of real 
 humbug when he said that it gave him pain to 
 inflict punishment. That I knew was not true, 
 
Forgiveness 299 
 
 j and T ended by feeling that older people were not 
 trustworthy in such matters. 
 
 And thus, if we make up our mind to punish 
 
 ; and to exact our due, where we can, we had 
 better not talk much about forgiveness. The two 
 (an hardly be brought together. The best way of 
 forgiving is often enough to forget, or at all events 
 to behave as if we had forgotten ; and perhaps the 
 largest and sweetest solution of all is to act in 
 the spirit of the old French proverb, which says, 
 " To love is to pardon everything." 
 
SELF-PITY 
 
 We all know the story of Narcissus who caught 
 a sight of his own face in a woodside well, where 
 he had stooped to drink, and who was so much 
 enchanted by his own beauty that he spent the 
 rest of his perhaps fortunately brief life in ad- 
 miring it. A parable of complacent vanity ! But 
 it lias been left to our self-conscious age to invent 
 a still more ingenious form of self-adoration. It 
 is not only now the Pharisee who is in love with 
 his own nobleness ; but the publican is intoxicated 
 with his own humility and abjectness. This is 
 very different from the elaborate sorrows of a 
 mediaeval penitent, like the Abbot Turgesius of 
 Kirkstall, whose grief over his sense of sinfulness 
 seems to us exaggerated. " His compunction," 
 says the old Chronicle, " knew no bounds. In 
 common conversation he scarcely refrained from 
 weeping. At the altar he never celebrated with- 
 out such a profusion of tears that his eyes might 
 be said to rain rather than to weep, insomuch 
 that scarcely any other person could use the 
 sacerdotal vestments after him." What wonder 
 if, after nine years of this lachrymose rule, the 
 300 
 
Self-Pity 301 
 
 poor monks of Kirkstall felt that they wanted a 
 man of business at their head ! 
 
 But, after all, the tears of Turgesius did corre- 
 spond, I supi)ose, to a sense that he fell far short 
 of his ideal. There is a much more subtle kind 
 of lamentation nowadays. T will not go so far 
 as to say that our modern development of the 
 art of self-pity is a common thing exactly, but 
 there is a good deal of it about, and the essence 
 of it is a kind of comi)lacent misery, a sense of 
 superiority and distinction at having more and 
 graver troubles than other people, and a greater 
 sensitiveness about them. I remember meeting 
 with it once in the case of an old lady, who died 
 years ago, whom I used to know. She had a 
 good many troubles, and I sui)pose that the 
 method she chose of meeting them was an in- 
 stinctive eflfort of the mind to relieve itself. She 
 could not forget them or remove them, and so she 
 took the line of being intensely proud of them. 
 8he could not hear of a disaster without saying 
 that it was nothing to what she had to bear. She 
 did not seclude herself in melancholy reserve; she 
 was rather fond indeed of society, and liked 
 nothing better, when she saw that all were en- 
 joying themselves, than to burst into tears and 
 say that it reminded her of all she had lost. She 
 was, or had been, a tender-hearted woman, but 
 T do not think she ever enjoyed herself more than 
 when she sat down to write a letter of condolence 
 to some bereaved person. This parade of grief 
 
302 Along the Road 
 
 used then to afflict me, but I know now — and I 
 say this not at all cynically, but with perfect 
 candour — that it was her way of turning the 
 tables on her sorrows, and that she got as much 
 interest out of the little drama as other people 
 get out of other poses. She thought herself a 
 romantic and interesting figure, overshadowed by 
 a mysterious and impressive affliction. What she 
 did not perceive was that strangers who met her 
 thought her dismal, and that her own immediate 
 circle found her partly tiresome and partly 
 grotesque. 
 
 Of course, the truth is that the condition of 
 self-pity is a morbid one, and that a person suf- 
 fering under it is as much worthy of pity as 
 anyone who is afflicted with any other disagree- 
 able complaint. It is like shyness — it is not the 
 least use to laugh at shy people and tell them 
 that it all comes of thinking about themselves; 
 that is the disease itself. Shyness is a very un- 
 pleasant and hampering malady, but no one de- 
 liberately makes up his mind to be shy. The only 
 cure for shy people is to encourage them to take 
 an interest in external things, to use other parts 
 of their brain, because when we know more of 
 mental and moral physiology we shall find, no 
 doubt, that shyness means some disarrangement 
 of brain molecules, some unsheathed nerve, which 
 prevents a man or woman from acting simply 
 and confidently, as healthy people act. 
 
 Self-pity is really nothing more than ordinary 
 
Self-Pity 303 
 
 vanity turned inside out. The vain person, what- 
 ever he hears or sees, is bent on favourable com 
 parison of himself with others. A man who is 
 vain of his api)earance is pleased to find himself 
 among deplorable-looking j^eojde; and if he has 
 an uneasy suspicion that some one is handsomer 
 than himself, delights to say that beauty does 
 not depend upon correctness of feature, but upon 
 expression. So, too, the self-pitying man is occu- 
 pied in always measuring other troubles against 
 his own, and if the trouble of another is obviously 
 greater, he falls back upon the superiority of his 
 own sensibilities. 
 
 T think that the complaint is more common 
 among women than among men, though when a 
 man has it it is generally very bad indeed, be- 
 cause men are generally more positive than 
 women. I remember an old gentleman who was 
 fond of api)earing at his own dinner-table with 
 an air of mournful resignation, and helping the 
 rest of the party to soup, but waving away the 
 proflfer of a plate for himself. Then there arose 
 a chorus of condolence from the female members 
 of his party, to which he gravely replied that he 
 hoped no notice would be taken of him, that he 
 had no appetite for dinner, but that he pre- 
 ferred to keep his anxieties to himself. Then 
 he was coaxed and implored to make an effort 
 for their sake; until with an air of infinite 
 magnanimity he helped himself to soup, and 
 generally ended by making a remarkably good 
 
304 Along the Road 
 
 dinner, due tribute having been paid to his 
 sensibilities. 
 
 But the reason why, as a rule, men are less 
 liable to the disease than women is simply because 
 as a rule they have more to do, are compelled to 
 go out to business, to meet other people, and so 
 are insensibly drawn out of themselves. But 
 lonely women or feminine households, with few 
 visitors and scanty external interests, with little 
 to do except to pass the hours between meals, and 
 plenty of time for brooding, are apt to fall a prey 
 to these fancies ; and especially does it happen in 
 the case of bereavements, where true affection dic- 
 tates a false loyalty to the dead, and where pro- 
 longed grief seems to be the obvious proof of 
 faithful love. But as Mrs. Charles Kingsley once 
 said to a friend, with splendid emphasis : " When- 
 ever I find myself thinking too much of Charles, 
 I read the most sensational story I can find. 
 Hearts were made to love with, not to break ! " 
 That is a true and a gallant saying! 
 
 But if anyone can once realise that this kind 
 of morbid sensibility is a disease, the cure is 
 possible, though difficult. It is of little use to 
 analyse an illness, unless one is prepared with 
 some suggestion as to its remedy. The remedy 
 in this case is at all costs to find an interest, or 
 at worst, a duty. If a person in this condition 
 takes up a definite piece of work, and if possible 
 a piece of work which involves relations with 
 other people, and pledges himself or herself to it 
 
Self-Pity 305 
 
 in a way that makes one ashamed of neglecting 
 it, the disease may be fought and conquered. It 
 is a medicine, and often a very disagreeable medi- 
 cine. Those involved in the luxury of grief think 
 that allowances should be made for them, that 
 they are not equal to action, that they can be 
 of no use. Let them try! Let a woman, for in- 
 stance, take up a perfectly definite piece of work, 
 the more congenial, of course, the better, if it be 
 only the anxious care of some one other human 
 ])eing. In every smallest village there is some 
 one who can be watched and tended; and then 
 human relations have a marvellous way of broad- 
 ening and extending; the flame leaps from one 
 point to another; and thus the thing becomes 
 dear and desiiable; or even if it does not, there 
 is always a pleasure in carrying a matter through, 
 in following out a programme. 
 
 Of course, people in real and great affliction 
 cannot always be hurried. But the time often 
 comes, as every doctor knows, when a strain or 
 a lesion is healed, but tlie habit of lameness or 
 incapacity continues. I was told an interesting 
 story the other day of an old Canon of a cathedral 
 who sank into great depression and could per- 
 form none of his duties. He sat day by day try- 
 ing to read or write, lost in melancholy. The 
 months went on, and his doctor became aware, 
 from certain unmistakable signs, that the attack 
 was over, and yet it seemed impossible to rouse 
 him. One morning a messenger came in to say 
 
3o6 Along the Road 
 
 that the only other Canon in residence had been 
 suddenly taken ill, and that there was no one 
 to preside at the service. The old man got up 
 from his chair, said, " I think I can manage it," 
 put on his surplice and went in, and to his amaze- 
 ment found that he could take his part in the 
 service with enjoyment ; from that moment he was 
 restored to health and activity. 
 
 This is the truth which underlies Christian 
 Science, that we can most of us endure and do 
 more than we feel we can; and there is nothing 
 so potent in dispersing nervous terrors as to 
 drag oneself to the scene of action, expecting 
 to break down, the result being in nine cases 
 out of ten that what breaks down is the nervous 
 terror. 
 
 It is not wrong to be attacked by self-pity any 
 more than it is wrong to have a cold in the head 
 — both are the result of some sort of disorganisa 
 tion of the frame. What is wrong, in both cases 
 is to allow oneself to be incapacitated by it. 
 What would help many people out of the self 
 pitying condition would be to realise how ugly 
 and ill-mannered and boring a thing it may be 
 come. A display of tragic grief at a moment of 
 mental agony is a very impressive thing; but one 
 cannot be harassed beyond a certain point; and 
 the complacent display of artificial misery is as 
 objectionable a thing in the moral world as is 
 the habit of incessant sniffing is in the physical 
 region. It may be very comfortable to sniff if 
 
Self-Pity 307 
 
 oue feels inclinod ; but what siiiflfers do not realise 
 is that, instead of evoking sympathy, they evoke 
 nothing bnt a sort of contemptuous irritation in 
 others. Christ advised people who were tempted 
 to parade their prayerful ness in public, to go 
 home and shut the door; the same applies to 
 genuine grief, and far more to indulged grief. 
 Of course no one who has had much experience 
 til inks that the world is a wholly easy or com- 
 fortable i)lace; but by indulging self-pity, one 
 lessens rather than increases one's capacity for 
 endurance. A century ago it was the fasliion for 
 a certain tyj>e of woman to faint as much as 
 jMjssible in public, and a power of unlimited 
 swooning was a matter of i)ardonable pride. But 
 when it became clear that other people were 
 frankly bored by having to attend to rigid females, 
 the tendency died out, to reappear in subtler 
 forms. To indulge self-pity is not only an ab- 
 negation of courage; it is an insult to the great, 
 interesting, exciting world. If life means any- 
 thing, it means that we have the chance of a 
 certain amount of exi>erience, and a certain 
 length of road to cover if we will. But if we 
 take our seat by the roadside, our face covered 
 by our hands, shaking with sobs, to excite the 
 interest and sympathy of other pilgrims, we run 
 the risk of delaying too long, and at last, when 
 we uncover our besmeared countenance, we shall 
 find that the* pilgrims are out of sight, and shall 
 have to trot after them in the twilight in a very 
 
3o8 Along the Road 
 
 helpless and humiliating fashion, when we might 
 have walked in true company, and had the pleas- 
 ure of honest talk and pretty prospects by the 
 tv^ay. 
 
BELLS 
 
 When we were living at Lincoln, now nearly 
 forty years ago, where my father was a Canon, 
 we children had a pleasant custom that when we 
 were all at home together, the first day of the 
 iiolidays, we should borrow my father's pass-key 
 to the cathedral, and go to the great bell-chamber 
 of the central tower, just before noon, to see and 
 liear Great Tom strike the hour. 
 
 We used to convoy the party to the little door 
 in the south transept that admitted one to the 
 winding stair. How cool it was in there, with 
 a pleasant smell of stone, and into what silence 
 and darkness it conducted us! Up and up we 
 went. Now there was a sudden peep out of a 
 loophole on to house-roofs and gardens and sailing 
 birds; then there was a long gallery to be 
 threaded, in the triforium, with pits of darkness, 
 in the upper surface of the aisle vaulting, on 
 either hand ; then another stair — we were in the 
 great tower now. Then a dizzy balustraded gal- 
 lery, in the lantern itself, from which we could 
 look down into the stacked organ-pipes below and 
 see the choir laid out like a map. Then further 
 309 
 
310 Along the Road 
 
 stairs, and at last a key was turned and we were 
 in the high, dusty chamber itself, with its great 
 tie-beams and cross-rods, its litter of jackdaw 
 nests, and the golden light filtering in through 
 the slanting louvres of the windows. 
 
 The bells themselves lived in a great railed 
 cage, into which we could also penetrate; but we 
 were getting anxious now, as the hour drew near, 
 and the great clock ticked the minutes away. 
 Someone would tell the legend of the unhappy 
 man who determined to stand inside the bell 
 when the hour struck, and fell to the ground 
 after the first stroke, with the blood gushing from 
 nose and ears — an entire fiction, no doubt ! And 
 now there was silence. 
 
 There was Great Tom himself, swung on his 
 monstrous wheel, on the one side of him a huge 
 black hammer for the hour, on the other side 
 another hammer, with a leathern strap round it, 
 for ringing a mufiied peal if any dignitary of the 
 church died. A little beyond were the two bells 
 for the quarter chimes, big enough, but as nothing 
 beside the bulk of Tom. Then perhaps a nervous 
 sister's heart would fail her, and she would seek 
 the shelter of the staircase. At last the watches 
 pointed to noon ; suddenly came a click. Pulled 
 by some mysterious agency, one of the hammers 
 of the small bells was jerked backwards, poised, 
 and fell with a crash, the others following suit. 
 That was deafening enough, and it was four times 
 repeated. Then came an awful pause, while the 
 
Bells 311 
 
 echoes died away. Great Tom was very deliberate 
 and took his time about striking. It was almost 
 more than mortal nature could bear to await the 
 moment; but at last the great hammer quivered, 
 was agitated, drew itself back, and then fell with 
 a tremendous shock and an outrushing wave of 
 sweet sound. Sometimes one fled before it; but 
 it was worse in the staircase, where the echoes 
 came and went like resounding waves; and I 
 irrew to think that the clash of the small bells 
 was more terrifying than the solemn thunder of 
 Tom himself. 
 
 How often, too, in the little mullioned bedroom 
 of the Chancery, which I occupied with my 
 brother, looking out on Minster Green, at some 
 dead hour of a gusty night, used we to hear the 
 solemn shout of the great bell come swinging over 
 the house-roofs! 
 
 I do not think there is anything which so iden- 
 tifies itself with the spirit and memory of a place 
 as the sound of some customary bell ! At Eton, 
 the great, school clock has a strange cracked 
 quality, I know not how produced, which it is 
 almost impossible to identify on a piano. How 
 well I remember the first bewildered night I spent 
 there as a small boy, with all the vague terrors 
 of the unfamiliar place upon me, and how the 
 great bell, not so far away, clashed out the hour 
 of dawn, when one had to bestir oneself and 
 plunge into the whirling tide of new faces and 
 mystifying duties I I little thought, when I heard 
 
312 Along the Road 
 
 it then, for how many years of my life there, as 
 boy and master, it would tell the happy and the 
 busy hours, or with what inexpressible emotion 
 I should hear it beat out the last hour of my 
 life of service there! 
 
 What poignant feelings, too, are aroused by a 
 cheerful peal of distant church bells floating melo- 
 diously on a spring morning over green woods 
 and blossoming valleys! It is very hard to ana- 
 lyse such vague reveries as they arouse — a half- 
 recovered freshness, a surprising joy; like the 
 notes of the cuckoo, they transport one back as 
 by a charm into the old unreflecting childish 
 mood, when life was all full of new experience 
 and joyful energy; or the sound of bells clashing 
 out above, as the wedding procession comes out 
 to the porch, with the organ humming within ; 
 or when the solemn tower takes voice, in some 
 moment of lonely waning light, and beats out the 
 news of the departure of a spirit voyaging to 
 the unknown; or when it beats, at slow and re- 
 luctant intervals, as the funeral pomp draws 
 deliberately nigh. 
 
 One of the many charms of Cambridge is that 
 it is a city of many bells; there is the beautiful 
 familiar chime of St. Mary's, and at night the 
 curfew is still rung there, by kindly custom, to 
 guide belated travellers home across the fen. The 
 bells of King's College are not solemn enough, 
 though endeared to me by use; the chapel bell 
 is not serious enough for the occasion, and the 
 
Bells 3^3 
 
 dock there utters a trivial and even waspish 
 note. Trinity has a new and very stately chime; 
 and then there are innumerable other voices of 
 stricken metal, in towers and belfries, down to 
 the great chime of the new Roman Catholic 
 Church, which plays a strict old ecclesiastical 
 melody, hard to recai)ture, at every quarter. Yet 
 how often the day passes, and one is not even 
 conscious of having heard a bell, much less of 
 having been disturbed by one; for the brain has 
 a singular power of taking no notice whatever 
 of a familiar sound and a recurring note, so long 
 as it has nothing of human unaccountableness, of 
 irregular volition, behind it. 
 
 The voices of bells certainly belong to the peace- 
 ful sounds of life, and mingle themselves with the 
 characteristic atmosphere and quality of a place 
 and a life. And then, as I say, they have the 
 magical power, when heard after a long interval, 
 of suddenly touching with vividness and recon- 
 structing the old sense of a forgotten hour: 
 
 " The times when I remember to have been 
 Joyful and free from blame." 
 
 One of my great pleasures at my little college 
 here is that T have lately been permitted to hang 
 in The quaint hall belfry a bell, of a soft and 
 silvery note, on which the clock now strikes the 
 hour; and two lesser bolls for the quarters, 
 tlie three to sound the subject of that wonderful 
 
•/ 
 
 314 Along the Road 
 
 Prelude of Rachmaninoff's, which will be familiar 
 to all who go to St. Paul's Cathedral, where it 
 is sometimes played. 
 
 What I like about it is the thought that the 
 three bells will, it may be hoped, become a part 
 of the memory of the place. Up till now there has 
 been a shrill, light-minded bell, which has had 
 neither dignity nor resonance, a mere time-teller. 
 But it is a pleasure to think that the new bells 
 may weave themselves into the delights and ac- 
 tivities and dreams of the generations who will 
 hereafter go in and out; and that coming back 
 a score of years after, the sound of the familiar 
 chime may bring back sudden retrospects of the 
 little vivid court full of sunlight, the voices of 
 forgotten friends, the old plans and designs, the 
 old energies and brightnesses of the unshadowed 
 life. One cannot live in retrospect; but however 
 strongly the new tide of activities may run — and 
 as life goes on, the tide does run more swift and 
 more absorbing — it is good to be recalled in spirit 
 to the earlier days, that we may see how far our 
 hopes have fulfilled themselves, and whether or 
 no we have been true to our purposes. This is 
 not a mere sentiment: it is facing life largely 
 and fully, and let us hope gratefully; and only 
 thus does one draw near to the secret and the 
 mystery of it all, realise its significance, and even 
 discern that it is but a prelude to the greatness 
 as vet unrevealed. 
 
STARLINGS 
 
 I SPENT some time to-day watching an innumer- 
 able colony of starlings, who were picking over 
 a field where some sheep were penned. The star- 
 ling as a bird is an interesting study; he has a 
 very prettily marked coat, with all sorts of un- 
 expected gleams and glooms and iridescences in 
 it. He suits his colours to the day. On a grey, 
 dull morning, the starling is habited in decent 
 pepper and salt, like a respectable farmer; on a 
 day of sunlight, he has the changeful sheen of 
 the dove, the radiance of the rainbow, the broken 
 lights of spilt petrol! Then his bill is so sharp 
 and long, and used so vigorously, that it is a 
 pleasure to see him at work. He never takes any- 
 thing quietly or tranquilly. He is always in 
 superlatives. He is for ever in a tremendous 
 hurry and fuss, frightfully hungry, desperately 
 busy. He goes about as if he were catching a 
 tiain. He eats as if it were his first meal for 
 weeks, and his last chance of food for a month. 
 And then he is a most dramatic bird. If you 
 throw crumbs out on a lawn, the robin arrives 
 first in a disengaged fashion, hops about admiring 
 315 
 
3i6 Along the Road 
 
 the view, and finally decides he may as well have 
 a mouthful. Then the sparrows bustle down, and 
 gobble away in a jolly, vulgar fashion. Then the 
 finches alight in a gentlemanly way, and pick up 
 their food courteously and daintily. Suddenly 
 there is a flutter of wings, and a starling or two 
 descend out of breath, in wild terror. and excite- 
 ment, as if they had to choose between a violent 
 death and death by starvation, and they had de- 
 cided to risk the former. They snatch up all 
 they can, and fly in furious haste. 
 
 When they roost, they are apparently only 
 afraid of being bored. They chirp all together 
 like Italian canons saying vespers against time; 
 and the moment they awake they begin to practise 
 all kinds of quaint imitation of sounds they have 
 heard. Life is a very strenuous business with 
 them. 
 
 Some years ago I spent a winter in Scotland 
 at a shooting lodge. The starlings had taken a 
 fancy to roost in a little island on a lake, which 
 was overgrown with thickets of rhododendrons. 
 They used to begin to assemble about four o'clock 
 as the day began to fade. Those that arrived 
 first used to fly round and round in a circle over 
 their roosting-place, and all the newcomers joined 
 them in their airy dance. As the sun set, one 
 used to see troops arriving from every direction, 
 until at last there was a dense mass of birds all 
 on the wing, fljang round and round over the 
 island. From a mile away one could see the mass 
 
Starlings 317 
 
 like a great shifting, shadowy balloon, now densely 
 packed, now bursting out at the top or the side 
 like a waving flag. At last, when the muster was 
 complete, at some given signal, they sank silently 
 on to the island. A minute or two were spent 
 in finding their perches, and then arose a wild 
 din, a sort of evening hymn, every starling shriek- 
 ing its loudest. After a few minutes again, as 
 though by a signal, the noise suddenly stopped, 
 not gradually, but like steam shut sharply off. 
 Then, if one came close up and clapped one's 
 hands, the whole company opened cry, and the 
 great mass shot up into the air with a roar, to 
 resume their evolutions, sinking down to roost as 
 soon as the coast was clear. 
 
 To-day, as I watched them, I saw that while 
 there were hundreds on the ground making a 
 thorough investigation of the field, several trees 
 close by were crammed with birds, and humming 
 like gigantic tea-kettles. I crept up to the hedge 
 to watch them, and they continued to feed for 
 some time, but suddenly one of them scented 
 danger. As if at a word of command, the whole 
 company, several hundred in number, rose into 
 the air; all those in the trees swooped out to 
 join them; and the whole mass flew over the 
 adjoining hedge to continue foraging on a safer 
 fallow. 
 
 Now this signal that is given is probably clear 
 enough to the birds. But what entirely beats me 
 is how they manage their evolutions. They fly at 
 
31 8 Along the Road 
 
 a prodigious pace in open order, they all keep 
 their distances, there is never the least sign of 
 any collision. The method is perfectly incompre- 
 hensible. It is impossible to divine who settles 
 the pace or the direction. Yet the whole rout 
 will execute a simultaneous wheel when on the 
 wing without the smallest sign of confusion or 
 of dislocation. It is all very well to say it is 
 instinctive, though I suppose that a young star- 
 ling when he joins the territorial force finds 
 these evolutions perfectly easy. But the whole 
 thing implies an extraordinary number of mental 
 processes, quick observation, rapid inference, in- 
 stantaneous calculation, and the most complete 
 subordination to some sort of guidance. It is 
 impossible to see whether any particular birds 
 take the lead; it does not seem so, because, as 
 the great company settles in a field, the birds in 
 the rear, when the leaders begin to pitch, fly over 
 their heads and settle too in what must be a 
 perfectly definite and preconcerted order. And 
 if one puts up the birds again, those in front, 
 which have a minute or two before been in the 
 rear, rise up and seem to take the lead. The 
 whole thing is, in fact, a most complete and 
 organised system of drill of a very delicate kind. 
 I once saw a mass of starlings in full flight sud- 
 denly confronted, as they came over a hedge, by 
 a boy who emerged from behind a haystack. 
 They were close upon him when they perceived 
 him. One would have imagined that there would 
 
Starlings 319 
 
 lave been some confusion owing to the sudden 
 eck; but instead of this, the whole flight went 
 up straight into the air, keeping their places 
 exactly. 
 
 I remember once, when I was a schoolmaster, 
 having to preside over the evolutions of a big 
 company of small boys, and the desperate diffi- 
 culty that there was, in spite of their extreme 
 willingness to manoeuvre, and their anxiety to 
 perform the process right, to get them to do any- 
 thing of the sort with any precision. They simply 
 could not keep their distances. If the front line 
 was suddenly checked, the back line rushed into 
 it, while if anything in the least complicated was 
 attempted, the whole body were in confusion at 
 once. Yet the boys understood perfectly well 
 what was wanted of them, and presumably had 
 as much intelligence as the starlings. 
 
 That is the extraordinary thing about animals, 
 that their reasoning processes seem so extraor- 
 dinarily perfect within certain limits, and so very 
 helpless in other directions. They take an im- 
 mense time to acquire new instincts, and yet, on 
 the other hand, they seem very quick at picking 
 up new ideas. Partridges, for instance, have 
 learned not to fear a railway train passing. You 
 will see them in fields beside a line, sitting per- 
 fectly still close to the roaring train. They seem 
 to have learned that no danger threatens them, 
 and the result is that they are absolutely uncon- 
 cerned. Yet the same birds will fly backwards 
 
320 Along the Road 
 
 and forwards over shooting-butts, season after 
 season, and never learn that there is anything 
 dangerous to be avoided. Even a bird which has 
 been wounded at a butt will fly with the covey 
 a week or two afterwards over the same butt. I 
 suppose that in the course of time they will learn 
 to differentiate between the beaters and the guns. 
 But it is very strange that their reasoning pro- 
 cesses are so incomplete, while their instincts are 
 so remarkably delicate and skilful. 
 
 I remember once watching a hen to whom had 
 been confided a big brood of partridge-chicks. She 
 was intensely solicitous about them, and furious 
 if one came too near the coop. The little crea- 
 tures themselves recognised her as their mother, 
 and fled to her for safety. Yet in a week she 
 had killed them all by treading upon them; 
 and, indeed, I saw her crush one to death in 
 the endeavour to protect it from my dangerous 
 proximity I 
 
 But the commonwealth of starlings is produc- 
 tive of still more interesting reflections. They 
 are extremely quarrelsome and selfish birds. Tf 
 one of them finds food, a dozen will rush in and 
 tear it away. They have not the slightest respect 
 for each other^s rights; and yet with all their 
 individualism they are the most entirely gre- 
 garious of birds. Their sense of the community 
 and their desire for each other's company is quite 
 irrepressible. They have a strong idea of im- 
 perial federation, and their subordination to some 
 
Starlings 321 
 
 kind of leadership must be complete. Yet they 
 seem to be entirely lawless among themselves, to 
 be at perpetual enmity with each other. 
 
 I suppose that this is the sort of community* 
 which may be the outcome of Socialistic prin- 
 ciples, if the wrong type of person gets the direc- 
 tion of the movenipnt. The starlings in their way 
 are a very satisfactory kind of community. They 
 are healthy, sensible, greedy, and strong. None 
 of them ever seem out of sorts or out of spirits. 
 If a weak starling has a tit-bit taken away from 
 him by a strong one, he does not waste time in 
 brooding, or impugning the justice of existence. 
 He hurries away to find another morsel. Then, 
 too, their intuitive subordination is complete. 
 They do not seem to be conscious of the pressure 
 of social problems. They are on a splendid level 
 of common sense and activity. It is true that 
 they are a thoroughly hourgeois type. One can- 
 not imagine a starling singing under the moon, 
 in a fine rapture, like the nightingale. They work 
 hard for their living, and when they are at leisure, 
 as in the early morning, they amuse themselves 
 by impudent imitations of things in general, like 
 healthy people who work all day and find amuse- 
 ment in the evening in the club and the music- 
 hall. They are eminently courageous and humor- 
 ous; but the lark and the nightingale, solitary 
 souls, have a certain secret joy in the beauty of 
 life, which one cannot imagine the starling shar- 
 ing. They no doubt consider the lark a fool for 
 
2i22 ' Along the Road 
 
 spending his time and strength in singing and 
 soaring, and as for the nightingale, they would 
 no doubt despise a bird which wasted time that 
 might be devoted to refreshing sleep in ecstasies 
 about the moon and the garden-scents. 
 
 I am not wholly on the side of the starling. 
 Their life is very well organised, very busy, very 
 sensible. They combine in a remarkable way a 
 devotion to their own interests with a sense of 
 civic duty. I admire their admirable evolutions, 
 and envy their entire disregard of any kind of 
 privacy. But the starling is only a jolly school- 
 boy when all is said and done. He obeys orders, 
 he enjoys his food. He is not so dreadfully busi- 
 ness-like as the bee, nor so helplessly gregarious 
 as the barnacle; but he is a conventional wretch 
 for all that, and I should be sorry if humanity 
 developed on his good-humoured lines. 
 
MOTTOES 
 
 I MAD occasion the other day to attempt to iden- 
 tify an unnamed portrait. There was nothing to 
 lielp me but the motto, ^^ Patio?' ut potiar''; "I 
 suffer that I may obtain." I turned over an im- 
 mense number of heraldic mottoes in search of 
 it. The Peyton family bears the motto, ^' Patior, 
 potior": "I suffer, I obtain." It ultimately 
 turned out to be the motto of the Spottiswoodes. 
 I was struck, I confess, on passing in review 
 several hundred mottoes, to find how flat they 
 generally are. The}^ are very often platitudes of 
 the deepest dye, and have nothing salient or dis- 
 tinctive about them. But they cast a curious 
 light on the English character. It never occurred 
 to me before what a very real and vital test of 
 (»iir national motives and temperament such a 
 collection of maxims supplies, but, if one thinks 
 of it, a man who is going to take a motto pro- 
 bably makes some attempt to sum up in it his 
 experience of life, or at all events, if mottoes are 
 suggested to him, he is not likely to adopt one 
 which does not seem to him to represent his own 
 philosophy. Now in studying these mottoes of 
 323 
 
324 Along the Road 
 
 great English families, I was struck with several 
 things. They dwell very much upon virtue as 
 the basis of success, a good deal upon honour, 
 and upon being true to one's word. Many of 
 them are distinctly religious and. Christian; the 
 cross of Christ is not infrequently named in 
 them, generally in cases where the chief of the 
 bearings is a cross. But they are not, as a rule, 
 idealistic or imaginative or poetical or suggestive; 
 they are sensible and straightforward and rather 
 materialistic. They take many of them very de- 
 cided views of the sanctity of property. Thus 
 Lord Zouche's motto is, " Let Curzon hold what 
 Curzon held." The motto of the Kiddell family 
 is, " I hope to share." The De Tabley motto is 
 ^^ Tenel)o" " I will retain." The Denny family 
 bears ^'Et mea messis erit" "And the harvest shall 
 be mine " ; while the Ecklin motto is still more 
 outspoken — ^^ Non sine pr^ceda" " Not without the 
 spoils." Again, the De Traffords have a fine old 
 predatory motto, " Gripe, Griffin, hold fast ! " On 
 the other hand, the Grevilles bear the motto, '^ Yix 
 ea nostra voco/' "I scarce can call it mine"; 
 and the Cowpers have the beautiful and solemn 
 motto, addressed, I suppose, to God — ^^ Tuum est'^ 
 " It is Thine." 
 
 Some of the most impressive mottoes are those 
 which consist of single words. The Duke of 
 Hamilton has the motto " Through " ; Lord Hawke 
 has " Strike," — a very appropriate motto for a 
 famous batsman ! Lord St. Vincent has the word 
 
Mottoes 325 
 
 " Thus," which has a very stately air of high- 
 bred satisfaction. The Aylmer family bears the 
 motto "^ Hallelujah," and the Marquis of Ayles- 
 bury has the pathetic word '' Fuhnus/' " We have 
 been." The last motto is an ill-omened one. I 
 suppose the idea was that the annals of the house 
 were a part of history; but the Latin word has 
 always the signification that a thing is over and 
 done with. 
 
 There are many very interesting punning 
 mottoes, with a play upon the family name. 
 Thus the Wolseleys (Wolves-ley) bear '^ Homo 
 homini lupus/' " Man is as a wolf to man " — a 
 grim maxim. Lord Fairfax bears ''Fare fac/' 
 " Speak and act " ; the Monsell family has '' Mone 
 mJc," which means " If you give advice, do so 
 humorously," or " Warn with wit." The Vernons 
 liave the motto, '' Yer non semper viret," which 
 limy mean " Spring is not always green," or 
 " Vernon always flourishes." The Beauchamps 
 bear '' Fortuna mea in hello campo/' " The lot 
 is fallen unto me in a fair ground " — the heau 
 champ of the name. The Fortescues have '' Forte 
 xciitum sahis ducum/' "The strong shield is the 
 captains' safety." The Doyles have a very curi- 
 ous motto, "Doe noe yle (ill) quoth Doyle"; 
 but the most ingenious of all is the Onslow motto, 
 " Fesfina lenie" which means " Make haste 
 slowly," or " On slow." The Cavendish family 
 has the solid maxim, '' Cavendo Tutus/' " Safe by 
 being cautious." 
 
326 Along the Road 
 
 Perhaps one of the most curious of all mottoes 
 is that borne by Lord Erskine, no doubt invented 
 by the first peer, the witty and fanciful Lord 
 Chancellor, " Trial by Jury." The Dashwoods 
 have the constitutional motto, ^^ Pro Magna 
 Charta/^ " For Magna Charta." 
 
 Then there are a number of fanciful and often 
 very beautiful mottoes. The Egertons have ^^ Sic 
 Donee " — " Even thus, until " — which is a fine 
 aposiopesis. Lord Gough bears the splendid 
 motto, referring to his great victory, " Goojerat, 
 clear the way." I suppose that this refers to 
 some celebrated order given by him on the occa- 
 sion. Then there is " Comme je trouve," which 
 is parallel to ^' Si je puis/' which last was 
 adopted by William Morris. The .Anstruthers 
 have " Perils sem nisi periissem," which, I sup- 
 pose, means, ^^ I should have perished if I had 
 not persevered," or it may be that it signifies, 
 " T should have lost my life if I had not lost it." 
 Lord Halifax bears the contented motto, " I 
 like my choice." The Maxwells have the pretty 
 maxim, " Think on " ; and the Montefiores the 
 still more beautiful one, " Think and Thank." 
 The Byrons have the grand war-cry, ^^ Crede 
 Byron/' " Trust Byron." The Yarde-Bullers have 
 the curious phrase, ^^ Aquila non capit muscas/' 
 " The eagle does not catch flies " ; the De Bathes 
 have the rather cynical phrase, ^^ l^ec parvis 
 sisto/' which seems to mean, " I don't stick at 
 trifles." The Ousel eys have a very curious motto, 
 
Mottoes 327 
 
 *' Mors lupi agnh vita" "The death of the wolf 
 is life to the lambs." The Peeks bear the beauti- 
 ful words, " Le matt re vient/' " The Master 
 coraeth." Lord Deramore has " Node volamus" 
 a reference to the bats^ wings on his arms. Lord 
 Donington has the pathetic motto, '' Tenehras 
 meas," which perhaps means " Lighten our dark- 
 ness." The Dnnconibes bear *' yon fecimus ipsi/* 
 " We did not achieve it of ourselves." The Ayles- 
 fords bear the beautiful motto, very hard to trans- 
 late, " Aperto vivere voto/' which means " To live 
 in all sincerity." The Duke of Marlborough has, 
 I think, a Spanish motto, which means " Faithful 
 though disgraced." Lord Carlisle has the very 
 pathetic motto, ^' Yolo non valeo/' " I desire but 
 I cannot perform." The Cadogans carry ^'^ Qui 
 inridet inferior est," " He that envies is the lesser 
 man." 
 
 Of the Christian mottoes which I mentioned, 
 Lord Basing bears a Greek motto, which language 
 is rarely used, *'d piT) sv tio araupw" — Save in the 
 Cross," — the words, " God forbid that I should 
 glory," being understood. The Lech meres have 
 the singular phrase, ^^ Christus pelicano" " Christ 
 in the pelican," with reference to the old tradition 
 of the jielican feeding her young with her own 
 blood. Lord Clarendon has the strange motto, 
 " Fidei coticula crux," " The Cross is the test of 
 faith " — coticula meaning a stone used for testing 
 metals. 
 
 Enough has, I hope, been said to show the 
 
328 Along the Road 
 
 interest and suggest! veness of these pretty sum- 
 maries of life and hope. I do not attach too 
 much importance to them, but I should value the 
 possession of a fine mysterious old family motto, 
 which one could hold on to in one's heart as a 
 comfort in perplexity and as a sort of battle-cry 
 when efi'ort was needed. My father used as a 
 young man to bear the beautiful motto, ^^ Luce 
 Magistra/' " With light as my guide " ; but when 
 he became Bishop of Truro he took out a new 
 patent of arms, because there seemed some doubt 
 as to his right to the arms he bore, and he then 
 went back to a fine old French family motto, 
 ^^ Fay hien crain rien/' which I have carried about 
 with me engraved on a gold ring for so many 
 years that it is now nearly obliterated. It is an 
 inspiring thing, T believe, to have a great, wise, 
 encouraging maxim to which one succeeds by in- 
 heritance, and by which one can try to regulate 
 one^s conduct. That may be a feeling apart from 
 common sense, but the mind and heart are much 
 affected by these symbols of great truths, which 
 can consecrate one's hopes in the old knightly 
 fashion. The truth is that sentiment does play 
 a far larger part in the world than we are most 
 of us willing to admit. A great many men and 
 women are sustained in life by a vague sense of 
 the superiority of their family traditions to the 
 traditions of other families. They would dis- 
 claim this if they were directly taxed with it, 
 but the fact remains that they secretly believe 
 
Mottoes 329 
 
 that their ways of doing things, their dress, their 
 deportment, their recipes, their furniture, indicate 
 a self-resi)ect which the arrangements of others 
 do not so clearly bespeak. And thus, though 
 family pride may be a limited and unsympathetic 
 affair, yet it is really a vei*y active force in the 
 world, and leads people to act, from a prin- 
 ciple of nohlense oblige, in a way which on the 
 whole encourages dignity and decorum. We are 
 swayed more by instinct than by reason in 
 the affairs of life, and happily for us the reason 
 which would in public discount, let us say, the 
 sentiment of a famil}^ motto as a bit of unneces- 
 sary emotion, is overcome by the instinct which 
 leads us to feel that our family traditions expect 
 a certain nobility of action from us, and to con- 
 demn ourselves in secret, if we have fallen short 
 of the standards in which we have been nurtured. 
 
ON BEING INTERRUPTED 
 
 I SUPPOSE that for busy people there are few 
 of the minor ills of life that are so hard to 
 bear philosophically as unnecessary interrup- 
 tions. Here is a case in point. Some little time 
 ago, I had secured, I thought, one evening, a 
 couple of hours to finish off a bit of work which 
 had to be done by a certain time. I had just 
 got into the swing of it, when a man whom I 
 know only slightly sent in his name, asking if 
 he might speak to me for a moment. I had been 
 in correspondence with him about fixing the date 
 of an engagement some weeks ahead. I had sug- 
 gested three possible dates, and all that he had 
 to do was to select one. He came in with a 
 leisurely air, said that he happened to be passing 
 through Cambridge, and thought it would be so 
 much more satisfactory to see me. ^' It is so 
 much easier," he said, with a genial smile, " to 
 settle these things at an inter vieio.'^ He then 
 produced my letter, and gave me, at much length, 
 a number of excellent reasons against two of the 
 dates I had proposed. I said that it was all 
 the same to me, so we would fix the third of the 
 330 
 
On Being Interrupted 331 
 
 dates. He then said that he was very much in- 
 terested in the matter that was going to be dis- 
 cussed on the occasion, and that he would much 
 like to have an opportunity of hearing my views 
 on the subject. He then occupied over half an 
 hour in giving me his own views on the question, 
 which differed from my own ; but when I at- 
 tempted to meet any of his points he held up his 
 hand and said, " Pardon me — I should just like 
 to finish my statement of the case; I shall deal 
 with that objection in a moment." So it went on, 
 and at the end of about an hour, he said : " Well, 
 I must not take up your time any longer; I am 
 very glad to have had this opportunity of dis- 
 cussing the question frankly." Then followed a 
 little talk on general topics and a few civilities, 
 and he finally took his departure with much 
 courtesy. 
 
 It is no doubt unreasonable and ungenial to 
 object to this polite kind of brigandage! T feel 
 ashamed to reflect how much annoyed I was by 
 the invasion. Yet T am sure that the worthy man 
 meant well. I have no doubt he thought in a 
 general way that he was saving me the trouble 
 of writing a letter, and he also wished to have 
 the opportunity of airing his views on the par- 
 ticular subject. It had not, I am sure, occurred 
 to him that a letter could have been written in 
 two minutes, or that I might not desire to hear 
 what he thought on the question. Yet to put the 
 matter in the most concrete and commercial light, 
 
332 Along the Road 
 
 he was depriving me not only of time, but actually 
 of money, by his call. The work I was doing was 
 wage-earning work; and this is the disadvantage 
 of being a writer, that people are apt to think 
 that writing can be done at any time. One would 
 not venture to treat a doctor or a lawyer so. 
 
 This particular case is no doubt an extreme 
 one, but I do not see how I could have met it. 
 It would have been uncivil to refuse to see him, 
 and he would have felt himself discourteously used 
 if I had said, like Archbishop Laud on a similar 
 occasion, when the two gentlemen of Wiltshire 
 called upon him, that I had no time for compli- 
 ments, and left the room by another door. 
 
 Of course, as a general rule, one must allow 
 for a certain inevitable amount of interruption. 
 As a college official, I know that, day by day, a 
 certain number of points are bound to turn up, 
 which involve one^s suspending whatever one has 
 in hand. One is rung up on the telephone to 
 fix an engagement, some one wants to borrow a 
 book, a proof comes in to be corrected, a man 
 comes in to see about hanging some pictures in 
 the library — every one knows the sort of triviali- 
 ties. One takes such things as part of the day^s 
 work, and deals with them as mechanically as 
 one opens an umbrella if it comes on to rain. 
 But the sort of interruption which one entirely 
 grudges are the things which take up time and 
 patience and do not seem to have anything to 
 justify them. T remember my father, when he 
 
On Being Interrupted 333 
 
 was Archbishop, saying Ihat the sort of thing 
 lie found so hard to understand the use of, was 
 when he spent the greater part of the day in 
 travelling to fulfil some social or ceremonial en- 
 gagement, *^ when for all the good I did I might 
 have been a stuffed seal ! " A day gone in travel- 
 ling and in vague civilities, with perhaps an op- 
 j)ortunity of making a ten minutes' speech! T 
 think that he perhaps naturally underestimated 
 the effect that his presence probably had in giv- 
 ing a stimulus to the particular enterprise. But 
 when, day after day, pressing business has to be 
 laid aside, when no leisure can be obtained for 
 quiet reading or for thinking out an important 
 matter, then it must be difficult for a busy man 
 not to say to himself," " To what purpose is this 
 waste?'' 
 
 In the case of a man like my father, who 
 worked, when left to himself, with an almost 
 destructive energy, I have little doubt that these 
 distractions were really a blessing, because they 
 gave him a compulsory rest. But there is a 
 further point which is worth considering. There 
 is no form of self-discipline to be compared to 
 that which can be practised by dealing with 
 little tiresome engagements and interviews and 
 interruptions in a perfectly tranquil and good- 
 liumoured way, giving the whole of one's attention 
 to the matter in hand, and not allowing the visitor 
 to feel that he is being hurried or that he has 
 intruded. I remember that Bishop Wilkinson said 
 
334 Along the Road 
 
 with great sternness to a friend of mine, who had 
 been late for an engagement, " You ought to be 
 punctual; but if you are not punctual, you must 
 not allow yourself to be fussed, or you commit a 
 double fault. Now that you are here, we will 
 both discuss the matter as carefully and delib- 
 erately as if you had been in time." 
 
 After all, few people's time is as valuable as 
 all that! We are not put into the world to 
 carry out our own programme exactly and pre- 
 cisely, but to rub shoulders with other people, to 
 increase our sympathies, to make others feel at 
 ease, to add to the general geniality of life. We 
 must not, of course, allow casual encounters 
 with other people to thrust our particular bit of 
 work into a corner, or, like an acquaintance of 
 my own, go about paying calls and complaining 
 that our social engagements leave us no time to 
 read or think. But we are in the world to live, 
 and interruptions, as we call them, are part of 
 life. 
 
 I do not think there is anything which is more 
 gratifying and encouraging than to have an inter- 
 view with some busy public man, and to find him, 
 to all appearances, kindly, amiable, and leisurely. 
 I had to see the head of a great department the 
 other day on a small point of business. I know 
 what his work is, and I did not wish to take up 
 his time. But instead of a brief and severe inter- 
 view, I came away feeling that I had made a 
 friend. The great man had thrown himself back 
 
On Being Interrupted 335 
 
 in his chair, had dealt in a few words with the 
 points before us, and had then talked genially 
 and interestingly about the further issues raised, 
 inviting criticism and weighing suggestions. As 
 I went out another visitor was shown in. I do 
 not know if the minister was bewailing his 
 hard fate inwardly, but there was not a sign 
 of anything but goodwill and interest in his 
 kindly smile, his pleasant handshake, and his 
 courteous invitation to me to interview him 
 again if the matter proved not to be perfectly 
 clear. 
 
 The important thing is not to lose our hold 
 upon life; it is a great temptation to busy and 
 energetic people to overvalue their work and to 
 undervalue their relations with others. But 
 routine-work is not necessarily valuable, except in 
 so far as It is a discipline against restlessness, in so 
 far as it steadies and strengthens character. No 
 one can avoid drudgery, but on the other hand 
 mere purposeless drudgery is not valuable at all ; 
 it consumes energy and it diminishes vitality.. 
 Nothing is so clearly stated in the Gospel as the 
 principle that we ought not to get immersed in 
 the details of life so as to lose sight of higher 
 and wider things; and a man who gets so at- 
 tached to routine-work that he cannot bear the 
 smallest deviation from it, is little better than 
 the miser who can think of nothing but his 
 money ; both the drudge and the miser are infected 
 by a perverted virtue: the one begins by believing 
 
336 Along the Road 
 
 in economy, and both end by becoming mere 
 machines. 
 
 Interruptions, then, are often but the influx of 
 the tide of humanity into the ordered life. The 
 danger nowadays is that we all tend to become 
 specialists ; and specialism unduly pursued means 
 a loss of due proportion. A father who is so 
 busy that he cannot find time to see anything of 
 his children, however exalted a view he may take 
 of the dignity and importance of work, is really 
 not doing his duty at all, but sacrificing duty to 
 inclination. Horace says that it is pleasant to 
 play the fool in season; it is not only pleasant, 
 it is a plain Christian duty to cultivate affection- 
 ate relations with others, and to contribute one's 
 share to the genial current of the world. I re- 
 member an excellent schoolmaster who was very 
 anxious on principle to make friends with his 
 boys, but if an old pupil dropped in to see him, 
 he fidgeted in his chair, hummed and hawed, 
 glanced at his watch, kept the papers he was 
 correcting in his hand, and gave such a sense 
 that his precious time was being wasted that 
 the attempt was seldom made a second time. 
 The other day I had a severe lesson myself, which 
 I hope to take to heart. A colleague of my own 
 at Cambridge said to me that an undergraduate 
 would like to consult me on a small matter. I 
 said, "Why does he not come to see me?" The 
 reply was, " He would like to, but he is afraid 
 of interrupting you." I quite appreciated the 
 
On Being Interrupted 337 
 
 couitesy and consideration of the young man; 
 but for all that I look upon it as a severe and 
 probably merited criticism, and I do not relish 
 a compliment to my industry at the expense of 
 my humanity. 
 
 The gist of the whole matter is that we must 
 teach ourselves to regard interruptions not as 
 necessary evils, but as welcome links with the 
 world. We must court them rather than resent 
 them, and we must practise, as far as we can, 
 the art of never being preoccupied or hurried or 
 snappish, remembering that however important 
 our work and occupation may seem, we are human 
 beings first, and that no ideal, however zealously 
 pursued, can supersede the claims and the duties 
 and the amenities of life. 
 
DEMOCRACY 
 
 Tt is recorded that some one, talking to Arch- 
 bishop Tait about Church affairs, used the phrase, 
 "the present crisis." "What crisis?" said the 
 Archbishop; "there has always been a crisis in 
 Church affairs, ever since I was old enough to 
 remember." The same is probably true of all 
 affairs, political as well as ecclesiastical. But 
 the interest, and perhaps we may add, the anxiety 
 of the present crisis in politics is simply this. 
 The people have not been given power, nor have 
 they exactly taken it — they have simply found 
 out how to use the power they have long had; 
 and the question is : How is this going to affect 
 our social life? That is the only interest that 
 there is in politics for ordinary people. What 
 most of us desire is to be as free as possible to 
 live on the lines we desire, and to be governed 
 as little as 4)ossible. Politics are no doubt an 
 excellent and exciting game for the people who 
 have a hand in them. But the less need there is 
 for politics, the happier a State is. If everyone 
 were rational and considerate and disinterested, 
 there would be no need for politics at all. 
 338 
 
Democracy 339 
 
 The ordinary man is no more interested in 
 technical i)olitics than he is interested in culinary 
 processes. What he wants is a well-cooked dinner 
 at a reasonable cost; and as long as he gets that, 
 he cares ver}' little how it is prepared. If his 
 dinner goes on being ill-cooked, and still more if 
 it continues to be expensive as well, he may go 
 into the kitchen and kick the jmts and pans about, 
 and even dismiss the cook; and in politics that 
 is a revolution. But what the ordinary man 
 wants is to get the most and the best out of 
 life. . The worst of it is that the process of get- 
 ting the most out of life in many cases involves 
 other people iti not getting anything out of life 
 except unpleasant drudgery: and it can hardly 
 be exi)ected that the drudges should acquiesce. 
 There was once an aged nobleman who closed his 
 park to the public because he said that it fussed 
 him and destroyed his sense of privacy to see 
 anyone within five hundred yards of his house. 
 He had a perfect right to feel like that, and if 
 he could, to secure his own comfort ; but if every- 
 one in an over-populated country felt the same, 
 it is evident that there would not be enough 
 privacy to go round. 
 
 The object, of course, of a State should be to 
 secure the welfare of the many at the cost of the 
 least possible inconvenience to the few. There 
 must, of course, be inconvenience from time to 
 time. If a man in a town has small-pox, it is 
 no doubt much pleasanter for him to be nursed 
 
340 Along the Road 
 
 in his own home; but the community have a 
 perfect right to compel him to be moved to an 
 isolation hospital. They cannot be expected to sub- 
 ordinate their unwillingness to catch small-pox 
 to his claim for personal comfort. Of course, it 
 involves a certain injustice if a majority of people 
 have to coerce a minority. But it is plain that 
 it is at least more fair than that a minority should 
 coerce a majority. The duty of the State is to 
 give all its members equal opportunities, to re- 
 ward them according to their merits, to safeguard 
 the weak, and to aim at educating everyone to 
 take a reasonable, sensible, and good-humoured 
 view of the rights of others. 
 
 Probably the interests of the State are best 
 served by encouraging all individual talent and 
 enterprise as far as possible. The more that 
 people have motives for exertion, for making the 
 best of themselves and their talents, the whole- 
 somer and stronger the State will be. If it 
 attempts to subordinate people too much, to claim 
 the same amount of the same kind of labour from 
 everyone, no matter what their dispositions and 
 faculties may be, one gets a kind of lifeless social- 
 ism which is fatal to vitality and progress. 
 Charles Kingsley was once travelling in the 
 United States and met a newspaper editor who 
 said to him : " Mr. Kingsley, I hear you are a 
 democrat. Well, so am I. My motto is, * When- 
 ever you see a head above the crowd, hit it.' " 
 " Good heavens ! " said Kingsley, commenting 
 
Democracy 341 
 
 upon the remark, " what a gliastlj* couceptioii 
 of human equality, to attempt, not to raise every 
 one to the level of the best, but to boycott all 
 force, all originality, all nobility, and to reduce 
 all to a dead level! If that is democracy, I am 
 no democrat ! " 
 
 I was talking the other day to a well-known 
 man, who said to me that he was perpetually 
 surprised and interested by the very feminine 
 view which his wife took of politics. They had 
 been reading some political speech or other, and 
 his wife made a depreciatory criticism. " I see 
 you are not interested in democracy," said my 
 friend. His wife was silent for a moment. Then 
 she said : " Xo, I am not — I am only interested 
 in the persons whom democracy brings to the 
 front." That is a very sane and wholesome critic- 
 ism. The thing which makes many people fight 
 shy of democracy is that it seems to be the glori- 
 fication of the average man, and not of the ideal 
 man. The average man is not interesting. There 
 was a curious series of portraits some time ago 
 in the Strand Magazine, T think, obtained by 
 photographing hundreds of people on the same 
 ])late, so that one obtained a sort of average 
 human being. The interest of the pictures to 
 me was the extremely undistinguished and even 
 muzzy result. Not only had the average man as 
 thus depicted not a single attractive feature, he 
 was mean, vacuous, suspicious, and dull. The last 
 thing that one desires for humanity is to co- 
 
34^ Along the Road 
 
 ordinate them ou uninteresting lines, and to 
 reduce all to a prosaic type. 
 
 The views of the average man form what is 
 commonly known as public opinion, and public 
 opinion is a very curious thing to study. The 
 people who form it cannot express it; they are 
 imperturbably silent. They do not even know 
 what they think. They know what they think, 
 when it is put to them; but they are not per- 
 suaded or convinced. If a view consonant with 
 public opinion is expressed to them, they say: 
 " Yes, I think that ! " If a view at variance with 
 public opinion is expressed to them, they say: 
 " That is stuff and nonsense ! " The same view 
 that they have condemned will perhaps be ex- 
 pressed to them a few years later, and they will 
 have found out that they do think so, and will 
 say : " Yes, that is sensible." But where it all 
 comes from, and how the process of leavening 
 takes place, is undiscoverable. It is simply there. 
 Public opinion is deeply sensitive to anything 
 that is picturesque and pathetic. A single strik- 
 ing incident has more weight with it than a row 
 of excellent reasons. The curious thing is that 
 it is not very sensible; it is melodramatic and 
 it is sentimental. Sometimes it is attracted by 
 a personality, by look or gesture or eloquence, 
 and it swallows a set of opinions whole. " So- 
 and-so says that, and it must be right." The 
 truth is that it is really a kind of childlike in- 
 stinct for what is likeable and pleasant, not a 
 
Democracy 343 
 
 reasoned thing at all; and perhaps the best 
 service that a man can do to his generation is 
 to present reasonable ideas and principles in a 
 striking or attractive light, and thus contribute 
 to the enlargement and enlightenment of public 
 opinion. 
 
 But the worst thing that anyone can do is 
 to yield to i)essimistic panic. Things do not 
 really change very fast; even a tremendous up- 
 heaval like the French Revolution did not affect 
 tlie ordinary life of France very deeply. One 
 class was affected most prejudicially by it; but 
 there was no great levelling of property, no very 
 marked increase of social equality. What the 
 duty of the ordinary citizen is, is to make just 
 concessions amiably, and to mind his own busi- 
 ness. It is not as though a majority of any 
 country are ever in favour of general insecurity 
 and pillage. " No gentleman," says even the 
 atrocious Mr. Hyde, in Stevenson's great allegory, 
 " but wishes to avoid a row." What most sen- 
 sible people desire is labour, order, and peace. 
 Most reasonable people like work, and feel dull 
 without it; and nearly all desire an orderly and 
 I)eaceful home; and democracy is just as much 
 interested in securing all that as the most en- 
 lightened of despots. What a democracy is per- 
 fectly right in demanding is the amelioration of 
 conditions which reduce labour to helpless 
 drudgery, and make the orderly and peaceful 
 home impossible. But this cannot be secured by 
 
344 Along the Road 
 
 universal pillage. The luxuries whicli democracy 
 has a perfect right to say shall not be indulged 
 in are the luxuries of idleness and disorder and 
 contempt and oppression. Public opinion has 
 made itself felt on these points already, and it 
 is likely to make itself still more felt. The hope 
 of the nation lies in a sincere attempt to amelio- 
 rate evil conditions of existence, in bringing 
 wholesome and ennobling pleasures within the 
 reach of all, and in aiming at simplicity of life 
 and cordial relations; it cannot be done in a 
 moment; but neither can it be done by grudging 
 and resentful acquiescence in movements which 
 one is powerless to check. We must agree swiftly, 
 as the Gospel says, and it is better to meet the 
 reasonable demand than to have the uttermost 
 farthing extorted. 
 
ABSENT-MINDEDNESS 
 
 Absent-mindedness is not in itself a charm, but 
 I have seldom known an absent-minded person 
 who was not charming. It generally goes with 
 guilelessness, sweet temper, and dreaminess. One 
 of the reasons, indeed, why absent-mindedness, 
 which has its inconveniences both for its owner 
 and others, survives in a temperament, is because 
 the person in question is generally incapable of be- 
 ing vexed or put out by small forgetfulnesses and 
 absurdities; if he is so vexed, he generally learns, 
 very speedily, presence of mind, or whatever is 
 the precise opposite of absent-mindedness. But 
 besides a certain childlikeness of nature, absent- 
 mindedness generally implies distinct mental 
 ability, and the power of being absorbed in a 
 train of thought. Indeed absent-mindedness com- 
 bined with irritability and stupidity would result 
 in about as unpleasing a mixture of qualities as 
 it would be possible to conceive of! 
 
 One of the most absent-minded people I ever 
 
 knew was a more or less distinguished ecclesiastic 
 
 at whose house I used to visit as a child. He had 
 
 won some fame in his youth as a poet, and he 
 
 345 
 
346 Along the Road 
 
 was, when I remember him, a preacher of some 
 force ; but he could not be depended upon in that 
 capacity. Whatever he was interested in at the 
 moment he preached about, and he had the power 
 of being interested in very drea ry things. His 
 sermons were like reveries; indeed, his whole 
 rendering of the service was that of a man who 
 was reading a book to himself and often finding 
 it unexpectedly beautiful and interesting. The 
 result was sometimes extremely startling, because 
 one felt as if one had never heard the familiar 
 words before. I remember his reading the ac- 
 count of the Nativity in a wonderfully feeling 
 manner, " because there was no room for them 
 at the inn." I do not know how the effect was 
 communicated; it was delivered with a half- 
 mournful, half-incredulous smile. If those who 
 refused them admittance had only known what 
 they were doing! 
 
 He had a great head of hair, my old friend, 
 which looked as if it were never brushed; great 
 hollow melancholy eyes, and a deliberate, mourn- 
 ful voice which seemed to come from very far 
 away. He was always dressed with great shabbi- 
 ness, and had yet a remote and stately air. He 
 used to be an object partly of terror and partly 
 of sympathy to us children. He never seemed to 
 recognise us, and had a way of gently detaining 
 us with a hand if he met us, and saying, " I 
 know who you are, child, but I can't find the 
 name ! "— and if there is one thing of which a 
 
Absent-Mindedness 347 
 
 child is incapable, it is of eimnciatiug its Olirist- 
 ian name and surname in public. I don't think 
 lie was an effective clergyman, because he seldom 
 knew his parishioners by sight; but he was re- 
 garded with a mixture of respect and compassion. 
 A friend of his told me that she was once sitting 
 with his wife — he had fallen in love in his time 
 and had somehow or other found words to com- 
 municate the fact — when he came in with one of 
 his sleeves turned up, and the air of a man who 
 had made a great discovery. He had caught sight 
 of the lining of his coat, and it had occurred to 
 him that it formed a little coat of itself, inside the 
 other. His idea was that, if it were taken out, it 
 would make a pretty little summer jacket for him, 
 and he made the suggestion with an air of deep 
 practical sagacity. He was adored in his own fam- 
 ily for his sweetness and helplessness, and he was 
 tenderly guarded and interpreted to the world. 
 
 There is a charming story by a German novelist 
 — Freytag, I think — which depicts a professor of 
 the same unworldly, contemplative kind. He goes 
 to spend the day at a friend's house, and unfortu- 
 nately hears the cry of some fowls which are 
 being killed for the dinner, with the result that 
 he loses his appetite and cannot touch any food. 
 The careful, homely hostess, when he goes away, 
 insists on giving him a cold chicken wrapi)ed up 
 in paper, that when he gets home he may not be 
 starved. The faithful house-dog sees the pro- 
 fessor pocket this in the hall, and gets into his 
 
348 Along the Road 
 
 sagacious head the idea that the professor is 
 a thief; so he slips out with him and tugs 
 at his pocket as he goes along. Every time that 
 the dog tugs, the professor takes off his hat, 
 and as the dog continues tugging, the professor 
 says, " Thank you, dear, I did bow ! " The fact 
 is that the professor's sister has arranged that 
 when she is out walking with him, and they pass 
 someone whom the professor ought to salute, 
 but whom he will certainly not recognise, she 
 should give him a signal to remove his hat by 
 pulling at his coat. 
 
 The most notable instance of absent-minded- 
 ness, or ratber abstraction, I ever saw, was when 
 I was a young man; I was in London, and as 
 I walked up Whitehall, Mr. Gladstone, who was 
 then Premier, came out of Downing Street, and 
 turned up to Trafalgar Square. I walked for 
 some way just belli nd him. He was entirely ab- 
 sorbed in some train of thought. He was rather 
 shabbily dressed, in an old frock-coat and ill- 
 brushed hat; and I remember noticing that his 
 trousers were so much trodden down at the heel 
 that the threads of the fabric swept the ground. 
 One of his hands was clenched at his side, and as 
 he walked he kept opening the fingers suddenly 
 and closing them again. It was at a time when 
 there was a great deal of political animus — I 
 expect over Home Kule — and I was amused and 
 interested to see the sort of greetings he got. 
 Some people stood still as he passed, bareheaded, 
 
Absent-Mindedness 349 
 
 hat in hand. Two fashionably-dressed women in 
 a victoria turned round to observe him, and one 
 of them shook her fist at him. But the great man 
 walked along, entirely oblivious of everything, 
 just removing his hat occasionally when he was 
 very markedly and insistently saluted. I am sure 
 I never saw any man show such entire uncon- 
 sciousness of his surroundings, and it was an 
 extremely impressive sight. 
 
 I suppose that of all the interesting figures of 
 the last century the most abstracted by far was 
 the poet Coleridge in his later days. He held a 
 sort of little court at Highgate, where he lived in 
 a doctor^s house, and discoursed of lofty subjects 
 in a continuous and misty monologue to an ad- 
 miring throng. There is a delicious description 
 of the ceremony in Carlyle's Life of Sterling, one 
 of the most picturesque and humorous passages 
 which Carlyle ever put on paper. Carlyle re- 
 garded the oracle with extreme interest and very 
 decided contempt. He said that he listened to 
 tlie poet discoursing for two stricken hours with- 
 out conveying to any of his hearers the slightest 
 idea of what he was talking about. Charles 
 li.nnb invented one of his most humorous stories 
 to illustrate the same thing. He said that he 
 met Coleridge on Hampstead Heath, and that 
 Coleridge took him aside into a dingle, laid hold 
 of the button of his coat, and began to expound 
 some abstruse subject with extraordinary earnest- 
 ness. Lamb remembered that he had an appoint- 
 
350 Along the Road 
 
 ment elsewhere, but saw no way of escaping, until 
 at last in desperation he got out a knife, severed 
 the button from his coat, leaving it in Coleridge's 
 fingers, and slipped away. Some hours later he 
 returned and heard Coleridge's voice rolling and 
 echoing in a full tide of eloquence among the 
 gorse-bushes. Lamb said that he went quietly 
 back to his place, and that Coleridge continued 
 the exposition, never having noticed his absence, 
 and still clasping the severed button. 
 
 It was an inherited characteristic with Cole- 
 ridge. His father, I believe, or possibly his 
 grandfather, who was a clergyman, had been 
 known to walk into the vestry in the course of 
 the service, and then, oblivious of the fact that 
 there was more to come, he would divest himself 
 of his robes and go back to the vicarage, leaving 
 the congregation waiting. 
 
 A friend of mine once told me that when he 
 was a boy an absent-minded friend, who was a 
 very fine reader, came to stay for a Sunday with 
 his father, who was a country squire. His father 
 was accustomed to read the lessons in church, but 
 being kept away that morning by a cold, he asked 
 the friend to read them instead of him. He 
 gladly consented. What was the consternation 
 of the congregation when the stranger left the 
 family pew at the end of the Venite^ and walked 
 briskly to the lectern. The clergyman was, how- 
 ever, equal to the situation. He leant forwards 
 and said in a very deferential manner to the 
 
Absent-Mindedness 351 
 
 eager aspirant, " We had thought of having the 
 Psalms first," as if they were for once departing 
 from the ordinary ritual. The friend was not in 
 the least discomposed, said with a polite bow, 
 "By all means," and returned to his place with 
 perfect equanimity. It is^ lust that traaquillity 
 oX_uerve which makes abstraction possible, and 
 also removes jany of ihe^ usual misery of having 
 ^ade a ridiculous mistake. 
 
 In spite, however, of the fact that absent- 
 mindedness is rather a charming quality, or at 
 all events an accompaniment of charming quali- 
 ties, it is not a thing to practise or to indulge, 
 and absent-minded people ought as far as possible 
 in early life to endeavour to bring themselves 
 into line with the world. One does not as a rule 
 commit important business, which needs to be 
 punctually i>erformed, to a man liable to fits of 
 abstraction; and the absent-minded are only too 
 apt to slip dreamily and good-naturedly through 
 life, engaged in very harmless and amiable trains 
 of thought, but effecting nothing and doing very 
 little to keep the world on the right lines. In- 
 deed, the chief use of the absent-minded man is 
 to give to his own circle the anxious and tender 
 care of one who is not adapted to the rigidity of 
 circumstance and routine, and to evoke a sort of 
 amused love, which is beautiful because it centres 
 on a character which is so childlike and pure, 
 and which never discovers that all are not as 
 guileless and disinterested as himself. 
 
PEACE 
 
 I SAT listening the other day to a beautiful sermon 
 on the Peace of God, on the text, " My peace I 
 leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not 
 as the world giveth give I unto you/' It was a 
 beautiful sermon, as I say, the sentences clear 
 and strong, the thoughts delicate and refined, and 
 the whole of it transfused with a fine emotion. 
 The Christian, said the preacher, was to seek 
 peace and make peace by every means in his 
 power, but he was never to sacrifice principle, 
 or to abandon what he held to be' true. He in- 
 stanced the case of the Congo atrocities, and he 
 said that this afforded a good illustration of 
 the point. The Christian must protest against 
 tyranny and wrong-doing, even if his protest were 
 to endanger the peace of Europe. And then he 
 went on to speak of the doctrines of the faith, 
 and he said that a man must never conceal or 
 dissemble his belief in those doctrines in order 
 to conciliate an opponent, even though he knew 
 that the result must be strife and hostility. 
 
 And then the preacher went on to speak of 
 the other side of the question, the peace which 
 
 352 
 
Peace 353 
 
 must keep the hearts and minds of believers, the 
 peace that comes from the sense of work faith- 
 fully done, and under the blessing of which a 
 man mi^ht wait patiently for whatever God chose 
 to send him. By this time I was wishing, as I 
 often do, to ask the preacher some questions, that 
 he might, if he could, resolve the difficulties of 
 Ills theme; because it seemed to me that he was 
 straining the 'sense of the word peace somewhat. 
 That is always the difficulty of using these large 
 vague, indistinct words, which have a hundred 
 shades of meaning. In the first place, I felt I 
 could have no clear idea of what peace was, if 
 the aiming at it might result in hostility. Let 
 me take this point first, and try to disentangle 
 what I mean. Peace, in its ordinary sense, in- 
 volves, I think, some suspension or cessation of 
 strife and hostility. It is a calm security which 
 falls ui)on the minds of those who have been 
 involved in some wrangling dispute, some heated 
 animosity. The essence of it seems to be that 
 man can, while it lasts, feel a sense of safety and 
 leisure and goodwill, when he can give himself 
 wholly to work or thought which involves no 
 interference with the rights and joys of others, 
 and further, it is a state in which he fears no 
 invasion of his rights, no violence or menaces, but 
 is sure that his neighbours regard him with the 
 same kindness and benevolence with which he 
 regards them. And thus it seems to me essen- 
 tially a state of things where men have not only 
 23 
 
354 Along the Road 
 
 agreed to drop differences, but to unite in sym- 
 pathy and goodwill. 
 
 Now it does not seem to me that it can be 
 described as peace when two adversaries agree, 
 as it is called, to differ. It is not peace when 
 a man says, " So-and-so is an unreasonable and 
 wrong-headed person. He is wholly wedded to 
 his own erroneous ideas, and is unable to see 
 another's point of view. But it is not worth 
 while squabbling and coming to blows over the 
 question. He will find out his mistake in time." 
 That does not seem to me a peaceful attitude at 
 all! The attitude of peace appears to me to be 
 when a man says : " Whatever happens, there must 
 be no animosity between me and So-and-so. It 
 is true that he sees things in a different light; 
 but in a matter of opinion, which cannot be scien- 
 tifically demonstrated, he has as much right to 
 his belief as I have. My own view may be wrong, 
 but it is the best I can arrive at, and my observa- 
 tions lead me to think it is true, and I must work 
 on in the light of my thought, just as he must. 
 After all, we agree about the main principles, 
 and can live in amity and love." If one sees two 
 good people, kindly, active, unselfish, virtuous, 
 disagreeing fiercely on some point of detail, it is 
 generally safe to assume that the detail is in 
 reality unimportant, or that they need not either 
 of them be in the right ; for the melancholy thing 
 is that a difference of opinion about details divides 
 people far more than an agreement about prin- 
 
Peace 355 
 
 ciples unites them. I remember once how sharply 
 a congregation were divided about the erection 
 of a crucifix in a church. One section held that 
 it was a beautiful and natural emblem of re- 
 demption; another section held, with even greater 
 vehemence, that it was a symbol which suggested 
 and encouraged idolatry. Both parties had, no 
 doubt, some right on their side; and it seemed 
 to me a case where the section who approved 
 should have given way to the section who ob- 
 jected, because, in any case, worship was possible 
 without the crucifix. But the defenders of the 
 symbol chose rather to consider the objection as 
 an almost blasphemous wrong done to the honour 
 of our Lord, and so the unhappy strife continued. 
 There seems to me no meaning at all in the 
 beatitude about peacemakers, unless a Christian 
 is ready to make some sacrifice and compromise, 
 or at all events to give up pressing some aspect 
 of doctrine as undeniably true. A man may well, 
 in his own mind and heart, believe that a certain 
 doctrine is true, without wishing to enforce the 
 concurrence in it upon those who quite sincerely 
 do not believe it to be true. Take, for instance, 
 such a doctrine as that of infant baptism ; a man 
 may trust the tradition of his Church, and say 
 that it is not possible to tell with exactness when 
 the conception of moral truth dawns upon a 
 childish mind, and that it is a great strength for 
 a child to realise, as soon as it realises anything, 
 that it is a baptised member of Christ's Church. 
 
356 Along the Road 
 
 But, on the other hand, a man may maintain that 
 there is a danger in regarding the ceremony as 
 a kind of superstitious charm, securing salvation 
 in a mechanical way, and that it should not be 
 administered until a child has a full conscious- 
 ness of what is happening. That view is based 
 upon a conscientious reason, and ought to be 
 respected, if sincerely held. There is much in 
 the Gospel about love and helpfulness and con- 
 ciliation, and not much about inflexible adherence 
 to doctrine or despotic intolerance. 
 
 One thinks of the old story about the two 
 hermits in Egypt who began to be afraid that 
 they were living too peaceful and harmonious a 
 life together. One of them said : " Let us have a 
 quarrel, like people in the world, so that we can 
 learn how to defend our faith courageously. T 
 will take one of these stones, and set it up and 
 say it is mine; and you shall say it is yours, 
 and then we will have a fine dispute over it." 
 
 "Excellent!" said the other. "That will be 
 good for us both. We are growing lazy and 
 indifferent." 
 
 So the first put up a stone and said, " That 
 stone is mine ! " And the other said, " I am sure 
 you are very welcome to it." And then after a 
 pause the first said, " Well, I give it to you, and 
 it is yours." And the second said, " I thank you 
 with all my heart." Then the first said, "But, 
 though it is yours, I take it from you and use 
 it as my own." And the second said, " It is the 
 
Peace 357 
 
 greatest pleasure T can have to yield it to you." 
 Then they both laughed, and gave up trying to 
 quarrel any more. 
 
 And now I must go on to the second point, and 
 try to inquire what the peace of God, which may 
 come to bless the heart of a man, can be. It 
 ob\iously cannot be a self-righteous kind of com- 
 placency, a self-satisfaction which is so deep that 
 nothing can ruffle it. There is a story of an old 
 eighteenth-century bishop who held many rich 
 preferments; and when he lay dying, he was seen 
 to be smiling to himself; his chaplain asked him 
 what gave him such tranquillity, and he said, 
 "The consciousness of a well-spent life I" But 
 this cannot be the peace of God which a Christian 
 ought to have. It cannot be a sense of having 
 found the world a comfortable place and god- 
 liness a profitable thing. It must be something 
 deeper and purer than that, a tranquillity far 
 removed from any sense of merit, which can be 
 disturbed by no misunderstanding and troubled 
 by no suffering or loss. It must be a humble 
 and penitent frame of mind, grateful for mercies, 
 and with a calm assurance that trials and troubles 
 do not come fortuitously, but from a Father's 
 loving hand. Such a peace is not desirous of 
 proclaiming its own convictions, nor anxious to 
 defend its own consistency; and still less bent 
 either upon judging the teachings of others or 
 enforcing its own happy conclusions upon them. 
 It concerns itself not at all with controversies op 
 
358 Along the Road 
 
 disputes, but only with concord and sympathy. 
 Whatever happens, it cannot be right for a 
 Christian to adopt a provocative attitude about 
 his own beliefs and hopes ; he must hold to them, 
 but he must not try to enforce them. The only 
 thing he has warrant in the Gospel for withstand- 
 ing is the tyrannical and Pharisaical temper! If 
 the Christian is to turn his cheek to the smiter, 
 it cannot be intended that he is presently, in the 
 cause of principle, to try his hand at a buffet, 
 and hope that his adversary will permit him to 
 make it two. There is really a great deal more 
 in the Gospel about literal non-resistance than 
 we find it convenient to admit. Can it be that 
 by our falling back upon more practical methods 
 the coming of the kingdom is so long delayed? 
 
 V 
 
CONVERSATION 
 
 I WAS bicycliug recently aloue in the depths of 
 the country, and took refuge from a tremendous 
 thunder-plump of rain in a mean little public- 
 house, with a stone floor, and drearily-painted, 
 much-worn pews of wood. There were two old 
 rustic men sheltering at the same time, who held 
 a long conversation, if it can be called a con- 
 versation, where each of the two followed his 
 own line of thoug ht, and wh ere the remarks of 
 the on e seemed to sugp^est nothing to th e other, 
 and not even to constitute an in terruption to th e 
 trai n of settled refle ction. 
 
 it was about the weather, this duet, and I 
 cannot reproduce it. One of the two was of 
 opinion that the water of a thunder-shower was 
 not as wholesome as the water of ordinary rain. 
 " There seems something got into it which ain't 
 quite wholesome," he said. The statement came 
 to an end after a minute or two ; then there was 
 a silence, and then the first speaker began again 
 with the same remark with which he had begun 
 the first strophe. To my surprise and amusement, 
 the second conversation was almost identically the 
 359 
 
36o Along the Road 
 
 same as the first. The s ame opinion was ex- 
 pressed^bj tjtie secaD.(l.sp£aker about the unhealthi- 
 ness of thundei'-raiu, and it was, as before, mutely 
 disregarded by the other. 
 
 When it was over, I thought that I might 
 myself intervene, so I said : " Some people say 
 that a thunder-storm breaks up the weather." 
 They both turned to me pleasantly, and the first 
 speaker, after a short pause of reflection, said, 
 " Yes, they do say it. It 's the weather they go 
 by." I wrestled in vain with the bearing of the 
 remark; and i)resently the second speaker said, 
 with the air of introducing a new element into 
 the talk, that there seemed to be something got 
 into the rain of a thunder-shower which was not 
 quite wholesome. After this, the sun came out, 
 the last drops of the storm fell with a resounding 
 flick, and we parted with cordial farewells and 
 with much mutual esteem. As I went away, I 
 heard the second speaker say to the first, in a 
 tone of deep conviction, " Yes, it 's the weather 
 they go by." 
 
 A day or two later I was sitting in my club 
 in London; the big saloon, with its arm-chairs 
 and sofas, its paper-bestrewn tables, its stands of 
 books and magazines, was filling up at tea-time. 
 An old gentleman with a grey beard was sitting 
 near me, when there drifted into his proximity 
 another old gentleman with a wig and an eye- 
 glass. They greeted cordially and arranged to 
 have tea together. The grey-bearded old man was 
 
Conversation 361 
 
 turning over a paper, which he now laid down, 
 and presently said to the other, " Well, so we 
 have lost our greatest humourist ! " The other 
 said, "Our greatest whatf^' The first replied, 
 " Our greatest humourist — that is to say, our 
 greatest humorous writer." " Ah," said the other, 
 in the tone of a man who had rapidly grasped an 
 obscure thought, " I dare say you are referring 
 to Gilbert? " " Yes," said the first, " our greatest 
 humourist, Gilbert." " Yes," said the man with 
 the wig, "you are about right there; he was a 
 very humorous writer, and we Ve lost him, in- 
 deed." " Now I don't suppose," said the grey- 
 beard, " that there was ever such a fortunate 
 conjunction of amusing poetry and straightfor- 
 ward music as his comic operas! " " Why," said 
 the man with the wig, "you refer to Sullivan, I 
 dare say ? " " That 's right I " said the grey-beard, 
 " Gilbert and Sullivan, there was a straightfor- 
 ward conjunction." 
 
 The conversation proceeded for a long time on 
 these simple lines; when the man with the wig 
 rose and said that he must be going, and that it 
 had bee n a great pleasure to have a good talk . 
 
 There was something very refreshing to find 
 the sjiiiH* pr(»(('ss Lining on all the world over. 
 Tlie jo.vs of conversation! I found myself reflect- 
 ing what a curious thing ordinary talk is. There 
 is no communication of ideas, no interchange of 
 sentiments, no comparison of experiences. Each 
 of the performers in each dialogue had got some 
 
362 Along the Road 
 
 thought of a dim kind in his mind, which he 
 slowly translated into the medium of speech. 
 There was no att empt to correct impress ions. 
 The only difference between the uncultured and 
 the cultured conversation was this. The two 
 rustics had not the time or the energy even to 
 listen to each other's contribution. In the club- 
 conversation, the man with the wig had the pleas- 
 ure of mental discovery, of gauging exactly the 
 thought in the grey-bearded man's mind. 
 
 But it wa&..^L _social refreshm ent in both cases; 
 and I perceived by degrees that cofiversatijpn is 
 only very rarely ^ n exc hq pge of _ tJl QllPJ^j^^ t ^^^• 
 It is just the establishing of a personal relation. 
 We are most of us like men who are stumbling 
 in a mist, with a painful sense of isolation. Sud- 
 denly we encounter another human being simi- 
 larly occupied. We draw near, we clasp hands, 
 we exchange signals of consciousness, we are glad 
 to find another creature of the same breed as 
 ourselves in our neighbourhood ; and then we part 
 and stumble into the mist again. Society is after 
 all but an organisation to remind ourselves that 
 we are not alone, that our bewilderment and our 
 sense of isolation are shared by other like-minded 
 beings ! 
 
 Of course, it is happier still if we have any 
 ideas as to what it is all about, and can exchange 
 them. But the essential point is still the personal 
 relation. It is that which matters, even more 
 than the ideas. One may love people very much, 
 
Conversation 363 
 
 and yet never interchange any ideas with them, 
 because the two minds may be on wholly different 
 planes. I watched a mother the other day with 
 a little boy, about whose health she was in great 
 anxiety, sitting on her knee. There was a 
 closer bond between them than there is between 
 two intellectual men-friends! They were utterly 
 hai)y)y in each other's nearness, with perfect trust- 
 fulness on the one hand, and intense affection on 
 the other. Yet the little boy had no idea what 
 the mother was thinking about, and the mother 
 could not even dimly guess at what the little brain 
 was imagining or recollecting. Yet how much 
 deeper and more sacred a thing was that union 
 of love than the elaborately-made friendship of 
 two critical persons, lucidly aware of each other's 
 mental foibles and failings! 
 
 All this may be very obvious, no doubt, but it 
 is a thing which we constantly forget. How 
 swiftly we can form a friendship with a congenial 
 nature, by glance and touch and silent proximity; 
 how far away one often is from one whose mental 
 processes one can follow and admire! It is not 
 in the intellectual region that our relations with 
 others are formed ; it is in that narrow enclosure 
 where the soul walks alone, peering out through 
 the bars to see what it is that passes by. That 
 is a thing which one only learns as life goes on. 
 When one was young, one used to think that 
 making friends was a mental process. One had 
 to talk out things, to get at a friend's opinions, 
 
364 Along the Road 
 
 to know what he thought. As one gets older, one 
 cares less about opinions and thoughts, one de- 
 sires more and more to know:_what a friend feels, 
 and one grows to~~value" unintelligent affection 
 above intelligent sympathy. Even if a person's 
 opinions conflict with one's own at every point, 
 yet if he is at ease with one, if he cares to be 
 with one, that is what matters. I used to wonder 
 in the old days, at the extraordinary alliances 
 which I saw: A husband of vivid intellectual 
 sympathies and a dull, homely wife;, or a bril- 
 liant, artistic, sensitive woman, with a robust 
 and comfortable mate. And yet such misfits often 
 seemed the most contented combinations. One 
 did not see that mutual love js often best sus- 
 tained by an admiration^ for opposite quaU^^^ 
 — that the brilliant husband could see the 
 superficiality of his own flourishes, and repose 
 gratefully upon his wife's sense and practical 
 judgment, while the wife could unenvyingly ad- 
 mire a vividness which she could not understand. 
 One forgot the necessary alternations of stimulus 
 and restfulness, one overlooked the meaning of 
 the whole affair. What matters most of all in 
 life is mutual confidence, the sense of unity, not 
 of idea and not even of aim, but of regard and 
 hope. What makes many people miss happiness 
 in life — and this is particularly true of intel- 
 lectual people — is that they look too much for 
 partnership in superficial things, and make the 
 mistake of thinking that life means occupation 
 
Conversation 365 
 
 and talk. Life is a much deeper and stronger 
 thing than that ; occupation is often nothing more 
 than the channel in which it flows, while talk 
 is but the breaking of bubbles on the surface of 
 the stream. 
 
 I do not mean that I undervalue conversation ; 
 to find anyone who will frankly set his mind 
 alongside of one's own, say without affectation 
 what he thinks, hear without impatience what one 
 believes, is oiie of the greatest pleasures in the 
 world. IJut, on the other hand, one learns not 
 to despise the dull and sticky conversations which 
 one has in many cases to endure, when words 
 seem nothing but courteous patches stuck over 
 gaps of silence, because one finds that, even so, 
 something remains; a sense of having been sig- 
 nalled to by another pilgrim on the lonely waste, 
 a sense of proximity triumphantly carried off 
 from an hour of boredom. A great many people 
 think very vaguely and dumbly, and are quite 
 unable to translate even those vague currents of 
 emotion into intelligible words. But the point is 
 to let those emotional currents mingle if possible, 
 to get the sense of fellowship and union. Some 
 of my best friends are people whose conversation 
 at first meeting bored me; while there are people, 
 whose talk always amuses and charms me, with 
 whom I have never been able to establish any 
 relation at all. One must not think lightly of 
 reason, or complain of its hardness and dryness; 
 but it is more important by far to keep one's 
 
366 Along the Road 
 
 emotions vivid and strong, to grasp every hand 
 held out, to answer every call, and to see in 
 every human being one meets, not a probable 
 antagonist, but a possible friend. 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 There is an old proverb which says, " If a thing 
 is worth doing, it is worth doing well." That 
 is fairly obvions; but the usual connection in 
 which it is quoted is that if a thing is worth 
 doing, it is not worth doing badly; and that I 
 humbly and heartily deny. Used in that sense 
 it becomes a brutal and stupid cudgel in the 
 hands of grim and tiresome elderly people, who 
 are always looking about for an opportunity to 
 interfere and scold; and because they dare not 
 do it to grown-up persons, they use their cudgel 
 on the backs of young people, who cannot or 
 probably will not answer back. There was long 
 ago a dreary friend of my family, a dry, creaking 
 sort of man, who looked as if he were made out 
 of wood, who liked nothing better, I used to think, 
 than spoiling our fun. He was what the old 
 books called a " killjoy." I remember once that 
 he found me playing the piano all by myself, and 
 doing it very badly. He listened a little, and 
 then said that he did not think it was worth 
 playing the piano unless one could do it better 
 than that. I might have replied that the only 
 
 367 
 
368 Along the Road 
 
 way to do it better was to go on doing it until 
 one improved; but I merely closed the piano and 
 fled from him. I dp not know that he meant it 
 unkindly; I should think he had a vague idea 
 of exhorting me to moral effort. Indeed, I had 
 myself a lesson the other day, eao ore infantium, 
 that one had better not indulge in criticisms. A 
 little girl showed me some poems she had written ; 
 I praised them duly, and then pointed out a line 
 which was not grammatical, and which could be 
 altered by the substitution of a single word. She 
 took it from my hand and looked at it; then 
 she said in a nonchalant way, " I don't think I 
 shall alter it." Her mother, who was present, 
 said, " Oh, but if you are shown that anything 
 is wrong, it is much better to change it." " No," 
 said the young poetess, " after all, it is my poem ! " 
 
 Of course, one must not get into the way of 
 doing everything in a slapdash amateur fashion. 
 One ought to have two or three things — one's 
 work in the world, for instance, which one does 
 well. But when it comes to filling one's leisure, 
 there is no reason why one should not amuse 
 oneself by doing a thing badly, if one cannot do 
 it better. It is a great thing to have a hobby, 
 and a variety of hobbies. 
 
 I myself strum infamously on a piano, and 
 draw in pen and ink with more zeal than accom- 
 plishment. I have no illusions as to the merit 
 of these performances, and at the age of fifty 
 there is not the slightest hope of improvement; 
 
Work and Play 369 
 
 but I cannot see for the life of me why I should 
 not continue to play and draw while it amuses 
 me. One cannot always be writing and reading, 
 and it is important that one should learn to 
 waste a little time pleasantly to oneself, even if 
 one's amusements give no pleasure to others. It 
 is very important, as one gets older, not to lose 
 the habit of playing; one cannot romp about and 
 (limb trees and play games which involve jump- 
 ing: but one can always amuse oneself, and it 
 need not be in a rational manner. To want to 
 play shows a wholesome appetite and zest for 
 life; and if possible one should encourage one- 
 self in early life to make things. There is an 
 elderly lady of my acquaintance who takes an 
 immense and unflagging interest in life. She has 
 a room which she calls her Bindery, in which she 
 is always binding volumes. They are dreadfully 
 badly done as a rule. One can't open one of her 
 masterpieces without breaking the back; and 
 when one has done so, several quires of paper 
 fall out. The lettering is all wrong, and there 
 is seldom quite room on the back for the title. 
 She is wholly aware of the absurd results which 
 she produces, and is more amused by them than 
 anyone else; but she gets a great deal of delight 
 out of the pursuit, and says that the occupation 
 is the real background of her life. 
 
 To desire to make something is a perfectly 
 natural human instinct, and I have always held 
 that all children ought to be taught a handicraft. 
 
 »4 
 
370 Along the Road 
 
 It would be well if this could be continued at 
 school, but it is not very easy to organise, espe- 
 cially when we make it a rule — not a wholly wise 
 rule — that all boys should play games, whether 
 they can do it or not. I do not think that all 
 games can be omitted even for boys who have no 
 aptitude for them ; one must provide exercise and 
 open air for all; but when it comes to a game 
 like cricket, which is essentially an idle game for 
 all but boys who can bowl and bat, and wastes 
 time more than any other game, it does seem to 
 me rather absurd that a boy who has, say, a taste 
 for carpentering should not be allowed to indulge 
 his taste, and give up cricket when it becomes 
 clear that he cannot under any circumstances 
 become proficient at it. 
 
 We are a curiously conventional nation in 
 many respects. It is taken for granted by many 
 people that games are not a waste of time, how- 
 ever ill you play them, and that reading is not 
 a waste of time however badly and unintelligently 
 you may read. I was in the company the other 
 day of an elderly gentleman, when a discussion 
 was going on as to the advisability of opening 
 a museum on Sundays. My old friend said 
 pleasantly that he did not think it should be 
 opened. " To speak frankly," he added, " I do 
 not think it is good for people to look at things; 
 it is a waste of time ; they get on very well with- 
 out it, and it only unsettles their minds." " But 
 that is an argument," I said, " not against open- 
 
Work and Play 371 
 
 ing this miiseiim on Sundays, but in favour of 
 the immediate abolition of all museums." " No/' 
 he said, " I think that professed students ought 
 to go to museums, but no one else — it is mere 
 dilettante rubbish." At which point I meekl}' 
 desisted from argument, because it is no good 
 arguing with people who have private decalogues 
 of their own. 
 
 My own theory of life is so wholly different, 
 that I find it hard to say how much I disagree. 
 1 believe that everyone ought to have work to 
 do, and ought to enjoy work; but I think that 
 many of us do too much work, and have not 
 nearly enough leisure. The ditliculty of chang- 
 ing all that is because we have developed a false 
 habit of occupation. We take it for granted that 
 if a person is occupied in something definite, he 
 is well employed. I am a busy man myself, and 
 have many engagements. I reflect with pain 
 sometimes what an extraordinary amount of good 
 time is ill consumed in things like committees, 
 in which details of a wholly unimportant kind 
 are discussed at enormous length, just because 
 they are the only part of the business that most 
 of those present understand. But the result is 
 that for many of us life slips away without 
 living. We know little of the wonderful world 
 around us; the wholesome sights of nature 
 the endless ingenuities and activities of men, 
 frankly, do not interest us. At Cambridge, for 
 instance, I have sometimes been almost appalled 
 
372 Along the Road 
 
 by the way in which undergraduates talk of the 
 absolute impossibility of taking a walk. They 
 walk, talk, eat, play a game, and the day is 
 full ; but a walk means nothing to see and nothing 
 to do. 
 
 And so I come back to my original proposition, 
 which amounts to this : that we ought to organise 
 leisure more liberally and more sensibly. We 
 have a dreary belief that it is everyone's duty 
 to get on, to make money, to win consideration, 
 to be respected. I am not sure that these am- 
 bitions are not absolutely wrong; a man ought 
 to have work and to enjoy it, and after that he 
 ought to desire to be innocently happy, and to 
 be loved; consideration and respect generally 
 mean that a man is thought to know how to 
 secure and how to retain a larger share of the 
 conveniences of life than other people, and to be 
 in no hurry to part with them. 
 
 And thus the old proverb seems to me to be 
 one of those dull and selfish maxims which repre- 
 sent the worst side of the English character- 
 its want of originality and lightness and joy and 
 kindly intercourse. It is a commercial maxim 
 through and through. A proverb is generally said 
 to be the wisdom of many and the wit of one; 
 but in this case it seems to me to be little more 
 than the stupidity of many and the cynicism of 
 one. 
 
LIVELINESS 
 
 I WAS talking to a friend the other day, and said 
 in tlie course of the talk that on the whole the 
 most useful people I knew were the people who had 
 chosen the work which amused them most. My 
 friend took exception to this, and said that it 
 was rather a light-minded and jaunty view of 
 life, and that it left out of sight great purposes 
 and serious etfort and devoted self-sacrifice. But 
 I stuck to my point. I had not said that these 
 lives were the finest and the most heroic, but 
 that they were on the whole the most useful. I 
 added that I believed that he agreed with me in 
 reality, but that he probably attached a different 
 sense to the word amusement. The people I 
 meant were those who did their work with a 
 kind of radiant enjoyment and gaiety, because 
 they liked the idea of it and the detail of it; 
 and that the men who worked in that spirit pro- 
 duced a very infectious result on the people who 
 worked with and under them; imported a sort 
 of zest and gusto into the whole business, which 
 carried everything before it, overcame difficulties, 
 made light of disagreeable incidents, and faced 
 373 
 
374 Along the Road 
 
 anxieties with a kind of cheerful courage which 
 deprived cares of half their terror. I said that 
 such people reminded me of that pleasant text 
 (which, bj the way, I have never induced any of 
 my clerical friends to preach upon, though I 
 have often suggested it), "And David danced 
 before the Lord with all his might." It is true 
 that Michal despised David for dancing so 
 eagerly; but Michal was no doubt one of those 
 intensely conventional people who value propriety 
 above everything; and David was certainly right. 
 Such a temper as this seems to me to be not 
 in the least inconsistent with effort and serious- 
 ness and unselfishness; and what I like about it 
 most is that it does not cloud life, as undue 
 seriousness is apt to do, with a sort of heavy 
 solemnity. I value solemnity in its place; but 
 it ought to come rarely and impressively, on 
 great occasions and at important moments. It 
 is of no use to pretend that life is not a serious 
 business; if one goes to work grinning and gig- 
 gling, one is ax>t to get a little nip from circum- 
 stances which remind one that levity is not al- 
 ways appropriate. But I think that, for all that, 
 life ought to be lived in a gay temper, as far as 
 possible. Life is full of interesting, exciting, and 
 amusing things, and one is meant to enjoy them 
 heartily. People, their ways, their sayings, and 
 their opinions, are highly entertaining. It is 
 pleasant to know beforehand exactly what line 
 a man is sure, to take, what familiar and un- 
 
Liveliness 375 
 
 necessary caution he is going to display, what 
 threadbare phrases and arguments he is going 
 to employ; it is as satisfactory as the striking 
 of a clock at the appointed hour; and not less 
 entertaining are the wholly unexpected things 
 which people do and say, entirely at variance 
 with all their principles and opinions. To ap- 
 prehend all this and to enjoy it is the essence 
 of humour; and it is a perpetual refreshment to 
 ])erceive it and relish it. 
 
 But if a man, on the other hand, takes up his 
 work with a pompous sense of rectitude, with a 
 belief that he is bound to be always correcting 
 and improving and uplifting people, what a 
 dreary business it often is! I do not know any- 
 thing which more takes the wind out of one's 
 sails, which brings such a sense of unnatural 
 constraint with it, as being much with people 
 who are always disapproving. I am not advo- 
 cating a cynical and flippant treatment of every- 
 thing, and still less an absence of decent and 
 seemly reticence in talk. Nor do I at all mean 
 that everything should be regarded as a joke; I 
 do not know anything more trying, or, indeed, 
 more de])ressing, tlian incessant trifling with 
 everything. But what I value is a light touch, 
 a sort of darting quality, like sun and breeze, a 
 changeful mood, amused and interested and seri- 
 ous by turns, responsive and sympathetic. Of 
 course, everyone cannot give this : it is a great and 
 unusual charm. But everyone can resolve that, 
 
Z^(i Along the Road 
 
 whatever happens, they will not blight and inter- 
 rupt the movement of others' minds, will not bore 
 others with their own preoccupations, or smear 
 their own worries into the gaps of every talk. 
 
 I do not think that one's own work is a thing 
 to dwell upon in the company of others; but the 
 people who do their work in a light and inter- 
 ested way have no temptation to do that. They 
 enjoy their work, and when it is done they are 
 pleasantly weary of it, and want to go on to 
 something else. I used to think that Roddie, the 
 beloved collie of whom I have written, and whose 
 loss I still mourn, was an ideal example of how 
 to take life. One would not have thought that 
 an afternoon walk was such a tremendous affair. 
 But Eoddie rushed off with a peal of joyful barks, 
 danced round one, was intensely interested, on 
 coming out of the drive, to see if we would turn 
 to the left or the right. Whichever way one 
 turned, there came another loud peal of barks, 
 as though to say, " Right again ! The very turn 
 I would have chosen." Then he settled down to 
 his own amusements, peeping into hedgerows, 
 looking through gates, discovering a hundred 
 exciting scents everywhere; and then the walk 
 over, when one turned into the gate, there came 
 another set of jubilant barks, as though to say, 
 " Why, we have got back liome after all ! You 
 really are the cleverest of guides." And then 
 came a delicious nap, beginning instantly, in his 
 own corner, under the card-table. 
 
Liveliness 377 
 
 Of course, we cannot all hope to have the 
 supreme tact and sympathy of a dog. Clever 
 and useful and important as we are, that is be- 
 yond our powers I But we can get nearer to this 
 sort of light-heartedness by practice, even by 
 admiring it and desiring it. 
 
 Hut my serious-minded friend would have none 
 of this; he said, not very profoundly, that we 
 were bound to spend and be spent for others. 
 Of course we are! Who can avoid it? But we 
 need not spend ourselves drearily and self-con- 
 sciously; and the people who do so because they 
 like doing it, spontaneously, and because they are 
 interested in others, are far more effective — at 
 least in my exi)erience — than the people who do 
 it from a strict sense of duty and with a sigh. 
 I do not mean to say that there is not a very 
 fine and silent kind of self-sacrifice, which people 
 can make and do make. But when I think of 
 the great Christian workers whom I have known 
 — my father, for instance. Bishop Lightfoot, 
 Bishop Westcott — they worked because they en- 
 joyed their work with a tremendous zest, because 
 it seemed to them the most delightful and inter- 
 esting work in the world, and from the purest 
 and simplest pleasure in doing a job well. And 
 then, again, I think of men like Charles Kings- 
 ley and Bishop Wilkinson — men of deep sorrows 
 and sharp anxieties — whose work lay more in 
 personal and pastoral regions. These men did 
 not work because they felt bound to do so, but 
 
37^ Along the Road 
 
 because they were intensely and incessantly inter- 
 ested in the problems of other people, and longed 
 to give them some of the joyful peace which they 
 themselves enjoyed. And thus I come back to 
 what I said at first, that the most useful people, 
 the people who make most difference to others, 
 are not the people who do their work on a theory 
 and for sound reasons, but the people who act 
 on a sort of generous instinct, and who find the 
 employment of their force and energy delightful, 
 and, in the best and truest sense, amusing. 
 
 Of course, one knows of work reluctantly un- 
 dertaken and faithfully fulfilled; and that is a 
 splendid thing too. " To be afraid of a thing and 
 yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of 
 man " — as the brisk Alan Breck said to David 
 Balfour. But Alan was all on the side of the 
 spirited life. He liked danger, because it gave 
 him a sense of excitement, and brought his powers 
 of inventiveness into use. And what I am really 
 pleading for is that people should not allow their 
 lives to become dull. It is dulness which takes 
 the edge off things, and discourages the young 
 aspirant. We cannot all keep our animal spirits 
 up, and we do not deceive others by per- 
 petually making bad jokes ; but we can be on the 
 look-out for what other people are thinking and 
 feeling; we can applaud if we cannot perform, 
 and smile if we cannot be convulsed with 
 laughter. I have a delightful friend at Cam- 
 bridge, whose interest in life is wholly unabated, 
 
Liveliness 379 
 
 in spite of his snowy locks. I sat next him in 
 Hall not long ago, at his own College. I men- 
 tioned a subject which was going to be discussed 
 that evening at a meeting I was to attend. 
 " Ah ! " he said, " that 's very interesting. Now 
 I should like to take a line of my own ! " He 
 began to indicate one or two arguments. " Ha ! '* 
 he suddenly cried, " this is really very good, much 
 to the point. I must just jot this down!" He 
 seized a menu and got out a pencil, and con- 
 tinued to take notes of his own conversation; 
 and at the end he gave me a little smile. " I am 
 afraid I have talked too much! I often do; but 
 I '11 just take this card away with me," — he 
 slipped it into his pocket as he spoke, — " I dare 
 say it will turn out useful; you see, I am 
 interested in most things ! " 
 
PRIDE 
 
 I HEARD a sermon the other day, which was both 
 beautiful and forcible, on the subject of pride. 
 The preacher said that pride was a kind of dis- 
 loyalty to God, and that pride was the sin of 
 the man who would not ride with the troop, or 
 be one of the rank and file, but would take his 
 own solitary and wilful way; and that it was 
 in a treasured and complacent solitariness that 
 pride consisted. He said it was as though the 
 mill-stream were too dignified to go through the 
 mill, and that we must be prepared to go through 
 the mill, and do the useful, obvious work. I 
 think that was all true, and that a sort of soli- 
 tariness, a desiring to do things in one's own way, 
 an incapacity of Avorking with other people, is 
 all a part of pride. I remember a man who had 
 been for a time in a Benedictine house as a novice 
 telling me his reasons for not continuing there. 
 He said with a smile, " I soon found out that 
 the only monastery of which I could be a member, 
 was a monastery of which I was also abbot I '' 
 That was a frank confession of pride. But I 
 think that there is a great deal more in pride 
 380 
 
Pride 381 
 
 than that, and that it would not have been at 
 the head of all the deadly sins if it were merely 
 the sin of wilfulness or disobedience or self-con- 
 fidence. If we look at the other side of the ques- 
 tion, it surely cannot be that God demands that 
 all work should be done in a timid, half-hearted, 
 uncertain spirit; that we should collapse in the 
 presence of difficulties and disfavour; that we 
 should let evil and meanness and selfishness go 
 unresisted for fear of taking a line of our own, 
 or of being thought to be superior. 
 
 And, again, pride is not the same as com- 
 placency. I have known men who were very 
 humble about themselves, very conscious of their 
 failures, and yet very proud both in upholding 
 their own ideal and contemning the ideals of 
 other people. And what increases the difficulty 
 is that pride is almost the only sin which can 
 be coupled with words of praise. We can speak 
 of proj)er pride and noble pride — we cannot speak 
 of proper envy or noble covetousness. And, of 
 course, the reason why it is so deadly a fault is 
 because it is so subtle, so hard to detect, so easy, 
 not only to overlook in oneself, but even to ad- 
 mire. If a man says of another that he is too 
 proud to do anything mean or underhand, he 
 intends to praise him, and a man might well be 
 proud of a pride which prevented his joining 
 in something petty or deceitful ; a kind of pride 
 is at the bottom of the feeling noblesse oblige, A 
 man who was too proud to confess poverty, or to 
 
382 Along the Road 
 
 deplore his own failures, would not necessarily 
 be a sinner. 
 
 We should all agree that a man who was 
 patently and obviously proud of his birth or of 
 his wealth was on the wrong tack. But a man 
 might be proud of his school or his regiment or 
 his profession or his children, and be only the 
 better for it. It is very difficult to disentangle 
 the truth about such kinds of pride, and to see 
 why one is wrong and the other is right. T 
 suppose that it really depends upon the personal 
 attitude. I mean that if a man is conscious, say, 
 that his regiment is a good one, that the tone 
 is keen, sound, friendly, gallant, and duty-loving, 
 so that he is thankful to be a member of it, and 
 anxious to do all he can to contribute to its wel- 
 fare, it is a wholesome pride. Whereas if he is 
 proud only that it is a smart, rich, well-bred, 
 dashing regiment, envied by vulgar people, and 
 fashionable, it is the wrong sort of pride, because 
 he looks upon these qualities as somehow in- 
 creasing his own reputation, and claims as credit- 
 able what are only the gifts of fortune. Pride 
 is, in fact, a hard and confident belief in oneself, 
 which leads one to take success as a sort of 
 natural right, and further makes one despise and 
 judge hardly the performances and aims of other 
 people. 
 
 And thus it is a quality which stands in the 
 way of progress and peace, because it leads men 
 to be unwilling to compromise, or to be con- 
 
Pride 383 
 
 siderate, or to do anything except on their own 
 terms. 
 
 But, as I said, the danger of it is that it is 
 so terribly hard to detect in oneself, because it 
 masquerades as an angel of light. A man may 
 learn to give up much for the sake of duty or 
 honour, to make allowances for other people, to 
 use them as far as he can, to admit good- 
 fa umou redly enough their good points, and yet 
 he may have a serene confidence that after all 
 his way is the best, and that it is only a want 
 of perception and reason and sense that makes 
 others fail to agree with him. I have known 
 frank, friendly, good-natured, effective people, 
 with whom one could never yet feel on an equal- 
 ity. They were patient and kindly and reason- 
 able enough, and yet one felt all the time that 
 there was an inner stubbornness about them, and 
 that for all their kindness they were deliberately 
 judging one for being wrong-headed and weak- 
 minded and ineffective and sentimental. But the 
 difficulty is this : suppose one perceives or believes 
 another man to be mean or vulgar or unjust or 
 unscrupulous, is one bound to try to persuade 
 oneself that he is the opposite, or to assert it? 
 It seems to me as absurd as if one was bound to 
 try to think ugly people beautiful or fat people 
 slim. And may one not be thankful or grateful 
 if one is not ugly or fat? Is it pride to recog- 
 nise such advantages as one has, or to be glad 
 that one has them? The answer is that one can- 
 
384 Along the Road 
 
 not, if one has perceptions at all, be blind to 
 other people's faults and disadvantages. To pre- 
 tend it would be to be deliberately hypocritical. 
 The mischief begins when self-comparison begins, 
 and when one thinks of other people's failings 
 merely to accentuate the comfortable sense of 
 one's own virtues; because the natural sequel is 
 that one becomes blind to one's own faults. 
 There is no need whatever to be for ever morbidly 
 dwelling upon and exaggerating one's own faults 
 — that often ends in a kind of complacent hu- 
 mility which is the most dangerous disguise of 
 pride. But one must resolutely perceive and 
 know that one's own way of going to work is 
 not necessarily the best. Tt may be the best way 
 or the only way for oneself, and one has a perfect 
 right, indeed a duty, to do the best work one 
 can under the best conditions one can secure. 
 But if one sees other influences more potent, other 
 people doing more good in their way, other people 
 receiving good from methods which one does not 
 like or from people whom one does not admire, 
 one must not try to interfere with it or to be 
 jealous of it or to belittle it, but to be sincerely 
 thankful that, by whatever means, the thing is 
 done. Take the case of a writer : supposing that 
 he sees that another writer, whom he may think 
 silly or vulgar or cheap or melodramatic, is better 
 liked, more read, more attended to than himself, 
 he must be glad that it is so; he must not try 
 to cast cold water upon the other's work or to 
 
Pride 385 
 
 (•;i11 it inferior or twaddling. He need not desert 
 liis own way of work, but he must be content to 
 recognise that the other is doing his work in the 
 best way that he can, and that his admirers ad- 
 mire him for good and sufficient reasons; if he 
 is a clergyman or a schoolmaster, and sees other 
 clergy and teachers more effective on different 
 lines, he must not sneer and shrug his shoulders, 
 and say that they sacrifice truth to impressive- 
 ness and strictness to popularity. He must not 
 be above taking hints from them, but he must be 
 glad that somehow or other the right kind of 
 effect is being produced. Pride comes in if one 
 believes one's own way to be the only way or 
 the best way, because the moment one feels that, 
 one begins to measure all natures by one's own, 
 and to feel not that man is made after the likeness 
 of God, but that God must somehow or other 
 resemble oneself, and be guiding the world on 
 the lines of which one approves. 
 
 The reason why pride is so deadly is because 
 it makes one incapable of learning or of perceiv- 
 ing one's failures and shortcomings. One trans- 
 lates a failure of one's own into the stupidity or 
 the perverseness of other people, and instead of 
 taking a misfortune or a calamity as showing one 
 frankly and plainly that one has been stupid or 
 lazy or careless, one takes it with a kind of 
 patient solemnity, as intended to minister to one's 
 own sense of ineffable importance. One thinks of 
 it as the dent of the graver upon the gem, when 
 
 2S 
 
386 Along the Road 
 
 it is often no more than the throwing of the 
 cracked potsherd upon the rubbish heap. 
 
 Experience is for many of us a process of 
 emptying, of bringing us to our senses, of show- 
 ing us that there is but little we are permitted 
 to do. We start gay and confident, with a strong 
 sense of our good intentions, our refinement, our 
 perceptiveness, our uncommonness, and we have 
 got to learn, most of us, that it does not count 
 for so much after all; that we cannot hope to 
 have a great effect upon the world, but that we 
 must be thankful to be shown our place, and be 
 grateful for our little bit of work. We are not 
 meant to be hopeless and despondent about our- 
 selves, to grovel abjectly in a sense of feebleness, 
 to welter in ineffectiveness, of course. But we 
 are meant to know that even if we are inside the 
 wicket-gate, we are yet a very long way from the 
 celestial city, and that we are better occupied in 
 minding the road, and facing the goblins, than 
 in drawing imaginary elevations of the King's 
 palace, in arranging who will enter and why, in 
 anticipating our own triumph and the blowing 
 of the heavenly trumpets. It is often when a 
 man least expects it that he finds his feet are 
 on the steps of jacinth, and when he is most 
 aware of his own failure to do what he might 
 have done, most overwhelmed by the murmurs of 
 regret and disappointment, that the music of the 
 melodious notes breaks serenely on the misty air. 
 
ALLEGORIES 
 
 There is no doubt that the pleasure felt by 
 ordinary |)eoi)le in parables and allegories is a 
 very general one, and has its roots far down in 
 human nature. In its simplest form it is the 
 same pleasure which a child has, say, in a 
 wooden figure of a cow or horse, which is not 
 only a toy, but a box, and can open and have 
 things kept inside it. A parable is just like that: 
 it is a pretty thing in itself, but it has a use 
 besides, and real things can be laid away there. 
 It is a mental pleasure of a simple kind ; one has 
 the story first and then one has the pleasure of 
 fitting it to real events and facts, and of per- 
 ceiving how it corresponds. It is the same thing 
 that makes a savage tell stories about the sun 
 and moon and stars, the husband and wife and 
 their inconveniently large family; and it may be 
 noted how constantly little children, who draw a 
 picture of a scene, tend to put a human face to 
 the sun, who comes peeping over the edge of the 
 world; and just in the same way the figures of 
 beasts, and the curves and lines of human furni- 
 ture and human ornaments were very anciently 
 387 
 
388 Along the Road 
 
 attached to the constellations. It is the joy of 
 detecting resemblances which underlies it all ; one 
 likes to see that a pollarded beech-tree is like a 
 kind of man holding up a bunch of strange horns 
 on his head, with terrifying, unwinking eyes, and 
 a great mouth prepared for shouting. For how 
 many years back have even I, who am old enough 
 to know better, been pleased to perceive that the 
 overlapping of two curtains above a red blind, in 
 a certain house where I often stay, makes, in 
 combination with the curtain-rings, a sort of red- 
 bladed sword with a curious twisted hilt! An- 
 other odder thing still is that in the depths of 
 the mind the thing is not only like a sword; it 
 is a sword, and there 's an end of it. 
 
 And then after those first pleasures of resem- 
 blance, one gets a little further on, and begins 
 to see deeper still ; and things become likenesses, 
 not of other things, but of mental ideas. The 
 ivy that grows so fast and stretches out such soft 
 green innocent tendrils across the window-pane 
 becomes like a fault which grows pleasantly upon 
 a man, and yet will darken all his life if it has 
 its way; the daisy with its open, homely little 
 face looking up out of the grass, is the simple 
 innocence that takes things as they come, and is 
 quietly happy in a comfortable manner, whatever 
 is going on. 
 
 And then we come to see that most things, 
 indeed, that surround us are, in a very deep and 
 wonderful fashion, types and symbols of what we 
 
Allegories 389 
 
 re and of what we either may become, if we 
 lake good heed, or of what we may fail to be- 
 come, if we go on our careless way, learning 
 nothing from what happens to us except how to 
 be disappointed and impatient. For the sum and 
 essence of all allegories is a noble kind of pa- 
 tience, that lives under laws of time and space, 
 and yet has a great life of its o\sti, which events 
 can help or hinder, according as we view them 
 and receive them; and we learn, perhaps very 
 late in life, to distinguish between the things that 
 it is good for us to keep — sweet memories and 
 faithful affections and hopes of goodness not yet 
 realised — and the things which we ought to throw 
 away as soon as we can — old grudges and poison- 
 ous recollections, and the useless burdens with 
 which, out of a fearful sort of prudence, we weight 
 our uncertain steps. 
 
 I do not think there is a more beautiful or a 
 happier gift than the power of seeing past the 
 surface of things into their inner realities. Of 
 course we must not be always drawing morals 
 for the sake of other people, because then we grow 
 tiresome, and like a wind that goes on turning 
 over the pages of one's book in a persistent way, 
 as if eager to get to the end. Mr. Interpreter 
 in the Pilgrim's Progress, with all his similitudes 
 and morals, must have been a rather overpowering 
 person to live with, when the pilgrims had gone 
 on their way, with pills and cordials, and the 
 family sate down to luncheon! Perhaps he said 
 
390 Along the Road 
 
 to his wife: " My dear, that room full of spiders 
 was very convenieut this morning to draw a moral 
 from, but it really does not reflect much credit 
 upon your housemaid ! " And I have often won- 
 dered what the private thoughts and occupations 
 were of the two men, one of whom had to cast 
 water on the fire to put it out, and the other who 
 had to cast oil secretly upon the flames. I can 
 imagine their comparing notes and agreeing that 
 their posts were rather unsatisfactory, and not 
 likely to lead to anything ! 
 
 Then there is another thing that has often struck 
 me about allegories ; and that is that they are on 
 the whole so discouraging. The percentage of suc- 
 cessful candidates for the heavenly honours is so 
 extremely small! The man goes upon his quest 
 backed by all sorts of wonderful powers, and he 
 makes such foolish mistakes, and finds such a 
 record of failures — the bones in the grass, the 
 careless predecessors turned into pigs or pea- 
 cocks, the foolish wayfarers being put into a 
 hole at the side of the hill — that the wonder is 
 that any one ever gets through at all! One de- 
 sires a very different kind of allegory, a race like 
 the Caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland, where 
 every one wins and every one has a prize. 
 
 But as a wise friend of mine said to me the 
 other day, if one must think of percentages at 
 all, it may be just the other way round. The per- 
 verse and greedy have fallen into snares and pits, 
 and they may be the tiny percentage who do not 
 
Allegories 391 
 
 get through. But all the while an endless stream 
 of pilgrims have been marching past, and pass- 
 ing on, and the walls and parapets of the heavenly 
 city are full of smiling persons who look over, 
 and welcome the tired souls who struggle in with 
 gladness and astonishment, under the melodious 
 notes of the silver trumpets, hardly daring to 
 believe that they are actually there. 
 
 And I am sure that on the whole one of the 
 things that hurts us most and keeps us back, is 
 that we will continue to think of trials and sor- 
 rows and misfortunes as things that are actually 
 there, injuring us and threatening us, when they 
 are as dead as Giant Despair. Evil is, of course, 
 liorribly powerful; but it is also strangely unreal. 
 Half the torture of a mistake is the misery of 
 considering what other people will think of it 
 all, as if that made any difference! The mistake 
 was made, and we trust, now that we are wiser, 
 that we shall not make it again. What ought to 
 vex us is that we were weak enough or foolish 
 enough to make it, not that other people will 
 blame us. Tt was a very cynical man who said 
 that the first commandment of all was " Thou 
 Shalt not be found out." We may be thankful 
 indeed that all we have done and thought is not 
 known to others, because their disapproving looks 
 would be a sad and mournful reflection of our 
 own self-displeasure; while, if we come to a better 
 mind, it is a good and wholesome thing to forgot 
 our mistakes, and not to encourage them to hang 
 
392 Along the Road 
 
 round us like a cloud of poisonous flies. But it 
 is essential that we should find ourselves out and 
 have no dull pretences. There is a striking little 
 story I once read — I have forgotten where — of a 
 man entertaining his own conscience. The man 
 — that is, his conventional and complacent self 
 — gets a good meal ready, but his conscience comes 
 in tired and woe-begone, cannot taste the food, 
 and puts his head down upon his hands. The 
 man says that it is hardly courteous to come so 
 ill-dressed and be so unsociable. The conscience 
 says : " I cannot help it. I am quite worn out. 
 If you knew what I know, you could not smile 
 and eat." Then the man says patronisingly : " Oh, 
 I dare say there are plenty of people who have 
 done far worse ; it does not do to think too much 
 of these things. Least said is soonest mended." 
 And then the conscience looks up, and says, 
 " Well, let me remind you of something," and 
 he tells him a tale of old ingratitude and un- 
 kindness which spoils the man's appetite, and 
 makes him get up from the table in a rage. I 
 forget how the story went on, but they settled 
 that they would try to work better together. 
 
 But if there is a danger in being content to 
 plod along, and take things dully as they come, 
 without looking forwards or backwards, there is 
 also a danger in allegorising overmuch, and get- 
 ting to regard one's own little pilgrimage as the 
 one central fact of importance in the world. We 
 have to remember that it is a great thing to be 
 
Allegories 393 
 
 allowed to go on pilgrimage at all, that Mr. Gaius, 
 for all bis hospitality, has other peoi)le to enter- 
 tain beside ourselves, and that we cannot order 
 rooms in the House Beautiful or use it as an 
 agreeable residence. There are very strong things 
 all about us, both for and against us, and we are 
 lucky if we slip through unhurt. 
 
 The most dreadful fact of all is that it is easy, 
 if we are selfish and romantic together, to imagine 
 that we are like Christian or Faithful, while all 
 the time we may be like Ignorance, sauntering in 
 a bypath, or like the young woman whose name 
 was Dull, or we may even be bearing still more 
 disreputable names. We must be sure that we 
 really are on pilgrimage, not merely being carried 
 in a comfortable train through exciting and in- 
 teresting places. It is not a pilgrimage which we 
 can take with a Baedeker in our hands, nor can 
 we hope that we can do the journey entirely on the 
 Delectable Mountains. There are dull stretches 
 of road which we do well to beguile with fine 
 memories and hopes; while in the dark valley 
 itself, with the hobgoblins howling in the smoke, 
 the less we can think of them, and the more we 
 can remember our glimpse through the Shepherd's 
 perspective-glass of the city, so much the better for 
 ourselves and for all that walk in our company. 
 
PUBLICITY AND PRWAOY 
 
 I WAS sitting the other day with an old friend, 
 who had called upon me in my rooms at Cam- 
 bridge, when a telegram was brought in. I read 
 it, apologising, and then said, showing it to him, 
 " I only wonder that it can pay to do this to any 
 extent ! " It was a wire from a very up-to-date 
 daily paper, requesting to know my opinion on 
 some current topic, and enclosing a double pre- 
 paid reply form. 
 
 My friend, I must first say, is an elderly man, 
 scholarly, fastidious, extremely refined, a con- 
 siderable student, and very retiring by nature, 
 but with a fine natural courtesy which makes 
 him on the too rare occasions when I see 
 him the most charming of companions. If his 
 eye ever falls on these words, which is not likely, 
 he will not take umbrage at this description, 
 which is literally and precisely true. 
 
 He read the telegram ; while I drew out a stylo- 
 graph, and asking him to excuse me for a minute, 
 began to write. He stared at me for a moment, 
 across the pink paper. Then he said, in a tone 
 of the deepest amazement, " You are surely not 
 394 
 
Publicity and Privacy 395 
 
 going to answer that?" "Yes," I said, "I am 
 — why not? " " You mean to say," he said, " that 
 you are going to allow your name to appear, with 
 your opinion on this question, in a daily paper, 
 to be read by hundreds of readers? It is simply 
 inconceivable to me! and just because an editor 
 asks you ! " 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I am certainly going to answer 
 it. It is a question on which I hold perfectly 
 definite views, and I am not at all sorry to have 
 an opportunity of stating them. I don't, I confess, 
 quite see why my opinion is wanted, nor why it 
 should be of the smallest interest to anyone to 
 know what I think about it. But if anyone does 
 wish to know, I am prepared to tell him my 
 opinion, just as I should tell you, if you asked 
 me." 
 
 " Well," he said, " I must say that you sur- 
 prise me — I am very much surprised. I would n't 
 do that for a hundred pounds." 
 
 " I wish," I said, " that you would tell me 
 exactly and frankly why you should object? If 
 you have an opinion on a subject, and are not 
 ashamed of your opinion, why should you not 
 state it?" 
 
 " I really don't quite know," he said ; " I don't 
 think I can give any logical reason; it is more 
 a matter of feeling. I- am afraid I should think 
 it — you don't mind my using the word? — terribly 
 vulgar. It seems to me against all my instincts 
 of privacy and propriety to do a thing like this. 
 
39^ Along the Road 
 
 I dare say I am very old-f ashioued ; but it seems 
 to me impertinent that you should be asked, and 
 quite dreadful that you should consent, to gratify 
 a trivial curiosity." 
 
 " Well/' I said, " I fully realise that your feel- 
 ing is a much more delicate and refined one than 
 my own ; I look at it in a very commonplace light. 
 I should like people to take the same view of this 
 question as I take myself. I don't expect to con- 
 vert many people to my way of thinking; but if 
 anyone is likely to regard my opinion, and to 
 modify his own in consequence of knowing mine, I 
 am only too happy to make him a present of mine. 
 I do not see that it is worse than writing a signed 
 article on a subject, or a book. In fact, I think it 
 is less open to objection ; for when I write an ar- 
 ticle or a book, I sell my opinions, or at least offer 
 them for sale; while this is wholly gratuitous." 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I see that your view is quite 
 consistent and probably sensible. But that any 
 editor should feel at liberty to rush into your 
 room like this with a question, and that you 
 should feel bound in any way to allow your 
 opinions to be made public, seems to me entirely 
 improper and undignified." 
 
 " Why," I said, " I only regard it as a legitimate 
 extension of conversation ! In a conversation one 
 can make one's opinions audible to about a dozen 
 people ; in a newspaper one can make them audible 
 to about a hundred thousand people — and the 
 more the merrier ! " 
 
Publicity and Privacy 397 
 
 My friend gave a sort of sigh, and said, 
 '^ Perhaps you are right," in a melancholy tone; 
 but I could see that he was both puzzled and 
 distressed. 
 
 ^VTien he left me I began to think over the 
 question again, and to search out my spirits, to 
 see if in any corner of my mind I could detect 
 any lurking sense of impropriety in the proceed- 
 ing. But I can find none. 
 
 I have a very strong feeling about one's right 
 to privacy — indeed, I think that one has a per- 
 fect right to refuse such requests as these. One 
 may have formed no opinion on a subject, or one 
 may not wish one's opinion to be known. I cer 
 tainly do not think that anyone has a right to 
 claim to call upon one or to demand to see one. 
 I very much resent the kind of letter I sometimes 
 get, which says : " I have been reading one of your 
 books with interest, and as I am passing through 
 Cambridge to-morrow, I shall venture to call and 
 make your acquaintance." I think that this 
 savours of impertinence, because it may not be 
 convenient or pleasant to me to receive a stranger 
 on such terms. In such a case a man ought to 
 obtain a proper introduction from a mutual 
 friend. But, on the other hand, I should always 
 w elcome a friendly letter about a book, or a civil 
 question about a statement made in a book. 
 That is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, though 
 I have a right, if I choose, not to answer it. 
 But to claim one's time and attention and 
 
39^ Along the Road 
 
 presence is a very different matter, especially if 
 one's consent is taken for granted. 
 
 Of course a writer in whose writings there is 
 a certain autobiographical element is bound to 
 be criticised, as I have often been, for having no 
 proper sense of privacy and intimacy. Critics 
 speak of it as though it were like substituting a 
 plate-glass front to one's house for a brick one, 
 and having one's meals and going to bed in public. 
 I do not contest that opinion; and if a man feels 
 that an intime book is indelicate, he has every 
 right to say so. But I think it is very difficult 
 to give a good reason for the objection. I myself 
 value the sense of intimacy and personality in a 
 book above all other qualities. The appeal of all 
 poets, dramatists, and essayists is based entirely 
 upon their intimacy. It seems to me that there 
 is all the difference between telling the world 
 what you choose to tell it, and letting people see 
 and investigate for themselves. The only objec- 
 tion I make to autobiographical books is that 
 they are sometimes dull — pompous, complacent, 
 heavy, self-satisfied. The more that a man like 
 Ruskin deigns to tell me about himself, the better 
 I am pleased ; but I am sometimes frankly bored 
 by pious JEueas and his adventures. It all de- 
 pends upon whether the recital is egotistical, 
 whether the writer takes himself too seriously. 
 If, on the other hand, one feels that a man is 
 intensely interested in his experiences, not only 
 because they are his own, but because they are 
 
Publicity and Privacy 399 
 
 just the things that happen to him, the things 
 he knows and cares about, the impression is de- 
 lightful. I had ten times rather have a man's 
 account of his own vivid actual thoughts and 
 adventures, than his dull and faulty imaginations 
 and fancies. I want to know what life is like 
 to other people, and what they think about it all, 
 not their platitudes and melodramas. It seems 
 to me that one of the blessed results of the multi- 
 plication of books and newspapers is that one 
 can talk to a larger audience. I like talking to 
 people, and hearing them talk, if they will only 
 say what they really think, and not put me 
 off with conventional remarks about things in 
 which neither of us takes the smallest interest. 
 Stale gossip, old stories, the weather, the last 
 railway accident, cautious and incomplete views 
 of politics — these are the heavy matters, litur- 
 gically recited, which make conversation insup- 
 portable. But if a companion has interests, views, 
 prejudices, preferences, and if he will discuss 
 them, not merely state them, and show a decent 
 interest in one's own views, then any talk becomes 
 interesting. I think that writers on current 
 topics should aim at being just as frank and 
 open in their writings as they would be in talk 
 with a trusted friend. And the more that one 
 trusts people, and listens with courtesy and fair- 
 ness to their views, the better for us all. No 
 one i^erson can form a complete and comprehen- 
 sive judgment of life and its issues; the only 
 
400 Along the Road 
 
 way to arrive at a solution is to balance and 
 weigh the views of other people; and it is a 
 wholesome and a bracing thing to know that men 
 whom one respects — and even men whom one does 
 not respect — may disagree with one, wholly and 
 entirely, on almost all subjects of importance. 
 
 I had a very pleasant adventure the other day. 
 I went to speak to an audience in London, most 
 of whom, I afterwards learned, had read some of 
 my books. I can only say that it was one of the 
 most comfortable and encouraging experiences I 
 have ever had, not because I was satisfied with 
 my lecture, but because, from first to last, I really 
 felt that I was among friends, and surrounded 
 with simple kindness and goodwill. I cannot see 
 that any one was the worse for this. It did not 
 make me believe that I was a prophet or a teacher ; 
 it simply enabled me to feel that we all met on 
 grounds of perfectly easy and simple friendliness. 
 My friends were quite prepared to listen to any- 
 thing I had to say, and I did my best to interest 
 them. I got far more than I gave, for we met 
 in what the old prayer calls the bond of peace, 
 and on grounds of perfectly simple human inter- 
 est. I believe that our suspicions and mistrusts 
 of one another are really very old and barbarous 
 things, primitive inheritances from the time when 
 every man had to fight for his own hand. But 
 we have come to the threshold of a very different 
 era, a time when we must be prepared to give all 
 we can, and not simply to take all we can get. 
 
Publicity and Privacy 401 
 
 The laws of time and space forbid us to live our 
 lives in company with the whole world; but we 
 can try to believe that the affection and kindness 
 we meet with in our own little circles are waiting 
 for us on every side; and the more that we can 
 step outside of our limitations, and clasp hands 
 with unknown friends, the better for us all. 
 
EXPERIENCE 
 
 It often seems to me a difficult point, illustrat- 
 ing the curious fact that the materials of the 
 world are so good but so imperfectly adjusted, 
 that busy and effective people get too little experi- 
 ence out of life, and idle and ineffective people 
 get too much. The effective man perceives so 
 little of the movement of the mind and thought 
 of humanity, because he modifies to such an ex- 
 tent the thoughts and dispositions of those with 
 whom he comes into contact; they become what 
 he expects them to be, and what they feel he 
 expects them to be. I have so often seen a mas- 
 terful man in contact with submissive people, 
 under the impression that he reads them like a 
 book, when all he sees is his own reflected light, 
 as though the sun were to analyse and despise 
 the light of the moon. A really masterful char- 
 acter, if it be also even superficially affectionate, 
 does seem to me to know so little about humanity 
 as a rule. I know, for instance, an enthusiastic 
 and ardent admirer of the classics, a schoolmaster, 
 who quotes to me triumphantly instances of the 
 pathetic interest which his pupils take in the 
 402 
 
Experience 403 
 
 classics, to prove that the classics are, after all, 
 the oiilj kind of culture that really appeals to 
 the human heart. He does uot know, and I can- 
 not tell hini, that all the interest he detects is 
 simply a submissive and gentle hypocrisy, a desire 
 to please and satisfy him, a desperate clinging to 
 anything which his pupils know will win his ap- 
 proval. And I have, too, in my mind a very 
 decisive academical personage, who detects and 
 praises business capacities and clear-headed views 
 in the minds of the most muddled and unbusiness- 
 like of the satellites who agree with him. " Poor 
 So-and-so!" I can hear him say. "Of course he 
 has not much head for business, but he somehow 
 catches the drift of a question, and knows what 
 is the right line to follow." 
 
 Tlie effective man is always dealing with things, 
 and turning possibilities into facts, and driving 
 the machine to such an extent that he cannot 
 notice the bits of the road and the sort of land- 
 8cai>e through which he is passing; he is so pre- 
 occui)ied with steering his big concern along 
 streets, slackening or putting on speed, dodging 
 through other vehicles, that he cannot know what 
 the faces are that look out of the ui)i>er windows, 
 or interpret the life of the by-road or the alley. 
 He gets to know something of the quality of 
 opposing forces, but nothing of the forces which 
 are neither in opposition nor in symi)ath3'. The re- 
 sult is that he overlooks or underrates all the 
 vague and beautiful influences, which flow on in- 
 
404 Along the Road 
 
 dependently, and which perhaps many years ago 
 gave the very impulse to the movement which he 
 is now engaged in directing. 
 
 And then, on the other hand, the ineffective, 
 restless, spectatorial people get, as I have said, 
 too much experience. Their time and energy are 
 not taken up with the alert conduct of some 
 definite scheme or duty. They see too much an<l 
 know too much of the great torrent of vague 
 impulses, and the stagnant expanses of inertia, 
 the sickly malarious swamps of morbidity. They 
 are too much bewildered by it all, just as the 
 effective are not bewildered enough. The reasons 
 for inaction multiply about them; they see that 
 activity often does little more than stir the sur- 
 face without bidding the waters flow; they are 
 fastidious about adding one more to the pile of 
 failures; they do not see the use of trying to 
 define their own inexactness. 
 
 Sometimes, as life goes on, a reversal of these 
 positions is brought about. The busy man be- 
 comes an extinct volcano, of which the burnt-out 
 crater is not even menacing, but only incon- 
 venient and perhaps picturesque. He sits bully- 
 ing people over the petty and unimportant 
 enterprises in which he is still allowed to take 
 a share. But the ineffective man sometimes blos- 
 soms out into a kindly and gracious creature; 
 things have at last become a little plainer, and 
 he knows at least where to bestow his sympathy. 
 He does not expect a prompt settlement of all 
 
Experience 405 
 
 conflicting claims, but he knows dimly what he 
 desires, and he is on the side of things orderly 
 and peaceful, neither contemptuous of movement 
 nor impatient of delay. 
 
 One sees all this sometimes in the faces of 
 people. I know nothing more melancholy than 
 the sight of dilapidated force, the fierce gesture 
 and the commanding eye with no authority be- 
 hind; the truculence, wiiich is merely grotesque 
 rudeness, extorting just a momentary and mean- 
 ingless deference, and then politely disregarded; 
 and yet, on the other hand, the person w^ho has 
 never been of much account, but who has been 
 affectionate, humble-minded, and patient, gets a 
 look of serenity, of contented waiting, which 
 transfigures a battered face from within. One 
 sees it in the faces of old and tired village people, 
 who have done such work as they could ever hope 
 to do, and can take life as they find it, with a 
 smiling dignity, which is very different from the 
 dignity of conscious powder, and looks as if some- 
 how self had melted out into a patience which 
 enjoys rather than endures. 
 
 Very rarely one sees a union of the two, where 
 a man has been effective and active, and yet has 
 never lost sight of the limits and deficiencies of 
 effectiveness, and into whose face comes a light 
 not so much of a tired sunset, as the promise of 
 a further daw^n. 
 
 Women have to bear the stress of this lapse of 
 energies even more than men; to an exciting 
 
4o6 Along the Road 
 
 girlhood succeeds marriage, the fierce joys and 
 ])i-eoccupations of motherhood, the sympathetic 
 liaiidling of the varying dispositions of the grow- 
 ing family ; then the launching away of the little 
 ships begins; the boys settle down to work in 
 the world, the girls marry; and quite suddenly, 
 sometimes, the wheels stop working, and the 
 mother, whose life has been so full of others' 
 cares, finds herself in a moment with nothing 
 whatever to do but to manage a house, and to 
 devote herself to her husband, whose interests in 
 many cases have been rather thrust into the 
 shade by the life and problems of the children. 
 Or widowhood brings with it a sudden cessation 
 of duties; and a woman finds herself obliged to 
 make a life of her own, when all along her life 
 has been made for her and forced upon her. 
 
 It is useless to say that men and women must 
 keep the evening of life in view and plan for it. 
 There is often neither time nor taste to do so. 
 Hobbies, reading, outlying friendships have all 
 been swept away joyfully enough by the rush of 
 the vital tide; and of all things the most difficult 
 is to construct interests out of trivialities, when 
 life has been too full of energies for trivialities 
 to have a place at all, except as interruptions to 
 the real business of the moment. 
 
 Of course it would be all easy enough if we 
 had our fill of life, and the evening were but a 
 time of wholesome and comfortable weariness. 
 But this natural and normal development is con- 
 
Experience 407 
 
 stantly broken in upon by untoward circum- 
 stiinte. Illness, bereavement, calamity, come, and 
 the flight lapses suddenly in mid-career. Not 
 everyone can begin to collect shells or to study 
 jmlitical economy, when life falls in ruins about 
 him. 
 
 It ought to be so plain what to do, and it is, 
 as a matter of fact, so difficult and intricate. If 
 one could but make some quiet secret investment 
 of fancy and hope, which would be there, safe 
 and secure, when we are suddenly beggared ! The 
 figure of Mrs. Leigh in Wesftcard Ho! so serene 
 and gracious, entirely occupied in religious con- 
 templation and parental adoration, is an attrac- 
 tive one at first, but becomes melodramatic and 
 unreal if one looks at it closer. 
 
 I suppose that the over-busy people ought to 
 try to clear a little space in their lives, in which 
 they may make sure that the arrows of God 
 strike home; because the eager, rushing, restless 
 life often holds up a shield against reality. It 
 is easy to say that they ought to do this, but 
 when life is crammed with practical things which 
 at all events seem to want doing, it is very hard 
 to set aside from one's active time an hour which 
 one is not quite sure how to occupy, an hour of 
 vague abstraction, which seems merely so much 
 time wasted. The case is easier for the people 
 whose time is not actively occupied and who are 
 over-burdened with fruitless reflection. I received 
 the other day a letter from a clever and unhappy 
 
4o8 Along the Road 
 
 woman, wealthy, childless, widowed, in indifferent 
 health, who said that she had no obvious duties, 
 and found the enigma of the world press heavily 
 upon her. Such a one ought, I think, at what- 
 ever cost of distastefulness or boredom, to take 
 up a piece of tangible and practical work. Un- 
 paid work is not difficult to find, and a task does 
 relieve and steady the mind in a wonderful 
 manner. 
 
 One does not want experience, real and vital 
 experience, to be either on the one hand a casual 
 visitor to a mind, like a bird which hops and 
 picks about a lawn, and hardly dints its surface ; 
 nor does one, on the other hand, desire it to be 
 a weight put over life and flattening it out, like 
 a stone that lies upon a grass-plot, crushing the 
 grass into a pale and sickly languor, and afford- 
 ing a home for loathly and shadow-loving insects. 
 But it is hard to find sufficient initiative to cor- 
 rect faults of temperament. It is so easy to 
 follow the line of least resistance, and to be 
 busy or dreary, as circumstances dictate. 
 
 The happiest lot of all is to have enough 
 definite duties to take off the humours of the 
 mind, and enough energy to use leisure profit- 
 ably — if one is as Martha, to resolve to sit still 
 and listen to the blessed talk; and if one is as 
 Mary, to be ready to lend a hand to wash the 
 plates. As Euskin once wrote in one of those 
 large and true summaries of principle which fell 
 so easily from his hand : " Life without industry 
 
Experience 409 
 
 is guilt; and industry without art [by which he 
 meant the disinterested love of beautiful and 
 noble things] is brutality." That is the truth, 
 make what excuses we may. 
 
RESIGNATION 
 
 Some time ago I was sitting with a friend of 
 mine, and the talk drifted on to a friend of his, 
 Anson by name, whom I just knew by sight, and 
 had met perhaps two or three times. Anson was 
 a young man, under thirty, and his wife had just 
 died, after two years of married life, leaving him 
 with a baby boy. The wife, whom I also just 
 knew, was a perfectly delightful creature, warm- 
 hearted, vivid, interested in many things, and of 
 great personal beauty and charm. 
 
 I said, I think, that I simply could not under- 
 stand how a man could endure such a blow at 
 all — how it would be possible to go on living after 
 such a bereavement, missing so beloved a com- 
 panion at every moment. ^' It is not," I said, " as 
 the common i)hrase goes, losing the half of one's 
 life, for in a marriage like that it would seem to 
 be the whole of life that is gone; I do not sup- 
 pose that there was a thought he did not share 
 with her, and hardly a waking moment when she 
 was out of his thoughts." 
 
 " That is so," said my friend. " It was just 
 one of those absolutely perfect marriages; and 
 410 
 
Resignation 411 
 
 yet lie is bearing his loss with astonishing patience 
 and resignation. He is simply wonderful I " 
 
 '• Ah ! " I said, " I do not really like that word 
 in that connection. I don't know poor Anson 
 well enough to say; but when the word * won- 
 derful ■ is used, it seems to me to imply a dan- 
 gerous exaltation of spirit, which is followed by 
 a terrible reaction ; or else — well, I hardly like to 
 say it, because it seems cynical, but it is not — 
 but I suspect such jieople of not caring as much 
 as it would be natural to imagine — of having 
 consolations in fact. I know an elderly lady 
 whose husband died after an illness of some 
 mqnths. They were a very devoted pair, I had 
 always thought. She was a woman who had 
 always subordinated her life to his; and he, 
 though a very affectionate man, was an exacting 
 one too. Well, she bore it * wonderfully,' and 
 then it turned out that when his illness was pro- 
 nounced hopeless she had quietly, without saying 
 anything about it, bought a house in Florence; 
 she went off there after his death, and I don't 
 honestly think she suffered very much. I do not 
 mean for an instant that she did not regret him, 
 or that she would not have done anything to have 
 saved him or to have got him back; the process 
 was wholly unconscious; but I really believe that 
 she had suffered all her life without knowing it 
 from a pent-up individuality, and from having no 
 life of her own, and this, I think, came to her 
 assistance; the interest of being able to lay out 
 
412 Along the Road 
 
 lier life upon her own lines did distract and sus- 
 tain her. Of course, she may have suffered, but 
 she gave little sign of it." 
 
 " I think that is quite possible," said my friend. 
 " A great loss does brace people to an effort ; and 
 there is no doubt that effort is enjoyable. But T 
 will show you a letter which Anson wrote me, in 
 reply to a letter of my own, and then you can 
 judge." 
 
 He took a letter from a drawer, and gave it 
 me. It certainly was a beautiful letter in one 
 sense. The writer said that the light of his life 
 had gone out, but that he was going to live " in 
 all things even as if she were by." That he was 
 grateful for the priceless gift of her love and 
 companionship, and looked forward with a cer- 
 tain hope to reunion, and that he knew that she 
 would have been wholly brave herself if she had 
 lost him, and that he was going to live as she 
 would have wished him to live. It was a long 
 letter, and it breathed from end to end the same 
 hopeful and tranquil spirit. I read it twice 
 through, and sat in silence. 
 
 " Well," said my friend at last, " what do you 
 think of it? " " I don't know what to think," I 
 said at last, " but I will speak quite frankly ; and 
 remember, I don't know Anson, so it is all guess- 
 work. It may, I think, be written in a mood of 
 intense but unconscious excitement. A man may 
 feel to himself ^ That is how I ought to think, 
 and that is how I will try to think ' — and if this 
 
Resignation 4^3 
 
 is so, I should be afraid of a terrible breakdown 
 later. Of course, there is no pretence about it 
 —I don't mean that! But it may be the kind 
 of rapture which comes of ])ain, and that is a 
 dangerous rapture. I had far rather think it is 
 tliat. But what I really miss in it is the human 
 cri du ca'itr. The man who wrote this had, so 
 to siKjak, all his wits about him. He is not, for 
 some reason or other, in an agony. He is sub- 
 lime and uplifted. I feel that I had rather know 
 that he was utterly crushed by his loss, that he 
 could see no one, do nothing. I don't think that 
 any human love ought to be able to look so far 
 ahead at such a moment. I have seen a man 
 before now in hopeless grief. It was a friend of 
 mine who had lost his only son, a boy of extraor- 
 dinary i)romise, w^ho w^as simply the ai>ple of his 
 eye. Well, he was very courageous, too; he went 
 on with his work, he was tenderly courteous and 
 considerate, but he could not speak of his grief; 
 he hardly ate or slept, and he had a perfectly 
 heart-breaking smile on his face, which gave me 
 the feeling of chords strained to the bursting 
 j)oint, as though a touch would snap them. Now, 
 I don't feel as if this letter came out of a mood 
 like that, and though again and again we find 
 that people do behave in a desperate crisis with 
 more courage than would have been expected, yet 
 T can't quite sympathise with the exalted view. 
 It seems to me to shirk or miss the meaning of 
 grief. I had rather almost that he went mad, or 
 
414 Along the Road 
 
 had an illness, or moped, or did something human 
 and natural. I feel that the way he is behaving 
 is the way in which people behave in plays or 
 in books, when the sorrow is not really there, 
 but only the imagined sorrow. I think that a 
 man may win his way to a heavenly patience and 
 acquiescence, but it is almost ghastly that he 
 should find it at once in fullest measure. How 
 can a man, the whole structure of whose life and 
 love has suddenly crumbled about him, look 
 through it all in that serene way? I don't think 
 that people at such a time ought to act a part, 
 however fine. It seems to me as if they were more 
 conscious of the impressive effect of their part, 
 than of the loss itself. I do not think I should 
 feel thus if a man lost his fortune or his position 
 or even his health. Those are all calamities which 
 ought to be borne philosophically, and where one 
 respects and admires a man for being able to 
 smile and begin again. In Sir Walter Scott's 
 Diary there is nothing so wonderful as the way 
 in which he records that the loss of his wealth 
 really did not affect him as much as he had ex- 
 pected, and that it was a relief to him when 
 everyone knew the facts. But when it comes to 
 losing the closest, best, and sweetest of human 
 relationships, all the words and glances and em- 
 braces that are so much in themselves, and stand 
 for so much more, all the interchange of thoughts 
 and hopes and fears and wonders — when all this 
 is suddenly ^wept away into silence and dark- 
 
Resignation 415 
 
 ness, the misery, the pathos, the waste, the horror 
 of it must be unendurable; and faith itself is a 
 tiling that must be won; it cannot be drunk like 
 a healing draught. One does not want people 
 to be able to forget, but to triumph over 
 remembrance." 
 
 " Yes," said my friend very gravely, " I think 
 that is all quite true. But Anson is not a self* 
 conscious man at all. He is perfectly frank and 
 simple. He is writing in this letter not platitudes, 
 but experience — I am sure of that. Something 
 — some flash of hoi)e, some certainty, has come 
 in between him and his sorrow; and he is not 
 thinking of himself at all. Is it possible, do you 
 suppose — I do not want to sj)eak fancifully or 
 transcendentally — that he may be sustained by 
 her conscious thought? If it were really true 
 that she, out of the body, seeing the truth and, 
 the significance of loss could put her spirit in 
 touch with his, and make him feel that love were 
 not over, and that separation were not disunion, 
 would that explain it? I know it is all a mys- 
 tery, but surely we must all feel that we are 
 visited by thoughts and hoi)es from time to time 
 that are not of our own making — that are sent 
 to us? I could not, if I would, believe that the 
 world is so sharply cut off from what lies behind 
 the world, from all that has gone before and all 
 that comes after. I do not doubt that Anson will 
 have to pass through dark hours, and learn, for 
 some reason which I cannot comprehend, that we 
 
4i6 Along the Road 
 
 cannot live life on our own terms, but must give 
 up, not only the base and evil things which we 
 desire, but the pure, sweet, and beautiful things 
 which we recognise. I can't argue about these 
 things — I can't prove them; but such a hope as 
 that which I have indicated does not seem to me 
 either unnatural or irrational. I cannot analyse 
 or state or prove the worth and energy of love. 
 I only know that I see in it a perfectly inex- 
 plicable force, which makes men rise above them- 
 selves and perform the impossible; and I cannot 
 believe that that depends upon its being expressed 
 in a human form, or that it ends with death." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " you are right and I am wrong. 
 I was speaking blindly and petulantly, from the 
 point of view of a silly child whose toy is broken, 
 and whose holiday is spoilt by rain. Instead of 
 doubting the larger force, when we see it, be- 
 cause we have not ourselves experienced it, we 
 ought to wait and wonder and hope. I will try 
 to think differently about it all. What I said 
 amounted to this — * I cannot believe unless I 
 see'; and what the world — or something above 
 the world — ^is telling us every day and hour of 
 our lives is simply this — that we cannot see unless 
 we believe." 
 
THE WIND 
 
 At the old house where I was lately living, my 
 window looked out on to an ancient terraced 
 bowling-green, along one side of which skirts an 
 avenue of big Scotch firs. On summer evenings, 
 when the breeze blows out of the west, they 
 whisper together softly like a falling weir; but 
 the other night a gale sprang up, and when I 
 awoke at some dark hour of the dawn, they roared 
 like wide-flung breakers, while the wind volleyed 
 suddenly in the gables and chimney-stacks, and 
 the oaken door of my room creaked and strained. 
 Some people find that an eerie sound; and I con- 
 fess that a fitful wind, wailing desolately round 
 the roofs of the house, gives the sense of a home- 
 less wanderer, hurried onwards on some unwill- 
 ing errand, and crying out sadly at the thought 
 of people sleeping securely in quiet rooms, and 
 w aking to sheltered life and pleasant cares. Last 
 night, and all day long, the wind has something 
 boisterous and triumphant about it, as if it were 
 bound upon some urgent business, and loved to 
 sweep over bare woodlands and healthy hill-tops, 
 to dive into deep valleys, set the quiet lake aswiri, 
 27 417 
 
41 8 Along the Road 
 
 and bend the sedges all one way. It seemed im- 
 possible not to attribute to it a life and a con- 
 sciousness, as of some great presence flying all 
 abroad, and rejoicing in its might. 
 
 I remember being brought very close to the 
 secret of the wind one Easter-tide, when I was 
 staying at a little village called Boot in the Esk- 
 dale valley in Cumberland, a lonely little place 
 between Scafell and the sea. We struck out one 
 day over the great moorland to the North, to- 
 wards Wast Water. There was a great steady 
 wind against us; we drew near at last to what 
 appeared to be the top, and far beyond it we 
 could see low-lying moors and woods, and deso- 
 late hills behind. The wind stopped quite sud- 
 denly — or at least we came out of it -into a space 
 of silent air, with, if anything, a little gentle 
 breeze behind us, instead of in our faces. Just 
 ahead now were some ragged-looking rocks ; from 
 them came a sound I have never heard again, a 
 sort of shrill humming sound. We were puzzled 
 by the cessation of the wind, and went to the 
 edge. 
 
 We found ourselves at the top of the great 
 Wast Water screes, those black, furrowed preci- 
 pices of rock which overhang the lower end of 
 the lake. The reason why the wind had seemed 
 to drop was simply this. It was blowing a raging 
 gale on the clifr'-front, and the current of air was 
 hurled up aloft, right over our heads, leaving a 
 quiet region with a back-draught of wind. It 
 
The Wind 4^9 
 
 was like being behind a waterfall turned upside 
 down, lint the strangest thing followed. We 
 got to the edge, so that we could look down the 
 steeply-channelled front, with the dark lake be- 
 low; and here the wind came up with such terrific 
 force that one could lean out against it. It 
 ruslied up like an irresistible jelly, and a bit of 
 paper tiiat we held was hurled a hundred feet 
 up above us. 
 
 I wish that, when I was at school, some of 
 these wonderful processes of air and light, of 
 cold and heat, had been explained to me. We 
 had some dreary science classes, when we did 
 things like hydrostatics, and worked out the 
 weight of columns of water; but it never seemed 
 to have any reference to the things we were see- 
 ing every day. I never realised then that a gale 
 only means that somewhere and somehow a great 
 mass of air is removed, and that a wind is nothing 
 more than a general rush of air from all sides 
 to fill the gap. I thought of winds as just irre- 
 sponsible rushes of air; and the Latin personifica- 
 tion of them, Boreas and Zephyrus, and the rest, 
 gave it all a freakish, fairylike flavour, which was 
 pretty enough, but nothing more; and then, too, 
 there were the old pictures, with furious, full- 
 cheeked faces, like the heads of middle-aged 
 cherubs, spouting storm on ships which leant 
 sideways over a steeply-curdled sea. I cannot 
 help feeling now that the beginning of all know- 
 ledge ought to be the picture of our little whirl- 
 
420 Along the Road 
 
 iiig globe, warmed by the fii'e of the sun, with 
 all its seas and continents, its winds and frosts. 
 One began at the other end too much, at the 
 undue prominence of man; not thinking of man 
 as a link in a chain, a creature who, by his won- 
 derful devices, fights a better battle, and gets 
 more out of the earth than other creatures; but 
 rather as if all were nicely and neatly prepared 
 for him, just to slip complacently upon the scene. 
 One ought to learn to think of man as strangely 
 and wonderfully permitted to be here, among all 
 these mighty forces and mysterious powers, not 
 as the visible lord of creation, and with every- 
 thing meant to minister to him. It is a mistake, 
 I believe, because it means that so much has to 
 be unlearned, if one is not to shirk the great 
 problem of life and destiny; much of our discon- 
 tent and cowardice comes, I think, from our be- 
 ginning by thinking that we have a right to have 
 things arranged for our convenience and comfort, 
 instead of its being a battle, where we have to 
 win what peace we can! 
 
 But I have travelled far away in thought from 
 the gale that roars in the pine-boughs outside my 
 window, as I sit with my quiet candles burning, 
 book on knee, and pencil in hand. There is a 
 delicious story of George MacDonald's, which 1 
 think is called At the Back of the North Wind. 
 I have not read it for years, but it used to give 
 me a delicious thrill. It was about a little boy, 
 I believe, who slept in a bed in a boarded stable- 
 
The Wind 421 
 
 loft, and who was annoyed by the wind blowinj^ 
 through a hole in the boards near his head. He 
 stopped it up with a cork, I remember, and when 
 he was in bed the cork was blown out with a 
 bounce, and next minute there was a beautiful 
 ( reature by him, a fairy all covered with rippling 
 tresses of hair. She carried him with her over 
 hill and dale, riding soft and warm, and night 
 after night these airy pilgrimages went on, while 
 she taught him how everything in the world was 
 bound together by love and care. Well, that is 
 a different way of apprehending the secret of the 
 wind, apart from barometrical depressions; and 
 it has its merits! The point, after all, is some- 
 how or other to feel the wonder and largeness of 
 it all, and the sense of something which is in- 
 finitely strong and kind behind our little, restless 
 lives. One does not want to obscure that, but 
 to feed it. One wants men to learn on the one 
 hand how small a part of the huge mystery they 
 are, and on the other to feel the glory and wonder 
 of being still a part of it ; and so to advance, not 
 complacently and foolishly, as though we knew 
 all they needed to know, and had nothing to do 
 but to make ourselves as comfortable as possible; 
 but rather as humble learners of a prodigious 
 secret, beautiful beyond love and hoi)e, of which 
 we hardly know the millionth part; a secret in 
 which everything has its sure and certain place, 
 from the continent that stretches from pole to 
 pole to the smallest atom of air that hurries on 
 
422 Along the Road 
 
 its viewless race; all indestructible alike, and the 
 human spirit the most immortal of all. 
 
 That is what the wind says to me to-night, as 
 it leaps and rushes from hill to hill, surely per- 
 forming its work, whatever that work may be. I 
 fly with it in thought over the silent homesteads 
 and the grassy downs; above the roofs of the 
 great city, with all its twinkling lights and 
 streaming smoke; over moorland and mountain, 
 and out upon the sea again, to the fields of 
 Northern ice, where its footsteps are not known. 
 
THE USE OF POETRY 
 
 Lord Tennyson once went to stay with Dean 
 Bradley, when the latter was Headmaster of 
 Marlborough, and said to him one evening, over 
 a pipe, that he envied Bradley with all his heart 
 his life of hard, useful, honourable work. It is 
 not recorded what Bradley — who, by the way, 
 detested tobacco with all his heart — said in reply, 
 but he no doubt let fall one of those courteous 
 and pithy epigrams which came so often from 
 his lips. But it is interesting to find that a man 
 like Tennyson, with such a vocation and such a 
 mission, was assailed by doubts as to the use of 
 it all. Tt was not as though Tennyson waited for 
 fits of inspiration, and dawdled in between. He 
 worked at poetry as another man might work 
 at accounts, diligently and faithfully. But, of 
 course, a man of high creative genius, with the 
 finest artistic work in hand, cannot possibly 
 work all day and day after day at poetry. There 
 must be interposed long spaces of quiet reflection 
 and mental recreation. The writing of poetry is 
 very destructive of brain tissue, and it cannot be 
 done in a dull or weary frame of mind. Milton 
 423 
 
424 Along the Road 
 
 wrote about forty lines a day of Paradise Lost, 
 composing in his head, in bed in the morning, 
 dictating and compressing them later in the day. 
 Few poets would share the breezy opinion of 
 William Morris, who said, ^' That talk of inspira- 
 tion is all stuff! If a man cannot compose an 
 epic poem in his head when he is weaving tapestry, 
 he will do no good, and had better shut up ! " 
 But then Morris's Earthly Paradise is, after all, a 
 sort of woven tapestry, and is a very different sort 
 of work from Paradise Lost or In Memoriam. 
 Morris, on one occasion, wrote eight hundred lines 
 in a single day, and probably, as they say, estab- 
 lished a record. 
 
 Of course, Tennyson was a man of very melan- 
 choly moods, and no doubt the sight of a busy 
 and happy place like Marlborough, humming like 
 a hive of bees, and governed as equably and peace- 
 ably as Bradley governed it, did make him feel 
 that whatever was tlie value of any literary work, 
 it could not have the same unquestionable and 
 indubitable beneficence and usefulness as the 
 work of a schoolmaster, with its close hold on 
 human life, the momentousness of its effects upon 
 character, and its far-reaching and germinating 
 influence. 
 
 The work of the poet is, after all, of a secret 
 kind ; all the compliments of enthusiastic readers, 
 all the laudation of reviewers, all the honours 
 which the world heaps upon the head of the divine 
 singer, cannot bring home to him the silent 
 
The Use of Poetry 425 
 
 ecstasies of joy and hope which quicken the souls 
 of thousands of eager readers and disciples. The 
 poet is a shepherd who can neither see nor hear 
 his flock; and in the case of Tennyson, who felt 
 his responsibility deeply, and never lost sight of 
 the fact that his work had for its end and aim 
 the clarifying of human vision and the nurture 
 of high hoi>es and pure ideals, there must have 
 been many hours in which he must have asked 
 himself what it was all worth! He could not see 
 the regeneration which he strove to bring about. 
 Just as Ruskin felt, with an acute sense of failure 
 and despondency, that the public loved his pretty 
 phrases and did not care twopence about his 
 schemes for the bettering of humanity, so Tenny- 
 son, as his later poems show, thought that the 
 world was getting more pleasure-loving, more 
 heedless, more low-minded year by year, and must 
 have wondered, with a bitter sense of regret, 
 whether he was, after all, more than a mere maker 
 of word-melodies and harmonious cadences, which 
 touched and pleased the ear but did not feed the 
 heart. 
 
 There is a well-known Greek legend, how the 
 citizens of Sparta, after a series of disasters, 
 applied to Athens for a leader; the Athenians 
 sent them, to their disgust, a little lame school- 
 master called Tyrta^us; they were wise enough 
 not to reject the distasteful advice, and found that 
 the contemptible creature was a gi'eat lyric poet, 
 whose martial odes and war-songs put such heart 
 
426 Along the Road 
 
 into their soldiers that they marched to victory 
 once more. The legend, it may be feared, ema- 
 nated from the brain of a literary man rather 
 than from the full heart of a brigadier-general! 
 The fragments of Tyrtseus do not display any 
 very stimulating quality; but the motive of the 
 story is a true one, namely, that vigorous and 
 patriotic life is after all a lyrical sort of busi- 
 ness, and that without imagination and fervour 
 a nation is in danger of living on a low level, of 
 making money, perhaps, and amassing comforts, 
 but not enriching the blood of the world, or 
 quickening the hopes of the future. 
 
 The poet, then, must content himself with his 
 sweet and noble music, and must not expect 
 either material reward, or the sort of recognition 
 that comes to the successful banker or the vic- 
 torious general. Yet even from the warlike point 
 of view, the fact that such a poem as The Happy 
 Warrior could appeal to and thrill countless 
 hearts in generation after generation, serves at 
 least to show that there is a romantic force in 
 the background of a nation, which stands for 
 something even in an era of commercial competi- 
 tion. Even Tennyson at Marlborough might have 
 taken heart at the thought that all the miniature 
 citizens of that well-ordered state w-ere still, as 
 a part of their daily duty, reading Virgil — the 
 Koman Gospel, as it has been called. That, at 
 least, may serve to indicate the marvellous vitality 
 of beauty and noble thought, and prove, if proof 
 
The Use of Poetry 427 
 
 were needed, that man does not live bj- bread 
 alone, but by every word proceeding from the 
 mouth of God. In these days when we are so 
 unreasonably afraid of German influence, the 
 danger, if it exists at all, lies in the fact that the 
 Germans are not given over to commercial enter- 
 prise alone, but have a romantic passion for 
 artistic things, poetry and music, which are the 
 sign if not the cause of the imaginative and ad- 
 venturous spirit which makes a race patriotic and 
 ambitious. It is the dream of victory and su- 
 premacy which makes a nation formidable, not its 
 business habits or its mercantile transactions. 
 
 In one of Swinburne's finest lyrics, in Atalanta 
 in CalydoUy he speaks of the nightingale, and how 
 she " feeds the heart of the night with fire." It 
 is that which the poet can claim and hope to 
 do. The nightingale herself, if she could be taken 
 in hand by a strict political economist, and if she 
 could be endowed with some of the common sense 
 which our age so prudently values, might be con- 
 vinced that she was a foolish creature, keeping 
 absurdly late hours, and expending a most un- 
 reasonable amount of energy on sounds which 
 could be equally well produced by a penny 
 whistle. But if an individual or a nation gets 
 into a material frame of mind, there are disasters 
 ahead. The man and the nation may live for a 
 while a very comfortable and well-ordered life, 
 do excellent work, and enjoy a well-earned dinner 
 at the end of the day. But it is not that spirit 
 
428 Along the Road 
 
 which makes a nation, or keeps it strong. What 
 is really the hopeful sign about a race is that it 
 enjoys doing fine, unreasonable, heroic things, not 
 unattended by plenty of risk and discomfort, 
 which are indeed considerable elements in the 
 fun. Schoolmaster and poet alike do their best 
 work if they can inspire and stimulate that sort 
 of spirit; and if at the same time they can show 
 that activity is best enjoyed, if it is chivalrous 
 and tender-hearted as well, and that it is on the 
 wrong lines if it consists in boisterous and in- 
 considerate merriment, and amuses itself at the 
 expense of the weak and frail. The hooliganism 
 of the day is a hopeful sign, because it means an 
 overflow of high spirits ; and what we have to do 
 is to turn those high spirits into the right chan- 
 nels, not to endeavour to suppress and eliminate 
 them altogether. The value of Tennyson's most 
 popular work is that it upholds the knightly ideal, 
 with plenty of hard blows, and splintered spears, 
 side by side with a generous and compassionate 
 spirit. It is, I think, a sign that some change 
 is passing gradually over our national tempera- 
 ment, that the spirit of the time is somehow alien 
 to poetry— that great poets are non-existent, and 
 that the reading public turns away from poetry. 
 But I think that the imaginative temper of the 
 time is fed by romances; and so far from think- 
 ing it a sign of decadence and mental decay that 
 such a cataract of novels pours from the press, I 
 believe it to be a sign of the existence of a fresh 
 
The Use of Poetry 429 
 
 aud childlike spirit, that wants to be told stories, 
 and likes to lose itself in the thought of other 
 lives and exciting adventures. I believe it shows 
 that we have still plenty of freshness and zest 
 in the race, and I should not in the least welcome 
 it as a sign of grace if the taste for novels were 
 to l)e succeeded by a taste for handbooks of 
 political economy and manuals of bookkeeping. 
 Of course, one wishes people to be serious and 
 sensible, but I cannot say that I wish them to 
 be dull and prudish. I believe myself that in 
 many ways our own age resembles the Elizabethan 
 age, and that there is an abundance of the adven- 
 turous spirit abroad. I do not at all wish to 
 see Englishmen prepared to work twelve hours a 
 day on low wages, and not to need any sort of 
 amusement. Such a time as the present has its 
 evils, no doubt, but a nation is in a far more 
 hoj^eful condition when it has plenty of high 
 spirits that need curbing, than when it is sunk 
 in apathetic diligence. And the use of poetry in 
 the best and widest sense is to keep alive that 
 eager and generous temi)er, which makes a nation 
 into a race of kings instead of a race of slaves. 
 
WAR 
 
 I SAW quoted the other day, in a review, some bits 
 of Mr. Newbolt's poetry, which lay like flowers or 
 crystals on the page. Mr. Newbolt is a true lyrical 
 poet, always and invariably beautiful and accom- 
 plished and melodious; and a great deal more 
 than that! There is a lyric on a stream, which 
 is one of the sweetest and purest pieces of word- 
 music I know, like the liquid discourse of a flute, 
 that goes and returns upon itself. And he is a 
 master, too, of a very different kind of music, 
 which stirs the heart and sets the blood dancing, 
 as though a trumpet uttered with all its might 
 a great fanfare. The test to me of a fine lyric 
 is when it sends a physical shiver down the back, 
 and fills the eyes with sudden tears; and this is 
 what Drake's Drum does. That refrain of " Cap- 
 tain, art tha sleepin' there below? " is a stroke of 
 high genius. Mr. Newbolt and Mr. Kipling are 
 pre-eminent among our poets for a certain fault- 
 less emphasis of accent, in which every single 
 syllable has its value, and which gives one the 
 impression, which is the test of perfect art, that 
 the writers are making the words do exactly as 
 430 
 
War 431 
 
 they are bid. It was in the train that I read 
 the article, and I wished I had a volume of Mr. 
 Xewbolt's within reach, to gladden the heart, as 
 all true poetry does, when one is in the happy 
 mood. 
 
 Then I read a fine grave poem called Clifton 
 Chapel, addressed to a son, reminding him of 
 what his father had thought and hoped at the 
 old school, and what he, too, must try to think 
 and hope. I read on till I came to the lines : 
 
 " To honour, while you strike him down, 
 The foe that comes with fearless eyes." 
 
 I dropped the book and sat thinking. One does 
 not want to be feeble-minded, nor what is called 
 sentimental, but somehow it made me shudder. 
 Ought one really to try to feel that? And if so, 
 ought one not also to feel the opposite? — 
 
 " To honour, while he strikes you down, 
 The foe that comes with fearless eyes." 
 
 Is not the essence of the triumphant thought in 
 the poet's mind, after all, the fact that oneself 
 should be victorious? One can afford, it would 
 seem, to honour a foe, if one can be sure of lay- 
 ing him low. But why touch the note at all? 
 Is one bound to accept the fact that war is a 
 noble thing in itself? Are we really right in 
 thinking that combat is inseparable from the life 
 of humanity? All depends, it seems to me, on 
 
432 Along the Road 
 
 the motive which lies behind a war. In the line 
 I have quoted it seems to be taken for granted 
 that the foe himself is a preux chevalier, a 
 soldier of honour and courage, a noble and a 
 gentle knight. If war is made for the sake of 
 righting some horrible wrong, of setting free a 
 country from cruel and barbarous misuse by 
 tyrants and evil governors, then it is a thing to 
 be proud of, if it leaves a legacy of peace. But 
 what could be the motive of a contest such as 
 is here indicated? Some aggression, some in- 
 tention of conquest, some sort of aggrandisement, 
 some sense of wounded honour, which implies a 
 wrong done and sustained? Ought one really to 
 desire, and to teach one's children to desire, to 
 meet in fight some man of as high courage and 
 honour as oneself, and to leave him, for all his 
 hopes and energies, dead upon the field? Can 
 one look upon that as a glorious fact, a thing 
 to dwell upon with satisfaction in quiet moments, 
 to remember how our adversary lay bleeding at 
 our feet, to fire our sons with the wish to do 
 likewise? 
 
 It seems to me a very strange thing that one 
 should value so highly the priceless privilege of 
 life, should feel so strongly the justice of doing 
 a murderer to death, in a ghastly kind of 
 pageant; and yet that one should be able to be- 
 lieve that under different circumstances, of in- 
 vasion or aggression, it is a splendid and heroic 
 thing to dismiss a fellow-creature into darkness ! 
 
War 433 
 
 It is easy enough for a poet to adorn his tale, 
 as Tennyson did in Maud, with the thought of 
 a nation, sunk in commercial materialism, being 
 set all aglow by the pleasure of tearing invaders 
 limb from limb. But it seems to me that war is, 
 after all, but a barbarous and horrible convention, 
 which in spite of all that Christianity and civilisa- 
 tion can do, stands out a blood-stained and a 
 cruel evil among our wiser and more temperate 
 designs. To glorify war seems to me but the un- 
 chaining and hounding on of the ferocious beast 
 that lies below the surface in most of us. To 
 condone it is like defending the institution of 
 slavery on the ground that cruel treatment may 
 develop a noble endurance in the downtrodden 
 slave, like encouraging bullying in schools that 
 the bullied may learn hardness and courage. 
 
 I think that we ought to regard war as a 
 horrible ultimate possibility. If a nation loses 
 its head with greed and excitement, and invades 
 a peaceful territory, then the invaded land must 
 appeal to force and sternly repel the aggressor. 
 But think of such wars as the Napoleonic wars! 
 If a murderer deserves the penalty of death and 
 shame, if he is thought of as going into the 
 presence of a wrathful God, with blood upon his 
 hands, what of Napoleon himself, who poured a 
 cataract of the best and strongest young lives 
 of his own countrymen into the grave, not only 
 with unconcern and indifference, but amid the 
 applause and wonder of his own and succeeding 
 
434 Along the Road 
 
 generations? And for what? To set his family 
 upon an imperial throne, and to put France at 
 the head of a European empire. There was not 
 a thought of helping anyone or benefiting any- 
 one. Just a thirst for what is called glory, a 
 determination to let the world feel the weight 
 of one's hand. Surely the one hope of the world 
 is the hope of living life in peace and energy and 
 security, in toil and virtue? To give oppor- 
 tunities to all, to protect the weak, to restrain 
 the cruel and selfish — that is the aim. And yet, 
 if only murder be practised on a great enough 
 scale, and under fixed rules of combat, it is to 
 be regarded as a heroic thing! On the one side, 
 one is to try to fight the ravages of disease and 
 calamity, to think of life as a precious thing and 
 a rich inheritance; and, on the other, one is to 
 sacrifice the best young blood and the highest 
 hopes of a nation, in a process which hampers 
 and penalises the prosperity of the conquering 
 nation as well as that of the conquered. Then 
 there is all the ghastly waste of human toil in 
 preparing armaments, all subtracted from the 
 working power of the world. It is not as though 
 war were the only disciplinary force at work 
 among us. The conquest of Nature, the subduing 
 of the forces of the world, the replenishing of the 
 earth, can make and keep men strong and virile 
 enough. 
 
 I had an interview in the sad days of the Boer 
 War with a widow who had given two sons to 
 
War 435 
 
 the service of the country. They were young men 
 of the finest promise — strong, kindly, fair-minded, 
 honourable. One had died, after horrible suffer- 
 ing, of wounds received in action ; one had died 
 of enteric in a fteld-hospital. The mother was 
 full of noble and unmurmuring resignation; but 
 it made me shudder to think that these two young 
 men, who might have lived long and valued lives, 
 the kindly fathers of strong children, should thus, 
 and for such ends as these, have been lost to the 
 earth. 
 
 People used to feel the same approval about 
 duelling. If a man's honour was insulted, there 
 was nothing for it but to fight, and the recipient 
 of the insult might lose his life as easily as the 
 insulter. The thing now seems too idiotic for 
 words, and who can say that our courage has 
 abated in consequence of the abolition of duelling? 
 
 I think it is probable that in the days to come 
 men will think with a bewildered compassion of 
 the time when war was an accepted practice. 
 They will say to themselves that it is incredible 
 that men should ever have thought it a noble 
 thing to let the brute passions loose. They will 
 see that the gift of God is life and health and 
 happy labour and joyful union; and that men 
 should have thought it admirable to spill each 
 other^s blood for vainglory and for passion and 
 for greed, will seem an inconceivable and an 
 intolerable thing. 
 
 It is not that I should wish to deter men from 
 
436 Along the Road 
 
 risking their lives for a generous or a daring 
 cause. I do not feel any indignation against 
 explorers or aviators or mountain-climbers or 
 mariners, for being willing to take their lives 
 in their hands. That is a noble spirit enough. 
 A man's life is his own; he must not take it out 
 of cowardice or despair, but he may risk it for 
 an achievement if he will. But to hold it glorious 
 to risk it in the mere taking of other lives seems 
 to me a brutal and a barbarous thing; and what 
 makes it baser still is that ultimately, as a 
 rule, it is a mere question of property which is 
 involved. 
 
 Suppose that we imagine two strong nations, 
 suffering from a great pressure of over-popula- 
 tion, in a large island, with no outlet. Emigra- 
 tion must, for the sake of the argument, be 
 considered impossible. The strange thing is that, 
 Avith our present ideas about war, we imagine 
 that if the two governments conferred together, 
 and decided that they would each put to death 
 all the weakly and tainted and broken lives, that 
 would be thought a ghastly and revolting pro- 
 cedure. And yet we should, on the whole, ap- 
 prove of the two nations going to war, and 
 sacrificing thousands of the best and most vigor- 
 ous lives in the process, leaving untouched all the 
 weakly and ineffective stock of the nations. That 
 is a very bewildering thought, and I find it im- 
 possible to disentangle it. 
 
 What is almost as bewildering is to think of 
 
^^'a^ 437 
 
 the things that occurred iu the Boer War, when 
 on a night before a battle, the two forces met in 
 friendly good-humour beside their entrenchments, 
 sang their songs, jested and laughed, and even 
 passed refreshments across to each other on bayo- 
 net points, all the time quite prepared on the 
 next day to kill as many of the opposing force 
 as they could. 
 
 Does it not look as though we were under some 
 strange and evil enchantment in the matter? We 
 are trying, many of us, to solve the constructive 
 problem, we are trying to accommodate our dif- 
 ferences, to educate, to civilise, to encourage 
 labour and order and peace; and yet in the back 
 of our minds lies the fixed determination that if 
 a quarrel is provoked, we will devastate as far as 
 we can each other's homes and circles; and with 
 this horrible fact before us, that a war skims, so 
 to sf)eak, the very cream of humanity, and sweeps 
 away, not the intemperate and the feeble-minded 
 and the invalided, but the lusty and cheerful and 
 strong. 
 
 The truth is that we do not yet live by reason, 
 but by instinct. When our passions rise they 
 carry us off our feet. But the misery is that 
 those men who have the vision — the poets and 
 the preachers and the prophets — are drawn away 
 by the fury and the excitement and the intoxica- 
 tion of the fight and the fray, into thinking and 
 s[)eaking of war as though it had something 
 Divine and noble about it, instead of its being, 
 
438 Along the Road 
 
 as it is, the boisterous passion of the animal 
 within us, the instinct to kick and bite and tear, 
 to see blood flow and limbs writhe, and to rejoice 
 with demoniacal gusto in the shameful havoc that 
 we have it in our power to do. 
 
ON MAKING FRIENDS 
 
 Friendship is one of the cheapest and most 
 accessible of pleasnres ; it requires no outlay, and 
 no very serious expenditure of time or trouble. 
 Tt is quite easy to make friends, if one wants to; 
 and in the second place, just as poetry can be 
 written while one is weaving tapestry, so friend- 
 ships can be made, and the best friendships are 
 often made, while one is doing something else. 
 One can make friends while one works, travels, 
 eats, walks. I am not now speaking of mere 
 pleasant acquaintances, but the friendships where 
 each friend feels a certain need for the other, 
 the friendships where one desires to compare ideas 
 and experiences, where it is a pleasure to agree, 
 because it is so delightful to find that one's friend 
 thinks the same as oneself, and an even greater 
 pleasure to differ, because the contrast is so 
 wonderful and interesting. Of course, one can- 
 not hope to have an indefinite number of great 
 friends. The laws of time and space intervene, 
 because if one is always plunging into new friend- 
 ships, it is difficult to keep up the old. And then, 
 too, a certain touch of jealousy is apt to creep 
 439 
 
440 Along the Road 
 
 in. There is surely no greater pleasure in the 
 Avorld than to feel that one is needed, welcomed, 
 missed, and loved ; and it is difficult to acquiesce, 
 with perfect generosity and good-humour, if one 
 feels that someone else is more valued and needed 
 than oneself. But it is possible, foHunately, to 
 reach a point of friendship with another when 
 one knows that there can never be any suspicion 
 or jealousy or misunderstanding again; and that 
 even if one does not see the friend or hear from 
 him, yet that one will find him exactly the same, 
 and take up the old relation exactly where it was 
 suspended. 
 
 It is surely one of the best and simplest pleas- 
 ures in the world, when one realises that there 
 has sprung up, one does not know how or when, a 
 sense of mutual interest and confidence and affec- 
 tion between oneself and another. It betrays itself 
 by a glance, a gesture, a word, and one becomes 
 aware that there is a secret bond, which cannot 
 exactly be defined or analysed, between oneself 
 and another — " because it was me, because it was 
 you," as the old French writer said. I am not 
 now speaking of the further and more mysterious 
 process which mortals call falling in love, because 
 that is a wholly different emotion, which is com- 
 plicated by fiery and agitating impulses; but 
 what I mean is a tranquil and contented emo- 
 tion, of which the basis is a certain trust. We 
 inherit no doubt from our palaeolithic ancestors 
 a distinct combativeness, a tendency to suspect 
 
On Making Friends 441 
 
 strangers, to growl aiid bristle like a dog. This 
 translates itself in modern life into a tendency 
 to be on one's guard and not to give oneself away. 
 Knt friendship comes when one can feel: " AVell, 
 whatever happens, So-and-so is on my side. I 
 can say what I think to him, and I shall not 
 be misunderstood ; we may disagree, but it will be 
 without hostility, and our criticisms will not be 
 resented. If I am misrepresented by other people, 
 he will be sure to stick up for me; if I want help 
 and advice, he will give it me, and what a pleasure 
 it will be if there is anything which I can do 
 for him ! " 
 
 Of course, when I said that the process of 
 making friends is easy, T do not forget that it 
 is much easier for some j)eople than for others. 
 1 know two or three men, and they are very 
 ])athetic figures, who desire friendship above 
 everything, and need it, too, and who yet find it 
 extraordinarily difficult to make friends. They 
 are formidable, or tactless; they say the right 
 thing to the wrong person, or the wrong thing 
 to the right person. They are brilliant when 
 they ought to be simple, and voluble when they 
 ought to be quiet. They make too much fuss 
 about it, and friendship ought to come gradually 
 and insensibly. One can't conquer people or take 
 them by storm. One may get admiration by 
 showing off, but one cannot get affection ; and 
 the worst of people who have a great desire to 
 make friends is that it tends to make them wish 
 
442. Along the Road 
 
 to show off, to dazzle, and attract. We English 
 are curious people; we are intensely emotional 
 and sentimental, though we are not always 
 credited with it by foreigners; we are supposed 
 to be haughty, insular, dull as our skies and 
 treacherous as our climate. Perfidious Albion! 
 The one thing we pride ourselves upon is our 
 blunt and transparent honesty, and yet we are 
 believed in Europe to be the most faithless of 
 the nations. We say that the Englishman's word 
 is as good as his bond; and with this foreigners 
 agree, because they believe that both are frauds; 
 that our word is deceptive, and our bond is not 
 worth the paper it is written on. Yet in our 
 own friendships we are, I believe, reliable, faith- 
 ful, slow to take offence, quick to make allowance, 
 ready to forgive and able to forget. 
 
 But though I am sure that English people have 
 rather a genius for friendship, it is curious how 
 often it is confined to our earlier years. School 
 and college friendships sometimes last through 
 life, and are often really romantic relations; but 
 as we get older we mostly lose the power. We 
 have made up our bundle of preferences, and it 
 is tiresome to add to them. I have often thought 
 how unnecessarily cautious people get in England 
 as they grow older. I find myself often sitting 
 next some one at dinner, and saying to myself: 
 ** I am sure I should like you and trust you, if 
 only you would say what you really think, and 
 not keep lurking behind a fence of conventional 
 
On Making Friends 443 
 
 opinions. Why is it necessar}' for us to talk 
 al)out tilings in which we neither of lis feel the 
 smallest interest? We have both of us experi- 
 ences, views, ideas. Why cannot we put them 
 into words? Why must we play this tiresome 
 kind of lawn-tennis, you serving a statement, and 
 I feebly returning it?" I sometimes think that 
 this apparent want of frankness, this shrinking 
 from reality is what makes us seem to foreigners 
 to be diplomatic when we are really only shy. 
 Yet there are finer things said about friends and 
 friendships in English poetry and prose than any- 
 where else that I know of, which show one that 
 whatever we may say or pretend to think about 
 emotion, the thing is there, and glowing with a 
 heart of fire. 
 
 Well, then, suppose the process over, the fencing 
 done, the conventional diplomacies put away, the 
 friend made and trusted and loved, what do we 
 expect to feel and to give and to receive? 
 
 First of all, let me respectfully say, neither to 
 tell our friend of his faults nor to be told of our 
 own I That may be set aside except in urgent 
 necessity. It may be a sad and reluctant duty, 
 once in a lifetime, to tell a friend of some fault 
 of which he is unconscious, and which is really 
 doing him harm. But as a rule we know our 
 own faults better than anyone else I Still less 
 do we expect a constant parade of sentiment, a 
 waving of the banners and a blowing of the 
 trumpets of emotion. We have done with all 
 
444 Along the Road 
 
 that too, except, perhaps, in a happy instant, 
 when we must express our gratitude and joy. 
 What we expect and what we get is the test of 
 all relationships, when we can show our inmost 
 mind without apology or fear; when there is no 
 need to avoid this subject or that, but when we 
 can talk plainly and without affectation of what 
 interests, amuses, pleases, vexes, distresses, moves 
 us, without any thought of wanting to produce 
 an effect, or to impress or win; and we can listen, 
 too, to our friend's talk without either patience 
 or impatience. It is neither a sentimental busi- 
 ness nor an intellectual business ; it is simply the 
 recognition of the fact that here are two spirits 
 strangely like, strangely unlike, bound on the 
 same pilgrimage, without secrets from each other, 
 only happy in companionship, and believing that 
 it does not end here, or now, or anywhere. 
 
 There is nothing finer or more beautiful in the 
 world than a man or woman who can go through 
 life thus, proffering to others that kind of faith 
 and trust and fellowship, not for the sake of 
 selfish convenience or to beguile a tiresome hour, 
 but out of sweetness and kindness and goodwill 
 and trustfulness. I have known some few such, 
 and I consider it the great blessing of my life. 
 They are as often as not wholly unconscious of 
 their great gift, and they believe others to be as 
 guileless, as frank, and as kindly as themselves, 
 for the simple reason that their own goodness 
 shines like the sun on all round them, making 
 
On Making Friends 445 
 
 the coldest heart warm for a while. Of course, 
 we cannot all be like that, because there comes 
 into it the mysterious force called charm, which 
 makes the word and the gesture and the smile 
 of some lieople so attractive and so beautiful; 
 but we can avoid the things that hold us back 
 from others — the grim statement, the peremptory 
 judgment, the cheap sneer, the suspicious caution ; 
 if we cannot all be warm-hearted and generous, 
 we need none of us be captious, irritable, prosy, 
 censorious. *' I can't make out why people don't 
 like me," said a peevish and cynical man to the 
 one friend he had on earth. It was no time for 
 compliments, and the friend, with a smile, said 
 * (^an't you?" There was a silence, and then 
 the other said, with a nod and a smile, " Yes, 
 I can ! " 
 
THE YOUNGER GENERATION 
 
 There is nothing which has so completely altered 
 in the course of the last fifty years, and altered, 
 in my belief, so wholly and entirely for the better, 
 as the method of bringing up children. No doubt 
 parents were always fond of their children, and 
 proud of them for not very demonstrable reasons. 
 But fifty years ago children w^ere much more 
 strictly handled, repressed, kept out of sight, and 
 generally dragooned, than is at all the case now. 
 They were paraded, of course, neatly brushed and 
 washed and habited, on fit occasions — at luncheon, 
 and perhaps before dinner; but they were ex- 
 pected to hold their tongues, to eat what was 
 put before them; their opinions were not asked, 
 and if expressed, were firmly snubbed. They were 
 left much more to themselves, and had to rule 
 their own community with superficial decorum. 
 The result of this was that, in the old books, chil- 
 dren were represented as a species of charming 
 hooligan. They always " got into mischief ^' if they 
 could, and relapsed into a sort of savagery if 
 they were not under control. But now the con- 
 trast between, so to speak, the public and the 
 
 446 
 
The Younger Generation 447 
 
 private life of children is not nearly so much 
 marked. They live much more with their elders, 
 and being treated as reasonable members of so- 
 ciety, they actually like, and, Indeed, are rather 
 dei>endent upon, their older friends, instead of 
 being frankly bored by them. Of course, one 
 always knew as a child that elder people, if they 
 only would play, were the best of playmates. 
 They were stronger, fairer, more inventive. But 
 tliey often would not play. They were " busy," 
 and a kind of dull grimness fell upon them 
 suddenly, and for no apparent reason. 
 
 But now children are apt to pervade a house, 
 to take their elders captive, to demand co-opera- 
 tion and sympathy. The day is much more laid 
 out with reference to them, and they have a social 
 part to play. It is just the same at private 
 schools. I was myself at a big private school 
 of the hardier sort. The tone was wholesome 
 and kindly; but we were left very much to our- 
 selves, and had to make our own arrangements. 
 If we were simply too ill to get along, we went 
 reluctantly to the matron. But now the assistant- 
 masters play with the boys, talk to them, see 
 that they change their boots, mother them from 
 morning to night. 
 
 The old ideal was a Spartan one; the design 
 was to get rid of softness, at the expense, no 
 doubt, of the frail and timid and delicate, to 
 make boys independent by leaving them to find 
 out what their duties were, and jni wishing them 
 
448 Along the Road 
 
 severely if they were unbusinesslike. Boys cer- 
 tainly grew older and harder more quickly, while 
 the gentler natures had very often rather a bad 
 time of it. 
 
 Again, look at the difference in the position of 
 the governess. The typical old-fashioned govern- 
 ess of the story-book was shy, plain, and prim. 
 If her charges were unruly, she had to fight as 
 with beasts at Ephesus. She came to dinner if 
 it was convenient, the servants were rude to her, 
 the mistress of the house was kind but per- 
 emptory. Now, on the contrary, one sees a per- 
 fectly-appointed and self-possessed young lady, 
 the social equal of her employers, and generally 
 much better educated. She can play games, she 
 can make jokes, and if she gets on well with the 
 children, she ends by ruling the whole household. 
 Woe betide the servant who is rude to her; and 
 as for the children, they adore her, and look upon 
 her as a sort of fairy godmother, standing be- 
 tween them and the wrath of the powers that 
 be. 
 
 The change in the whole situation was, of 
 course, a hazardous experiment; but it came by 
 nature, it was not deliberately introduced. It 
 was hardly possible to say for certain, until 
 lately, whether the new regime was going to be 
 a success. Was it going to end in making the 
 children effeminate, selfish, peevish, helpless, in- 
 considerate? Was it all a sign of decadence and 
 sentimentality ? 
 
The Younger Generation 449 
 
 It is possible now to auswer these questions 
 with a decided negative. The results have been, 
 so far as one can see, wholly good. The twenty 
 years of my own professional life as a school- 
 master constituted a crucial period. The boys 
 who came to Eton at that date were boys edu- 
 cated on the new plan. I have not the smallest 
 doubt that they were incomparably nicer, kinder, 
 more humane, more considerate, more reasonable, 
 and not in the least less active, or spirited, or 
 conscientious, than the boys of my own school- 
 days. Of course, they were not perfect. There 
 is a good deal of the native savage about the 
 growing boy. lie is self-absorbed, messy, greedy, 
 unreflective, conventional. But he comes to a 
 public school expecting to find other boys kindly 
 and friendly; he no longer looks upon the au- 
 thorities as his natural enemies. He anticipates 
 that even if they are strict and quick-tempered, 
 they will, probably, take a human interest in him, 
 and will not be cruel or malicious. He finds the 
 path smoothed for him from the outset. Bully- 
 ing has practically disappeared, corporal punish- 
 ment is fast becoming extinct, work that a boy 
 cannot understand is explained to him. His rea- 
 sons are no longer treated as excuses. His rights 
 in the matter of exercise are safeguarded. His 
 health is looked after rationally. There is plenty 
 of discipline; but the whole life is healthier, 
 happier, more humane; and there is far less of 
 the vague sense of alarm, of impending cata- 
 39 
 
450 Along the Road 
 
 strophe in the background, than used to be the 
 case even in my own schooldays. 
 
 I cannot see any point upon which the lauda- 
 tor temporis act I can lay his finger and say that 
 things have gone downhill. Of course, there are 
 plenty of tiresome and stupid pessimists about, 
 who utter absurd grumbles and diatribes about 
 the luxury and effeminacy of the younger genera- 
 tion; but with every wish to encourage frank 
 criticism and to accept definite evidence, I can- 
 not see the smallest sign of deterioration. When 
 our boys had to go out and fight in the Boer 
 War, they went and roughed it with a keenness, 
 a gaiety, and a courage which was patent and 
 undeniable. And now that I have an opportunity 
 of observing the younger generation up at the 
 University, it seems to me that the net gain is 
 simply incontestable. I think that undergradu- 
 ates seem in some ways younger than they 
 were, and there is a conventional respect for 
 athletics which is tiresome, but which stands for 
 a w^holesome love of physical activity and the open 
 air which I should be sorry to see diminished. 
 
 The other day an old friend of mine came to 
 stay at Cambridge; his name was put down at 
 the Union, and he spent a good deal of time 
 there. He said to me that he had two criticisms 
 to make — that the young men were very badly 
 dressed, and that they were extraordinarily polite 
 and kind to him. " Why," he said, " if I want 
 a book or a paper, or if I wish to be shown my 
 
The Younger Generation 451 
 
 way about, any young man whom I ask wants to 
 go and fetcli the book or paper for me, or insists 
 on personally conducting me round. I am sure," 
 he added, " that in my time we should have con- 
 sidered an elderly clergyman, who infested the 
 Union, as a bore, and we should have been very 
 short with him." 
 
 As far as the bad dressing goes, I fear I am 
 wholly on the side of the undergraduate. I 
 agree with Solon, who legislated against expen- 
 sive dress, saying that rich and poor ought all 
 to be dressed alike. The present tradition of 
 dress is simple, comfortable, healthy, and cheap; 
 and the undergraduate is quite capable of turn- 
 ing out very smart upon a state occasion. As 
 for his increased courtesy and kindness, it is 
 perfectly true, and an immense improvement upon 
 the rougher and more independent manners of 
 my own day. 
 
 The point is, I think, to bring up children to 
 be happy. Of course, they must be obedient, and 
 conscientious. But children only want a motive, 
 and there is far more potent a force at work if 
 they learn to do their duty for the sake of those 
 whom they love, and because they love them, than 
 because of an abstract and unintelligible code of 
 rules. The aim is to get them somehow habitu- 
 ated to right conduct, and the simpler and 
 more direct the motive the better. Then, too, one 
 wants children to find the world a friendly and 
 a kindly place, and to feel themselves welcome 
 
452 Along the Road 
 
 in it. There are plenty of hard, sorrowful, and 
 dreadful things waiting for them, which no one 
 can escape. But we need not add to those terrors 
 the terrors of harshness and unkindness at the 
 outset. One does not want to make people stoical 
 and cynical; one wants to make them brave and 
 affectionate. The bravery that comes of affection 
 is a far better thing than the stoicism which 
 comes of cynicism. One of my own terrors as a 
 child and schoolboy was the fear of some penalty 
 falling on me out of the blue for some transgres- 
 sion that I had not understood nor intended. 
 This was not a fear of justice, but a fear of 
 unprovoked calamity, and I cannot see that it 
 did me any good or improved my outlook. One 
 wants to encourage children to do what is right, 
 not to frighten them into it. There is a reason- 
 able fear of the consequences of ill-doing which 
 is a very different thing from the inconsequent 
 terror of undeserved affliction. 
 
 I will go a step further, and say that the boys 
 among my own pupils who turned out just what 
 one would wish boys to be — manly, simple, keen, 
 and kind — were boys of nice and wholesome dis- 
 positions who had been rather spoilt at home. 
 Of course, it is not safe to spoil children, because 
 one cannot be sure that there is the nice dispo- 
 sition behind; but if a boy is right-minded and 
 sensible, a little spoiling does him no harm. 
 "Spoiling" is not the right word quite, but I 
 can find no other — and it is exactly what the 
 
The Younger Generation 453 
 
 gruff and grim critic would call spoiling. The 
 sort of thing I mean is giving the children a 
 good deal of simple pleasure, indulging them in 
 reasonable ways, letting them choose, in a general 
 way, what they will do to amuse themselves, what 
 they will eat and wear; and letting them see quite 
 l)lainly that their parents love them, and desire 
 their company, and want them to be hai)py. That 
 concealment of affection which used to be con- 
 sidered wholesome is a mistake. The result was, 
 on the boys of whom I am sjxiaking, that they 
 in turn adored their parents, wanted to be with 
 them, and learned to want them to be hai>]>y. 
 And thus these boys got into the way of being 
 considerate, kind to their brothers and sisters, 
 and perfectly sure that they were not in the way, 
 but that the world was peopled with affectionate 
 and reasonable persons. The result with such 
 boys was simply thus: that if one had to enforce 
 discipline with them, and was content to explain 
 the reason for it, they acquiesced willingly and 
 graciously; while the wish not to distress or 
 grieve their parents in any way was simply 
 supreme. I am not pleading for a luxurious, 
 easy-going, pleasure-loving kind of education at 
 all. I think that there ought to be a very strict 
 code of perfectly obvious discipline behind, but 
 not mechanical discipline. For if children know 
 that they are loved, they do obey orders, and 
 obey them willingly; and a very little willing 
 obedience takes a child a long way further along 
 
454 Along the Road 
 
 the right road than any amount of rebellious 
 obedience. 
 
 Whether we like it or not, there is no going 
 back; and I for one have no wish to go back. 
 What we need in this, as in many other directions, 
 is more frankness and sincerity. The old idea 
 was that children were to be taught their place, 
 and the result was that they were not taught 
 their place at all. They occupied, then as now, 
 a foremost place in their parents' hearts and 
 minds; and thej were often kept deliberately 
 ignorant of this, and led rather to suppose that 
 they were troublesome little creatures, who were 
 rather in the way than otherwise. It often hap- 
 pened, later in life, that a boy found out, by 
 falling into disgrace, the depth of unknown affec- 
 tion that had surrounded him; if he had known, 
 it before, it would have been an additional mo- 
 tive to do nothing that would cause pain and 
 grief to those who loved him. 
 
 I remember well hearing my father, late in his 
 life, deplore the fact that he liad thought it right 
 to be so strict a schoolmaster. " If I could have 
 it all over again," he said, " I would try to drive 
 less and to lead more. Driving,'- he added, " gets 
 one quickly past the immediate obstacle, but that 
 is not the point; the real aim ought to be to 
 develop character, and that can only be done by 
 leading." 
 
READING 
 
 I SUPPOSE it is because writing books is known to 
 be my trade that strangers whom I meet, often, 
 out of courtesy and kindness of course, speak to 
 me about books. And I suppose that it is from 
 some lack of courtesy and kindness that T often 
 find it so difTicult to do my part, to make due 
 responses to the friendly versicles. It is held by 
 most people that anyone who reads books can 
 talk about them, but as a matter of fact, though 
 most of the people I know read books, very few 
 indeed can talk about them. Books, pictures, 
 music, scenery, and people are all difficult things 
 to talk about, because they are not wholly definite 
 and tangible things, but depend so enormously 
 for their value upon something in the mind and 
 heart of the persons who read, see, hear, and 
 observe them. 
 
 Just as certain chemicals will remain quiescent 
 if they are mixed with one set of substances, but 
 if they are mixed with another set they rise in 
 foam and vaiK)ur, so a book requires to be mixed 
 with something in the soul of the reader, before 
 there is any motion or energy put forth. Even 
 455 
 
456 Along the Road 
 
 the people who feel a book cannot always talk 
 about it. But at the least a book must be read 
 with a certain critical apprehension to be worth 
 anything, and not in obedience to a fashion, or 
 a review, or a friend's recommendation. To read 
 a book, in my own case, is always a sort of com- 
 bat, in which I ask myself whether the author is 
 going to overcome me, and persuade me, and con- 
 vince me, or even vex me. And the whole point 
 about a book is not whether it is brilliant, or 
 well arranged, or well written, but whether it has 
 a real life of its own. It need not necessarily 
 be like life. The novels of Dickens are not in 
 the least like life, but they have an overpowering 
 life of their own. The difference between books — 
 I am speaking now mainly of fiction — is whether 
 you say, " That could not have happened — that 
 is untrue to life," or whether you say, " That is 
 not at all like my experience of life, but it exists 
 and lives." Many people are, I think, too defer- 
 ential to books, and if books are well written 
 and have a well-known name on the title-page, 
 many readers will accept them as good and bow 
 down before them. I could name authors, though 
 I will not, who began by writing a good book, 
 and made a name by it, who have never written 
 anything else worth reading. Sometimes it is the 
 same book again, with different names and places ; 
 and sometimes it becomes a mere mechanical busi- 
 ness, and the author does not pour his mind and 
 heart into his books any more. I do not myself 
 
Reading 457 
 
 think that it is of any use to read a book in a 
 deferential spirit. The writer's business is to lay 
 you flat if he can, to make you feel the active 
 presence of forces and influences, to rouse, startle, 
 interest, amuse, satisfy. 
 
 I am sure that the advantages and benefits of 
 reading are greatly exaggerated. It is an in- 
 nocent way of passing time, of course, but the 
 time that we pass is not worth comparing to the 
 time that we use; and I am not sure that even 
 wasting time may not be better than merely pass- 
 ing it, because there is some spirit about that. 
 Reading poor books ma^^, of course, be strictly 
 regarded by laborious i)oople as a way of easing 
 off a mental sti-ain. I have a friend who works 
 very hard, and who finds that if he works on 
 until he goes to bed he cannot sleep. Bo he reads 
 what he calls " garbage," a novel a night, and he 
 finishes it generally within an hour; but that is 
 mere unbending, like playing patience. 
 
 But real reading, which is deliberately putting 
 oneself in contact with another mind, ought to 
 be like concentrated talk. A writer is talking, 
 and he is missing out all the half-formed and 
 slipshod sentences, which make up so large a part 
 of ordinary talk. He is doing his best; and real 
 reading cannot be pure recreation ; it must mean 
 a certain amount of observing and judging. Our 
 ancestors used to think that all well-conducted 
 people should put in a certain amount of what 
 was called solid reading, and there were plenty 
 
458 Along the Road 
 
 of old-fashioned, serious households where novel- 
 reading in the morning was thought to be dis- 
 sipation. I think that this is out of date, and I 
 am not sure that I wholly regret it, because I 
 am not certain that reading is of any use unless 
 you care about it. Solid reading was history, 
 biography, science, theology, and classical litera- 
 ture — and the odd thing was that Shakespeare 
 was solid reading and Walter Scott was not. As 
 to reading for the sake of general information, it 
 all depends upon what use you are going to make 
 of it. If 3^ou read in order that you may under- 
 stand the development of modern problems, or, 
 better still, because you care to know what people 
 were like in times past, what they did and en- 
 dured, and why they did it or endured it, it is 
 an excellent occupation. But if you read because 
 you like to stock your mind, like a warehouse, 
 or because you like feeling superior, or being 
 thought intellectual, then it is useless, or worse 
 than useless. 
 
 And of all fruitless reading, the reading of 
 books about books is the worst, if you do not 
 go on to read the books themselves. That is like 
 reading the news of the Stock Exchange if you 
 have no money, or reading Bradshaw if you are 
 confined permanently to your bed. T do not mean 
 that I desire to make people read from the right 
 motive or else not read at all, because one has 
 no right to interfere with other people^s ways 
 and wishes. But I do not think it right that it 
 
Reading 459 
 
 Rhould be vaguely supposed that there is anything 
 dignified or useful about mere reading, or that 
 people ought to be ]»roud of doing it, any more 
 than they are proud of eating and sleeping. 
 
 The ground, too, is all cumbered with foolish 
 maxims about reading. Hacon said that reading 
 made a full man. That is true in a sense. 1 
 know some people who are unpleasantly full, 
 bulging and distorted with knowledge undigested. 
 But what Bacon meant was a well-stored, un- 
 encumbered mind, which can reach down the 
 knowledge it wants from the right shelf. Then, 
 again, it is often said that writers have no bio- 
 graphies but their own works — and that is pure 
 nonsense. Statesmen and generals and men of 
 science have often no biographies, because their 
 work was done in the world, and has gone into 
 the world. But writers are just the very people 
 about whom it is worth reading, if one loves their 
 books, because their biographies show what made 
 them think as they did, and how they came to 
 cast such a transfiguring light on ordinary things. 
 Again, I have often heard serious men, especially 
 schoolmasters, say that it is wrong to read maga- 
 zines, because one gets only snippets of know- 
 ledge; but that is not only what most people 
 want, but exactly what they get out of bigger 
 books with infinitely more trouble. I think that 
 the miscellaneous reading in modern magazines, 
 so full of all sorts of curious and interesting 
 things, is the very way to open people^s minds 
 
460 Along the Road 
 
 and touch their imagination, and make them feel 
 that the world is a very wide and exciting place. 
 
 I do not wish to decry the real intellectual life. 
 That is a very noble thing, lived at a high alti- 
 tude and in rarified air, and from it flow many 
 of the ideas and thoughts that make life worth 
 living for the next generation. But for ordinary 
 minds tlie thing is to think clearly about simple 
 things, and feel generously and eagerly about life. 
 A great deal of the trouble of the world is made 
 by well-meaning, muddled people, men and women 
 who tamely accept and preach traditions and con- 
 ventions, and still more by stupid and tyrannical 
 people, who are unsympathetic and unimagina- 
 tive, and bully those who do not agree with them. 
 What one wants to encourage people to do is to 
 live eagerly and hopefully in the thoughts of 
 noble-minded men of genius — men, let us say, like 
 Tennyson and Browning, Carlyle and Buskin, who 
 lived gallant and enthusiastic lives, and saw the 
 sunrise further ofl' than duller natures. But it 
 is useless to go to these great men only because 
 it is the correct thing to do, and because one 
 feels a fool if one does not know about Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra, or the Stones of Venice. Of course, 
 one wants people to care about such things, but 
 one does not want them to care for ugly reasons. 
 
 There is nothing in which dishonesty or pre- 
 tentiousness punishes itself so severely as it does 
 with reading. It is like practising religion be- 
 cause other people think better of you for doing 
 
Reading 461 
 
 so. It is like keeping? the manna too long, like 
 offering money for the tire of the Spirit. Instead 
 of hel]>ing })eoj)le to be wise and tolerant and 
 generous, it makes them despise true feeling and 
 beautiful thought; because the aim of life is to 
 meet it with a noble curiosity and a courageous 
 frankness. It does not need an intellectual per- 
 son to do that; I know some very simple people, 
 who never oi)en a book, who yet look life very 
 straight in the face, mend what they can, help 
 others along, and do their best to get rid of the 
 ugly giants and beasts who infest the path of 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 And thus, as I say, reading can be, if it is done 
 simply and instinctively, a very harmless thing; 
 and if it is done eagerly and enthusiastically, it 
 can be a very fine thing, like the listening to the 
 talk of great j)ersons — not overhearing it, but hav- 
 ing it addressed deliberately to oneself; or it can 
 be a very feeble and even pernicious thing, if it 
 is done ungenerously and for ulterior motives; 
 because the dangerous things of life are the things 
 that make us self-satisfied and complacent, and 
 give us the evil right of thinking contemptuously 
 about others. But of course one ought to know 
 something of the glory and beauty of the world 
 about us, and not to be satisfied with our own 
 little round of trivial cares and interests. There 
 is a touching story of a man, travelling in South 
 America, who met an aged Roman Catholic priest 
 in a very out-of-the-way place. He entered into 
 
462 Along the Road 
 
 talk with the old man, who seemed unfit for 
 rough travel, and asked him what he was doing. 
 " Oh, just seeing the world," said the priest, witli 
 a tired smile. The traveller said, " Is it not 
 rather late in life to begin? " " Well, I will tell 
 you how it is," said the old man. " I have lived 
 and worked all my life in a very quiet little place. 
 A year ago I had a bad illness, and knew that T 
 should die. I was weary, and glad to go; and 
 I am afraid I was proud of my long and simple 
 service. While I was thinking thus, I saw 
 someone was standing by me, a young man with 
 a strange brightness on his face; and then I saw 
 it was an angel. He said to me, ^ W^hat do you 
 expect?' I said: ^I am waiting upon God, and 
 I hope that because I have served Him so long 
 He will show me the glory of Paradise.^ The 
 angel did not smile, but looked at me rather 
 sternly, and then said : ^ No ; you have taken so 
 little trouble to see the glory of His world here 
 that you must not expect that you will see the 
 glory of that other place.' And then in a mo- 
 ment he was gone, and all my pride was gone too. 
 I got well from that moment; and then I gave 
 up my work, and determined that I would spend 
 the little money I had saved in trying to see 
 something of the beauty of the world; and I am 
 seeing it, and I find it beautiful beyond words." 
 
 THE END 
 
 h/ 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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