THE ; IBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CAL [FORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ' 
 
 
 fl- 
 
 <?* 

 
 BESIDE STILL WATERS
 
 BESIDE 
 STILL WATERS 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 
 
 "/ will run the way of Thy commandments; 
 when Thou hast set my heart at liberty." 
 
 0. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK RND LONDON 
 
 Cbc Knickerbocker press 
 
 1007
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 ' 
 
 Beside Still Waters 
 
 HUGH NEVILLE was fond of tender and mi- 
 nute .retrospect, and often indulged himself, in 
 lonely hours, with the meditative pleasures of 
 memory. To look back into the old years was 
 to him like gazing into a misty place, with sud- 
 den and bright glimpses, and then the cloud 
 closed in again ; but it was not only with his 
 own life that he concerned himself ; he liked 
 to trace in fancy his father's eager boyhood, 
 brought up as he had been in a great manufac- 
 turing town, by a mother of straitened means, 
 who yet maintained, among all her restrictions, 
 a careful tradition of gentle blood and honour- 
 able descent. The children of that household 
 had been nurtured with no luxuries and few 
 enjoyments. Every pound of the small income 
 had had its appointed use ; but being, as they 
 were, qr^D^t pfn fltift na l natlir ^ g they had con- 
 trived to extract the best kind of pleasure out 
 i 
 
 1155GCK)
 
 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 of books, art, and music ; and the only trace 
 that survived in Hugh's father of the old nar- 
 row days, was a deep-seated hatred of waste- 
 fulness and luxury, which, in a man of generous 
 nature, produced certain anomalies, hard for his 
 children, living in comparative wealth and ease, 
 to interpret. <^H is father, the boy observed, was 
 liberal to a fault in large matters, but scrupu- 
 lously and needlessly particular about small ex- 
 penses.^He would take the children on a foreign 
 tour, 'and then practise an elaborate species 
 of discomfort, in an earnest endeavour to save 
 some minute disbursements. He would give his 
 son a magnificent book, and chide him because 
 he cut, instead of untying, the string of the par- 
 cel. Long after, theboy, disentanglinghisfather's 
 early life in diaries and letters, would wish, with 
 a wistful regret, that he had only had the clue to 
 this earlier; he would have sympathised, he 
 thought, with 
 
 economies, instead of fretting over them, and 
 discussing them rebelliously with his sisters. 
 His father was a man of almost passionate af- 
 fections ; there was nothing in the world that he 
 more desired than the company and the sym- 
 pathy of his children ; but he had, Desides tms, 
 an intense and tremulous sense of responsi- 
 bility towards them. He attached an undue 
 importance to small indications of character;
 
 The Family 3 
 
 and thus the children were seldom at ease with 
 their father, because he rebuked_them^con- 
 stantly, and found frequent fault, doing almost 
 violence to his tenderness, not from any pleas- 
 ure in censoriousness, but from a terror, that 
 was almost morbid, of the consequences of the 
 unchecked development of minute tendencies. 
 Hugh's mother was of a very different dispo- 
 sition ; she was fully as affectionate as his father, 
 but of a brighter, livelier, more facile nature ; 
 she came of a wealthy family, and had never 
 known the hard discipline from which his father 
 had suffered. She was a good many years 
 younger than her husband ; they were united 
 by the intensest affection; but while she de- 
 voted herself to him with a perfect understand- 
 ing of, and sympathy with, his somewhat jealous 
 and puritanical nature, she did not escape the 
 severity of his sense of responsibility, and his 
 natural instinct for attempting to draw those 
 nearest to him into the circle of his high, if rigid, 
 standards. Long afterwards, Hugh grew to 
 discern a greater largeness and liberality in her 
 methods of dealing with life and other natures 
 than his father had displayed ; and no shadow 
 of any kind had ever clouded his love and ad- 
 miration for his mother; his love indeed could 
 not have deepened; but he came gradually to 
 discern the sweet and patient wisdom which,
 
 4 Beside Still Waters 
 
 after many sorrows, nobly felt and ardently en- 
 dured, filled and guided her large and loving 
 heart. 
 
 His father, after a highly distinguished aca- 
 demical career, entered the Church ; and at the 
 time of Hugh's birth he held an important coun- 
 try living, together with one of the Archdeacon- 
 ries of the diocese. 
 
 Hugh was the eldest child. Two other child- 
 ren, both sisters, were born into the household. 
 Hugh in later days loved to trace in family pa- 
 pers the full and vivid life which had surrounded 
 his unconscious self. His mother had been 
 married young, and was scarcely more than a 
 girl when he was born ; his father was already 
 a man grave beyond his years, full of affairs, 
 and constantly occupied. But his melancholy 
 moods, and they were many, had drawn him to 
 value with a pathetic intentness the quiet family 
 life. Hugh could trace in old diaries the days 
 his father and mother had spent, the walks they 
 had taken, the books they had read together. 
 There seemed for him to brood over those days, 
 in imagination, a sort of singular brightness. 
 He always thought of the old life as going on 
 somewhere, behind the pine woods, if he could 
 only find it. He could never feel of it as 
 wholly past, but rather as possessing the living 
 force of some romantic book, into the atmos-
 
 The Scene 5 
 
 phere of which it was possible to plunge at 
 will. 
 
 And then his own life ; how vivid and delicate 
 the perceptions were ! Looking back, it always 
 seemed to be summer in those days. He could 
 remember the grassy walks of the pleasant gar- 
 den, which wound among the shrubberies ; the 
 old-fashioned flowers, sweet-williams and Can- 
 terbury-bells, that filled the deep borders ; the 
 rose-garden, with the pointed white buds, or 
 the large pink roses, full of scent, that would 
 fall at a touch and leave nothing but an orange- 
 seeded stump. But there had been no thought 
 of pathos to him in those years, as there came 
 to be afterwards, in the fading of sweet things ; 
 it was all curious, delightful, strange. The im- 
 pressions of sense were tyrannously strong, so 
 that there was hardly room for reflection or 
 imagination ; there was the huge chestnut cov- 
 ered with white spires, that sent out so heavy 
 a fragrance in the spring that it was at last cut 
 down ; but the felling of the tree was a mere 
 delightful excitement, not a thing to be grieved 
 over. The country was very wild all round, 
 with tracts of heath and sand. The melodious 
 buzzing of nightjars in hot mid-summer even- 
 ings, as they swept softly along the heather, 
 lived constantly in his memory. In the moor- 
 land, half a mile away, stood some brick-kilns,
 
 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 strange plastered cones, with blackened tops, 
 from which oozed a pungent smoke ; those were 
 too terrible to be visited alone ; but as he walked 
 past with his nurse, it was delightful and yet 
 appalling to look into the door of the kiln, and 
 see its fiery, glowing heart, Two things in par- 
 ticular the boy grew to love ; one was the sight 
 of water in all its forms ; a streamlet near the 
 house trickled out of a bog, full of cotton-grass ; 
 there were curious plants to be found here, a 
 low pink marsh-bugle, and the sundew, with its 
 strange, viscid red hands extended ; the stream 
 passed by clear dark pools to a lake among the 
 pines, and fell at the farther end down a steep 
 cascade ; the dark gliding water, the mysterious 
 things that grew beneath, the fish that paused 
 for an instant and were gone, had all a deep 
 fascination for the boy, speaking, as they 
 seemed to do, of a world near and yet how far 
 removed from his own ! 
 
 And then still more wonderingly, with a kind 
 of interfusion of terror and mystery, did he love 
 the woodlands of that forest country. To steal 
 along the edge of the covert, with the trees knee- 
 deep in fern, to hear the flies hum angrily with- 
 in, to find the glade in spring carpeted with 
 blue-bells all these sights and sounds took hold 
 of his childish heart with a deep passion that 
 never left him.
 
 Environment 7 
 
 All this life was, in memory, as I have said, 
 a series of vignettes and pictures ; the little 
 dramas of the nursery, the fire that glowed in 
 the grate, the savour of the fresh-cut bread at 
 meal-times, the games on wet afternoons, with 
 a tent made out of shawls and chairs, or a fort 
 built of bricks ; these were the pictures that 
 visited Hugh in after days, small concrete things 
 and sensations ; he could trace, he often thought, 
 in later years, that his early life had been one 
 more of perception than anything else ; sights 
 and sounds and scents had filled his mind, to 
 the exclusion of almost all beside. He could 
 remember little of his relations with those about 
 him ; the figures of the family and servants ' 
 were accepted as all part of the environment. 
 The only very real figure was the old nurse, 
 whose rare displeasure he had sorrowed over 
 more than anything else in the world, and 
 whose chance words, uttered to another servant 
 and overheard by the child, that she was think- 
 ing of leaving them, had given him a deeper 
 throb of emotion than anything he had before 
 known, or was for many years to know. 
 
 But the time for the eager and romantic asso- 
 ciation with other people, which was to play so 
 large a part in Hugh's life, was not yet come. 
 People had to be taken as they came, and their 
 value depended entirely upon their kindness or
 
 8 Beside Still Waters 
 
 unkindness. There was no sense of gratitude 
 as yet, or desire to win affection. If they were 
 kind, they were unthinkingly and instinctively 
 liked. If they thwarted or interfered with the 
 child's little theory of existence, his chosen 
 amusements, his hours of leisure, his loved pur- 
 suits, they were simply obstacles around which 
 his tiny stream of life must find its way as it 
 best could. 
 
 There was indeed one other chief delight for 
 the child : the ordered services of the Church 
 hard by the house. He loved with all his heart 
 the fallen day, the pillared vault, the high dusty 
 cornices, the venerable scent ; and the services, 
 with their music solemn and sweet, the pos- 
 tures of the ministers, the faces, clothes, and 
 habits of the congregation all was a delightful 
 field of pleasing experience. "^treligionjvas 
 a wholly unreal thing to the child. He learned 
 his Bible lessons and psalms ; he knew the lit- 
 urgy by heart ; but the religious idea, the 
 thought of God, the Christian life of effort, 
 were all things that he merely accepted as so 
 many facts that were taught him, but without 
 the least interest in them, or even the shadow- 
 iest attempt to apply them to his own life. It 
 seemed strange to Hugh when, in years long 
 after, religion came to have so deep a meaning 
 to him, that it should have been so entirely
 
 Childhood 9 
 
 a blank to him in the early days. God was no 
 more to him than a far-off monarch ; a mighty 
 and shadowy person, very remote and power- 
 ful, but the circle of whose influence never 
 touched his own. And yet one of the deepest 
 desires of his father's mind had been to bring 
 a sense of religion home to his children. Hugh 
 used to wonder how he had missed it ; but the 
 practical application of religion, to which the 
 Bible lessons had led up, had been to the child 
 a mere relief from the tension of thought, 
 because at last he had escaped from the material 
 teaching about which he might be questioned, 
 and which he would be expected to remember. 
 Personal relations, then, had scarcely existed 
 for Hugh as a child. Older and bigger people, 
 armed with a vague authority, had to be 
 obeyed, and the boy had no theory which could 
 account for their inconsequent behaviour ; they 
 were amiable or ill-humoured, just or unjust ; 
 he never attempted to criticise or condemn 
 them by a moral standard ; he simply accepted 
 them as they were, and kept as much as possi- 
 ble out of the way of those who manifested 
 sharpness or indifference. With children of his 
 own age it was in many ways the same, though 
 there seemed to the boy to be more hope of 
 influencing their behaviour; threats, anger, 
 promises, compliance could be applied ; but of
 
 io Beside Still Waters 
 
 the affection that simply desired to please the 
 object of its love, the boy knew nothing. 
 Once or twice he went away from home on 
 a visit, and because he wept on his depart- 
 ure, he was supposed to have a tender and 
 emotional nature ; it was not tenderness, at 
 least not tenderness for others, that made 
 him weep. It was partly the terror of the 
 unknown and the unfamiliar; it was partly 
 the interruption to the even tenor of his life 
 and the customary engagements, of his day; 
 and in this respect the boy had what may 
 be called a middled-aged temperament, an 
 intense dislike of any interference with his 
 own ways ; he had no enterprise, none of the 
 high-hearted enjoyment of novelty, unless he 
 was surrounded by a bulwark of familiar 
 personalities; but partly, too, his love was 
 all given to inanimate things ; and as he 
 drove out of the gate on one of these visits, 
 the thought that the larches of the copse 
 should be putting out their rosy buds, the 
 rhododendrons thrusting out their gummy, 
 spiky cases, the stream passing slowly through 
 its deep pools, the beehive in the little birch 
 avenue beginning to wake to life, and that 
 he should not be there to go his accus- 
 tomed rounds, and explore all the minute 
 events of his dear domain it was this that
 
 Childhood n 
 
 brought out the tears afresh, with a bitter, 
 uncomforted sense of loss and bereavement. 
 So the early years passed for the boy, in a 
 dream full to the brim of small wonders and 
 fragrant mysteries. How pleasant it was to / 
 sink to sleep on summer evenings with the Y 
 imagination of voyaging all night in a little 
 boat or carriage ; how delightful to wake, with 
 the morning sun streaming in at the window, 
 to hear the casement ivy tap on the pane, and 
 to rehearse in the mind all the tiny pleasures of 
 the long day! His short lessons were easy 
 enough for the boy ; he was quick and acute, 
 and had a good memory ; but he took not the 
 smallest interest in them, except the interest 
 of making a situation go smoothly ; the only 
 interest was in the thought of the unmolested 
 lonely play that was to follow. He cared 
 little for games, though they had a certain 
 bitter excitement, the desire of emulation, the 
 joy of triumph about them. He loved best 
 an aimless wending from haunt to haunt, an 
 accumulation of small treasures in places un- 
 known to others; and, most of all, the rich 
 sense of observation of a hundred curious and 
 delicate things; the nests of birds in the shrub- 
 bery, the glossy cones of the young pines, the 
 green, uncurling fingers of the bracken, the 
 fresh green sword-grass that grew beneath
 
 12 Beside Still Waters 
 
 the firs; he did N not^.care to know the 
 nature of the reasons of these things; it 
 was enough simply to see them, to explore 
 them with restless fingers, to recognise 
 their scents, hues, and savours, with the 
 sharp and unblunted perceptions of child- 
 hood. 
 
 Then came the intellectual awakening. 
 Hugh's mother, who had an extraordinary gift 
 for improvisation, began to tell the children 
 stories in the nursery evenings ; and these tales 
 of giants and fairies grew to have an extreme 
 fascination for the child ; not that he peopled 
 his own world with them, as some imaginative 
 children do ; the boy's perceptions were too 
 definite for that ; such beings belonged to a dif- 
 ferent region ; he had no idea that they existed 
 or had ever existed. They belonged to the 
 story world, which was associated in his mind 
 with bright fires and toys put away, when 
 he nestled as close as he could to his mother's 
 knee, with her hand in both his own, explor- 
 ing every ring and every finger, till he could 
 recall, many years after, each turn and curve, 
 and even each finger-nail of those dear hands. 
 And then at last came the supremest joy of 
 all ; the children used to be summoned down 
 to their mother's room, and she began to read 
 aloud Ivanhoe to them ; and then indeed aTTEw
 
 Books 1 3 
 
 world, a world that had really existed sprang 
 to light. 
 
 Hugh used to wonder afterwards how much 
 he had really understood of what was read ; but 
 the whole thing seemed absolutely alive to him ; 
 his pictorial fancy came into play, and the de- 
 tails of woods and heaths that he knew so well 
 began to serve him in good stead ; and then the 
 child, who had before thought of reading as 
 merely a tiresome art that he was forced to 
 practise, found that it was the key that admit- 
 ted him into this wonderful world. It did not 
 indeed destroy his relish for the outer world of 
 nature, for at all hours of the day, when it was 
 possible to slip out of doors, he went his soli- 
 tary way, looking, looking ; until every tree and 
 flower-border and thicket of the small domain 
 became so sharply imprinted upon the mind 
 that, years after, he could walk in memory 
 through the sunny garden, and recall the 
 minutest details with an astonishing accuracy. 
 
 But books became for the child a large part 
 of his life. It was a story that he desired, some- 
 thing that should create a scene for him, person- 
 alities like or unlike his own, whose deeds and 
 words he could survey, leaning, so it seemed to 
 him, from a magic casement into the new scene. 
 His father, whose taste was for the improving 
 in literature, was willing enough that the boy
 
 H Beside Still Waters 
 
 should be supplied with books, but hardly un- 
 derstood that the child was living in a world of 
 bright fancies and simple dreams. His father, 
 moreover, who had all his life had a harder and 
 more definite turn of thought, and had desired 
 knowledge of a precise kind, wanted the boy to 
 read the little dry books, uncouthly and elabo- 
 rately phrased, that had pleased himself in his 
 own early days. Hugh's mind was precise 
 enough ; but these terse biographies, these 
 books of travel, these semi-scientific stories 
 seemed to Hugh only to relate the things that 
 he did not want to know. His father had been 
 born at a time when the interest in the educa- 
 tion of children was first taking shape, the days 
 of Miss Edge worth's Frank, and Harry and 
 Lucy, that strange atmosphere of gravity and 
 piety, when children were looked upon as a 
 serious responsibility more than as a poetical ac- 
 cessory to life ; not as mysterious and fairylike 
 creatures, to be delicately wooed and tenderly 
 guided, but rather as little men and women, 
 to be repressed and trained, and made as soon 
 as possible to have a sense of responsibility too. 
 Hugh used to look at the old books in later 
 days, and wonder what the exact social posi- 
 tion of the parents in such books as Frank, and 
 Harry and Lucy, was supposed to be. They 
 lived in the country ; they were not appar-
 
 Books 1 5 
 
 ently wealthy ; they lived with much sim- 
 plicity. Yet Harry's father seemed to have 
 nothing to do but to conduct his children over 
 manufactories, and to take them for long walks j 
 in the course of which he diligently improved / 
 their minds by a species of Socratic inquiry. 
 But Hugh never thought of quarrelling with 
 the books provided ; he seized upon any trace of 
 humanity or amusement that they afforded, any 
 symptoms of character and liveliness, and sim- 
 ply evaded the improving portion, which blew 
 like a dry wind over his spirit. When his father 
 talked over the books with the child, he listened 
 tolerantly to the boy's amusement at how the 
 cake had rolled down the hill, or how the little 
 pig had got into the garden ; but he was disap- 
 pointed that the boy seemed not to care whether 
 the stone which Harry threw described a para- 
 bola or not, though there was an odious diagram 
 to explain it, full of dotted lines and curves. 
 Yet the boy held on his way, deaf to all that 
 did not move him or interest him, and fixing 
 jealously on all that fed his fancy. Such books / 
 as Grimm 's Fairy Talcs and Masterman Ready 
 were wells of delight, enacted as they were in 
 a strange and exciting world; and he was sensi- 
 tive, too, to the beauty of metre and sonorous 
 phrases, learning poetry so easily that it was sup- 
 posed to be a species of wilfulness in him that
 
 1 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 the Collects and texts, and the very Psalms 
 that seemed to him so unreal and husk-like then, 
 and that later became to him like fruits full of 
 refreshment and savour and sweet juice found 
 their way slowly into his memory, and were so 
 easily forgotten.
 
 II 
 
 THE time came for Hugh to go to school. He 
 drifted, it seemed to him afterwards, with a sin- 
 gular indifference and apathy of mind, into the 
 new life, though the parting from home was 
 one of dumb misery ; not that he cared deeply, 
 as a softer-hearted child might have cared, at 
 being parted from his father, his mother, his 
 sisters. People, even those nearest to the boy, 
 were still only a part of the background of life, 
 a little nearer perhaps, but hardly dearer, hardly 
 more important than trees and flowers, except 
 that a greater part of his life was spent with 
 them. But the last afternoon in the familiar scene 
 it was a hot, bright September day tried 
 the boy's fortitude to the uttermost. He felt as 
 though the trees and walks would almost miss 
 his greeting and presence and what was the 
 saddest part of all to him was that he could not 
 be sure of this. Was the world that he loved 
 indifferent to him ? Did it perhaps not heed 
 him, not even perceive him ? He had al- 
 ways fancied that trees and flowers had a 
 species of sight, that they watched him, the 
 2 17
 
 1 8 Beside Still Waters 
 
 trees shyly out of their green foliage, the flow- 
 ers with their bright unshrinking gaze. The 
 tallest trees seemed to look down on him 
 from a height, regarding him with a digni- 
 fied and quiet interest ; his-^personal affection 
 for them had led him indeed to be careful not 
 to ill-use them ; he had always disliked the 
 (V gathering of flowers, the tearing off of boughs 
 or leaves from shrubs. They seemed to suffer 
 injury patiently, but none the less did he think 
 that they were hurt. He liked to touch the 
 full-blown heads of the roses, when they yielded 
 their petals at a touch into his hand, because 
 it seemed that they gave themselves willingly. 
 And then, too, when the big china bowl that 
 stood in the hall was full of them, and they 
 were mixed with spices, the embalming process 
 seemed to give them a longer and a fuller life. 
 
 But now he was leaving all this ; day after day 
 the garden would bloom, until the autumn 
 came, and the trees showered down their golden 
 leaves on walk and lawn. He had seen it year 
 after year, and now he would see it no more. 
 Would they miss him as he would miss them? 
 And so the last afternoon was to him a wistful 
 valediction ; he went softly about, to and fro, 
 with a strange sadness at his heart, the first 
 shadow of the leave-takings of the world. 
 
 The school to which he went was a big place
 
 The Schoolmaster 19 
 
 Ci 
 
 in the suburbs of London, standing near a royal 
 park. The place was full of dignified houses, 
 standing among trees and paddocks, with high 
 blank garden-walls everywhere. The school it- 
 self had been once a great suburban mansion, 
 the villa of a statesman. The rooms were 
 large, high, and dignified, but the bareness of 
 life, under the new conditions, was a great trial 
 to the boy. He had a certain luxuriousness of 
 temperament, not in matters of meat and drink, 
 but in the surroundings and apparatus of life. 
 The bare, uncurtained, uncarpeted rooms, the 
 big dormitory with its cubicles, the stone- 
 flagged passages, all appeared to him mean 
 and sordid. His schoolmaster was a man of 
 real force of character, a tall stately personage 
 with a great enthusiasm for literature, a fine 
 converser and teacher, and with a deep insight 
 into character. But this was marred by a want 
 of tenderness, a certain harshness of disposi- 
 tion, and a belief that boys needed to be re- 
 pressed and dragooned. Hugh conceived an 
 overwhelming terror for this majestic man, with 
 the dress and bearing of a fine gentleman, with 
 his flashing eyes, his thin lips, his grey curly 
 hair, his straggling beard. He was a friend of 
 Hugh's father, and took a certain interest in the 
 boy, especially when he discovered that, though 
 dreamy and forgetful, Hugh's abilities were
 
 20 Beside Still Waters 
 
 still of a high order. His work was, in fact, 
 always easy to him, though he was entirely 
 destitute of ambition. Certain scenes impressed 
 themselves on the boy's mind with extraordi- 
 nary vividness. Mr. Russell, the schoolmaster, 
 used to read out every week a passage for the 
 boys to turn into verse. He read finely, and 
 Hugh noticed, with a curious surprise, that Mr. 
 Russell was almost invariably affected to tears 
 by his reading. But, on the other hand, a scene 
 which he saw, when he and certain other boys 
 were waiting to have their exercises looked 
 over, was for years a kind of nightmare to him. 
 There was a slow and stupid boy in the class, 
 whom Mr. Russell chose to consider obstinate, 
 and who was severely caned, in the presence of 
 the others, for mistakes in his exercise. Even 
 ten years after, Hugh could remember with a 
 species of horror the jingling of the keys in Mr. 
 Russell's pocket, as he took them out to unlock 
 the drawer where the cane lay. Perhaps this 
 proved a salutary lesson for Hugh, for the ter- 
 ror that such an incident might befall himself, 
 caused him to take an amount of trouble with 
 his exercises which he would certainly not 
 otherwise have bestowed. 
 
 On Sunday evenings Mr. Russell read aloud 
 to the upper boys in his drawing-room ; and 
 this was a happy time for Hugh; he loved to
 
 School Life 21 
 
 sit in a deep chair, and feast his eyes upon the 
 pictures, the china, the warm carpet and cur- 
 tains of the fire-lit room, and the books that he 
 heard read had a curious magic for him. Mr. 
 Russell never seemed to take any particular 
 notice of him, and Hugh used to feel that he 
 was despised for his want of savoir faire, his 
 slovenliness, his timidity ; and it was a great 
 surprise to discover, long after, a bundle of let- 
 ters from Mr. Russell to his father, in which he 
 found his abilities and shortcomings discussed 
 with extraordinary penetration. 
 
 Hugh played no games at school ; there was 
 not then the organisation of school games 
 which has since grown up. His favourite occu- 
 pation was wandering about the big grounds, 
 to which certain boys were admitted, or joining 
 in the walks, which a dozen boys, conducted by 
 a peevish or good-tempered usher, as the case 
 might be, used to take in the neighbourhood of 
 the school. The high garden-walls, with the 
 mysterious posterns, the huge horse-chestnuts 
 looking over, the leaded tops of the classical 
 arbours with which the grounds of an adjacent 
 villa were adorned ; the great gate-posts of the 
 main entrances, the school-house itself, looking 
 grimly down from a great height, all these held 
 strange mysteries for the boy, sinking uncon- 
 sciously into his spirit.
 
 22 Beside Still Waters 
 
 But he made very few friends either with 
 masters or boys. He had none of the merry 
 sociability of childhood ; he confided in no one, 
 he simply lived his life reluctantly, hating the 
 place, never sure that some ugly and painful 
 punishment, some ridicule or persecution might 
 not fall on him out of a clear sky for some of- 
 fence unconsciously committed. He had hardly 
 a single pleasant memory connected with the 
 school, except of certain afternoons when the 
 boys who had done well for the week were al- 
 lowed to go without supervision to the neigh- 
 bouring shops, and purchase simple provender. 
 But if he made no friends, he at least made no 
 enemies; he was always friendly and good-tem- 
 pered, and he was preserved by his solitariness 
 from all grossness and evil. It was a big school, 
 and occasionally he perceived in the talk and 
 behaviour of his companions the signs of some 
 ugly and obscene mystery that he did not un- 
 derstand, and that he had no wish to penetrate. 
 But the result, which in after days surprised him 
 with a sense of deep gratitude and thankful- 
 ness, was, that though he spent two years at this 
 school, he left it with absolutely untainted inno- 
 cence, such innocence as in later days he would 
 have held to be almost inconceivable, as to all 
 the darker temptations of the senses. But the 
 absence of close human relationship was the
 
 Companions 23 
 
 strange thing. He had a few boys with whom 
 he associated in a familiar way. But he had no 
 idea of the homes from which they came, he 
 knew nothing of their inner taste and fancies. 
 And though his own feelings and interests were 
 definite enough and even strong, though he 
 read books of all kinds with intense avidity, he 
 never spoke of them to other boys, while at 
 the same time he was averse to writing letters 
 home ; his father complained once during the 
 holidays that he knew nothing of what the boy 
 did at school. Hugh could not put into words 
 what he felt to be the truth, namely, that he 
 hardly knew himself. He submitted quietly 
 and obediently to the dull routine of the place, 
 and felt so little interest in it, that he could 
 not conceive his father could do so either. 
 There were of course occasional exciting inci- 
 dents, but to relate them would have required 
 so much explanation, such a list of personages, 
 such a description of circumstances, that he 
 felt unable to embark upon it. His father asked 
 him whether he would not like some of his school 
 friends to visit him at home, and he rejected the 
 suggestion with a kind of incredulous horror. 
 The thought of invading the sanctity, the famil- 
 iarity of home, with the presence of a boy who 
 might reveal its secrets to others, was too appall- 
 ing to face ; it hardly occurred to him that the
 
 24 Beside Still Waters 
 
 boys had homes of their own, places which they 
 loved. He only thought of them as figures on 
 the school stage, to be conciliated, tolerated, 
 lived with, his only preoccupation being to 
 shield and guard his own heart and inner life 
 from any intruding influence whatever. He 
 had no desire ever to see one of the crew again, 
 Y boys or masters. Some indeed were preferable 
 to others, but no one could be trusted for an in- 
 stant ; the only safe course was to make no 
 claim, and to shield one's self as far as possible 
 against all external influences, all alliances, all 
 relationships. 
 
 Hugh, in after life, could hardly recall the 
 faces of any of his companions ; the only way 
 at the time in which he differentiated them 
 to himself was that some looked kinder than 
 others that was the only thing that mattered. 
 Thus the years dragged themselves along, the 
 school-time hated with an intensity of dislike, 
 the holidays eagerly welcomed as a return to 
 old pursuits. The boy used to lie awake in a 
 big dormitory in the early summer mornings, 
 thinking with vague terror and disquiet of the 
 ordered day of labour that lay before him. 
 There were peacocks kept in the grounds 
 whose shrill feminine screams of despairing re- 
 proach were always inseparably connected with 
 the dreariness of the place. His last morning
 
 Relief 25 
 
 at the school he awoke early, full of joyful ex- 
 citement, and heard the familiar cries with a 
 thankful sense that he would never hear them 
 again. He said no good-byes, made no fare- 
 well visits. He waved his hand, as he drove 
 away, in merry derision at the grim high win- 
 dows that looked down on the road, the only 
 thought in his mind being the feeling of un- 
 conquerable relief that the place would see him 
 no more. 
 
 He used to wonder, in after days, whether 
 this could not have been avoided ; whether it 
 was a wholesome discipline for a child of his 
 age and perhaps peculiar temperament to have 
 been brought up under these conditions. After 
 all, it is the case of the average boy that has to 
 be considered, and for the average boy, insou- 
 ciant, healthy-minded, boisterous, there is prob- 
 ably little doubt that the barrack-life of school 
 has its value. Probably too for Hugh himself, 
 though it did not in any way develop his intel- 
 lect or his temperament, it had a real value. It 
 taught him a certain self-reliance ; it showed 
 him that what was disagreeable was not neces- 
 sarily intolerable. What Hugh needed to 
 make him effective was a certain touch of the 
 world, a certain hardness, which his home life 
 did not tend to develop. And thus this bleak 
 and uncheered episode of life gave him a super-
 
 26 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ficial ordinariness, and taught him the need of 
 conventional compliance with the ways of the 
 mysterious, uninteresting world.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE change was accomplished, and Hugh went 
 to a public school. In later life, conscious as 
 he became of the strain and significance of per- 
 sonal relations with others, he used to wonder 
 at the careless indifference with which he had 
 entered the big place which was to be his home 
 for several years, and was to leave so deep a 
 mark upon him. In his mature life, in the case 
 of the official positions he was afterwards to 
 hold, unimportant though they were, the 
 thought of his relations to those with whom he 
 was to work, the necessity of adapting himself 
 to their temperaments, of establishing terms of 
 intercourse with them, used to weigh on his 
 mind for many days before the work began. 
 But here, he reflected, where life was lived on 
 so much closer terms, when the words and 
 deeds, the feelings and fancies of the boys, 
 among whom he was to live, were of the deep- 
 est and most vital importance, he entered upon 
 the new life, dull and careless, without interest 
 or excitement, simply going because he was 
 sent, just dumbly desirous of ease and tran- 
 27
 
 28 Beside Still Waters 
 
 quillity. He had been elected on to the foun- 
 dation of an ancient school, and the surroundings 
 of the new place did indeed vaguely affect 
 him with a sort of solemn pleasure. The 
 quaint mediaeval chambers ; the cloisters, with 
 their dark and mysterious doorways ; the hall, 
 with its high timbered roof and stained glass ; 
 the huge Tudor chapel, with its pure white 
 soaring lines ; the great organ, the rich stall- 
 work, and the beautiful fields with their great 
 elms all this gave him a dim delight. He was 
 taken to school by his father, who was full of 
 affection, hope, and anxiety. But it seemed to 
 Hugh, with the curiously observant power that 
 v he always possessed, though he could not have 
 put it into words, that his father, rather than 
 himself, was experiencing the emotion that it 
 would have been appropriate for him to have 
 felt. His father was disappointed that Hugh 
 did not seem more conscious of membership, of 
 the dignity and greatness of the place. His 
 tender care about the books, the pictures, and 
 the furnishing of Hugh's little room, did in- 
 deed move the boy to a certain gratitude. But 
 his father's way on such occasions was to order 
 what he himself would have liked, and his taste 
 v was severe ; and then he demanded that the 
 boy should not only accept, but enthusiastically 
 like, what was given him. Hugh's immature
 
 The Public School 29 
 
 taste was all for what was bright and fanciful ; 
 his father's for what was grave and dignified ; 
 and thus though the boy was glad to have 
 pictures of his own, he had rather that they 
 had not been engravings of old religious pic- 
 tures ; and he would have preferred dainty 
 china objects, such as candlesticks and orna- 
 ments, to the solid metal fittings which his 
 father gave him. When they parted, his father 
 gave him a serious exhortation to which the 
 child hardly listened. Reset him on his guard 
 against certain temptations, when Hugh was ig- 
 norant of what he was alluding to ; and the emo- 
 tion with which the boy took leave of his father 
 was rather envy that he was returning to the 
 dear home life, than regret at being parted from 
 him. 
 
 The first two years of the boy's school life 
 passed like a bewildered dream ; he had a com- 
 panion or two, but hardly a friend ; he had little 
 idea of what was going on in the big place round 
 him ; he was not in the least ambitious of dis- 
 tinction either in work or games; his one desire 
 was not to be conspicuous in any way. He was 
 now a shy, awkward creature ; but he was good- 
 humoured enough, and as his performances ex- 
 cited no envy in any of his companions, he was 
 left to a great extent to his own devices. The 
 masters with whom he was brought into contact
 
 30 Beside Still Waters 
 
 he regarded with a distant awe ; it never occurred 
 to him that they took any interest in their work 
 or in the characters of the boys they dealt with. 
 He supposed vaguely that they liked to show 
 their power by scoring under the mistakes in 
 exercises, and by setting punishments. But they 
 were all dim and inhuman beings to him. Only 
 very gradually did it dawn upon the boy that he 
 had a place in a big society. He was habitually 
 unsuccessful in examinations, but he became 
 a proficient in football, which gave him a cer- 
 tain small consequence. He began to give 
 thought to his clothes, and to adopt the custom- 
 ary tone of talk, not because he felt in sym- 
 pathy with it, but because it was a convenient 
 shield under which he could pursue his own 
 ideas. But his tastes were feeble enough ; he 
 spent hours in the great school library, a cool 
 panelled room, and though he had no taste for 
 anything that was hard or vigorous, he read an 
 immense amount of poetry and fiction. He be- 
 gan, too, to write poetry, with extraordinary 
 precautions that his occupation should not be 
 discovered. He was present on one occasion 
 when a store of poems, the work of a curious 
 and eccentric boy of his own age, was discov- 
 ered in the drawer of a bureau. These were 
 solemnly read aloud by a small tormentor, while 
 the unhappy author, writhing with shame and
 
 Friendships 31 
 
 misery, was firmly held in a chair, and each 
 composition received with derisive comments 
 and loud laughter. Hugh had joined, he re- 
 membered with a sense of self-reproach, in the 
 laughter and the criticisms, though he felt in 
 his heart both interest in and admiration for the 
 poems. But he dare not so far brave ridicule 
 as to express his feelings, and simply fell tamely 
 and ungenerously, into the general tone. He 
 did indeed make feeble overtures afterwards to 
 the author, which were suspiciously and fiercely 
 repelled, and the only practical lesson that 
 Hugh learned from the scene was to conceal 
 his own literary experiments with a painful 
 caution. 
 
 But as the years passed there came a new in- 
 fluence into Hugh's life. He had always been 
 observant, in his quiet way, of other boys, and 
 at last, as his nature developed, he began to 
 idealise them in a romantic way. The first ob- 
 ject of his admiration was a boy much older 
 than himself, an independent, graceful creature, 
 who had a strong taste for beautiful things, and 
 adorned his room with china and pictures; he 
 was moreover a contributor of verses to the 
 school magazine, which seemed to Hugh mod- 
 els of elegance and grace. But he was far too 
 shy to think of attracting the notice of his 
 hero. It simply became an intense preoccupa-
 
 32 Beside Still Waters 
 
 tion to watch him, in chapel or hall ; it was a 
 fearful joy to meet him, and he used to invent 
 excuses for passing his room, till he knew the 
 very ornaments and pictures by sight. That 
 room seemed to him a kind of sacred shrine, 
 where a bright being lived a life of high and 
 lofty intellectual emotion. But he never suc- 
 ceeded in exchanging a word with the object of 
 his admiration, except on a certain day, marked 
 in his calendar long after with letters of gold. 
 There was a regatta in the neighbourhood of 
 the school, to which the boys were allowed to go 
 under certain conditions. He had gone, and had 
 spent his day in wandering about alone, until 
 the glare and the crowd had brought on a head- 
 ache ; and he had resolved to return home by 
 an early train. He went to the station, hoping 
 that he might be unobserved, and stepped into 
 an empty carriage. Just as the train started, 
 he heard rapid steps; the door was flung open, 
 and his hero entered. Seeing a junior boy of 
 his own house in the carriage, he made some 
 good-natured remark, and before Hugh could 
 realise the greatness of his good fortune, his 
 hero had sat down beside him, and after a 
 few words, with a friendly impulse, had launched 
 into a ghost story which lasted the whole of the 
 journey, and the very phrases of which haunted 
 Hugh's mind for weeks. They had walked
 
 Friendships 33 
 
 down from the station together, but alas for 
 the vicissitudes of human affairs, his god, con- 
 tented with having shown courteous kindness 
 to a lonely and uninteresting small boy, never 
 gave him for the rest of the school term, after 
 which he left, the slightest sign of recognition ; 
 and yet for years after the fields and trees and 
 houses which they had passed on the line were 
 suffused for Hugh with a subtle emotion in the 
 memory of that journey. 
 
 And then, a little later than this, Hugh had 
 the first and perhaps the most abiding joy of 
 his life. A clever, ambitious, active boy of his 
 own standing, whom he had long secretly ad- 
 mired, took a pronounced fancy to him. He 
 was a boy, Hugh saw afterwards, with a deeply 
 jealous disposition ; and the first attraction of 
 Hugh's friendship had been the fact that Hugh 
 threatened his supremacy in no department 
 whatever. Hugh was the only boy of the set 
 who had never done better than he in anything. 
 But then there came in a more generous feeling. 
 Hugh's heart awoke; there was nothing which 
 it was not a pleasure to do for his friend. He 
 would put anything aside, at any moment, to 
 walk, to talk, to discharge little businesses, to 
 fetch and carry, to be in attendance. More- 
 over, Hugh found his tongue, but his anxiety 
 to retain his friend's affection made him astonish-
 
 34 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ingly tactful and discreet. He was always ready 
 to sympathise, to enter into any suggestion ; he 
 suppressed himself and his own tastes complete- 
 ly and utterly; and he found, too, to his vast 
 delight, that he could be entertaining and amus- 
 ing. The books he had read, the fiction with 
 which he had crammed himself, his keen eye 
 for idiosyncrasies and absurdities, all came to 
 his assistance, and he was amply repaid by a 
 smile for his trouble. 
 
 The two boys became inseparable, and per- 
 haps the thing that made those days of com- 
 panionship bright with a singular and golden 
 brightness, was that there was in his friend the 
 same fastidious vein, the same dislike of any 
 coarseness of -talk or thought which was strong 
 in Hugh. Looking back on his school life, with 
 all the surprising foulness of the talk of even 
 high-principled boys, it was a deep satisfaction 
 to Hugh to reflect that there had never been in 
 the course of this friendship a single hint, so 
 far as he could recollect, in their own intercourse 
 with each other, of the existence of evil. They 
 had tacitly ignored it, and yet there had not 
 been the least priggishness about the relation- 
 ship. They had never inquired about each 
 other's aspirations or virtues, in the style of 
 sentimental school-books. They had never said 
 a word of religion, nor had there ever been the
 
 The Opening Heart 35 
 
 smallest expression of sentiment. All that was 
 taken for granted. It was indeed one of those 
 perfect, honest, wholesome companionships, 
 which can only exist between two cheerful boys 
 of the same age. Hugh indeed was conscious 
 of a depth of sacred emotion, too sacred to be 
 spoken of to any one, even to be expressed to 
 himself. It was not, in fact, a definite relation 
 which he represented to himself ; it was rather 
 like a new light shed abroad over his life ; in- 
 cidents had a savour, a sharp outline which they 
 had lacked before. He became conscious, too, 
 of the movement and intermingling of personal 
 forces, of characters. He no longer had the 
 purely spectatorial observation of others which 
 had distinguished him before, but beheld other 
 personalities, as in a mirror, in the mind of his 
 friend. And then, too, what was a far deeper 
 joy, literature and poetry began to yield up their 
 secrets to him. Poetry had been to him before, 
 a gracious, soulless thing like a tree or a flower, 
 and had been apprehended purely in its external 
 aspect. But now he suddenly saw the emotion 
 that burned beneath, not indeed of the love that 
 is mingled with desire that had still no mean- 
 ing for the soul of the boy, or only the signifi- 
 cance of a far-off mystery ; but he perceived for 
 the first time that it was indeed possible to hold 
 something dearer than one's self, one's country,
 
 36 Beside Still Waters 
 
 one's school, one's friend something large and 
 strong, that could intervene between one's hopes 
 and one's self. 
 
 Hugh was indeed not yet, if ever, to learn the 
 force of these large words patriotism, honour, 
 self-surrender, public spirit ; he remained an 
 individualist to the end. His country never be- 
 came to him the glowing reality that it means 
 for some. It was dear because his friends, who 
 were also Englishmen, were dear ; and his 
 school for the same reason. If he had a friend 
 in the School Eleven, Hugh would always rather 
 that his friend should be distinguished than that 
 the school should win. He could not disen- 
 tangle the personal fibre, or conceive of an 
 institution, a society, apart from the beings 
 of which it was composed. 
 
 But his friendship broke in pieces, once and 
 for all, the dumb isolation in which he had 
 hitherto lived. It opened for him the door of 
 a larger and finer life, and his soul, endowed 
 with a new elasticity, seemed to leap, to run, to 
 climb, with a freshness and vigour that he had 
 never before so much as guessed at. 
 
 The closeness of this friendship gradually 
 loosened or rather the exclusive companion- 
 ship of its earlier stages grew less ; but it seem- 
 ed to Hugh to bring him into new relations 
 with half the world. He became a boy with
 
 Discoveries 37 
 
 many friends. Other boys found his quaint 
 humour, his shrewd perceptions, his courtesy 
 and gentleness attractive. He took his new- 
 found popularity with a quiet prudence, a good- 
 humoured discretion that disarmed the most 
 critical ; but it was deeply delightful to the boy ; 
 he seemed to himself to have passed out of the 
 shadow into the sun and air. Life appeared to 
 be full of gracious secrets, delightful emotions, 
 excellent surprises ; it became a series of small 
 joyful discoveries. His intellect responded to 
 the stimulus, and he became aware that he had, 
 in certain directions, a definite ability of which 
 he had never suspected himself. The only part 
 of his nature that was as yet dark and sealed 
 was the religious spirit. In a world so full of 
 interests and beauties, there was no room for 
 God ; and at this period of his life, Hugh, with 
 a blindness which afterwards amazed him, grew 
 to think of God in the same way that he 
 unconsciously thought of his father, as a check- 
 ing and disapproving influence, not to be 
 provoked, but equally not to be trusted. 
 Hugh had no confidences with his father ; he 
 never felt sure, if he gave way to easy and 
 unconstrained talk with him, that his father 
 would not suddenly discern something of levity 
 and frivolity in his pursuits ; and this developed 
 in Hugh a gentle hypocrisy, that was indeed
 
 38 Beside Still Waters 
 
 the shadow of his sympathy, which made him 
 divine what would please his father to talk 
 about. He found all his old letters after his 
 father's death, arranged and docketed the 
 thought of the unexpected tenderness which 
 had prompted this care filled his eyes with 
 sudden tears but how unreal they seemed ! 
 There was nothing of himself in them, though 
 they were written with a calculated easiness of 
 expression which made him feel ashamed. 
 
 And it was ever the same with his idea of 
 God. He never thought of Him as the giver 
 ~oT"~beautiful things, as the inspirer of happy 
 friendships ; he rather regarded Him as the 
 liberal dispenser of disappointments, of rainy 
 days, of reproofs, of failures. It was natural 
 enough in a place like a public school, where 
 the masters set the boys an example of 
 awkward reticence on serious matters. Even 
 Hugh's housemaster, a conscientious, devoted 
 man, who, in the time of expansion, was taken 
 into the circle of his sincere friendships even 
 he never said a serious word to the boy, except 
 with a constrained and official air as though he 
 heartily disliked the subject. 
 
 It is no part of this slender history to trace 
 the outer life of Hugh Neville. It must suffice 
 to say that, by the time that he rose to the top 
 of the school, he appeared a wholesome, manly,
 
 The Second Harvest 39 
 
 dignified boy, quiet and unobtrusive ; very few 
 suspected him of taking anything but a simple 
 and conventional view of the scheme of things ; 
 and indeed Hugh's view at this time was, if 
 not exactly conventional, at least unreflective. 
 It was his second time of harvest. He had 
 gathered in, in his childhood, a whole treasure 
 of beautiful and delicate impressions of nature. 
 Now he cared little for nature, except as 
 a quiet background for the drama which 
 was proceeding, and which absorbed all 
 his thoughts. What he was now garnering was 
 impressions of personalities and characters, the 
 odd perversities that often surprisingly revealed 
 themselves, the strange generosities and noble- 
 nesses that sometimes made themselves felt. 
 But an English public school is hardly a place 
 where these larger and finer qualities reveal 
 themselves, though they are indeed often there. 
 The whole atmosphere is one of decorum, 
 authority, subordination. Introspection is dis- 
 regarded and even suppressed. To be active, 
 good-humoured, sensible, is the supreme de- 
 velopment. Hugh indeed got nothing but 
 good out of his school days ; the simple code of 
 the place gave him balance and width of view, 
 and the conventionality which is the danger of 
 these institutions never soaked into his mind ; 
 convention was indeed for him like a suit of
 
 40 Beside Still Waters 
 
 bright polished armour, in which he moved 
 about like a youthful knight. He left school 
 curiously immature in many ways. He had 
 savoir faire enough and mild literary interests, 
 but of hard intellectual robustness he had 
 nothing. The studies of the place were indeed 
 not of a nature to encourage it. The most 
 successful boys were graceful triflers with 
 ancient literatures ; to write a polished and 
 vapid poem of Latin verse was Hugh's high- 
 est accomplishment, and he possessed the power 
 of reading, with moderate facility, both Latin 
 and Greek ; add to this a slender knowledge 
 of ancient history, a slight savour of mathe- 
 matics, and a few vague conceptions of science ; 
 such was the dainty intellectual equipment 
 with which he prepared to do battle with the 
 great world. But for all that he knew some- 
 thing of the art of dealing with men. He 
 had learned to obey and to command, to be de- 
 ferential to authority and to exact due obedi- 
 ence, and he had too a priceless treasure of 
 friendship, of generous emotion, untinged 
 with sentimentality, that threw a golden light 
 back upon the tall elms, the ancient towers, 
 the swiftly-running stream. It was to come 
 back to him in later years, in reveries both 
 bitter and sweet, how inexpressibly dear 
 the place had been to him ; indeed when
 
 The Last Morning 4 1 
 
 he left his school, it had simply transmuted 
 itself into his home, the Rectory, with its 
 trees and walks, its narrower circle of interests, 
 having faded quite into the background. 
 
 The last morning at school was filled with a 
 desolation that was almost an anguish ; he had 
 packed, had distributed presents, had said a 
 number of farewells, each thrilled with a pas- 
 sionate hope that he would not be quite forgot- 
 ten, but that he might still claim a little part in 
 the place, in the hearts so dear to him. He lay 
 awake half the night, and in the dawn he 
 rose and put his curtain aside, and looked out 
 on the old buttresses of the chapel, the mellow 
 towers of the college, all in a clear light of in- 
 finite brightness and freshness. He could not 
 restrain his tears, and went back to his bed 
 shaken with sobs, yet aware that it was a luxu- 
 rious sorrow ; it was not sorrow for misspent 
 days ; there were carelessnesses and failures in- 
 numerable, but no dark shadows of regret ; it 
 was rather the thought that the good time was 
 over, that he had not realised, as it sped away, 
 how infinitely sweet it had been, and the 
 thought that it was indeed over and done with, 
 the page closed, the flower faded, the song silent 
 pierced the very core of his heart. One more 
 last thrill of intense emotion was his ; his car- 
 riage, as he drove away, surmounted the bridge
 
 42 Beside Still Waters 
 
 over the stream ; the old fields with the silent 
 towers behind them lay beneath him, the home 
 of a hundred memories. There was hardly a 
 yard of it all that he could not connect with 
 some little incident ; the troubles, the unhap- 
 pinesses, such as they had been, were gone like a 
 shadow ; only the joy remained ; and the mem- 
 ory of those lost joys seemed like a bird beat- 
 ing its wings in the clear air, as it flew to the 
 shadow of the pines. What was to follow ? He 
 cared little to think ; all his mind was bent on 
 the sweet past. Something of the mystery of 
 life came home to him in that moment. He 
 would have readily died then, he felt, if a wish 
 could have brought him death. Yet there was 
 nothing morbid in the thought ; it was only 
 that death seemed for a moment a fitting con- 
 summation for the end of a period that had 
 held a richness and joy that nothing else could 
 ever hold again.
 
 IV 
 
 THE desire to be returning to school with 
 which Hugh went up to the university did not 
 last long ; he paid a visit to his housemaster, 
 and saw with a mixture of envy and amuse- 
 ment how his juniors had all stepped quietly 
 into places which he and his friends had va- 
 cated, and were enjoying the sensation of influ- 
 ence and activity. He was courteously treated 
 and even welcomed ; but he felt all the time like 
 the revenante of Christina Rossetti, " I was of 
 yesterday." And then, too, a few weeks after 
 he had settled at Cambridge, in spite of the 
 strangeness of it all, in spite of the humiliation 
 of being turned in a moment from a person of 
 dignity and importance into a mere " freshman," 
 he realised that the freedom of the life, as com- 
 pared with the barrack-life of school, was irre- 
 sistibly attractive. He had to keep two or three 
 engagements in the day, and even about these 
 there was great elasticity. The independence, 
 the liberty, the kindliness of it all, came home 
 to him with immense charm. And then, too, 
 the city full of mediaeval palaces, the quiet 
 43
 
 44 Beside Still Waters 
 
 dignity, thei ncomparable beauty of everything 
 gave him a deep though partly unconscious 
 satisfaction. But for the first year he was 
 merely a big schoolboy in mind. The real 
 change in his mental history dated from his elec- 
 tion to a small society which met weekly, where 
 a paper was read, and a free discussion followed. 
 Up to this time Hugh's religion had been of a 
 purely orthodox and sensuous description. He 
 had grown up in an ecclesiastical atmosphere, 
 and the ritual of church services, the music, 
 the ceremonial, had been all attractive to him. 
 As for the dogmatic side, he had believed it un- 
 questioningly, just as he had believed in the 
 history or the science that had been taught him. 
 But in this society he met young men and 
 older men too, for several of the Dons were 
 members who were rationalists, materialists, 
 and definitely sceptical. It dawned on his mind 
 for the first time that, while all other sciences 
 were of a deductive kind, endeavouring to ap- 
 proach principles from the observation and 
 classification of phenomena, from the scrutiny 
 of evidence, that theology was a science based 
 on intuitions, and dependent on assumptions 
 which it was impossible to test scientifically. 
 The first effect of this was to develop a great 
 loyalty to his traditions, and almost the first 
 hard thinking he had ever done was in the
 
 Undergraduate Days 45 
 
 direction of attempting to defend his faith on 
 scientific principles. But the attempt proved 
 fruitless ; one by one his cherished convictions 
 were washed away, though he never owned it, 
 not even to himself. He was regarded as a 
 model of orthodoxy. He made friends with a 
 young Fellow of his college, who was an ad- 
 vanced free-thinker and set himself to enlighten 
 the undergraduate, whose instinctive sympathy 
 gave him a charm for older men, of which he 
 was entirely unconscious. They had many se- 
 rious talks on the subject ; and his friend em- 
 ployed a kind of gentle irony in undermining 
 as far as he could the foundations of what 
 seemed to him so irrational a state of mind. 
 One particular conversation Hugh remembered 
 as vividly as he remembered anything. He and 
 his friend had been sitting, on one hot June 
 day, in the college garden, then arrayed in all 
 its mid-summer pomp. They sat near a great 
 syringa bush, the perfume of which shrub in 
 later years always brought back the scene 
 before him ; overhead, among the boughs of a 
 lime-tree, a thrush fluted now cheerfully, now 
 pathetically, like one who was testing a gift of 
 lyrical improvisation. The elder man, wearied 
 by a hard term's work, displayed a certain irri- 
 tability of argument. Hugh held tenaciously 
 to his points ; and at last, after a silence, his
 
 46 Beside Still Waters 
 
 friend turned to him and said : " Well, after all, 
 it reduces itself to this : you have an interior 
 witness to the truth of what you say, which 
 you can honestly hold to be superior to the ex- 
 terior evidences of its improbability ? " Hugh 
 smiled uneasily, and, conscious that he was say- 
 ing something which he hoped rather than 
 knew, said, " I think I have." The older man 
 shrugged his shoulders and said, " Then I can 
 say no more !" nor did he ever again revert to 
 the question, from what Hugh thought was a 
 real generosity and tenderness of spirit. 
 
 All the time Hugh practised a species of emo- 
 tional religion, attending the chapel services de- 
 voutly, even willingly hearing sermons. There 
 was a little dark church, in a tiny courtyard 
 hemmed in by houses and approached by a nar- 
 row passage, served by a Fellow of a neighbour- 
 ing college, who preached gentle devotional 
 discourses on Sunday evenings, to which many 
 undergraduates used to go. These were a great 
 help to Hugh, because they transferred religion 
 from the intellectual to the spiritual region ; 
 and thus, though he was gradually made aware 
 of the weakness of his intellectual position, he 
 continued his religious life, in the hope that the 
 door of a mystery might some day be opened 
 to him, and that he might arrive, by an inner 
 process, at a conviction which his intellect
 
 Strain 47 
 
 could not give him. But here as elsewhere he 
 was swayed by a species of timidity and cau- 
 tion. While on the one hand his intellect told 
 him that there was no sure and incontrovertible 
 standing-ground for the orthodoxy which he 
 professed, yet, on the other hand, he could not 
 bear to relinquish the chance that certainty 
 might be found on different lines. 
 
 In the middle of these speculations, he suf- 
 fered a dark experience. He fell for the first 
 time in his life into ill-health. His vitality and 
 nervous force were great, and though soon de- 
 pleted were soon recuperated ; but the new and 
 ardent interests of the university had appealed 
 to him on many sides ; he worked hard, took 
 violent exercise, and filled up every space of 
 time with conversation and social enjoyment; 
 he had no warning of the strain, except an un- 
 accustomed weariness, of which he made light, 
 drawing upon his nervous energy to sustain him ; 
 the wearier he grew, the more keenly he flung 
 himself into whatever interested him, learning, 
 as he thought, that the way to conquer lassi- 
 tude was by increased exertions, the feeling 
 of fatigue always passing off when he once 
 grew absorbed in a subject. He took to sit- 
 ting up late and rising early, and he had 
 never seemed to himself more alert and vig- 
 orous in mind, when the collapse came. He
 
 48 Beside Still Waters 
 
 was suddenly attacked, without warning, by 
 insomnia. 
 
 One night he went to bed late, and found it 
 difficult to sleep ; thoughts raced through his 
 brain, scenes and images forming and reforming 
 with inconceivable rapidity ; at last he fell 
 asleep, to awake an hour or two later in 
 an intolerable agony of mind. His heart 
 beat thick and fast, and a shapeless horror 
 seemed to envelop him. He struck a light 
 and tried to read, but a ghastly and poi- 
 sonous fear of he knew not what seemed 
 to clutch at his mind. At last he fell in- 
 to a broken sleep ; but when he rose in the 
 morning, he knew that some mysterious evil 
 had befallen him. If he had been older and 
 wiser, he would have gone at once to some 
 sensible physician, and a short period of rest 
 would probably have restored him ; but the 
 suffering appeared to be of so purely mental a 
 character that he did not realise how much of 
 it was physical. For that day and for many 
 days he wrestled with a fierce blackness of de- 
 pression, which gradually concentrated itself 
 upon his religious life ; he became possessed by 
 a strong delusion that it was a punishment 
 sent to him by God for tampering with 
 freedom of thought, and little by little a 
 deep moral anxiety took hold of him. He
 
 Recovery 49 
 
 searched the recesses of his heart, and ended by 
 painting his whole life in the blackest of colours. 
 In the endeavour to find some degree of 
 peace, he read the Scriptures constantly, and 
 the marks he made in his Bible against verses 
 which seemed to hold out hope to him or to 
 plunge him into despair, remained through the 
 after years as signs of this strange conflict of 
 mind. His distress was infinitely increased by 
 attending some services at a mission which 
 then happened to be proceeding which, instead 
 of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that 
 his case was past recovery. For some weeks 
 he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of 
 the cup of dark and causeless depression, and 
 laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. 
 This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his 
 whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of 
 his work, of his friendships, of the easy philoso- 
 phy of his life. He began to learn the distress- 
 ing necessity of dissembling his feelings; he 
 endeavoured at great cost to bear as uncon- 
 cerned a part as before in simple festivities 
 and gatherings, while the clouds gathered and 
 the thunder muttered in his soul. And all 
 the time the answer never came. Wrestle as 
 he might, there seemed to him an impenetra- 
 ble barrier between him and the golden light 
 of God. He learned in what dark and cold
 
 50 Beside Still Waters 
 
 isolation it is possible for the soul to wander. 
 Slowly, very slowly, the outlook brightened ; a 
 whole range of new emotions opened before 
 him. The expressions of suffering and sorrow, 
 that had seemed to him before but touching 
 and beautiful phrases, became clear and vivid. 
 His own powers of expression became more 
 subtle and rich. And thus, though he gradu- 
 ally drifted back into a species of spiritual 
 epicureanism, he always felt grateful for his 
 sojourn in the dark world. He did not aban- 
 don his religious profession, but he became 
 more content to suspend his judgment. He 
 saw dimly that the mistake he had made was 
 in hoping for anything of the nature of cer- 
 tainty. He became indeed aware that the only 
 persons who are indubitably in error are those 
 who make up their minds in early life to a the- 
 ory about God and the world, and who from 
 that moment admit no evidence into their 
 minds except the evidence that supports their 
 view. Hugh saw that life must be, for him at 
 all events, a pilgrimage, in which, so long as 
 his open-mindedness, his candour, his enthu- 
 siasm did not desert him, there were endless 
 lessons to be learned by the way. And thus he 
 came back gratefully and wearily to his old 
 life, his old friendships. His college became 
 to him a very blessed place ; apart from the
 
 A First Book 51 
 
 ordinary social life, from the work and the 
 games which formed a background and frame- 
 work in which relationships were set, he found 
 a new region of desires, impulses, ideas, through 
 which he wandered at his will. 
 
 At this time Hugh could not be said to be 
 happy. The shadows of his dark moods often 
 hung about him, and he bore in his face the 
 traces of his suffering. He felt, too, that he 
 had failed in his religious quest, though side 
 by side with this was the consciousness that 
 he had been meant to fail. His religious views 
 were a vague theism, coupled with a certain 
 tendency to determinism, to which his wander- 
 ings had conducted him. Christian determin- 
 ism he called it, because, though his old 
 unquestioning view of the historical evidences 
 of Christianity had practically disappeared, yet 
 his belief in Christian morality as the highest 
 system that had yet appeared in the world was 
 unshaken. And it was at this time, just after 
 taking his degree, that he wrote a little book, a 
 species of imaginary biography which attained, 
 to his surprise, a certain vogue. The book was 
 an extraordinarily formless and irrelevant pro- 
 duction, written upon no plan, into which he 
 shovelled all his vague speculations upon life. 
 But its charm was its ingenuous youthful- 
 ness and emotional sincerity ; and, although he
 
 52 Beside Still Waters 
 
 afterwards came to dislike the thought of the 
 book so much, that at a later date he bought up 
 and destroyed all the copies of it that remained 
 unsold, yet for all that it had the value of being 
 a perfectly sincere revelation of personality* 
 and represented a real, if a sentimental, experi- 
 ence. The book was severely reviewed, but as 
 it was published anonymously this gave Hugh 
 little anxiety ; and so he shouldered his burden, 
 and went out of the sheltered life into the wil- 
 derness of the world.
 
 V 
 
 THERE will be no attempt made here to trace 
 in any detail the monotonous years of Hugh's 
 professional life, because they seemed to him to 
 have been in one sense lost years ; there was at 
 all events no conscious growth in his soul. His 
 spirit seemed to him afterwards to have lain, 
 during those years, like a worm in a cocoon, 
 living a blind life. Externally, indeed, they 
 were the busiest time of his life. He became 
 a hard-worked official in the Civil Service. He 
 lived in rooms in London. He spent his day 
 at the office, he composed innumerable docu- 
 ments, he wrote endless letters ; he seemed to 
 himself, in a way, to be useful; he did not dis- 
 like the work, and he found it interesting to 
 have to get up some detailed case, and to pre- 
 sent it as lucidly as possible. He began his of- 
 ficial life with an intention of doing some sort 
 of literary work as well; but he found himself 
 incapable of any sustained effort. Still, he con- 
 tinued to write; he did a good deal of review- 
 ing, and kept a voluminous diary, in which he 
 53
 
 54 Beside Still Waters 
 
 scribbled anything that struck him, recording 
 scenes, conversations, impressions of books and 
 people. This he found was easy enough, but it 
 seemed impossible to complete anything or to 
 give it a finished form. However, he acquired the 
 habit of writing, and gained some facility of ex- 
 pression. His short holidays were spent either 
 in travel, with some like-minded companion, or 
 in his quiet country home, where he read a large 
 number of books, and lived much in the open 
 air. But his progress seemed to have been 
 purely intellectual. He lost his interest in ab- 
 stract problems and in religious matters, which 
 retired to a remote distance, and appeared to him 
 to be little more than a line of blue hills on a 
 distant horizon, as seen by a man who goes up 
 and down in a city. He had visited them once, 
 those hills of hope, and he used to think vaguely 
 of visiting them again ; but meanwhile the im- 
 pulse and the opportunity alike failed him. 
 
 Yet in another sense he did not consider those 
 days lost. He gained, he used to feel after- 
 wards, a knowledge of the world, a knowledge 
 of men, a knowledge of affairs. This contact 
 with realities took from his somewhat dreamy 
 and reflective temperament its unpractical 
 quality. If he chose afterwards to leave what 
 is commonly called the world, it was a deliber- 
 ate choice, founded on a thorough knowledge
 
 Practical Life 55 
 
 of its conditions, and not upon a timid and awk- 
 ward ignorance. He did not leave the world 
 because it frightened or bewildered him, but be- 
 cause he did not find in it the things of which 
 he was in search. Neither, on the other hand, 
 did he quit the life of affairs like a weakling or 
 an inefficient person who had failed in it and 
 had persuaded himself that incompetence was 
 unworldliness. Hugh became a remarkably ef- 
 ficient official, alert, sensible, practical, and pru- 
 dent. He was marked out for promotion. He 
 was looked upon as a man who got on well with 
 inferiors and superiors alike, who could be 
 trusted to do a complicated piece of business 
 well, who was worth consulting. 
 
 Moreover he acquired a very serviceable and 
 lucid style, a power of clear statement, which 
 afterwards stood him in good stead. His of- 
 ficial work gave him the power of seeing the 
 point, it gave him an economy of words, an ef- 
 fective briskness and solidity of presentment ; 
 at the same time his literary work prevented 
 him from degenerating into a mere precis- writer. 
 
 It is very difficult to say which of the days of 
 a man's life are wasted and which are fruitful. 
 It is not necessarily the days in which a man 
 gives himself up to his chosen work in which he 
 makes most progress. Sometimes a long inar- 
 ticulate period, when there seems to a man to
 
 56 Beside Still Waters 
 
 be a dearth of ideas, a mental drought, acts as a 
 sort of incubation in which a thought is slowly 
 conceived and perfected. Sometimes a long 
 period of repression stores force at high pres- 
 sure. The lean years are often the prelude, 
 even the cause, of the years of fatness, when the 
 exhausted and overteemed earth has lain fallow 
 and still, storing its vital juices. 
 
 Sometimes, too, a disagreeable duty, under- 
 taken in heaviness and faithfully fulfilled, re- 
 wards one by an increase of mental strength and 
 agility. A painful experience which seems to 
 drown a man's whole nature in depression and 
 sadness, to cloud hope and eagerness alike, can 
 be seen in retrospect to have been a period fer- 
 tile in patience and courage. 
 
 Hugh did not find his official life depres- 
 sing, but very much the reverse. He enjoyed 
 dealing with affairs and with men. He used 
 sometimes to wonder, half regretfully, half com- 
 fortably, at the fading of his old dreams, in 
 which so much that was beautiful was mingled 
 with so much that was uneasy. He began 
 indeed to be somewhat impatient of sentiment 
 and emotion, and to think with a sort of com- 
 passion of those who allowed themselves to be 
 ruled by such motives. He did not exactly 
 adopt a conventional standard, but he found it 
 easier to live on a conventional plane, until he
 
 The Official World 57 
 
 even began to be viewed by some of his old 
 friends as a man who had adopted a conven- 
 tional view. Hugh indeed found, in his official 
 life, that the majority of those among whom 
 his lot was cast did seem whole-heartedly con- 
 tent to live in a conventional world and enjoy 
 conventional successes. Such men, and they 
 were numerous, never seemed disposed to 
 probe beneath the surface of things, unless 
 they were confronted by adverse circumstances, 
 bereavements, or indifferent health ; and, under 
 these conditions, their one aim seemed to be 
 to escape as soon as possible from the region 
 of discomfort : they viewed reflection as a sort 
 of symptom of failing vitality. And so Hugh 
 drifted to a certain extent into feeling that 
 self-questioning and abstract thought were a 
 species of intellectual ill-health. One arrived 
 at no solution, any more than one did in the 
 case of a toothache ; the one thing to do was 
 to get rid of the unsatisfactory conditions as 
 swiftly as possible. 
 
 During this period of his life Hugh made 
 many acquaintances, but no great friends. In 
 fact the idea of close and intimate relationship 
 with others fell more and more into the back- 
 ground ; he became interested rather in the 
 superficial and spectatorial aspect of things and 
 persons. He began to see how differences of
 
 58 Beside Still Waters 
 
 character and temperament played into each 
 other, and formed a resultant which merged 
 itself in the slow current of affairs. But he 
 seemed to himself to be acquiring and sorting 
 tangible experiences, and to have little specu- 
 lative interest at all ; he neither craved to make 
 or to receive confidences. The hours not occu- 
 pied by business were given to social life and 
 to reading ; and he was, or fancied himself to 
 be, perfectly contented. 
 
 But as the years went on, instead of sinking 
 into purely conventional ways, Hugh found a 
 mood of dissatisfaction growing upon him. He 
 found that after his holidays he came back 
 with increasing reluctance to his work. The 
 work itself, how unsatisfactory it became ! 
 Half the time and energy of the office seemed 
 to be spent on creating rather than performing 
 work ; an immense amount of detail seemed to 
 be entirely useless, and to cumber rather than 
 to assist the conduct of the business that was 
 important. Of course much of it was neces- 
 sary work which had to be done by some one ; 
 but Hugh began to wonder whether his life 
 was well bestowed in carrying out a system of 
 which so much seemed to consist in dealing 
 with unimportant minutiae, and in amassing 
 immense records of things that deserved only 
 to be forgotten. He found himself reflecting
 
 Drudgery 59 
 
 that life was short, and that he tended to spend 
 the greater part of his waking hours in matters 
 that were essentially trivial. He began to 
 question whether there was any duty for him 
 in the matter at all, and by what law, human 
 or divine, a man was bound to spend his days 
 in work in the usefulness of which he did not 
 wholly believe. 
 
 Living, as he did, an inexpensive life of great 
 simplicity, he had contrived to save a certain 
 amount of money, and he was surprised to find 
 how fast it accumulated. When he had been 
 some fifteen years in his office, a great-uncle of 
 his died, leaving Hugh quite unexpectedly a 
 sum of a few thousand pounds, which, together 
 with his savings, gave him a small but secure 
 competence, as large, in fact, as the income he 
 was accustomed to spend. 
 
 Even so, he did not at once decide to leave his 
 official career. It seemed to him at first that the 
 abandonment of a chosen profession ought not 
 to depend upon the fact that one could live in- 
 dependently without it ; he felt that there ought 
 to be a better reason for pursuing a certain course 
 of life than mere livelihood. But his accession 
 of means enabled Hugh to give up all literary 
 hack-work, such as reviewing, which had long 
 been somewhat of a burden to him ; he had 
 found himself of late agreeing more and more
 
 60 Beside Still Waters 
 
 with William Morris's doctrine, that there was 
 something degrading in a man's printing his 
 opinions about other persons' books for money ; 
 and he now began to indulge in more ambitious 
 literary schemes. This involved him in a good 
 deal of reading ; but he found himself thwarted 
 at every turn by the pressure of official busi- 
 ness. He found that his reading had to be done 
 over and over again ; that he would master a 
 section of his subject, and then for lack of time 
 be compelled to put it aside, until it had passed 
 out of his mind and needed to be recovered. 
 
 At last he made up his mind that he would take 
 the first obvious opportunity that offered itself 
 to end his official work. It came in the form of 
 an offer which, a year or two before, would have 
 gratified his ambition, and which would have 
 bound him without question to official work for 
 the rest of his active life ; he was offered in very 
 complimentary terms the headship of a newly 
 created department. He not only declined it, 
 to the surprise and disappointment of his chief, 
 but he resigned his appointment at the same 
 time. He had a somewhat painful interview 
 with the head of the office, who told him that he 
 was sacrificing a brilliant and honourable career 
 at the very moment when it was opening before 
 him. Hugh did not, however, hesitate; he found 
 it a difficult task to explain to his superior ex-
 
 Resignation 61 
 
 actly what he intended to do, who expressed a 
 good-humoured contempt for the idea of mak- 
 ing a mild literary experiment, at an age when 
 literary success seemed unattainable. The great 
 man, indeed, one of whose virtues was an easy 
 frankness, said that it seemed to him as absurd 
 as if Hugh had expressed the intention of de- 
 voting the rest of his life to practising the piano 
 or drawing in water-colours. Hugh was quite 
 aware that his literary position was of a dilet- 
 tante kind, and that he had done nothing to 
 justify the hope that success in literature was 
 within his reach. He pleaded that the service of 
 the State was encumbered by a mass of unneces- 
 sary detail, in the usefulness of which he did not 
 believe. The Secretary said that of course there 
 was a good deal of drudgery, but that the same 
 applied to most lives of practical usefulness; 
 and he pointed out that by accepting the new 
 appointment, Hugh would be set free to attend 
 to work of a more original and important kind. 
 But Hugh felt himself sustained by a curiously 
 inflexible determination, for which he could not 
 wholly account ; he merely said that he had con- 
 sidered the question in all its bearings, and that 
 his mind was made up; upon which the Secre- 
 tary shrugged his shoulders, and said that he 
 did not wish to over-persuade him ; and that in- 
 deed, if Hugh accepted the new post merely in
 
 62 Beside Still Waters 
 
 deference to persuasion, it would be good nei- 
 ther for himself nor the service. He added a few 
 conventional words to the effect that the office 
 would be sorry to lose so courteous and compe- 
 tent an official; and Hugh recognised that his 
 chief, with the instinct of a thoroughly practical 
 man, had dismissed him from his thoughts, as 
 an entirely fantastic and wrong-headed person. 
 His retirement was not unattended by pain ; 
 he found that the announcement of his depart- 
 ure aroused more surprise and sorrow among 
 his colleagues than he had expected ; it was 
 depressing, too, to say good-bye to the well- 
 known faces, the familiar rooms, the routine 
 that formed so substantial a part of his life. 
 But he found in himself a wholly unanticipated 
 courage, and even a secret glee at the prospect 
 of his release, which revealed to him how con- 
 genial it was. He cleared up the accumulations 
 of years ; he made his adieus with much real 
 emotion ; yet it was a solemn rather than a 
 sad moment when he put his papers away for 
 th e last time, and handed over the keys of 
 the familiar boxes to his successor. He went 
 slowly down the stairs alone, and stopped at 
 the door to say good-bye to the old attendant, 
 whom he never remembered to have seen absent 
 from his place. The old man said, " Well, sir, 
 I did think as you would not have left us yet."
 
 Retirement 63 
 
 Hugh replied, smiling, "Well, we have all to 
 move on when our time comes, and I hope I 
 leave only friends behind me." The old man 
 seemed much affected by this, and said, * Yes, 
 sir, we shall be glad to see you whenever you 
 can look in upon us " and then with much 
 fumbling drew out and presented a small pen- 
 wiper to Hugh, which he had made with his 
 own hands "and God bless you, sir!" he 
 added, with an apology for the liberty he was 
 taking. This was the only incident in his 
 leave-taking which affected Hugh to tears ; but 
 they were tears of emotion, not of regret. He 
 was looking on to the new life, and not back 
 to the old ; and as he went out into the foggy 
 air, and along the familiar pavement, there was 
 nothing in his heart that called him back. He 
 was grateful for all the kindness and affection 
 of his friends, and the thought that he held 
 a place in their hearts. What he hoped, he 
 hardly knew ; but the release from the burden 
 of the tedious and useless work was like that 
 which Christian experienced, when the burden 
 rolled from his back into the grave that stood 
 in the bottom, and he saw it no more.
 
 VI 
 
 ONE of the best things that Hugh's profes- 
 sional life had brought him was a friendship 
 with his father; their relations had been in- 
 creasingly tense all through the undergraduate 
 days; if Hugh had not been of a superficially 
 timorous temperament, disliking intensely the 
 atmosphere of displeasure, disapproval, or mis- 
 understanding, among those with whom he 
 lived, there would probably have been sharp 
 collisions. His father did not realise that the 
 boy was growing up ; active and vigorous him- 
 self, he felt no diminution of energy, no sense 
 of age, and he forgot that the relations of the 
 home circle were insensibly altering. He took 
 an intense interest in his son's university career, 
 but interfered with his natural liberty, expect- 
 ing him to spend all his vacations at home, and 
 discouraging visits to houses of which he did 
 not approve. He was very desirous that Hugh 
 should ultimately take orders, and was nerv- 
 ously anxious that he should come under no 
 sceptical influences. The result was that Hugh 
 64
 
 His Father's Friendship 65 
 
 simply excluded his father from his confidence, 
 telling him nothing except the things of which 
 he knew he would approve, and never asking 
 his advice about matters on which he felt at all 
 keenly ; because he knew that his father would 
 tend to attempt to demolish, with a certain 
 bitterness and contempt, the speculations in 
 which he indulged, and would be shocked and 
 indignant at the mere beckoning of ideas 
 which Hugh found to be widely entertained 
 even by men whom he respected greatly. His 
 father's faith indeed, subtle and even beautiful 
 as it was, was built upon axioms which it 
 seemed to him a kind of puerile perversity to 
 deny. Religion came to him in definite and 
 traditional channels, and to seek it in other 
 directions appeared to him a species of wanton 
 profanity. 
 
 The result was an entire divergence of 
 thought, of which Hugh was fully conscious ; 
 but it did not seem to him that there was any- 
 thing to be gained by candid avowal. He was 
 at one with his father in the essential doctrines 
 of Christianity; and being by nature of a specu- 
 lative turn, he considered the discrimination of 
 religious truth, the criticism of religious tradi- 
 tion, to be rather a stimulating and agreeable 
 mental pastime than a question of ethics or 
 morals. Thus he was led into practising a kind
 
 66 Beside Still Waters 
 
 of hypocrisy with his father in matters of relig- 
 ion. He felt that it was not worth while engaging 
 in argument of a kind that would have distressed 
 his father and irritated himself, upon matters 
 which he believed to be intellectual, while his 
 father believed them to be ethical. Hugh often 
 pondered over this condition of things, which 
 he felt to be unsatisfactory, but no solution oc- 
 curred to him ; he said to himself that he valued 
 domestic peace rather than a frank understand- 
 ing upon matters to which he and his father at- 
 tached a wholly different value. But meantime 
 he drifted further and further away from the 
 ecclesiastical attitude, though his fondness for 
 ecclesiastical art and ceremony effectually dis- 
 guised from his father the speculative move- 
 ment of his mind. 
 
 But his independent entrance upon his pro- 
 fessional life had given him an emancipation of 
 which he was not at first fully conscious. He 
 did not act from set purpose, and only became 
 aware later that if he had thought out a diplo- 
 matic scheme of action, he could not have de- 
 vised a more effectual one. He simply made 
 his own arrangements for the holidays ; he 
 travelled, he paid visits ; he came home when it 
 was convenient to him ; but the result was that 
 in the early years of his professional life he was 
 very little at home. Hugh supposed afterwards
 
 His Father's Friendship 67 
 
 that his father must have felt this deeply ; but 
 he did not show it, except that suddenly, al- 
 most in a day and an hour, Hugh became aware 
 that their relations had completely altered. He 
 found himself met with a deference, a courteous 
 equality which he had never before experienced. 
 Instead of giving him advice, his father began 
 to ask it, and consulted him freely on matters 
 which he had hitherto kept entirely in his own 
 hands. The result was at once an extraordi- 
 nary expansion of affection and admiration on 
 Hugh's part. He realised, as he had never 
 done before, the richness and energy of his 
 father's mind within certain limits, his practical 
 ability, his highmindedness, his amazing moral 
 purity. Once freed from the subservient rela- 
 tion imposed upon him by habit, Hugh saw in 
 his father a man of real genius and effectiveness. 
 The effectiveness he had hitherto taken as amat- 
 ter of course ; he had thought of his father as effec- 
 tive in the same way that he had thought of him 
 as severe, dignified, handsome it had seemed a 
 part of himself; but he now began to compare 
 his father with other men, and to realise that he 
 was not only an exceptional man, but a man with 
 a rare intensity of nature, whose whole life was 
 lived on a plane and in an atmosphere that was 
 impossible to easy, tolerant, conventional na- 
 tures. He realised his father's capacity for
 
 68 Beside Still Waters 
 
 leadership, his extraordinary and unconscious 
 influence over all with whom he came in con- 
 tact, the burning glow of his fervid tempera- 
 ment, his scorn and detestation of all that was 
 vile or mean. It did not at once become easier 
 for Hugh to speak freely of what was passing 
 in his own mind ; indeed he realised that his 
 father was one of those whose prejudices were 
 so strong, and whose personal magnetism was 
 so great, that not even his oldest and most in- 
 timate friends could afford to express opposi- 
 tion to him in matters on which he felt deeply. 
 But Hugh saw that he must accept it as an un- 
 alterable condition of his father's nature, and 
 realising this he felt that he could concede him 
 an honour and a homage, due to one of com- 
 manding moral greatness, which he had never 
 willingly conceded to his paternal authority. 
 The result was a great and growing happiness. 
 Sometimes indeed Hugh made mistakes : be- 
 guiled by the increasing freedom of their inter- 
 course, he allowed himself to discuss lightly 
 matters on which he could hardly believe that 
 any one could feel passionately. But a real 
 and deep friendship sprang up between the two, 
 and Hugh was at times simply astonished at 
 the confidence which his father reposed in him. 
 There were still, indeed, days when the tension 
 was felt. But Hugh became aware that his
 
 His Father's Friendship 69 
 
 father made strong efforts to banish his own de- 
 pression and melancholy when he was with his 
 son, that it might not cloud their intercourse. 
 Signs such as these came home to Hugh with 
 intense pathos, and evoked an affection which 
 became one of the real forces of his life. His 
 father had consented to Hugh's entering the 
 Civil Service, but he continued to hope that his 
 son might ultimately decide to take orders ; he 
 had cherished that hope from Hugh's earliest 
 years, and seeing Hugh's fondness for the ex- 
 ternals of religion, while he knew nothing of his 
 mental attitude, he still believed and prayed 
 that Hugh might be led to enter the service of 
 the Church. Hugh realised that this was still 
 his father's deep preoccupation, and perceived 
 that he avoided any direct expression of his 
 wishes, exercising only a transparent diplomacy 
 which was infinitely touching so touching in- 
 deed that Hugh sometimes debated within him- 
 self whether he might not so far sacrifice his 
 own bent, which was more and more directed to 
 the maintenance of an independent attitude, in 
 order to give his father so deep and lasting a 
 delight. But he was forced to decide that the 
 motive was not cogent enough, and that to 
 adopt a definite position, involving the suppres- 
 sion of some of his strongest convictions, for 
 the sake of giving one he loved a pleasure, was
 
 70 Beside Still Waters 
 
 like exposing the ark to the risks of battle. He 
 knew well enough that if he had declared his 
 full mind on the subject to his father, the ex- 
 tent to which he felt forced to suspend his 
 judgment in religious matters, his father would 
 have desired the step no longer. 
 
 With the rest of the family circle, in these 
 years, Hugh's relations were affectionate but 
 colourless. With his natural reticence, he 
 shrank from speaking of the thoughts which 
 predominated in his mind ; especially while 
 there was an abundance of interesting and un- 
 controversial topics which afforded endless sub- 
 jects of conversation ; and the tendency to leave 
 matters alone which, if debated, might have 
 caused distress, was heightened by the death of 
 one of Hugh's sisters. 
 
 She was a girl of a very deep, loyal, and 
 generous nature, full of activities and benevo- 
 lence, and at the same time of a reflective order 
 of mind. She had been a strong central force 
 in the family ; and Hugh found it strange to 
 realise, after her death, that each member of the 
 family had felt themselves in a peculiar relation 
 to her, as the object of her special preoccupation. 
 The event, which was strangely sudden, stirred 
 Hugh to the bottom of his soul. The vacant 
 chair, the closed room, the sudden cessation of 
 a hundred activities, brought sharply to his
 
 The Dark Mystery 71 
 
 mind the dark mystery of death. That a door 
 should thus have been suddenly opened, and 
 one of the familiar band bidden to enter, and 
 that the loving heart that had left them should 
 be unable to communicate the slightest hint of 
 its presence to those who desired her in vain, 
 seemed to him a horrible and desperate thing. 
 For the first time in his life the terrible secrets 
 of identity opened before his eyes. He could 
 not bring himself to believe in the extinction of 
 so vital, so individual a force, but he recognised 
 with a mournful terror that, so far as scientific 
 evidence went, the whole preponderating force 
 of facts tended to prove that the individuality 
 was, if not extinguished, at least merged in some 
 central tide of life, and that the only rebutting 
 evidence was the cry of the burdened heart 
 that dared not believe a possibility so stern, 
 so appalling. He wrestled dumbly and darkly 
 against these sad convictions, and how many 
 times, in miserable solitude, did he send out a 
 wistful prayer that, if it were possible, some 
 hint, some slender vision, might be granted him 
 as a proof that one so dear, so desired, so mo- 
 mently missed, was still near him in spirit. 
 But no answer came back from the dark thresh- 
 old, and, leaning in, he could but discern a land- 
 scape of shapeless horror, in which no live thing 
 moved by the shore of a grey and weltering sea.
 
 72 Beside Still Waters 
 
 Little by little a dim hint came to comfort him ; 
 he thought of all the unnumbered generations 
 of men who had lived their brief lives in sun 
 and shade, full of hopes and schemes and af- 
 fections. One by one they had lain down in 
 the dust. In the face of so immutable, so ab- 
 solute a law, it seemed that rebellion and ques- 
 tioning were fruitless. God gives, God takes 
 away, He makes and mars, He creates, He dis- 
 solves ; and if we cannot trust the Will that 
 bids us be and not be, what else in this shifting 
 world, full of dark secrets, can we trust? It 
 cannot be said that this thought comforted 
 Hugh, but it sustained him. He learned again to 
 suspend his hopes and fears, and to leave all 
 confidently in the hands of God ; and time, too, 
 had its healing balm ; the bitter loss, by soft 
 gradations, became a sweet and loving memory, 
 and a memory that sweetened the thought of 
 the dark world whither too he must sometime 
 turn his steps. For if indeed our individuality 
 endures, he could realise that one who loved so 
 purely, so loyally, so intensely, would not fail 
 him on the other side of the silent river, but 
 would welcome him with unabated love, per- 
 haps only feeling a tender wonder that those 
 who yet had the passage to make should find 
 it to be so terrible, so unendurable.
 
 VII 
 
 THE question which, when he resigned his 
 appointment, occupied Hugh, was where he 
 should live. He would have preferred to settle 
 in the country, loving, as he did, silence and 
 pure air, woods and fields. He had never liked 
 London, though it had become endurable to 
 him by familiarity. He decided, however, that 
 at first, at all events, he must if possible find a 
 place where he could see a certain amount of 
 society, and where he would be able to obtain 
 the books he expected to need. He was 
 afraid that if he transferred himself at once to 
 the country he might sink into a morbid seclu- 
 sion, as he had no strong sociable impulses. 
 His thoughts naturally turned to his own 
 university. He thought that if he could find a 
 small house at Cambridge, suitable to his means, 
 he would be able to have as much or as little 
 society as he desired, while at the same time he 
 would be on the edge of the country. More- 
 over the flat fenland, which is generally sup- 
 posed to be unattractive, had always possessed 
 
 73
 
 74 Beside Still Waters 
 
 a peculiar charm for Hugh. He spent some 
 time at home, revelling in his freedom, while he 
 made inquiries for a house. The thought of a 
 long perspective of days before him, without 
 fixed engagements, without responsibilities, so 
 that he could come and go as he pleased, filled 
 him with delight. 
 
 His father had not at all disapproved of the 
 decision. Hugh had shown him that he was 
 pecuniarily independent ; but he was aware 
 that in the background of his father's mind lay 
 the hope that, even so late in life, he might still 
 be drawn to enter the ministry of the Church. 
 At all events he thought that Hugh might gain 
 some academical position ; and thus he gave a 
 decidedly cordial assent to the change, only 
 expressing a hope that Hugh would not make a 
 hurried decision. 
 
 Hugh did not delay to sketch out a plan of 
 work. But whereas before he had worked only 
 when he could, he now found himself in the 
 blessed position of being able to work when he 
 would. Instead of becoming, as he had feared, 
 desultory, he found that his work exercised a 
 strong attraction over him indeed that it 
 became for him, with an amazing swiftness, the 
 one pursuit in the world about which exercise, 
 food, amusement, grouped themselves as 
 secondary accessories. This was no doubt in
 
 Liberty 75 
 
 part accounted for by the fact that he had 
 acquired a habit of regular work, a craving for 
 steady occupation ; but it was also far more due 
 to the fact that Hugh had really, and almost as 
 though by accident, discovered his ruling 
 passion. He was in truth a writer, a word- 
 artist ; his only fear was whether, in the hard 
 work of unmitigated years of specified toil, he 
 had not perhaps lost the requisite mental 
 agility, whether he had not failed to acquire 
 the elastic use of words, the almost instinctive 
 sense of colour and motion in language, which 
 can only be won through constant and even 
 unsuccessful use. That remained to be seen ; 
 and meanwhile his plans settled themselves. 
 He found a small, picturesque, irregularly-built 
 house crushed in between the road and the river, 
 which in fact dipped its very feet in the stream ; 
 from its quaint oriel and gallery, Hugh could 
 look down, on a bright day, into the clear 
 heart of the water, and survey its swaying reeds 
 and poising fish. The house was near the 
 centre of the town ; yet from its back windows 
 it overlooked a long green stretch of rough 
 pasture-land, now a common, and once a fen, 
 which came like a long green finger straight 
 into the very heart of the town. There was 
 a great sluice a few yards away, through 
 which the river poured into a wide reach of
 
 76 Beside Still Waters 
 
 stream, so that the air was always musical 
 with the sound of falling water, the murmur 
 of which could be heard on still nights 
 through the shuttered and curtained case- 
 ments. The sun, on the short winter days, 
 used to set, in smouldering glory, behind 
 the long lines of leafless trees which termi- 
 nated the fen ; and in summer the little 
 wooded peninsula that formed part of a 
 neighbouring garden was rich in leaf, and 
 loud with the song of birds. The little 
 house had, in fact, the poetical quality, and 
 charmed the eye and ear at every turn, the 
 whisper of the little weir outside seeming to 
 brim with sweet contented sound every corner 
 of the quaint, irregular, and low-ceiled rooms, 
 with their large beams and dark corners. 
 
 So Hugh settled here after his emancipation, 
 and for the first time in his life realised what it 
 meant to be free. He woke day after day to 
 the sensation that he had no engagements, no 
 ties; that he could arrange his hours of work 
 and liberty as he liked, go where he would ; that 
 no person would question his right, interfere 
 with his independence, or even take the least 
 interest in his movements. His freedom was 
 at first, to his dismay, something of a burden to 
 him; he had been used to ceaseless interruptions, 
 multifarious engagements ; the one struggle, the
 
 Cambridge 77 
 
 one preoccupation, had been to win a few hours 
 for solitude, for reflection, for literary work. 
 But now that the whole of time was at his dis- 
 posal, he found himself unable to concentrate 
 his mind, to apply himself. He had several 
 friends at Cambridge ; but the strain of making 
 new acquaintances, of familiarising himself with 
 the temperaments and the tastes of the new set 
 of personalities, was very great. It was impos- 
 sible for Hugh to enter upon neutral, civil, 
 colourless relations. He could not meet a man 
 or a woman without endeavouring to find some 
 common ground of sympathy and understand- 
 ing. And this was made more difficult to him 
 at Cambridge by the swift monotony in which 
 the years had flowed away. Time seemed to 
 have stood still there in those twenty years. 
 Many of the men that he remembered seemed 
 still to be there, contentedly pursuing the cus- 
 tomary round, circulating from their rooms to 
 Hall, from Hall to Combination-room, and back 
 again. Thus Hugh, picking up the thread where 
 he had laid it down, appeared to himself to be 
 youthful, inexperienced, insignificant ; while to 
 those who made his acquaintance he seemed to 
 be a grave and serious man of affairs, with a 
 standing in the world and a definite line of his 
 own. 
 
 Thus the first months were months of some
 
 78 Beside Still Waters 
 
 depression. Not that he would have gone back 
 if he could, or that he ever doubted of the wis- 
 dom, the inevitableness of the step ; even in 
 moments of dejection it cheered him to feel 
 that he was not eating his heart out in fruitless 
 work, or solemnly performing a duty, which 
 relied for seriousness upon its outer place in a 
 settled scheme, rather than upon any intrinsic 
 value that it possessed. But his life soon settled 
 down into a steady routine. He gave his morn- 
 ings to letters, business, and reading ; his after- 
 noons to exercise ; his evenings to writing and 
 academical sociabilities. His aim began gradu- 
 ally to be to make the most of the sacred hours 
 of the late afternoon, when his mind was most 
 alert, and when he seemed to possess the easiest 
 mastery of language. He consecrated those 
 hours to his chosen work, and it was his object 
 to fit himself, as by a species of training, to 
 make the most and best of that good time, 
 which lay like gold among the debris of the day. 
 It seemed to him that the solid, unimaginative 
 work of the morning cleared away a certain 
 heaviness and sluggishness of apprehension, 
 which was the shadow of sleep ; that the open 
 air, the active movement of the afternoon, re- 
 moved the clumsier and grosser insistence of 
 the body ; and that there resulted a frame of 
 mind, when the imagination was lively and alert,
 
 Literary Work 79 
 
 and when the willing brain served out its stores 
 with a cordial rapidity. There was a danger 
 perhaps of selfish absorption in such a scheme 
 of life ; but at least no artist ever more sedu- 
 lously cultivated the best and most fruitful 
 conditions for the practice of his art. Hugh 
 grew to have an almost morbid sense of the 
 value of time. Interruptions, social entertain- 
 ments, engagements which interfered with his 
 programme, he resented and resolutely avoided. 
 He became indeed aware that other people, to 
 whom the value of his work was not apparent, 
 were apt to regard the jealous arrangement of 
 his hours as the mere whim of a self-absorbed 
 dilettante. But that troubled Hugh little, be- 
 cause he realised that his only hope of doing 
 sound and worthy work lay in making a sacri- 
 fice of the ordinary and trifling occupations of 
 life, of forming definite habits, for the want of 
 which so many capable and brilliant persons 
 sink into unproductiveness. 
 
 Yet the life had a danger which Hugh did 
 not at first perceive. It tended to concentrate 
 his thoughts too much upon himself. His writ- 
 ings took a personal colour, a warm, self-regard- 
 ing light, of which his candid friends did not 
 hesitate to make him aware. The bitterness of 
 the slow progress of a book, and of the long 
 time that must elapse between its execution
 
 8o Beside Still Waters 
 
 and its appearance, is that the readers of it tend 
 to consider that it reflects the exact contempo- 
 rary thought of its writer. Hugh's mind and 
 personality grew fast in those days ; and by the 
 time that his friends were criticising a book as 
 the outcome of his immediate thought, he was 
 feeling himself that it was but a milestone on 
 the road, marking a spot that he had left leagues 
 behind him. 
 
 But the creative instinct, which had struggled 
 fitfully with the hard practical conditions of his 
 professional life, now took a sudden bound for- 
 ward. His writing became the one important 
 thing in the world for Hugh. He had gained, 
 he found, through constant practice, dry as the 
 labour had been, a considerable fluency and 
 firmness of touch: now sentences shaped them- 
 selves under his hand like living things ; words 
 flowed easily from their abundant reservoir. Yet 
 the peril, which he soon grew to perceive, was 
 that his outfit of emotional experience, his 
 knowledge of human life in its breadth and 
 complexity, was very narrow and limited. He 
 had seen life only under a single aspect, and 
 that an aspect which, poignant and intense as it 
 was, did not easily lend itself to artistic treat- 
 ment. The result was that his outlook was a 
 narrow one, and his mind was driven back upon 
 itself. The need to speak, to express, to shape
 
 Egotism 8 1 
 
 thoughts in appropriate words, so long repressed, 
 so instinctive to him, became almost fearfully 
 imperative. He was haunted by a hundred ar- 
 dent speculations in art, in literature, in religion, 
 in metaphysics, all of a vague rather than a pre- 
 cise kind. His mind had been always of a 
 loose, poetical type, turning to the quality 
 of things rather than to outward facts or 
 practical questions. Temperaments, individu- 
 alities, appealed to him more than national 
 movements or aspirations ; and then the old 
 love of nature came back like a solemn pas- 
 sion. 
 
 This sudden growth of egotism and introspec- 
 tion tended to alarm and disquiet Hugh's 
 friends ; they put it down to his severance from 
 practical activities, and began to fear a morbid 
 and self-regarding attitude. Yet Hugh knew 
 that it would right itself ; it was but the com- 
 pletion of a process, begun in his college days, 
 and checked by his early entry into professional 
 life; it was return of his youth, the natural ful- 
 filment of that period of speculative thought, 
 which a young man must pass through before 
 he can put himself in line with the world. And 
 in any case it was inevitable; and Hugh was 
 content as before to leave himself in the hand 
 of God, only glad at least that a process which 
 would naturally have been finished under the
 
 82 Beside Still Waters 
 
 overshadowing of the melancholy of youth, 
 could thus be worked out with the temperate 
 tranquillity, the serenity of manhood.
 
 VIII 
 
 AFTER all the inevitable bustle, the moving 
 and settling of furniture, the constant noting of 
 small needs, the conferences with tradesmen, all 
 the details inseparable from establishing a new 
 home, had died away, Hugh found himself, as 
 has been said, for the first time in his life in 
 comparative solitude. He had a few old friends 
 in Cambridge; but unless two men are mem- 
 bers of the same college, meetings, in a place of 
 many small engagements, have to be deliber- 
 ately arranged. Hugh could always go and 
 dine in the hall of his college, and be certain 
 of finding there a quiet good-fellowship and a 
 pleasant tolerance. But he had not as yet mas- 
 tered the current of little incidents which fur- 
 nish so much of the conversation of small 
 societies : allusions to facts familiar to all beside 
 himself were perpetually being made ; and he 
 knew that nothing is so tiresome as a would-be 
 sympathetic questioner, who does not under- 
 stand the precise lie of the ground. He had as 
 yet no definite work ; a literary task in which 
 83
 
 84 Beside Still Waters 
 
 he was shortly to be engaged had not as yet 
 begun ; the materials had not been placed in 
 his hands. Thus compelled by circumstances to 
 pass through a period of enforced retreat, Hugh 
 resolved upon a certain course of action. He 
 determined to putjdpwn in writing, for his own 
 instruction and benefit, the precise position Jie_ 
 held in thought his hopes, his desires, his be- 
 liefs. He set to work, it must be confessed, in 
 a melancholy mood, the melancholy that is in- 
 separable from the position of a man who has 
 lived a very full and active life, and from whom 
 the burden of activities is suddenly lifted. 
 Though the lifting of the weight was an im- 
 mense relief, and though he could often sum- 
 mon back cheerfulness by reflecting how entire 
 his freedom was, and how troublesomely he 
 would have been occupied if he had still held 
 his professional position, yet the mere fact that 
 there was no longer any necessity to brace his 
 energies and faculties to meet some particular 
 call of duty, gave him spaces of a flaccid dreari- 
 ness, in which his accustomed literary work 
 palled on him ; one could not read or write for 
 ever ; and so he set himself, as I have said, to 
 compose a memorandum, a symbol, so to speak, 
 of his moraljmd intellectual faith. 
 
 He was surprised, as soon as he began his 
 task, to find how much of what he had believed
 
 Foundations of Faith 
 
 to be certainties_hrank and dwindled. A per- 
 fect sincerity with himself was the only possible 
 condition under which such a work was worth 
 undertaking. A sincerity which should reso- 
 lutely discard all that was merely traditional 
 and cujrtomary^ should emphasise nothing, 
 should regard nothing as proved, in which 
 outran scientific certainty. 
 
 He found that his_ creed began with a deep / 
 
 and abiding faith in God ; he believed, that is, 
 in the existence of an all-pervading, all-power- 
 ful Will, lying behind and in the scheme of 
 things. 
 
 Side by side with this belief, and inextricably 
 interwoven with it, was his belief inliis own 
 
 ^ 'ii^r- ' ""** f ^^^* 
 
 identity and personality! Tfiat was perhaps 
 the only thing of which he was ultimately 
 assured. "But his experience of the world was 
 that it was peopled by similar personalities, each 
 of whom seemed equally conscious of a sepa- 
 rate existence, who were swayed by motives 
 similar in kind, though differing in detail, from 
 the motives which swayed himself ; beyond 
 these personalities lay whole ranges of sen- 
 tient beings, which sank at last, by slow and 
 minute gradations, into matter which seemed 
 to him to be inanimate ; but even all this was 
 permeated by certain forces, themselves unseen, 
 but the symptoms of which were apparent in
 
 86 Beside Still Waters 
 
 all directions, such as heat, motion, attraction, 
 electricity. He believed it possible that all 
 these might be different manifestations and 
 specimens of the same central force ; but it 
 was nothing more than a vague possibility. 
 
 He was next confronted with a mysterious 
 fact. In every day and hour of his own life he 
 was brought face to face with a double experi- 
 ence. At moments he felt himself full of life, 
 health, and joy ; at other moments he felt him- 
 self equally subject to torpor, malaise, and suf- 
 feringlS What it was that made these two 
 classes of experience clear to him he could not 
 tell ; but there was no questioning the fact that 
 at times he was the subject of experience of a 
 pleasant kind, which he would have prolonged 
 if he could ; while at times he was equally 
 conscious of experiences which his only de- 
 sire was to terminate as speedily as possible. 
 
 This mystery, which no philosopher had ever 
 expfamed,"^seemed to him to run equally 
 through the whole of nature. He asked him- 
 self whether he was in the presence of two war- 
 ring forces. Would the Will, whatever it was, 
 which produced happiness, have made that 
 happiness permanent, if it could ? was it 
 thwarted by some other power, perhaps equally 
 strong though it seemed to Hugh that the 
 happiness of most^sentient beings decidedly
 
 Duality 87 
 
 and largely^ predominated over their unhappi- 
 ness a power which was deliberately inimical 
 to joy and peace, health and well being? 
 
 It seemed to him, however, that the two were 
 so inextricably intermingled, and so closely 
 ministered the one to the other, that there 
 was an essential unity of the Will at work ; 
 and that both joyful and painful experiences / 
 were the work of the same mind. He 
 therefore rejected at the outset the belief 
 that what was commonly called evil could be 
 a principle foreign to the nature of the Will 
 of God ; and he put aside as childish the 
 belief that evil is created by the faculty 
 of human choice, setting itself against the bene- 
 volent Will of God ; for benevolence thus 
 hampered would at once become a mere 
 tame and ineffective desire for the welfare 
 of sentient things, and be wholly deprived 
 of all the attributes of omnipotence. Besides, 
 he saw the same qualities that produced suffer- ' 
 ing in humanity, such as the instincts of cruelty, 
 lust, self-preservation, manifesting themselves 
 with equal force among those sentient creatures 
 which did not seem to be capable of exercising 
 any moral choice. 
 
 But in regarding nature, as revealed by the 
 researches of scientists, he saw that there was a 
 slow development taking place, a development
 
 88 Beside Still Waters 
 
 of infinite patience and almost insupportable 
 delay. Finer and finer became the organisa- 
 tion of animal life ; and in the development of 
 human life, too, he saw a slow progress, a daily 
 deepening power of organising natural resources 
 to gratify increasingly complicated needs. Not 
 only was an energy at work, but a progressive 
 energy, bringing into existence things that were 
 not, and revealing secrets unknown before. 
 
 He next attempted to define his moral belief ; 
 and here, too, he saw in the world a progressive 
 force at work. He saw society becoming more 
 and more refined, more desirous to amend 
 faulty conditions, more anxious to alleviate 
 pain ; and this not only with self-regarding 
 motives, but with a vital sympathy, which 
 reached its height in the deliberate purpose of 
 many individuals that, even if condemned to 
 suffer themselves, they would yet spend thought 
 and energy in relieving, if possible, the ills of 
 others. 
 
 He saw in the teaching-of Christ what ap- 
 peared to be the purest and simplest attempt 
 ever made to formulate unselfish affection. No 
 teacher of morals had ever reached the point of 
 inculcating upon men the belief that it was the 
 highest joy to spend the energies of life in con- 
 tributing to the happiness of others. Though 
 he saw in the system of Christ, as popularised
 
 Christianity 89 
 
 and interpreted, a whole host of insecure as- 
 sumptions, unverified assertions, and even de- 
 grading traditions, yet he could not doubt 
 the Divine force of the central message. If he 
 was not in a position to affirm with certitude 
 the truth of the recorded events which attained 
 the origin of the Christian revelation, he could 
 yet affirm with confidence that in the teaching 
 of Christ a higher range of emotion had been 
 reached than had ever been approached before ; 
 and he saw that spirit, in countless regions, 
 however slowly, leavening the thought, the in- 
 stincts of the world. The question then re- 
 solved itself into a practical one. How in Jiis own 
 life was he to make the serenity, the happiness 
 
 . -* j^t * x * 
 
 which he desired, predominate over the suffer- 
 ing, the discontent to which he was liable ? 
 Could it be done by an effort of mind? His 
 professional life had shown him that activity 
 had not brought him any peace of mind, prin- 
 cipally because the system which he was bound 
 to serve demanded such immense expense of 
 labour for purely unprofitable ends. It had not 
 been part of the humble and necessary work of 
 the world, which must be done by some one, if 
 human beings are to live at all ; it had only 
 been the outcome of the needlessly elaborate 
 life of a highly organised community. It had 
 filled his life full of a futile intellectual toil.
 
 90 Beside Still Waters 
 
 And then, the effect upon his own character 
 had been to hamper and stunt his natural 
 energies. It had given him false ideals and 
 wrong motives. 
 
 Looking back at his own life, Hugh saw that 
 ambition, in one form or another, had poisoned 
 his spirit. He saw that the instinct to gain a 
 supremacy at the expense of others had been 
 the one serious motive pressed upon him from 
 first to last ; indeed the necessity for moral 
 control had been really, though not nominally, 
 urged upon him, on the ground that by yield- 
 ing to bodily desires he would be likely to 
 frustrate his visions of success. Only of late 
 had he had any suspicion of the truth, that 
 
 wisWWSSSfT 
 
 gentleness, peacefulness, kindness, sincerity, 
 quiet toil, activity of body and mind, were the 
 things that really made life sweet and joyful. 
 Had he learned it too late to be able to exor- 
 cise the demons that had so long harboured in 
 his soul? He feared so. 
 
 But at last, after long pondering, he arrived 
 at his decision, which was that if indeed this 
 vast and patient Will was in the background of 
 all, the only way was to follow it, to lean upon 
 it ; above all things not to be distracted by the 
 conventions of society, which, though they, too, 
 in a sense, had their origin in the Will of God, 
 yet were things to be left behind, to be strug-
 
 The Will of God 9' 
 
 gled out of. There might indeed be some 
 natures to which such things were attractive 
 and satisfying, but Hugh had no doubt that 
 though they might attract him, they could not 
 satisfy. 
 
 And yet over his thoughts there brooded the 
 shadow of the sad possibilities that lay in wait 
 for him, and of which he had already felt the 
 touch pain, weariness, a discontented mind, 
 jealousy, despair, and at the end of all death, 
 which closed the prospect whichever way he 
 looked. But if these things, too, were of the 
 very nature of God, His Will indeed, though 
 obscure and terrible, the only way was in a 
 patient and loving submission, a knowledge 
 that they could not be wholly in vain ; and so 
 he resolved that his life should be even so ; 
 that he would embrace all opportunities of 
 showing kindness, giving help to others ; that 
 he would live a simple life of labour, using his 
 faculties to the uttermost, as God should pro- 
 vide; and that his whole being should be a 
 deliberate prayer that he might do the Will of 
 God as affected himself, without seeking the 
 praise or recognition of men. He foresaw in- 
 deed much solitude, much weariness. God had 
 never given him one whom he could unre- 
 servedly love, though He had sent him abun- 
 dance of pure and noble friendships. Quiet
 
 92 Beside Still Waters 
 
 dependence upon God, simplicity of life, a 
 readiness to serve, a strenuous use of the gifts 
 given to him ; that was the faith in which 
 Hugh, now late in life, and after what profitless 
 squandering of energies, began his pilgrimage. 
 
 
 
 .X
 
 IX 
 
 IT seemed strange to Hugh to sit there as he 
 did, in his quiet house beside the stream, with 
 an active professional life behind him, and 
 wonder what the next act would be. His time 
 was now filled with an editorial task which 
 would demand all his energies, or rather a large 
 part of them; but editorial work, however 
 interesting in itself and the interest of his 
 particular work was great left one part of the 
 mind unsatisfied ; that part of the mind which 
 desired to create some beautiful thing. Hugh's 
 difficulty was this, that he had no very urgent 
 message, to use a dignified word, to deliver to 
 the world. Nowadays, to appeal to the .world, 
 it is necessary to do things, it would seem, in 
 rather a strident way, to blow a trumpet, or 
 wave a flag, or command an army, or reform 
 a department of state, or control a railroad. 
 Hugh had neither the power nor the will to 
 write a virile book or a powerful story, or to 
 take imagination captive. He did not wish 
 to head a revolt against anything in particular. 
 The day of the old, grim, sinister tyrannies, he 
 93
 
 94 Beside Still Waters 
 
 felt, in the Western corner of the world, was 
 over, and the kind of tyranny that vexed his 
 spirit was a far more secret and subtle distor- 
 tion of liberty. It was the rule of convention- 
 ality that he desired to destroy, the appetite 
 for luxury, and power, and excitement, and 
 strong sensation. He would have liked to do 
 something to win men back to the joys that 
 were within trie reach of all, the joys of peace- 
 ful work, and simplicity, and friendship, and 
 quiet hopefulness. These wete what seemed 
 to Hugh to be the staple of life, and to be 
 within the reach of so many people. And yet 
 he had no mission. He could only detest the 
 loud voices of the world and its feverish excite- 
 ments, with all his heart ; and on the other 
 hand he loved with increasing contentment the 
 gentler and beautiful background of life, that 
 enacted itself every day in the garden and field 
 and wood ; the quiet waiting things, the old 
 church seen over orchards and cottage-roofs, 
 the deep pool in the reedy river, dreaming its 
 own quiet dreams, whatever passed in the 
 noisy world. He was sure that those things 
 would bring peace to many weary spirits, if 
 they could but learn to love tHem. 
 
 Artists and musicians, Hugh felt, were the 
 happiest of all people ; for they made the beau- 
 tiful thing that might stand by itself, without
 
 Art 95 
 
 the need of comment. The graceful boy or 
 girl that they painted, undimmed by age and 
 evil experience, looked down at you from the 
 canvas with a pure and radiant smile, and 
 became, as it were, a spring of clear water, 
 where a soul might bathe and be clean. Or 
 the picture of some silent woodland place, 
 some lilied pool on a golden summer afternoon" 
 how the peace of it came into the spirit, how 
 it seemed to assure the heart that God loved 
 beauty best, lavishing it with an unwearied 
 hand, even where there could be none to behold 
 it but Himself! Then the musician, how he 
 wove the airy stuff of sound, so that the pathos 
 of the world, its heavy mysteries, its sunlit 
 joys, started into life, embracing the soul, and 
 bidding it not to be faithless or blind. These 
 were the pure gifts of art, the spells before 
 which the dull conventions of the world, its 
 noise and dust, crumbled into the ugly ashes 
 that they really were. 
 
 Beside those magical secrets the clumsy art 
 of the writer stood abashed. Those tints, those 
 notes were such definite things ; but in the 
 grosser and more tainted medium with which 
 writers dealt, where so much depended upon 
 association and point of view, there was so 
 much less certainty of producing the effect 
 intended, that one faltered and lost faith. One
 
 9 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 thing was certain, that it was useless to search 
 for a mission ; the purpose must descend from 
 heaven, as the eagle pounced on Ganymede, 
 and carry the trembling and awed minister 
 high above the heads of men. But the only 
 thing that the faithful writer could do was to 
 map out some little piece of quiet work, make 
 no vast design, seek for no large sovereignty ; 
 and then work patiently on with ever-present 
 enjoyment, learning his art, gaining skill and 
 mastery over his vast and complex instrument, 
 till he gained certainty of touch and the power 
 of saying, with perfect lucidity, with pure trans- 
 parency of phrase, exactly what he meant ; and 
 then, behind his art, to live resolutely in his 
 simple creed, whatever article of it he could 
 master, sure of this, that if his inspiration 
 came, he would be able to present it worthily ; 
 and if it did not come well, his would have 
 been a grave, quiet, gracious life, like the life 
 of a song-bird that had never had an audience, 
 or a stream which dropped in crystal cataracts 
 from unvisited rocks, upon which no gazer's 
 eye had ever fallen. And so there shaped 
 itself what must be for the lover of the beauti- 
 ful the first article of his faith, the thought 
 that the happiness of art came in the making, 
 the weighing, the disposing, and not in the 
 recognition of the triumph by others; and that
 
 The End of Art 97 
 
 the temptation to gain a hearing, to touch 
 hearts, to sway emotions was a natural one 
 enough, but that it must be the first of all to 
 be discarded, as one set foot in the enchanted 
 world, among the dim valleys and rock-ridges, 
 the thickets and the plains, that stretched 
 beyond the sunset arid on to the sea's rim, that 
 wider, more shadowy, more remote world of 
 awe and mystery which lay so near, outside 
 the window, at the opening of a door, at the 
 sound of a voice, the glance of an eye, and in 
 which one's busy fevered life was set, like the 
 print of the wind's footstep in the crisping wave, 
 on the surface of some vast unfathomable 
 sea. 
 
 7 
 
 V,
 
 X 
 
 IN reading biographies of illustrious person- 
 ages, Hugh was often interested and surprised 
 to compare the pictures of undergraduate life 
 drawn there with his own experience of that 
 period. They were generally related in the 
 form of reminiscences, seen far-off, at the end 
 of a long perspective of years. It was gener- 
 ally represented as a period of high enthusiasm, 
 intense energy, eager work, unclouded happi- 
 ness. The perception of great problems, noble 
 thoughts, seemed in these reminiscences to 
 have fallen on chivalrous minds with a deep 
 natural joy. They recorded hours of match- 
 less talk, ingenuous debate, brilliant wit, scin- 
 tillating intellect. Hugh liked to believe that 
 this was the case, but_Jie_ .often -wondered 
 whether it was not all heightened by retro- 
 spect, and whether the radiance pjf the^ whole 
 picture was not merely the radiance of recol- 
 lected youth, rlf } the picture was a true one, 
 then the later years of the men whose lives 
 were thus told, of whom more than one were
 
 Retrospect 99 
 
 known personally to Hugh, must have been ^ 
 years of sad ^physical and mental decline. 
 There was one person in particular, an eminent 
 ecclesiastic, who had been a frequent guest at 
 his father's house, in whom Hugh had never 
 discovered any particular swiftness of percep- ~ 
 tion, of agility of mind, yet the reminiscences 
 of whose undergraduate years were given in a 
 vein of high enthusiasm. This worthy clergy- 
 man had seemed, if his memory was to be 
 trusted, to have been the shining centre of a 
 group whose life threw the life of young Ath- 
 ens, as represented by Plato, into the shade. 
 The man in question seemed, in later years, 
 a sturdily built clergyman, slow and cautious 
 of speech, brusque and even grim of address, 
 sensible, devoted to commonplace activities, 
 and with a due appreciation of the comforts 
 and conveniences of life. His conversation 
 had no suggestivenesj^ or subtlety. He was 
 grumpy in the morning and good-humoured in v 
 the evening. He seemed impatient of new 
 ideas, and endowed with a firm grasp of con- 
 ventional and obvious notions. 
 
 Hugh's own recollection of his university days 
 was very different, and yet he had lived in what 
 might e called an intellectual set. There had 
 been plenty of easy friendship, abundance of 
 lively gossip, incessant and rather tedious fes-
 
 ioo Beside Still Waters 
 
 tivities. Men had groaned and grumbled over 
 their work, played games with hearty conviction , 
 had nourished no great illusions about them- 
 selves and each other, had had few generous and 
 ardent visions about art, poetry, or humanity ; 
 or, if they had, they had kept them to them- 
 selves with a very good show of contented 
 indifference. There was indeed a little society 
 to which Hugh had belonged, where books, and 
 not very recondite ideas, of ethical or moral 
 import, were discussed freely and amiably, with- 
 out affectation, and occasionally with a certain 
 amount of animation. But the arguments en- 
 gendered were flimsy, inconsequent, and fan- 
 tastic enough ; the dialectic flashed to and fro, 
 never very convincing, and mostly intended to 
 aggravate rather than to persuade. Even at 
 the time it had often appeared to Hugh to be 
 shallow and flimsy. He had seldom heard a sub- 
 ject debated with any thoroughness or justice, 
 and he had learned far more from the preparation 
 of occasional papers framed to initiate a discus- 
 sion, than from any discussion that followed. 
 The best thoughts that Hugh had apprehended 
 in those days had been the thoughts that he had 
 won from books ; his mind had opened rapidly 
 then, in the direction of a kind of poetical meta- 
 physic, not deep speculation on the ultimate 
 nature of things, so much as reflection on the
 
 Mental Progress 101 
 
 more psychological problems of character and 
 personality. It seemed to Hugh that his own 
 mind, and the minds of those with whom he had 
 lived, had been a mass of prejudices, of half- 
 formed and inconsistent theories. None of 
 them had had any policy into which they fitted 
 the ideas that came to them ; but a new and 
 attractive idea had been seized upon, on its own 
 merits, without any reference to other theories, 
 or with any desire to co-ordinate it with other 
 ideas, which were indeed just thrust aside to 
 make room for the new one. 
 
 Hugh's idea of mental progress, in his later 
 years, was the slow dwelling upon some thought, 
 the quiet application of it to other thoughts. It 
 seemed an inversion of the ordinary method of 
 progress, if the biographies that he read were 
 true. Taking the case, for instance, of the par- 
 ticular man whom Hugh had known, and whose 
 biography he had studied, he seemed in youth 
 to have been generous, fearless, candid, and 
 ardent, and life must have been to him a process 
 of hardening and encrusting with prejudice ; he 
 seemed to have begun with a bright faith in 
 ideas, and to have ended with a dull belief in 
 organisations. He had begun by being thrilled 
 with the beauty of virtue, and he had ended by 
 supporting the G.F.S. Hugh's experience was 
 the exact opposite of this. He had begun, he
 
 102 Beside Still Waters 
 
 thought, by being loaded and burdened with 
 prejudices and stupid notions, acquired he knew 
 not how ; he had not doubted the value of 
 authority, tradition, usage; as life went on, it 
 seemed to him, that he had got rid of his pre- 
 judices one by one, and that he had arrived, at 
 the age of forty, at valuing sincerity, sympathy, 
 simplicity, and candour above dogma and ac- 
 cumulated beliefs. He had begun with a firm 
 faith in systems and institutions ; he had ended 
 by basing all his hopes on the Individual. He 
 had begun by looking for beauty and perfection 
 wherever he was told to expect it ; if he had 
 not discerned it, he had blamed his own dulness 
 of perception. It had been a heavy and soulless 
 business ; and the real freshness of life, intel- 
 lectual curiosity, mental independence seemed 
 to have come to him in fullest measure, just 
 at the age when most men seemed to have 
 parted with those qualities. As an under- 
 graduate, he had been more aware of fitfulness 
 and weariness than anything ; only gradually 
 had he become conscious of concentration, 
 sustained zest, intention. Then he had tend- 
 ed to condemn enthusiasm as a species of 
 defective manners. Now he lived by its 
 steady light. Then he had been at the mercy 
 of a new idea, an attractive personality. He 
 shuddered to think how easily he had made
 
 Renewal of Youth 103 
 
 friendships, and how contemptuously he had 
 broken them the moment he was disappointed. 
 Now he weighed and tested more ; but at the 
 same time he also opened his heart and his 
 thoughts far more deliberately and frankly to 
 sympathetic and generous people. 
 
 Hugh seemed to have found rather than to 
 have lost his youth. His_actuai_youth, indeed, 
 seemed to him to have been a tremulous thing, 
 full of fears and sensibilities, feminine, unbal- 
 anced, frivolous. Life had so far been to Hugh 
 pure gain. Looking back he saw himself irreso- 
 lute, vague, sentimental, incapable of applica- 
 tion, unmethodical, half-hearted. He had had 
 none of the buoyancy, the splendid dreams, 
 the sparkling ambitions that seemed, according 
 to the records, to have been the stuff of great 
 men's youth. 
 
 He sat one day in the ante-chapel of his old 
 college, through a morning service, listening, 
 as in a dream, to the sweet singing within ; it 
 seemed but a day since he had sat in his stall, 
 a fitful-hearted boy. The service ended, and 
 the procession streamed out, the rich tints of 
 the windows lighting up the faces and the white 
 surplices of the men, old and young, that issued 
 from the dark door of the screen. Hugh felt 
 within himself that he would not have the old 
 days back again even if he could ; he was no-
 
 104 Beside Still Waters 
 
 thing but grateful for the balance, the serenity, 
 that life had brought him. He was conscious 
 , of greater strength, undimmed energy, increased 
 zest ; faltering indeed he was still, not better, 
 not more unselfish ; but he had a sense of truer 
 values, more proportion, more contentment. 
 The mysteries of life were as dark as ever, but 
 at least he no longer thought that he had 
 the key ; in those days his little rickety system 
 of life, that trembled in every breeze, had 
 seemed for him to bridge all gaps, to explain 
 all mysteries. Now, indeed, chaos stretched all 
 about him, full of huge mists, dark chasms, hid- 
 den echoes ; but he perceived something of its 
 vastness and immensity ; he had broken down 
 the poor frail fences of his soul, and was in 
 contact with reality. He did not doubt that 
 he seemed to the younger generation an elderly 
 and sombre personage, stumbling down the 
 dark descent of life, with youth and brightness 
 behind him ; but that descent appeared to him- 
 self to be rather an upward-rising road, over 
 dim mountains, the air glowing about him with 
 some far-off sunrise. Poetry, art, religion 
 they meant a thousand-fold more to him than 
 they had meant in the old days. They had 
 been pretty melodies, deft tricks of hand, choice 
 toys then. Now they were exultations, agonies, 
 surrenders, triumphs. The prospect of life had
 
 The New Energy 105 
 
 been to him in those days like misty ranges, 
 full of threatening precipices and dumb valleys 
 in which no foot had trod. Now he saw from the 
 hill-brow, a broad and goodly land full of wood 
 and pasture, clustered hamlets, glittering, smoke- 
 wrapt towns, rivers widening to the sea ; the 
 horizons closed by the blue hills of hope, from 
 which life and love, and even death itself, 
 seemed to wave hands of welcome ere they 
 dipped to the unseen. He blessed God for 
 that; and best of all he had no desire, as he 
 had had in the old days, to be understood, to 
 be felt, to claim a place, to exercise an influence. 
 He had put all that aside; his only concern 
 was now to step as swiftly, as strongly as possi- 
 ble, upon the path that opened before him, 
 caring little whether it led on to grassy moor- 
 lands, or sheltered valleys full of wood, or even 
 to the towered walls of some strong city of God. 
 
 X
 
 XI 
 
 HUGH, in his leisure, determined to try if he 
 could set his mind at rest on one point, a ques- 
 tion that had always exercised a certain attrac- 
 tion over him. This was to^make himself 
 acquainted with some technical philosophy, or 
 at any rate to try and see what the philosophers 
 were doing. He had not, he was aware, a mind 
 suited for the pursuit of metaphysics ; he had 
 little logical faculty and little power of deduc- 
 tion ; he tended to view a question at bright 
 and radiant points ; he could not systematise or 
 arrange it. He did not expect to be able to 
 penetrate the mystery, or to advance step by 
 step nearer to the dim and ultimate causes of 
 things ; but he thought he would like to look 
 into the philosophers' workshop, as a man 
 might visit a factory. He expected to see~a~ 
 great many processes going on the nature of 
 which he did not hope to discern, and the object 
 of which would be made still more obscure by 
 the desperately intelligent explanations of some 
 obliging workman, who would glibly use tech- 
 106
 
 Platonism 107 
 
 nical words to which he would himself be able 
 to attach no sort of meaning. 
 
 But aiter a few excursions into modern philo- 
 sophy, in which he seemed, as Tennyson said, 
 to be wading as in a sea of glue, hewent back, 
 to the earliest philosophers and* reacHAristotle 
 and Plato. He soon conceived a great horror 
 of Aristotle, of his subtle and ingenious analy- O 
 sis, which often seemed to him to be an attempt 
 to define the undefinable, and never to touch 
 the point of the matter at all ; he thought that 
 Aristotle was often occupied in the scientific 
 treatment of essentially poetical ideas, and in 
 the attempt to classify rather than to explain. 
 Yet there were moments, it seemed to him, 
 when Aristotle, writing with a kind of grim 
 contempt for the vagueness of Plato, was carried 
 off his feet by the Platonic enthusiasm ; and so 
 Hugh turned to Plato which he had scrambled 
 through as an undergraduate long years before. 
 How incomparably beautiful it was !(It reveal- 
 ed to Hugh what he had before only dimly 
 suspected, that the poet, the moralist, the priest, 
 the philosopher, and even the man of science, 
 were all in reality engaged in the same task 
 penetrating the vast and bewildering riddle of 
 the world. ^ In Plato he found the philosophical 
 method suffused Dy" a buPnmg poetical imagina- 
 tion ; and he thought that Plato solved far more
 
 io8 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ; metaphysical riddles by a species of swift in- 
 tuition than ever could be done by the closest 
 
 | analysis. He realised that Plato's theory was of 
 a great, central, motionless entity, which acted 
 not by expulsive energy but by a sort of mag- 
 
 netic attraction ; and that all the drearjjs, the 
 >Jippej^the activities of human minds^werejhot 
 
 the ripples of some central outward-speeding 
 1 force, but the irresistible inner motion, as to the 
 
 loadstone or the vortex, which made itself felt 
 j through the whole universe, material and im- 
 
 * material alike. The intense desire to know, to 
 solve, to improve, to gain a tranquil balance of 
 thought, was nothing more, Hugh perceived, 
 than this inward-drawing impulse, calling rather 
 than coercing men to aspire to its own supreme 
 serenity ; all our ideas of what was pure and 
 beautiful and true, then, were the same vast 
 centripetal force, moving silently inward ; all 
 our sorrows, our mistakes, our sufferings, were 
 but the checking of that overpowering influ- 
 ence ; and any rest was impossible till we liacf 
 drawn nearer to the central peace. This 
 seemed to Hugh to be not a theory but an in- 
 tensely inspiring and practical thought. How 
 light-hearted, how brave a secret ! Instead of 
 desiring that all should be made plain at once, 
 one could rejoice in the thought that one 
 was certainly speeding homewards ; and ex-
 
 Platonism 109 
 
 perience was no longer a blind conflict of 
 
 forces, but a joyful near ing of the central 
 sum of things. At all events, what a blithe- 
 ness, what a zest it gave to the genius of 
 Plato himself ! With what eager inquisitive- 
 ness, in a sort of a childlike gaiety, he hurried 
 hither and thither, catching at every point some 
 bright indication of the delightful mystery. 
 Plato seemed to differ from the serious and 
 preoccupied philosophers in this, that while 
 they were lost in a grave and anxious scrutiny 
 of phenomena, he was rather penetrated by the 
 cheerfulness, the romance of the whole business. 
 /The intense personal emotions, which to the 
 analytical philosophers seemed mere distracting 
 elements, experiences to be forgotten, crushed 
 and left behind, were to Plato supreme mani- 
 festations of the one desire.) Onedesired^in 
 others what one desired in God ; the sense of 
 admiration, the longing for sympathy the de- 
 sire that no close embrace, no passionate glance 
 could satisfy, these were but deep yearnings 
 after the perfect sympathy, the perfect under- 
 standing of God. And thus when Plato 
 appeared most to be trifling with a subject, 
 to T>e turning it over and over as a man 
 may turn about a crystal in his hands, watch- 
 ing the lights blend and flash and separate 
 on the polished facets, he was really draw-
 
 no Beside Still Waters 
 
 ing nearer to the truth, absorbing its delicious 
 radiance and sweetness. Those sunny morn- 
 ings, spent in strolling and talking, in col" 
 onnade or garden, in that imperishable 
 Athens, seemed to Hugh like the talk of 
 saints in some celestial city. Saints not of 
 heavy and pious rectitude, conventional in pos- 
 ture and dreary in mind, but souls to whom 
 love and laughter, pathos and sorrow, were alike 
 sweet. ^Instead of approaching life with a sense 
 of its gravity, its heinousness, its complexity, 
 timid of joy and emotion and delight, practising 
 sadness and solemnity, Plato and his followers 
 began at the other end, and with an irrepressible 
 optimism believed that joy was conquering and 
 not being conquered, that light was in the as- 
 cendant, rippling outwards and onwards. And 
 then the supreme figure of all, whether imagi- 
 nary or not mattered little, Socrates himself, 
 with what a^ joyfu^ soberness and - gravit / y*~3'id 
 he move forward through experience, never 
 losing his balance, but serenely judging all 
 till the moment came for him to enter be- 
 hind the dark veil of death ; and this he did 
 with the same imperturbable good-humour, 
 neither Jingering nor hasting, but with a tran- 
 quil confidence that life was beginning rather 
 than ending. , 
 
 And then Hugh saw in a flash thatfthe essence
 
 The Pauline Gospel in 
 
 of the Gospel itself was like that.y When he 
 read the sacred record in the light of Plato, it 
 seemed to him as if it must in some subtle way 
 
 be pervaded by the same bright intuitions as 
 those which lit up the Greek mind. It seemed 
 to Hugh a strange and bewildering thing that 
 (the pure message of simplicity and love, with 
 its tender waiting upon God, its delight in 
 flowers and hills, its love of great ideas, its rich 
 poetry, its perfect art, had taken on the gloomy 
 metaphysical tinge that StPaul, with all his^ 
 genius, had contrived to communicate to it. j 
 Surely it was intolerable to believe that all 
 those subtle notions of sacrificial satisfaction, 
 of justification, of substitution, had ever crossed 
 the Saviour's mind at all. In a sense He ful- 
 filled the Law and the Prophets, for they had 
 laid down, in grief and doubt, a harsh code of 
 morality, because they saw no other way of 
 leavening the conscience of the world. But 
 the Saviour, at least in the simple records, had 
 not trafficked in such thoughts ; He had but 
 shown the significance of the primary emotions, 
 had taught humanity that it was free as air, 
 dear to the heart of God, heir of a goodly in- 
 heritance of love and care. St. Paul was ajpan 
 of burning ardour, but had he^not made the 
 mistake of trying to lend too intellectual, too 
 erudite, too complicated a colour to it all?
 
 1 1 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 The essence of *ha Qpsppl seemed to be that man 
 should not be bound by the tradition of men ; 
 but St. Paul had been so intent upon drawing 
 in those to whom tradition was dear, that in 
 trying to harmonise the new with the old, he 
 had made concessions and developed doctrines 
 that had detrimentally affected Christianity 
 ever since, and gone near to cast it in a different 
 mould. Of course there was a certain con- 
 tinuity in religion, a development. But St. 
 Paul was so deeply imbued with Rabbinical 
 methods and Jewish tradition, that In his splen- 
 did attempt to show that Christianity was the 
 fulfilment of the Law, he had deeply infected 
 the pure stream with Jewish ideas. The essence 
 of Christianity was meant to be a tabula rasa. 
 Christ bade men trust their deepest and widest 
 intuitions, their sense of dependence upon God, 
 their consciousness of divine origin. In this 
 respect the teaching of Christ had more in 
 common with the teaching of Plato, than the 
 doctrine of St. Paul with the doctrine of Christ. 
 Christ was concerned with the future, St. Paul 
 with the past ; Christ was concerned with re- 
 ligious instinct, St. Paul with religious develop- 
 ment. The strength of the Gospel of Christ 
 was that it depended rather on the poetical 
 and emotional consciousness of religion, and 
 thus made its appeal to the majority of the
 
 The Gospel and Plato 113 
 
 human race. Plato, on the other hagd. was 
 too intellectual, and a perception of his doctrine 
 was hardly possible except to a man of subtle 
 and penetrating ability. Hugh wondered Qf)it 
 would be possible to put the__doctryi_ofJP|atu 
 in such a light that it would appeal to simple 
 people ; he thought that it would be possible; 
 and here he was struck by the fact that Plato,, 
 like Christ, ernpjoyed the_devicejofjthe parable 
 largely as a means of interpreting religious 
 ideas. The teaching of the Gospel and the 
 teaching of Plato were alike deeply idealistic. 
 They both depended upon the simple idea 
 that men could conceive of themselves as / 
 better than they actually were, and upon the 
 fact that such a conception is the strongest 
 motiygjforce in the world in the direction of 
 self-improvement. The mystery of conversion 
 is nothing more than the conscious apprehen- 
 sion of the fact that one's life is meant tojbe 
 noble and beautiful, ancPtriat one has the 
 poTver to make it nobler and more beautiful 
 than it is. 
 
 It seemed to Hugh, reflecting on the de- 
 velopment of Christianity, that perhaps it was 
 not too much to say that the Pauline influence 
 had been to a great extent a misfortune^, it was 
 true that in a sense he had resisted the Jewish 
 tyranny, and moreover that his writings were 
 
 8
 
 ii4 Beside Still Waters 
 
 full of splendid aphorisms, inspiring thoughts, 
 generous ideals. But he had formalised Christ- 
 ianity for afl tfrat ; he had linked jtjplosely to 
 the Judaic system ; he was ultimately respon- 
 sible for Puritanism ; that is to say, it was his 
 influence more than any other that had given 
 the Jewish Scriptures their weight in the Christ- 
 ian scheme. It seemed to Hugh to be a ter- 
 rible calamity that he had reserved, so to speak, 
 a place in the chariot of Christ for the Jewish 
 dispensation ; it was the firm belief in the vital 
 inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures that had 
 produced that harsh and grim type of Christ- 
 ianity so dear to the Puritan heart. With the 
 exception of certain of the Psalms, certain por- 
 tions of Job and of the Prophets, there seemed 
 to HughTo be little in theJQfd Testament that 
 did not merely hamper and encumber the re- 
 ligion of Christ. What endless and inextricable 
 difficulties arose from trying to harmonise the 
 conception of the Father as preached by 
 Christ, with the conception of the vindictive, 
 wrathful, national, local Deity of the Old Tes- 
 tament. {J.aw.^liiiJe countenance did Christ 
 ever give to that idea ! He did not even think 
 of the Temple as a house of sacrifice, but as a 
 house of prayer ! How seldom He alluded to the 
 national history! How human and temporary 
 a character He gave to the Law of Moses ! How
 
 The Harmony 115 
 
 constantly He appealed to personal rather than 
 to national aspirations ! How He seemed to 
 insist upon the fact that^very man must make 
 his religion out of the simplest elements of 
 moral consciousness !/How often He appealed 
 to the poetry of symbols rather than to the 
 effectiveness of ceremony ! How little claim 
 He laifjLjrt fcftsft in the Synoptic Gospels, to 
 any divinity, and then rather in virtue of His 
 perfect humanity! He called Himself the Son 
 of Man ; in the only^ recorded payer He gave 
 to His disciples, there was no hint that prayer 
 should be directed to Himself ; it was all centred 
 upon the Father. 
 
 Here again the Aristotelian method, the de- 
 light in analysis, the natural human desire to 
 make truth precise and complete, had intruded 
 itself. What was the Athanasian creed but an 
 Aristotelian formula, making a hard dogma out 
 of a dim mystery ? The outcome of it all for 
 Hugh was the resolution that for himself, at all 
 events, his business was to disregard tempta- 
 tion to formularise his position. With one's 
 limited vision, one's finite inability to touch a 
 thought at more than one point at a time, one 
 must give up all hope of attaining to a per- 
 fected philosophical system. The end was dark, / 
 the solution incomprehensible. He must rather 
 live as far as possible in a high and lofty emo-
 
 
 n6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 tion, beholding the truth by hints and glimpses, 
 pursuing as far as possible all uplifting intuitions, 
 all free and generous desires. It was useless 
 vx to walk in a prescribed path, to frame one's life 
 on the model of another's ideal. He must be 
 open-minded, ready to revise his principles in 
 the light of experience. He must hold fast to 
 what brought him joy and peace. How restful 
 after all it was to know that one had one's own 
 problem, one's own conditions ! All that was 
 necessary was to put one's self firmly and con- 
 stantly in harmony with the great purpose that 
 had set one exactly where one was, and given 
 one a temperament, a character; good and evil 
 desires, hopes, longings, temptations, aspira- 
 tions. One could not escape from them, thank 
 God. If one only desired God's will, one's sins 
 and sufferings as well as one's hopes and joys 
 all worked together to a far-off end. One must 
 go straight forward, in courage and patience 
 and love.
 
 XII 
 
 HUGH made friends at Cambridge with a 
 young Roman Catholic priest, who was working 
 there. 
 
 His new friend was a very simple-minded 
 man ; he seemed to Hugh the only man of 
 great gifts he had ever known, who was abso- 
 lutely untouched by any shadow of worldliness. 
 H ugh knew of men who resisted the temptations 
 of the world very successfully, to whom indeed 
 they were elementary temptations, long since 
 triumphed over; but this man was the only 
 man he had ever known who was gifted with 
 qualities that commanded the respect and ad- 
 miration of the world, yet to whom the tempta- 
 tions of ambition and success seemed never to 
 have appeared even upon the distant horizon. 
 He was an interesting talker, a fine preacher, 
 and a very accomplished writer ; but his interest 
 was entirely centred upon his work, and not upon 
 the rewards of it. He was very poor ; but he 
 hacT no regard for anything luxury, power, 
 position that the world could give him. He 
 117
 
 n8 Beside Still Waters 
 
 had no wish to obtain influence ; he only cared 
 to make the work on which he was engaged as 
 perfect as he could. The man was really an 
 artist pure and simple ; he seemed to have little 
 taste for pastoral work. 
 
 One day they sat together, on a hot breath- 
 less afternoon, in a college garden, on a seat 
 beneath some great shady chestnut-trees, and 
 looked out lazily upon the heavy-seeded grass 
 of the meadow and the bright flower borders. 
 The priest said to Hugh suddenly, " I have 
 often wondered what your religion really is. 
 Do you mind my spealcing of it ? You seem to 
 me exactly the sort of man who needs a strong 
 and definite faith to make him happy." 
 
 Hugh smiled and said, "Well, I am try- 
 ing, not very successfully I fear, to find out 
 what I really do believe. I am trying to 
 construct my 'faith from the bottom ; and I 
 am anxious not to put into the foundations 
 any faulty stones, anything that I have not 
 really tested." 
 
 " That is a very good thing to do," said the 
 priest. " But how are you setting to work? " 
 
 " Well," said Hugh, " I have never had time 
 before to think my religion out ; I seem to have 
 accepted all kinds of loose ideas and shaky tra- 
 ditions. I want to arrive at some certainties ; 
 I try to apply a severe intellectual test to
 
 Sacrifice 119 
 
 everything : and the result is that I seem 
 obliged to discard one thing after another that 
 I once believed." 
 
 " Perhaps," said the priest after a silence, 
 " you are doing this too drastically ? Religion, 
 it seems to me, has to be apprehended in a dif- 
 ferent region, the mystical region, the region 
 of intuition rather than logic." 
 
 "Yes," said Hugh, "and intuitions are what 
 one practically lives by ; but I think that they 
 ought to be able to stand an intellectual test 
 too for, after all, it is only intellectually that 
 one can approach them." 
 
 The priest shook his head at this, with a half- 
 smile. And Hugh added, "I wish you would 
 give me a short sketch, in a few words if you can, 
 of how you reached your present position." 
 
 " That is not very easy," said the priest ; 
 " but I will try." He sat for a moment silent, 
 and then he said, " When one looks back into 
 antiquity, before the coming of Christ, one sees / 
 a general searching after God in the world ; 
 the one idea that seems to run through all 
 religions is the idea of sacrifice a coarse and 
 brutal idea orTginallyTperhaps ; but the essence 
 of it is that there is such a thing as sinfulness, 
 and such a thing as atonement ; and that only 
 through death can life be reached. The Jews 
 came_ nearest to the idea of a personal God:
 
 120 Beside Still Waters 
 
 and the sacrificial system is seen in its fullest 
 perfection with them. Then, in the wise coun- 
 sels of God, it came about that our Saviour 
 was born a Jew. You will say that I beg the 
 question here ; but approaching the subject 
 intellectually, one satisfies one's self that the 
 purest and completest religion that the world 
 has ever seen was initiated by Him ; it is im- 
 possible, in the light of that religion, not to feel 
 that one must give the greatest weight to the 
 credentials which such a teacher put forward ; 
 and we find that the claim that He made was 
 that He was Himself Very God. The moment 
 that one realises that, one also realises that 
 there is no prima, facie impossibility that God 
 should so reveal Himself for indeed it seems 
 an idea which no human mind would dare to 
 originate, except in a kind of insane delusion ; 
 and the teaching of Christ, His utter modesty 
 and meekness, His perfect sanity and clear- 
 sightedness, make it evident to me that we may 
 put out of court the possibility that He was 
 under the influence of a delusion. He, it seems 
 to me, took all the old vague ideas of sacrifice 
 and consummated them ; He showed that the 
 true spirit was there, hidden under the ancient 
 sacrifices ; that one must offer one's best freely 
 to God ; and in this spirit He gave Himself to 
 suffering and death. He founded a society with
 
 The Church 121 
 
 a definite constitution ; He provided it with 
 certain simple rules, and said that, when He 
 was gone it would be inspired and developed 
 by the workings of His Spirit. He left this 
 society as a witness in the world ; it has de- 
 veloped in many ways, holding its own, gain- 
 ing strength, winning adherents in a marvellous 
 manner. And I look upon the Church as the 
 witness to God in the world ; I accept its de- 
 velopments as the developments of the Spirit. 
 I see many things in it which I cannot compre- 
 hend; but then the whole world is full of myste- 
 ries and the mysteries of the Church I accept in 
 a tranquil faith. I have put it, I fear, very clum- 
 sily and awkwardly ; but that is the outline of 
 my belief and it seems to me to interpret the 
 world and its secrets, not perfectly indeed, but 
 more perfectly than any other theory." 
 
 " I see ! " said Hugh, " but I will tell you at 
 once my initial difficulty. I grant at the out- 
 set that the teaching of Christ is the.pu.rest and 
 best religious teaching that the world has ever 
 seen ; but I look upon Him, not^as the founder 
 of a system, but as the most entire individual; 
 ist that the world has ever known. It seems to 
 me that (aln His teaching was directed to the 
 end that we should believe in God as a loving 
 Father, and regard all men as brothers ; the 
 principle which was to direct His followers was
 
 122 Beside Still Waters 
 
 to be the principle of gerfectlove. and I think 
 that His idea was that, if men could accept 
 that, everything else mattered little. They 
 must live their lives with that intuition to guide 
 them ; the Church seems to me but the human 
 spoiling and complicating of that great simple 
 idea. I look round and see other religious 
 systems of the world Mohammedanism, Bud- 
 dhism, and the rest. In each I see a man of 
 profound religious ideals, whose system has 
 been adopted, and then formalised and vitiated 
 by his followers. I do not see that there is 
 anything to make me believe that thejsame 
 process has not taken place in Christianity. 
 The elaborate system of dogma and doctrine 
 seems to me a perfectly natural human process 
 of trying to turn ideas, essentially poetical, into 
 definite and scientific truths, and half its errors to 
 arise from feeling the necessity of reconciling 
 and harmonising ideas, which I have described 
 as poetical, which were never meant to be re- 
 conciled or harmonised. And then there is the 
 added difficulty that, owing to the system of 
 the Church, the ideas of the earliest Christian 
 teachers, like St. Paul, have been accepted as 
 infallible too ; and hence arises the dilemma of 
 having to bring into line a whole series of state- 
 ments, made, as in St. Paul's case, by a man of 
 intense emotion, which are neither consistent
 
 Christianity 123 
 
 with each other, nor, in all cases, with the 
 teaching of Christ. My idea of Christianity 
 is to get as close to Christ's own teaching as 
 possible^ 1 do not concern myself with the 
 
 historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives, 
 or even with the incidents there recorded. 
 Those records are the work of men of very 
 imperfect education, and feeble intellectual 
 grasp, in the grip of the prejudices and be- 
 liefs of their age. But their very imperfection 
 makes me feel more strongly the august per- 
 sonality of Christ, because the principles, 
 which they represent Him as maintaining, 
 seem to me to be entirely beyond anything 
 that they could themselves have originated. 
 It seems to me, if I discern Christ rightly 
 speaking of Him now purely as a man that 
 if He could return to the earth, and be con- 
 fronted with the system of any of the Churches 
 that bear His name, He would declare it to 
 be all a horrible mistake. It seems to me that 
 what He aimed atwasa strictly individualistic 
 
 '" 'Jffjr^TlIMM lll*'lllrrf ^^fc^^^^^^^^afca^ja-^^*"* 
 
 system, an attitude of sincerity, simplicity, 
 and" loving-kindness, free from all formalism 
 (which He seems to have detested above every, 
 thing), and free, too, from all elaborate and 
 metaphysical dogma. Instead of this, He would 
 find that men had seized upon the letter, not 
 the spirit, of His teaching, and had devised a
 
 124 Beside Still Waters 
 
 huge mundane organisation, full of pomp and 
 policy, elaborate, severe, hard, unloving. Now 
 if I apply my intellectual tests to the central 
 truths of Christianity, such as the law of Love, 
 the powejr o self^acrifice, the brotherhood of 
 men, they stand the test ; they seem to contain 
 a true apprehension of the needs of the world, 
 of the methods by which the happiness of hu- 
 manity may be attained. But when I apply 
 the intellectual test to the superstructure of any 
 Church, there are innumerable doctrines which 
 appear to me to be contrary to reason. It is 
 difficult indeed, in this world of mystery, to 
 affirm that any mystical claim is not true, but 
 such claims ought not to appear to be repug- 
 nant to reason, but to confirm the processes 
 of reason, in a region to which reason cannot 
 scientifically and logically attain. Such doc- 
 trin.es, for instance, as prayers to saints for 
 their intercession, or the efficacy of masses for 
 the dead, seem to me to have a certain poetical 
 beauty about them, but to be contrary both to 
 reason and experience. I do not see the slight- 
 est hint of them in the teaching of Christ, or 
 anything which can be taken as giving them 
 any support whatever. They seem to me 
 purely human fancies, hardened into a pain- 
 ful mechanical form, which forfeit all claim 
 to be inspired by the Spirit of Christ. But
 
 Christianity 125 
 
 I must apologise for giving you such an 
 harangue still, you brought it on yourself." 
 
 The priest smiled quietly. " I quite see your 
 point," he said, " and we are at one in your main 
 position ; the difficulty of the Church is that it 
 has to organise its system for people of all kinds 
 oT"Temperament, and at all stages of develop- 
 ment. But the spirit is there and if one lets go 
 of the letter, the grasp of many human beings 
 is so weak that they tend to lose the spirit. The 
 Church no doubt appears to many to be over- 
 organised, over-definite, but that is a practical 
 difficulty which every system which has to deal 
 with large masses of people is confronted with. 
 It is the same with education ; boys have to do 
 many definite and precise things which seem at 
 the time to have no educational value; but at 
 the end of their time they see the need of these 
 processes." 
 
 Hugh laughed. " I wish they did ! " he said ; 
 "my own belief is that, in educationjag well as 
 in religion, we want more individualism, more 
 
 o ' *..* 
 
 elasticity. I think it is very doubtful whether 
 great ideas, rigidly interpreted and mechanically 
 enforced, have any value at all for undeveloped 
 minds ; the whole secret lies in their being liber- 
 ally and freely apprehended. " 
 
 " What really divides us," said the priest 
 " and I do not think we are very far apart is
 
 126 Beside Still Waters 
 
 my belief that God has not left the world with- 
 out a definite witness to Himself which I be- 
 lieve the Church to be." 
 
 " Yes," said Hugh, " I believe that the Church 
 is a witness to God : anyjsysjtejEn which teaches 
 pure morality is that ; but I could not limit His 
 witness to a single system ; Nature, beauty, 
 music, poetry, art to say nothing of sweet and 
 kindly persons they are all the witnesses of 
 His spirit ; and the Church is, in my belief, 
 simply hampered and restricted from doing 
 what she might, by the woful rigidity, the 
 mechanical and hard precision, which she has 
 imported into the spiritual region. The mo- 
 ment that the liberty of the spirit is restricted, 
 and grace is made to flow in definite traditional 
 channels, that moment the stream loses its force 
 and brightness." 
 
 " I should rather believe," said the priest, 
 " that, with all the obvious disadvantages of 
 organisation, left to itself, the stream welters 
 into a shapeless marsh, instead of making glad 
 the City of God ! And may I say that you, and 
 those like you, with ardent spiritual instincts, 
 make the mistake of thinking that we exclude 
 you ; indeed it is not so. You would find the 
 yoke as easy and the burden as light as ever. 
 In submission you would gain and not lose the 
 liberty of which you are in search."
 
 Certainty 127 
 
 The priest soon after this took his leave. 
 Hugh sat long pondering, as the evening faded 
 into dusk. Was there no certainty, then, at- 
 tainable ? And the answer of his own spirit was 
 that no ready-made certainty was of avail ; that 
 a man must begin from the beginning, and con- 
 struct his own faith from the foundation ; that 
 reason must play its part, lead the soul as far 
 as it could, and set it in the right way ; but that 
 the spjrit must not halt there, but pass courage- 
 ously and serenely into the tractless waste, 
 content, if need be, to make mistakes, to retrace 
 its path, only sincerely and gently advancing, 
 waiting for any hint that might fall from the 
 Divine Spirit, interpreting rather than selecting, 
 divesting itself of preferences and prejudices 
 one by one, and conscious that One waited, 
 smiling and encouraging, but a little ahead 
 upon the road, and that any turn in the path 
 might reveal his bright coming to the faithful 
 eye.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE charm of the Cambridge life was to 
 Hugh the alternation of society and solitude. 
 He was soon fortunate enough to obtain a post 
 at^his old college, and to be allotted a set of 
 rooms there. He was sociably enough inclined, 
 and the stir and movement of the minute soci- 
 ety was interesting and enlivening. He had a 
 little definite work to do, and he tried to culti- 
 vate relations with every one in the college. 
 It was pleasant that he had no connection with 
 disciplinary matters ; and thus he was able to 
 enter into a friendly intercourse with the under- 
 graduates, not checked or hampered by any 
 necessity to find fault or to offer advice. He 
 occupied his rooms during term-time, and lived 
 the life of the college with quiet enjoyment. 
 But he retained his little house as well, and 
 when the vacation began, he retired there, and 
 spent his days much in solitude. He preferred 
 this indeed to the life of the college, but he 
 was well aware that it owed half its pleasure to 
 its being an interlude in the busier life. But 
 128
 
 Waiting for Light 129 
 
 it was thus that what he felt were his best 
 thoughts came to him ; thoughts, that is to say, 
 that pierced below the surface, and had a qual- 
 ity of reality which his mind, when he was 
 employed and full of schemes, often seemed to 
 himself to lack. But, like all spe.culat[yp 
 
 he seemed to himself very soon to cross the 
 debatable ground in which people of definite 
 religious views appeared to him to linger gladly. 
 Here he left behind all Jthe. prsans,..^hp..,jclf 
 pended^ugon i systjgms. Here remained Roman 
 Catholics, who depended chiefly upon the 
 authority and tradition of the Church, and Pro- 
 testants depending no less blindly and compla- 
 cently upon the authority of the Bible. The 
 real and crucial difficulty lay further on ; and it 
 was simply this : he saw a world full of joy, and 
 full too of suffering; sometimes one of his fel- 
 low-pilgrims would be stricken down with some 
 incurable malady, and through slow gradations 
 of pain, sink wretchedly to death ; was this suf- 
 fering remedial, educative, benevolent? He 
 hoped it was, he believed that it was, in the 
 sense, at least, that he could not bear to feel 
 that it might not be ; but however ardently and 
 eagerly he might try to believe it, there was 
 always the dark alternative that pain might not 
 be either remedial or educative; there was the
 
 130 Beside Still Waters 
 
 terrible possibility that identity and personal 
 consciousness were absolutely extinguished by- 
 death , for there was, no sort of evidence to 
 fhe contrary ; andf if Jhis was the case, what 
 remained of all h'urhan belief, philosophies, 
 and creeds ? They might simply be beautiful 
 dreams, adorable mistakes, exquisite fallacies : 
 but they could supply no inspiration for life, 
 unless there was an element of absolute cer- 
 tainty about them, which was just the element 
 that they lacked ; and, in any case, the sad fact 
 that such certainties as men professed differed 
 from and even contradicted each other, intro- 
 duced a new bewilderment upon the scene. A 
 Romanist maintained the absolute divinity of 
 the Church; a Protestanj maintained the abso- 
 lute reliability of the Bible ; both of these 
 could not be true, because in many points they 
 gnqtraygped each other ; the authority of the 
 Church contradicted the authority of the Bible, 
 while neither was perfectly consistent even with 
 itself. They could not both be true, and Hugh 
 was forced to believe that the point in which 
 they were both in error was in their claim to 
 * aj^y absolute certainty at all. The conclusion 
 -'seemed to be that one must take refuge in a 
 perfect sincerity, not formulate one's hopes as 
 beliefs, but wait for light, and keep the eyes of 
 the mind open to all indications of any kind
 
 Waiting for Light 131 
 
 that one must, in the words of the old wise 
 proverb, be ready to begin one's life afresh 
 many times, in the light of any new knowledge, 
 any hint of truth. And thus one kind of hap- 
 piness became impossible for Hugh, the happi- 
 ness that comes of absolute certainty, when 
 one may take a thing for granted, and not 
 argue_any more about it ; that was the sort~ol 
 happiness which mauy of his friends seemed to 
 him to attain ; andjjfxlife did indeed end with, 
 death, it was probably the best practical sys- 
 tem to adopt ; but Hugh could not adopt it ; 
 and therefore the only happiness he could 
 expect was a candid and patient waiting upon 
 truth, a welcoming of any new experience with 
 a balanced and eager mind. To some a human 
 love, a human passion, seemed the one satisfy- 
 ing thing, but this was denied to Hugh and 
 the only thing in his life which was of the 
 nature of a passion was the sight of the beauti- 
 
 ~' ~ TT fmmmm . ,- . , ,^ti ] g "~~ 
 
 ful world about him, which appealed to him 
 day by day with a hundred delicate surprises, 
 unnumbered novelties of rapture. He realised 
 that the one thing that he dreaded was a cold 
 tranquillity, uncheered by hope, unresponsjye 
 to beauty. 
 
 He rode one day, in the height of summer, 
 for miles across the fenland. To left and right 
 lay the huge plain with its wide fields, its soli-
 
 132 Beside Still Waters 
 
 tary trees; to his left, between grassy flood- 
 banks, ran the straight reedy river, full to-day 
 of the little yellow water-lily, golden stars ris- 
 ing from the cool floating leaves ; far ahead ran 
 a low wooded ridge, with house-roofs clustering 
 round a fantastic church tower, with a crown 
 of pinnacles. Cattle grazed peacefully, and 
 the whole scene was brimful of sweet passion- 
 less life, ineffable content. If he could only 
 have shared it! Yet the sight of it all filled 
 him with a sweet hopefulness ; he travelled on, 
 a lonely pilgrim, eager and wistful, desiring 
 knowledge and love and serenity. He felt that 
 they were waiting, certainly waiting ; that they 
 were tenderly and wisely withheld. That was 
 the nearest that he could come to his heart's 
 desire. 
 
 // ^
 
 XIV 
 
 IT was always a greatjjleasure to Hugh toj^x- 
 plore an unfamiliar^ countryside, and the same 
 pleasure was derivable to a certain extent from 
 railway travelling, though the vignettes that one 
 saw from the windows of a swiftly-rolling train 
 were so transitory and so numerous, that one 
 had soon the same sense of fatigue that comes 
 from turning over a book of photographs, or 
 from visiting a picture-gallery. If one explored 
 the country in a leisurely manner it was less fa- 
 tiguing, because one could taste the savour of a 
 sight at one's ease. Hugh came to the conclu- 
 sion, as life advanced, that he preferred a land- 
 scape on which humanity had set itsjrnark^to a 
 landscape of a pure, natural wildness, though 
 th'at indeed had a beauty of its own, a more 
 solemn beauty, though not so near to the heart. 
 But the great red-brick house, peering through 
 its sun-blinds, among the flower-beds, with a 
 rookery behind in the tall trees of a grove, and 
 the cupola of stable-buildings among the shrub- 
 beries, that one saw in a flash as the train 
 133
 
 134 Beside Still Waters 
 
 emerged from the low cutting; or the tiled 
 roofs of houses, with an old mouldering church- 
 tower peering out above them, in a gap between 
 green downs; or a quiet manor-house among 
 pastures, seen at the close of day when the 
 shadows began to lengthen, gave him a sense of 
 the long succession of peaceable lives the boy 
 returning from school to the familiar home, or 
 the old squire, after a life of pleasant activities, 
 walking among the well-known fields, and know- 
 ing that he must soon make haste to be gone 
 and leave his place for others. There was a 
 sense of romance and pathos about it all; and 
 the scenes thus unfolded suddenly before his 
 eyes were dear to him because they had been 
 dear to others, and stood for so much old tender- 
 ness and anxious love. There was always., too, 
 a feeling in his mind of how easy, how sweet 
 and tranquil, life would be under such condi- 
 tions. Seen from outside, certain lives, lived in 
 beautiful surroundings and tinged with seemly 
 traditions, seemed to have a romantic quality, 
 even in their sufferings and sorrows. No 
 amount of experience, no accumulation of the 
 certainty that life was interwoven with a sordid 
 and dreary fibre, seemed ever to dispel this il- 
 lusion, just as sorrows and miseries depicted in 
 a book or in a drama appeared to have a 
 romance about them which, seen from inside,
 
 Dreariness 135 
 
 they lacked. There were in Hugh's own 
 memory a few places and a few houses, where 
 by some happy fortune the hours had always 
 been touched with this poetical quality, and 
 into which no touch of dreariness had ever 
 entered. Something of the same romance 
 lingered for Hugh over certain of the colleges at 
 Cambridge. To wander through their courts, 
 to read the mysterious names inscribed over 
 unknown doors, to think of the long succession 
 of inmates, grave or light-hearted, that_Jived 
 within, either for a happy space of youth, or 
 through long quiet years ; this never ceased to 
 communicate to him a certain thrill of emotion. 
 The only period of his life that seemed to 
 Hugh to lack this quality of poetry were the 
 years of his official life in London, the years that 
 the locust had eaten. He did not grudge hav- 
 ing spent them so, for they had given a sort of 
 solidity and gravity to life ; but now that he 
 was free to live as he chose, he determined that 
 he would, if he could, so spend his days, that 
 there should be as little as possible of this dull 
 and ugly quality intermixed with them ; the 
 sadness and incompleteness of countless lives 
 seemed to Hugh to arise from the fact that so 
 many men settled down to mechanical toil, 
 which first robbed them of their freshness, and 
 then routine became essential to them. But
 
 >^ 
 
 136 Beside Still Waters 
 
 Hugh determined that neither his work nor his 
 occupation should have this sunless and dismal 
 quality ; that he would deliberately eschew the 
 things that brought him dreariness, and the 
 people who took a mean and conventional view; 
 that he would not take up, in a spirit of heavy 
 rectitude, work for which he knew himself to be 
 unfit ; and that such mechanical work as he felt 
 bound to undertake should be regarded by him 
 in the light of a tonic, which should enable him 
 to return to his chosen work with a sense of 
 gladness and relief. 
 
 This would demand a certain sustained effort, 
 he foresaw. But whatever qualities he pos- 
 sessed, he knew that he could reckon upon a 
 vital impatience of things that were dull and 
 common ; moreover it was possible to determine 
 that, whatever happened, he would not do things 
 in a dull way ; so much depended upon how 
 they were handled and executed. One of the 
 * dullest things in the world was the multiplica- 
 n of unnecessary business. So many people 
 made the mistake of thinking that by minute 
 organisation the success of a system could be 
 guaranteed. Hugh knew that the^reaj^ secret 
 was to select the right personalities, and to leave 
 systems elastic and simple, and that thus the 
 best results were achieved ; the most depressing 
 thing in the world was a dull person administer-
 
 Romance 137 
 
 ing faithfully an elaborate system ; one of the 
 most inspiring sights was an original man mak- 
 ing the best of a bad system. 
 
 And so Hugh resolved that he would bring 
 to his task, his leisure, his relations with others, 
 his exits and entrances, his silence and his 
 speech, a freshness^ and a zest, no^direc^djfl. 
 surprising or interesting others -that was the 
 most vulgar expedient "f allhut with a. rfo, 
 
 *-* A VMMMHMMMMH^^* 
 
 liberate design to transmute, as by the touch 
 of "the magical stone, the common materials of 
 life into pure gold. He would endeavour to 
 
 _ ii ummm ffr^* i~^^*^^B 
 
 discern the poetical quality in everything and 
 in every one. In inanimate things this was 
 easy enough, for they were already full of pun- 
 gent distinctness, of subtle difference ; it was 
 all there, waiting merely to be discerned. With 
 people it was different, because there were so 
 many who stared solemnly and impenetrably, 
 who repelled one with remarks about the 
 weather and the events of the day, as a man 
 repels a barge with a pole. With such people 
 it would be necessary to try a number of con- 
 versational flies over the surface of the sleeping 
 pool, in the hope that some impulse, some 
 pleasant trait would dart irresistibly to the sur- 
 face, and be hauled struggling ashore. Hugh 
 had seen, more than once, strange, repressed, 
 mournful things looking out of the guarded
 
 138 Beside Still Waters 
 
 eyes of dreary persons ; and it would be his 
 business to entice these to the light. He de- 
 termined, too, to cultivate thejart of being 
 .alone. (There were many people in the world 
 who found themselves the poorest of all com- 
 pany, and Hugh resolved that he would find 
 his own society the most interesting of all ; he 
 would not be beaten by life, as so many people 
 appeared to him to be. Of course, he knew 
 that there were threatening clouds in the sky, 
 that in a moment might burst and drench the 
 air with driving rain. But Hugh hoped that 
 his attitude of curiosity and wonder could find 
 food for high-hearted reflection even there. 
 The n ni verse teemed with significance, and if 
 God had bestowed such a quality with rich 
 abundance everywhere, there must be a still 
 larger store of it in His own eternal heart. The 
 world was full of surprises ; trees drooped their 
 leaves over screening walls, houses had backs 
 as well as fronts ; music was heard from shut- 
 tered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. 
 There were a thousand pretty secrets in the 
 ways of people to each other. Then, too, there 
 were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied 
 wall. One had but to clap one's hands and 
 cry out, and there was a fluttering of innumer- 
 able wings ; life was as full of bubbles, forming, 
 rising into amber foam, as a glass of sparkling
 
 The Choice of Work 139 
 
 wine. That cup he would drink, and try its 
 savour. There would be times when he would 
 flag, no doubt, but it should not be from any 
 failure of desire. He would try to be tem- 
 perate, so as to keep the inner eye unclouded ; 
 and he would try to be perfectly simple" anoT 
 sincere, deciding questions on their own merits, 
 and with no conventional judgment. Such an 
 attitude might be labelled by peevish persons, 
 with prejudices rather than preferences, a species 
 of intellectual Epjcjjreanjsm. But Hugh de- 
 sired not to limit his gaze by the phenomena 
 of life, but to keep his eyes fixed upon the fur- 
 ther horizon ; the light might dawn when it was 
 least expected ; but" the best chance of catch- 
 ing the first faint lights of that othej^ sunrise, 
 was to have learned expectancy, to have trained 
 observation, and to have kept one's heart 
 unfettered and undimmed. 
 
 He saw that the first qsg^Bjjg^ ftf ?Hiwas to 
 
 Of F ntT "" kinrl, to 
 
 have a chosen work, to which he should be 
 vowed as by a species of consecration ; it was 
 in choosing their life-work, he thought, that so 
 many people failed. He saw men of high abil- 
 ity, year after year, who continued to put off 
 the decision as to what their work should be, 
 until they suddenly found themselves con- 
 fronted with the necessity of earning their
 
 Beside Still Waters 
 
 living, and then their choice had to be made 
 in a hurry ; they pushed the nearest door open 
 and went in ; and then habit began to forge 
 chains about them ; and soon, however un- 
 congenial their life might be, they were in- 
 capable of abandoning it. There were some 
 melancholy instances at Cambridge of men of 
 high intellectual power, who had drifted thus 
 into the academical life without any aptitude 
 for it, without educational zeal, without in- 
 terest in young people. Such men went on 
 tamely year after year, passing from one college 
 . office to another, inadequately paid, with no 
 belief in the value of their work, averse to 
 trying experiments, fond of comfort, only 
 anxious to have as little trouble as possible, 
 expending their ingenuity of mind in academi- 
 cal meetings, criticising the verbal expression 
 of reports with extreme subtlety, too fastidious 
 to design original work, too much occupied for 
 patient research, and ending either in a bitter 
 sense of unrecognised merit, or in a frank and 
 unashamed indolence. 
 
 Hugh saw that in choosing the work of one's 
 life, one must not be guided by Necessity, or 
 even mere rectitude. Work embraced from a 
 sense of duty was like driving a chariot in sea- 
 sand. One must have an enthusiasm for one's 
 task, and a delight in it; for only by enjoyment
 
 The Choice of Work 141 
 
 of the results could one tolerate the mechanical 
 labour inseparable from all intellectual toil. It 
 was true that he had himself drifted into offi- 
 cial duties, but here Hugh saw the guidance of 
 a very tender providence, which had provided 
 him with a species of discipline, that he could 
 never have spontaneously practised. His great 
 need had been the application of some harden- 
 ing and hammering process, such as should give 
 him that sort of concentrated alertness which 
 his education had failed to bestow ; and none 
 the less tenderly provided, it seemed to Hugh, <! 
 was the irresistible impulse to arise and go, 
 which had come upon him when the process 
 was completed. And now he was free, with an 
 immense appetite for speculation, for intellec- 
 tual pleasure, for the criticism of life, for obser- 
 vation. It was the quality, the finer essence of 
 things and thoughts that mattered. To some 
 was given the desire to organise and manage 
 the world, to others the instinct for perception, 
 for analysis, for the development of ideas. It 
 was not that one kind of work was better than 
 the other; both were needed, both were noble; 
 but Hugh had no doubt on which side of the 
 battle he was himself meant to fight. And so 
 he determined that he would devote his life to 
 the work, and that he would not allow any ex- 
 cessive intrusion of extraneous elements. The
 
 142 Beside Still Waters 
 
 blessing of the academical life was that it en- 
 tailed a certain_arnount of social intercourse ; it 
 compelled one to come into contact with a large 
 variety of people. Without this Hugh felt 
 that his oujtlook would have become narrow 
 and self-centred. He knew of course that there 
 would be times when it would seem to him that 
 his life was an ineffective one, when he would 
 envy the men of affairs, when he would wonder 
 what, after all, his own performance amounted 
 to. But Hugh felt that the grejtJack_ofjTiany 
 lives was the failure to perceive the interest of 
 ideas ; that many men and women went through 
 existence in a dull and mechanical way, raking 
 together the straws and dust of the street; and 
 he thought that a man might do a great work 
 if he could put a philosophy of life into an 
 accessible shape. The great need was the need 
 of simp_lifialion ; the world was full of palpi- 
 tating interests, of beauty, of sweetness, of 
 delight. But many people had no criterion of 
 values ; they filled their lives with pettyjen- 
 gagements, and smilingly lamented that they 
 had no time to think or read. For such people 
 the sun rose over dewy fields, in the freshness 
 of the countryside, in vain: in vain, the sunset 
 glared among the empurpled cloud-banks ; in 
 vain, the moon rose pale over the hushed gar- 
 den-walks, while the nightingale, hidden in the
 
 Dulness H3 
 
 dark heart of the bush, broke into passionate 
 song. And even if it were argued that it was 
 possible to be sensible and virtuous without 
 being responsive to the appeal of nature, what 
 did such people make of their social life ? they 
 made no excursions into the hearts and minds 
 of others ; their religion was a conventional 
 thing ; they went to concerts, where the violins 
 thrilled with sweet passion, and the horns com- 
 plained with a lazy richness, that they might 
 chatter in gangways and nod to their friends. 
 It was all so elaborate, so hollow ! and yet in the 
 minds of these buzzing, voluble persons one 
 could generally discern a trickle of unconven- 
 tional feeling, which could have made glad the 
 sun-scorched pleasance. 
 
 Hugh determined with all his might that he 
 
 b i . n air 
 
 would try to preach this simple gospel ; that he 
 would praise and uphold the doctrine of sincer- 
 ity, of appreciation, of joy. He made up his 
 mind that he would not be, drawn into the 
 wKirlpool, that he would intermingle long spac- 
 es of eager solitude with his life, that he would 
 meditate, reflect, enjoy ; that he would, try to 
 discern the significance of all things seen or felt, 
 and practise a disposition to approach all phe- 
 nomena, whether pleasant or painful, in a critical 
 mood ; and at the same time he resolved that 
 his criticism should not be a mere solvent ; that
 
 144 Beside Still Waters 
 
 he would strive to discern not the dulness, the 
 ugliness, the dreariness of life, but its ardours, 
 its passions, its transporting emotions, its beau- 
 ties. That was a task for a lifetime. What- 
 ever was doubtful, this was certain, that one 
 was set in a mysterious, attractive, complex 
 place ; if one regarded it carelessly, it seemed 
 a commonplace affair enough, full of material 
 activities, dull necessities, foolish stirrings, low 
 purposes ; but if one looked a little closer, there 
 were strange, dim, beautiful figures moving in 
 and out, evanescent and shadowy, behind the 
 nearer and more distracting elements. Here 
 was hope, with a far-off gaze, beauty with 
 mournful yearning eyes, love with finger on lip 
 and dreamful gaze. It was here that the larger, 
 the holier life lay. What was necessary was 
 to keep apart, with deliberate purpose, from all 
 fruitless vexations, dull anxieties, sordid de- 
 signs. To detach one's self not from life, but 
 from the squm and foam of life ; to realise that 
 
 1 the secret lay in the middle of it all, and that 
 
 J 
 
 , it was to be discerned not by fastidious absten- 
 tion, not by chilly asceticism, but by welcoming 
 all nobler impulses, all spiritual influences ; not 
 by starving body or mind, but by selecting 
 one's food carefully and temperately. If a 
 man, Hugh thought, could live life in this 
 spirit, reasonable, kindly, humble, sincere, he
 
 A Creed 145 
 
 could encourage others to the same simplicity 
 of aim. To be selfish was to miss the beauty 
 of the whole ; for the essence of the situation 
 was to reveal to others, by example and by 
 precept, what they already so dimly knew. 
 
 To find out what one could do, where one 
 could help, and to work with all one's might ; 
 to live strongly and purely ; not to be dissuaded 
 by comment or discouraged by lack of sym- 
 pathy ; to meet others simply and frankly; 
 to be more desirous to ascertain other points 
 of view than to propound one's own ; not to 
 be ashamed to speak unaffectedly of one's 
 own admirations and hopes ; not to desire 
 recognition ; not to yield to personal motives; 
 not to assent to conventional principles blindly, 
 nor to dissent from them mechanically ; never to 
 be contemptuous or intolerant ; to foresee 
 contingencies and not to be deterred by them ; 
 to be open to all impressions ; to be tender 
 to all sincere scruples; not^ to be censorious 
 or hasty; not to anticipate opposition; tolbe 
 neither timid nor rash ; to seek peace ; to be gen- 
 tle rather than conscientious ; to be appreciative 
 rather than critical on these lines Hugh 
 wished to live ; he desired no deference, no 
 personal domination ; but neither did he wish 
 to reject responsibility if he were consulted 
 and trusted. Above all things he hoped to
 
 146 Beside Still Waters 
 
 resist the temptation of taking soundings, of 
 calculating his successes. Fame and renown 
 allured him, none but he could say how much ; 
 but he knew in his heart that he contemned 
 their specious claims, and he hoped that they 
 would some day cease to trouble him. He 
 knew that much depended upon health and 
 vigour ; but on the other hand, he believed 
 that the most transforming power in the 
 world was the desire to be different : why he 
 could not stride into his kingdom and realise 
 his ideal all at once, he could not divine ; 
 but meanwhile he would desire the best, and 
 look forward in confidence and hope.
 
 XV 
 
 HUGH was seized, one bright February 
 morning of clear sun and keen winds, with a 
 sudden weariness of his work, This rebellious 
 impulse did not often visit him, because he 
 loved his work very greatly, and there were no 
 hours so happy as those which were so engaged. 
 But to-day he thought of himself suddenly that, 
 lost thus in his delightful labour, he was for- 
 getting to live. How strange it was that the 
 hours one loved most were the hours of work 
 that sped past unconsciously, when one stood 
 apart, absorbed in dreams, from the current of 
 things. It seemed to him as if he was like the 
 Lady of Shalott, so intent upon her web and 
 the weaving of it, that she thought of the mov- 
 ing forms upon the road beyond the river 
 merely as things that could be depicted in her 
 coloured threads. He took up the Pilgrims 
 Progress and sat a long while reading it, and 
 smiling as he read ; he wondered why so many 
 critics spoke so slightingly of the second part, 
 which seemed to him in some ways almost more 
 i47
 
 148 Beside Still Waters 
 
 beautiful than the first. There was not perhaps 
 quite the same imaginativeness or zest; but 
 there was more instinctive art, because the 
 writer was retracing the same path, lodging at 
 the same grave houses, encountering the same 
 terrors, and yet representing everything as 
 mirrored in a different quality of mind ; the 
 mind of a faithful woman, and of the boys and 
 maid'ens who walked with her upon the pil- 
 grimage. There was not quite the same 
 romance, perhaps, but there was more tender- 
 ness than sweetness. It came less from the 
 mind and more from the heart. 
 
 Hugh smiled to see how rapidly the dangers of 
 the road must have diminished, if Mr. Greatheart 
 had often convoyed a party on their way. That 
 mighty man laid about him with such valour, 
 sliced off the heads and arms of giants with 
 such cordial good-humour, that there could 
 hardly, Hugh thought, have been for the next 
 company any adventures left at all. Moreover 
 so many of the stubborn and ill-favoured per- 
 sons had come by a bad end, were hung in 
 chains by the road, or lying pierced with sor- 
 rows, that later pilgrims would have to complain 
 of lack of bracing incidents. Still, how delicate 
 and gentle a journey it was, and with what 
 caressing fondness the writer helped these 
 young and faltering feet along the way. What
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress H9 
 
 pretty and absurd sights they saw! How 
 laden they were with presents ! Christiana 
 had Mr. Skill's boxes, twelve in all, of medicine, 
 with no doubt a vial or two of tears of repent- 
 ance to wash the pills down ; she had bottles of 
 wine, parched corn, figs, and raisins from the 
 Lord of the place, to say nothing of the golden 
 anchor which the maidens gave her, which must 
 have impeded her movements. 
 
 He read with a smile, which was not wholly 
 one of amusement, Mr. Greatheart's admirable 
 argument as to how the process of redemption 
 was executed. The Redeemer, it seemed, had 
 no less than four kinds of righteousness, three 
 to keep, which he could not do without, and one 
 kind to give away. Every detail of the case 
 was supported by a little cluster of marginal 
 texts, and no doubt it appeared as logical and 
 simple to the author as a problem or an equa- 
 tion. But what an extraordinary form of re- 
 ligion it all was ! There was not the least mis- 
 giving in the mind of the author. The Bible J 
 was to him a perfectly unquestioned manifesto 
 of the mind of God, and solved everything 
 and anything. And yet the whole basis of the 
 pilgrimage was insecure. There was no free 
 gift of grace, at all. Some few fortunate people 
 were started on the pilgrimage by being given 
 an overpowering desire to set out, while the
 
 150 Beside Still Waters 
 
 pleasant party who met at Madam Wanton's 
 house, Mr. Lightmind and Mr. Love-the-flesh, 
 with Mr. Lechery and Mrs. Filth, and passed 
 the afternoon with music and dancing, were 
 troubled by no divine misgivings. 
 
 Then, too, the Lord of the way found no 
 difficulty in easing the path of the gentler sort 
 of pilgrims. He kept the Valley of the Shadow 
 comparatively quiet for Christiana and her ten- 
 der band. The ugly thing that came to meet 
 them, and the Lion that padded after them, 
 were not suffered to draw near. The hobgob- 
 lins were stayed from howling. It never 
 seemed to have occurred to Bunyan to ques- 
 tionwhj/ the Lord of the way had ever allowed 
 this unhallowed crew to gather in the valley at 
 all. If he could restrain them, and if Mr. 
 Greatheart could hew the giants in pieces, why 
 could not the whole nest of hornets have been 
 smoked out once and for all ? Even the Slough 
 of Despond could not be mended with all the 
 cartloads of promises and texts that were shot 
 there. And yet for all that, when one came to 
 reflect upon it, this Calvinistic scheme of elec- 
 tion and reprobation did seem to correspond in 
 a terrible manner with the phenomena of the 
 world. One saw people around one, some of 
 whom seemed to start with an instinct for all 
 that was pure and noble, and again others
 
 The Pilgrimage 15 l 
 
 seemed to begin with no preference for virtue 
 at all, but to be dogged with inherited corrup- 
 tion from the outset. The mistake which 
 moralists made was to treat all alike, as if all 
 men had the moral instinct equally developed ; 
 and yet Hugh had met not a few men who 
 were restrained by absolutely no scruples, ex- 
 cept prudential ones, and the dread of incurring 
 conventional penalties, from yielding to every 
 bodily impulse. If truth and purity and unself- 
 ishness were the divine things, if happiness lay 
 there, why were there such multitudes of peo- 
 ple created who had no implanted desire to 
 attain to these virtues? 
 
 It was in the grip of such thoughts that 
 Hugh left the house and walked alone through 
 the streets of the town, as Christian might 
 have walked in the City of Destruction. What 
 was one to fly from? and whither was the pil- 
 grimage to tend? The streets were full of 
 busy comfortable people, some, like Mr. Brisk, 
 men of considerable breeding, some again, like 
 the two ill-favoured ones, marked for doom ; 
 here and there was a young woman whose 
 name might have been Dull. What was one's 
 duty in the matter? Was one indeed to 
 repent, with groans and cries, for a corruption 
 of heart that had been bestowed upon one 
 without any choice of one's own ? Was one
 
 152 Beside Still Waters 
 
 bound to overwhelm one's companions with 
 abundance of pious suggestions, to rebuke vice, 
 to rejoice in the disasters that befell the 
 ungodly ? It seemed a hopeless business from 
 first to last ; of course, if one had Bunyan's 
 simple faith, if one could believe that at a cer- 
 tain moment, on the Hill of Calvary, a thing 
 had been accomplished which had in an instant 
 changed the whole scheme of the world ; that a 
 wrathful Creator, possessed hitherto by a fierce 
 and vindicative anger with the frail creatures 
 whom he moulded by thousands from the clay, 
 was in an instant converted into a tender and 
 compassionate father, his thirst for vengeance 
 satisfied, it would be plain enough; but Hugh 
 felt in the depths of his heart that whatever 
 else might be true, that was not ; or at least if 
 jf'' it had any semblance of truth in it, it simply 
 consummated a mystery so appalling that one 
 must merely resign all hope and courage. 
 
 What could one make of a Gospel that could 
 lend any colour to a theory such as this ? Was 
 it the fault of the Gospel, or was the error 
 rooted in human nature, a melancholy misin- 
 terpretation of a high truth ? It seemed to 
 Hugh that the mistake lay there ; it seemed to 
 arise from the acceptance by the Puritans of 
 the Bible as all one book, and by the deliberate 
 extrusion of the human element from it. Christ,
 
 Interpretations 153 
 
 in the Gospel, seemed to teach, so far as Hugh 
 could understand, not that he had effected any 
 change in the nature or disposition of God, but 
 that He had always been a Father of men, full 
 of infinite compassion and love ; the miracle of 
 Christ's life was the showing how a Divine 
 spirit, bound by all the sad limitations of mor- 
 tality, could yet lead a life of inner peace and 
 joy, a life of perfect trust and simplicity. The 
 clouding of the pure Gospel came from the 
 vehement breath of His interpreters. His later 
 interpreters were men in whose minds was in- 
 stinctively implanted the old harsh doctrine of 
 man's perverse corruption, and the dark severity 
 of God's justice ; and thus the Puritans were 
 misled, because they laid an equal stress upon 
 the whole of the Bible, and spoke of it as all 
 of equal and Divine authority. Instead of re- 
 jecting, as faulty human conceptions, what did 
 not harmonise with the purer Gospel light, they 
 sought and found in the Gospel a confirma- 
 tion of the older human view. They treated 
 the whole collection of books as all equally 
 true, all equally important, and thus they were 
 bent on seeing that the Gospel should fulfil 
 rather than supersede the Law. This was in 
 part the spirit of St. Paul ; and thus the Puri- 
 tan Gospel was the Gospel of the Saviour. To 
 Hugh the Old Testament was a very wonderful
 
 154 Beside Still Waters 
 
 thing, wonderful because it showed the rise of 
 a spirit of personal righteousness in the world, 
 a spirit that worshipped morality with the same 
 vehemence and enthusiasm as that with which 
 the Greeks worshipped beauty. And thus be- 
 cause they had loved righteousness and hated 
 iniquity, there had been given to their imperi- 
 ous nation the reward that the humanity of 
 their race should be chosen to enshrine the 
 Divine spirit of the Saviour. 
 
 Hugh felt that the weakness pf the ecclesias- 
 tical position was its obstinate refusal to admit 
 the possibilities of future development. A cen- 
 tury ago, a man who ventured to hint that the 
 story of Noah's Ark might not be historically 
 and exactly true would have been pronounced 
 a dangerous heretic. Now no one was required 
 to affirm his belief in it. Nowadays the belief 
 in the miraculous element even of the New 
 Testament was undoubtedly weakening. Yet 
 the orthodox believer still pronounced a 
 Christian unsound who doubted it. 
 
 Here lay the insecurity of the orthodox 
 champions. They stumbled on, fully accepting, 
 when they could not help themselves, the pro- 
 gressive developments of thought, yet loudly 
 condemning any one who was a little further 
 ahead upon the road, until they had caught 
 him up.
 
 The Pilgrimage 155 
 
 Still, the old Puritan poet, for all his over- 
 preciseness of definition, all his elaborate scheme 
 of imputed righteousness, all his dreary meta- 
 physics, had yet laid his hand upon the essential 
 truth. Life was indeed a pilgrimage ; and as 
 the new law, the law of science, was investigated 
 and explored, it seemed hardly less arbitrary, 
 hardly more loving than the old. It was a scheme 
 of infinite delay ; no ardent hopes, no burning 
 conceptions of justice and truth could hasten or 
 retard the working of the inflexible law, which 
 blessed without reference to goodness, and 
 punished without reference to morality. No one 
 could escape by righteousness, no man could 
 plead his innocence or his ignorance. One was 
 surrounded by inexplicable terrors, one's path 
 was set with gins and snares. Here the smoke 
 and the flame burst forth, or the hobgoblins 
 roared in concert ; here was a vale of peace, or a 
 house of grave and kindly entertainment ; and 
 sometimes from the hill-tops or the land of Beu- 
 lah, there seemed indeed to be a radiant vision, 
 dim-descried, of towers and pearly gates, a high 
 citadel of heavenly peace. But how little one 
 learned even of one's own strength and weak- 
 ness ! The one instinct, which might itself be \ 
 a delusion, was that one had a choice in the 
 matter, a will, a power to act or to refrain from , 
 acting ; there was a deep-seated impulse to fare /
 
 156 Beside Still Waters 
 
 onward, to hope, to struggle. It was useless to 
 blame the mysterious conditions of the journey, 
 for they were certainly there. The only faith 
 that was possible was the belief that the truth 
 was somehow larger, nobler, more beautiful than 
 one could conceive it ought to be ; and there 
 was a restfulness, when one apprehended what 
 seemed so dark at first, in the knowledge that 
 one's character and environment alike were 
 not one's own choice ; the only way was to keep 
 one's eye fixed upon the furthest hope, and 
 never to cease imploring the Power that made 
 us what we were, to give not abundant, but suf- 
 ficient, strength, and to guide us into acting, so 
 far as we had power to act, as He willed. 
 
 This then became for Hugh his practical re- 
 ligion ; to commit himself unceasingly, in joy and 
 trouble alike, in the smallest matters, to the 
 Eternal will ; until he grew to feel that if there 
 were anything true in the world, it was the power 
 of that perpetual surrender. It was surprising to 
 him to find how anxiety melted into tranquillity, 
 if one could but do that. Not only, he learned, 
 must great decisions be laid before God, but the 
 smallest acts of daily life. How often one felt 
 the harassing weight of small duties, the dis- 
 tasteful business, the anxious conversation, the 
 dreary occasion ; fatigue, disappointment, care, 
 uncertainty, timidity ! If one could but put the
 
 The Essence of the Situation 157 
 
 matter into the hands of God, instead of rehears- 
 ing and calculating and anticipating, what a 
 peace flowed into one's spirit ! Difficulties 
 melted away like mist before it. The business 
 was tranquilly accomplished ; the interview 
 that one dreaded provided its own obvious so- 
 lution, vexations were healed, troubles were 
 suddenly revealed as marvellously unimportant. 
 One blundered still, went perversely wrong, 
 yielded falteringly to an impulse knowing it to 
 be evil ; but even such events had a wholesome 
 humiliation about them which brought healing 
 with it. The essence of the whole situation was 
 to have in one's heart the romance of pilgrimage, 
 to expect experience, both sweet and bitter, to 
 desire the goal rather than the prize ; and to 
 find the jewels of patience, hopefulness, and 
 wisdom by the way, where one had least ex- 
 pected them.
 
 XVI 
 
 HUGH, one Sunday, in walking alone outside 
 Cambridge, went for some considerable time be- 
 hind a party of young men and boys, who were 
 out for a stroll. He observed them with a dis- 
 gustful curiosity. They were over-dressed; they 
 talked loudly and rudely, and so far as Hugh 
 could hear both coarsely and unamusingly. 
 They laughed boisterously, they made offensive 
 remarks about humble people who passed them. 
 It was the height of humour to push each other 
 unexpectedly into the ditch at the side of the 
 road, and then their laughter became uproari- 
 ous. It was harmless enough, but it was all so 
 ugly and insolent, that Hugh thought that he 
 had seldom seen anything which was so singu- 
 larly and supremely unattractive. The per- 
 formance seemed to have no merit in it from 
 any point of view. These youths were no doubt 
 exulting in the pride of their strength, but the 
 only thing that they really enjoyed was that the 
 people who met them should be disconcerted 
 and distressed. Making every allowance for 
 158
 
 Humanity 159 
 
 thoughtlessness and high spirits, it seemed un- 
 necessary that these qualities should manifest 
 themselves so unpleasingly. Hugh wondered 
 whether, as democracy learned its strength, hu- 
 manity was indeed becoming more vulgar, .more 
 inconsiderate, more odious. Singly, jDerhaps, 
 these very boys might be sensuSIe and good- 
 humoured people enough, but association seemed 
 only to develop all that was worst in them. 
 And yet they were specimens of humanity at 
 its strongest and cheerfullest. They were the 
 hope of the race for the same thing was prob- 
 ably going on all over England and they would 
 no doubt develop into respectable and virtuous 
 citizens ; but the spectacle of their joy was one 
 that had no single agreeable feature. These 
 loutish, rowdy, loud-talking, intolerable young 
 merTwere a blot upon the sweet day, the pleas- 
 ant countryside. Probably, Hugh thought, 
 there was something sexual beneath it all, and 
 the insolence of the group was in some dim way 
 concerned with the instinct for impressing 
 and captivating the female heart. Perhaps 
 the more demure village maidens who met 
 them felt that there was something dash- 
 ing and even chivalrous about these young 
 squires. 
 
 There came into Hugh's mind the talk of a 
 friend who had been staying with him, a man of
 
 160 Beside Still Waters 
 
 lofty socialistic ideals, who spoke much and elo- 
 quently of the worship of humanity. ^Reflect- 
 ing upon the phrase, Hugh felt that he could 
 attach no sort of meaning to it. What was the 
 humanity that one was to worship? Was it 
 the glory of the average man ? Was it the mem- 
 ory of the past? Was it the possibility of the 
 future? It seemed to Hugh to be an impossi- 
 ble abstraction. He had said as much to his 
 friend, who had replied that it was like the wor- 
 ship of Nature, which Hugh himself practised. 
 But Hugh replied that he did not worship Na- 
 ture at all. There was much in Nature that he 
 did not understand, much that he feared and 
 disliked. There was an abundance of beautiful 
 things in Nature that he worshipped, not Na- 
 ture as a whole; there was enough, he said, in 
 Nature that was desirable, to give him a kind 
 of hope that there was some high and beautiful 
 thought behind it ; at which his friend became 
 eloquent, veiling, Hugh thought, a great con- 
 fusion of mind behind a liberal use of rhetoric, 
 and spoke of suffering, toiling, sorrowing, 
 onward-looking humanity, its impassioned rela- 
 tions, its great wistful heart. Hugh again, 
 could not understand him ; he thought that his 
 friend formed some exotic and fanciful concep- 
 tion, arrived at by subtracting from humanity all 
 that was not pathetic and solemn and dignified,
 
 Humanity 161 
 
 and then fusing the residue into a sort of cor- 
 poreal entity. He did not see any truth or reality 
 about the conception. It seemed to him as un- 
 real as though one had personified the Great 
 Western Railway into a sort of gigantic form, 
 striding westward, covered with packages of 
 merchandise, and carrying a typical human 
 being, as St. Christopher carried the Sacred 
 Child across the flood. It was pure anthro- 
 pomorphism. 
 
 "TTugrT could understand a personal relation, 
 even the passionate idealisation of an individual. 
 He could conceive of the latter as givirTg'one 
 a higher idea of the possibilities of the human 
 race: but to lump a vast and complex system 
 together, to concentrate unknown races, dead 
 and living, negroes, Chinamen, Homeric heroes 
 and palaeolithic men, into one definite con- 
 ception, and to worship it, seemed to Hugh 
 an almost grotesque thought. He could con- 
 ceive of a species of Pantheism, in which the 
 object of one's awe and worship was the vast 
 force underlying all existing things; but even 
 so it seemed necessary to Hugh to focus it all 
 into one personal force. The essence of wor- 
 ship seemed to Hugh to be that the thing 
 worshipped should have unity and individual- 
 ity. It seemed to him as impossible to worship 
 a thing of which he himself was a part, as to
 
 1 62 Beside Still Waters 
 
 demand that a cat should adore the principle 
 of felinity. 
 
 The essence of the world, of life, to Hugh 
 lay in the sense of his own individuality. He 
 was instinctively conscious of his own existence, 
 he was experimentally conscious of the exist- 
 ence of a complicated world outside of him. 
 But it was to him rather a depressing than an 
 ennobling thought, that he was one of a class, 
 I fettered by the same disabilities, the same 
 weaknesses, as millions of similar objects. Per- 
 haps it was a wholesome humiliation, but it 
 was none the less humiliating. On the one 
 hand he was conscious of the vast power of 
 imagination, the power of standing, as it were, 
 side by side with God upon the rampart of 
 heaven, and surveying the whole scheme of 
 created things. Yet on the other hand there 
 fell the sense of a baffling and miserable im- 
 potence, a despairing knowledge that one's 
 consciousness of the right to live, and to live 
 happily, was conditioned by one's utter frailty, 
 the sense that one was surrounded by a thou- 
 sand dangers, any one of which might at any 
 moment deprive one of the only thing of which 
 one was sure. How, and by what subtle pro- 
 cess of faith and imagination, could the two 
 thoughts be reconciled ? 
 
 The best that Hugh could make of the ardent
 
 Individuality 163 
 
 love of life and joy which inspired him, was the 
 belief that it was implanted in man, that he 
 might have, for some inscrutable reason, a mo- 
 tive for experiencing, and for desiring to con- 
 tinue to experience, the strange discipline of 
 the world. If men did not love life and ease 
 so intensely, at the first discouragement, at the 
 first touch of pain, they would languidly and 
 despairingly cease to be. Hugh seemed to dis- 
 cern that men were put into the world that 
 they might apprehend something that it was 
 worth their while to apprehend ; that for some 
 reason which he had no means of divining, life 
 could not be a wholly easy or pleasurable 
 thing ; but that in order to inspire men to bear 
 pain and unhappiness, they were permeated 
 with an intense desire to continue to live, and 
 to regain some measure of contentment, if that 
 contentment were for a time forfeited. Of 
 course there were many things which that did 
 not explain, but it was a working theory that 
 seemed to contain a large element of truth. 
 Sometimes a technically religious person would 
 say that the world was created for the glory of 
 God, a phrase which filled Hugh with a sense 
 of bewildered disgust. It either implied that 
 God demanded recognition, or that it was all 
 done in a species of intolerable pride of heart, 
 as a mere exhibition of power. That God
 
 1 64 Beside Still Waters 
 
 should yield to a desire for display seemed to 
 Hugh entirely inconsistent with a belief in His 
 awful supremacy. 
 
 It seemed to him rather that God must have 
 abundant cause to be dissatisfied with the world 
 as it was, but that at the same time He must 
 have some overpoweringly just reason for ac- 
 quiescing for a time in its imperfection. How 
 else could one pray, or aspire, or hope at all ? 
 
 But the sight of human beings, such as Hugh 
 had before his eyes that day, filled him with 
 perplexity. One was only possessed by an in- 
 tense desire that they might be different from 
 what they were. Hugh indeed knew that he 
 himself had sore need to be different from what 
 he was. But the qualities that lay behind the 
 motions and speech of these lads inconsider- 
 ateness, indifference to others, vanity, gross- 
 ness were the things that he had always been 
 endeavouring to suppress and eradicate in him- 
 self; they were the things that were detested 
 by poets, saints, and all chivalrous and generous 
 souls. 
 
 Sometimes indeed one was confronted, in 
 the world of men, by a perfectly sincere, noble, 
 quiet, gentle, loving personality ; and then one 
 perceived, as in a gracious portrait, what hu- 
 manity could hope to aspire to. But on the 
 other hand Hugh had seen, in the pages of a
 
 The Average 165 
 
 periodical, an attempt to arrive at a typical hu- 
 man face, by photographing a number of indi- 
 viduals upon the same plate ; and what a blurred, 
 dim, uncomfortable personality seemed to peer 
 forth ! To worship humanity seemed to Hugh 
 like tryingto worship that concentrated average ; 
 and he had little hope that, if an absolutely 
 average man were constructed, every sin- 
 gle living individual contributing his character- 
 istics to the result, the result would be edifying, 
 encouraging, or inspiring. Hugh feared that 
 the type would but sink the most tolerant 
 philosopher in a sense of irreclaimable depres- 
 sion. And yet if, guided by prejudice and prefer- 
 ence, one made up a figure that one could wholly 
 admire, how untrue to nature it would be, 
 how different from the figure that other human 
 beings would consent to admire. 
 
 The problem was insoluble ; the only way 
 was to set one's self courageously at one's own 
 little corner of the gigantic scheme, to attack 
 it as faithfully as one could, by humble aspi- 
 rations, quiet ministries, and tender-hearted 
 sympathy ; to take as simply as possible what- 
 ever message of beauty and hope fell to one's 
 share ; not to be absorbed in one's own dreams 
 and imaginings, but to interpret faithfully 
 every syllable of the great Gospel; and, above 
 all, to remember that work was inevitable,
 
 1 66 Beside Still Waters 
 
 necessary, and even beautiful ; but that it only 
 had the noble quality when it was undertaken 
 for the love of others, and not for love of 
 one's self.
 
 XVII 
 
 THE return of the sweet spring days, with 
 the balmy breath of warm winds, soft sunshine 
 on the pastures, the songs of contented birds in 
 thicket and holt, brought to Hugh an astonish- 
 ing richness of sensation, a waft of joy that 
 was not yet light-hearted, joy that was on the 
 one hand touched with a fine rapture, yet on 
 the other hand overshadowed by a wistful 
 melancholy, The frame, braced by wintry 
 cold, revelled in the outburst of warmth, of 
 light, of life ; and yet the very luxuriousness 
 of the sensation brought with it a languor and 
 a weariness that was akin rather to death than 
 to life. He rode alone far into the shining 
 countryside, and found, in the middle of wide 
 fields with softly swelling outlines, where the 
 dry ploughlands were dappled with faint fawn- 
 coloured tints, a little wood, in the centre of 
 which was a reed-fringed pool. The new 
 rushes were beginning to fringe the edges of 
 the tiny lake, but the winter sedge stood 
 pale and sere, and filled the air with a dry 
 167
 
 1 68 Beside Still Waters 
 
 rustling. The water was as clear as a trans- 
 lucent gem, and Hugh saw that life was at 
 work on the floor of the pool, sending up 
 rich tresses of green-haired water-weed. The 
 copse was green under foot, full of fresh, 
 uncrumpling leaves. He sat down beside the 
 pool ; the silence of the wide fields was 
 broken only by the faint rustling of sedge 
 and tree, and the piping of a bird, hid in some 
 darkling bush hard by. Never had Hugh 
 been more conscious of the general outburst 
 of life all about him, and yet never more aware 
 of his isolation from it all. His body seemed 
 to belong to it all, swayed and governed by 
 the same laws that prompted their gentle 
 motions to tree and herb ; but his soul seemed 
 to him to-day like a bright creature caught in 
 the meshes of a net, beating its wings in vain 
 against the constraining threads. From what 
 other free and spacious country was it exiled ? 
 What other place did it turn to with desire and 
 love ? It seemed to him to-day that he was a 
 captive in a strange land, remembering some 
 distant home, some heavenly Zion, even in his 
 mirth. It seemed to him as if the memory of 
 some gracious place dwelt in his mind, separated 
 only from his earthly memory by a thin yet 
 impenetrable veil. His spirit held out listless 
 hands of entreaty to some unseen power, desir-
 
 Spring 169 
 
 ing he knew not what. To-day on earth 
 the desire of all created things seemed to be 
 directed to each other. The tiny creeping 
 sprays of delicate plants that carpeted the 
 wood seemed to interlace with one another in 
 tender embraces. In loneliness they had slept 
 beneath the dark ground, and now that they had 
 risen to the light, they seemed to thrill with 
 joy to find themselves alone no longer. He 
 saw in the leafless branches of a tree near him 
 two doves, with white rings upon their necks, 
 that turned to each other with looks of desire 
 and love. Was it for some kindred spirit, 
 for the sweet consent of some desirous heart 
 that Hugh hankered? No! it was not that! 
 It was rather for some unimagined freedom, 
 some perfect tranquillity that he yearned. It 
 was like the desire of the stranded boat for 
 the motion and dip of the blue sea-billows. He 
 would have hoisted the sail of his thought, 
 have left the world behind, steering out across 
 the hissing, leaping seas, till he should see at 
 last the shadowy summits, the green coves of 
 some remote land, draw near across the azure 
 sea-line. To-day the fretful and poisonous 
 ambitions of the world seemed intolerable to 
 him. As the dweller in wide fields sees the 
 smoke of the distant town rise in a shadowy 
 arc upon the horizon, and thinks with pity of the
 
 1 70 Bes.ide Still Waters 
 
 toilers there in the hot streets, so Hugh thought 
 of the intricate movement of life as of a thing 
 that was both remote and insupportable. That 
 world where one jostled and strove, where one 
 made so many unwilling mistakes, where one 
 laboured so unprofitably, was it not, after all, 
 ^an ugly place? What seemed so strange to 
 him was that one should be set so unerringly 
 in the middle of it, while at the same time one 
 was given the sense of its unreality, its dis- 
 tastefulness. So marvellously was one made 
 that one sickened at its contact, and yet, if one 
 separated one's self from it, one drooped and 
 languished in a morbid gloom. The burden of 
 the flesh ! The frailty of the spirit ! The two 
 seemed irreconcilable, and yet one endured 
 them both. The world so full of beauty and 
 joy, and yet the one gift withheld that would 
 make one content. 
 
 And yet it was undeniable thai the very 
 sadness that he felt had a sweet fragrance 
 about it. It was not the sadness of despair, 
 but of hope unfulfilled. The soul clasped 
 hands with the unknown, with tears of joy, and 
 leaned out of the world as from a casement, 
 on perilous seas. Indeed the very wealth of 
 loveliness on every hand, and the mysterious 
 yearning to take hold of it, to make it one's 
 own, to draw it into the spirit, the hope that
 
 Wonder 171 
 
 seemed at once so possible and yet so baffling 
 gave the key of the mystery. There was a 
 beauty, there was a truth that was waiting for 
 one, and the sweetness here was a type of the 
 unseen. It was only the narrow soul that 
 grudged if it was not satisfied. The brave 
 heart went quietly and simply about its task, 
 welcoming every delicate sight, every whisper 
 of soft airs, every touch of loving hands, every 
 glance of gentle eyes, rejoicing in the mystery 
 of it all ; thanking the Lord of life for the 
 speechless wonder of it, and even daring to 
 thank Him that the end was not yet ; and that 
 the bird must still speed onwards to the home 
 of its heart, dipping its feet in the crest of the 
 wandering wave, till the land, whither it was 
 bound, should rise like a soft shadow over the 
 horizon ; till the shadow became a shape, and 
 at last the tall cliffs, with the green downs 
 above, the glittering plain, the sombre forest, 
 loomed out above one, just beyond where the 
 waves whitened on the loud sea-beaches, and 
 the sound of the breakers came harmoniously 
 over the waste of waters, like the soft tolling 
 of a muffled bell.
 
 XVIII 
 
 UP to this time it may be said that Hugh 
 had never felt the pressure of sordid anxieties, 
 or experienced any sorrows but the sorrows of 
 pure emotion. But now all at once there fell 
 on him a series of heavy afflictions. His father 
 died after a very short illness; so little had a 
 fatal result been expected, that Hugh only 
 reached home after his death. It happened 
 that the last sight he had had of his father had 
 been one of peculiar brightness. He had been 
 staying at home, and, on the morning of his 
 return to Cambridge, had gone into the study 
 for a parting talk. He had found his father in 
 a mood not common with him, but which was 
 growing commoner as he grew older, of serene 
 : cheerfulness. He had talked to Hugh very 
 eagerly about a little book of poems that Hugh 
 had lately published. Hugh had hardly men- 
 tioned it to his father beforehand, but he had 
 dedicated the book to him, though he imagined 
 that his father must consider poetry a dilettante 
 kind of occupation. He was amazed to find, 
 172
 
 His Father's Death 173 
 
 when he discussed the book with his father, 
 that he was met with so vivid and personal a 
 sympathy, and he discerned that the writing 
 of poetry must have been a preoccupation of 
 his father's in early days, one of those delicate 
 ambitions on which he had sharply turned the 
 key. His mother and sister were away for 
 the day, so that when it was time to go, and 
 the carriage was announced, there was no one 
 but his father in the house. He had, as his 
 custom was, laid his hand on his son's head, 
 and blessed him with a deep emotion, adding 
 a few words of love and confidence that had 
 filled Hugh's eyes with tears; and his father 
 had then put his arm through his son's, walked 
 to the door with him, and had stood there in 
 the bright morning, with his grey hair stirred 
 by the wind, waving his hand till the carriage 
 had turned the corner of the shrubbery. 
 
 Hugh often suffered from a certain appre- 
 hensiveness of mind on leaving home ; he had 
 sometimes wondered, as he said farewell to the 
 group, whether he would see them thus again. 
 But that morning it had never occurred to him 
 that there was any such possibility in store for 
 him ; so that now, when he had returned to the 
 darkened house, and presently saw that pale, 
 still form, with a quiet smile on the face, as 
 of one satisfied beyond his dearest wish, he
 
 i74 Beside Still Waters 
 
 plunged into a depth of ineffectual sorrow such 
 as he had never known before. The one 
 thought that sustained him was that he and 
 his father had loved, understood, and trusted 
 each other. It was a horror to Hugh to think 
 what his feelings might have been in the old 
 days, if his father had died when his own pre- 
 dominant emotion had been a respectful fear 
 of him. 
 
 It seemed impossible to believe that all the 
 activities of that long life were over ; and as 
 Hugh went through his father's papers, with 
 incessant little heart-broken griefs at the ar- 
 rangements and precisions that had stood for 
 so much devoted faithfulness and loyal respon- 
 sibility, it seemed to him as though the door 
 must open, and the well-known figure, with the 
 smile that Hugh knew so well, stand before 
 him. 
 
 The first disaster that was revealed to him 
 was the smallness of his father's fortune; his 
 father, though often talking about business to 
 his son, had a curious reticence about money 
 affairs, and had never prepared him for the 
 scantiness of the provision that he had accumu- 
 lated. Hugh saw at once that the utmost care 
 would have for the future to be exercised, and 
 that their whole scale of life must be altered. 
 The fact was that his father's professional
 
 Changes 175 
 
 income had been ample, and that he had had 
 a strong dislike of saving money from ecclesi- 
 astical sources. The home must evidently be 
 broken up at once, and a small house taken for 
 his mother. But fortunately both his mother 
 and sister were entirely undismayed by this; 
 their tastes were simple enough; but Hugh 
 saw that he himself would have to contribute 
 to their assistance. With his own small for- 
 tune, his literary work, and a little academical 
 work that he was doing, he had been able 
 to live comfortably enough without taking 
 thought; but now he saw that all this must be 
 curtailed. He had an intense dislike of think- 
 ing about money ; and he therefore determined 
 that there should be no small economies on his 
 part, but that he would simply, if necessary, 
 alter his easy scale of living. 
 
 It was a terrible process disestablishing the 
 old home; the sale of furniture and books, the 
 displacing of the old pictures, seemed to tear 
 and rend all sorts of delicate fibres ; but at last 
 the house was dismantled, and it became a bit- 
 ter sort of joy to leave a place that had be- 
 come like a sad skeleton of one that he had 
 loved. The trees, the flowers, the church- 
 tower over the elms as they drove away on 
 that last morning, these seemed to regard him 
 with mournful and hollow eyes ; the parting
 
 176 Beside Still Waters 
 
 was indeed so intensely sad, that Hugh experi- 
 enced a grim relief in completing it and there 
 fell on him a deep dreariness of spirit, which 
 seemed at last to benumb him, until he felt that 
 he could no longer care for anything. 
 
 He returned at last to Cambridge; and now 
 illness fell upon him for the sec.pnd. time, in his 
 life. Not a definite illness, but a lingering ma- 
 laise, which seemed to bereave him of all spring 
 and energy. He was told that he must not 
 work, must spend his time in the open air, must 
 be careful in matters of food and sleep. He 
 lived indeed for some months the life of an in- 
 valid. The restrictions fretted him intolerably; 
 but he found that every carelessness brought 
 its swift revenge. He had previously felt little 
 or no sympathy with invalids ; he had disliked 
 the signs of illness in others, the languor, the 
 sunken eye, the fretfulness of fever, and now he 
 had to bear them himself. He had always felt, 
 half unconsciously, that illness was a fanciful 
 thing, and might be avoided by a kind of cheer- 
 ful effort. But now he had to go through the 
 experience of feebleness and peevish inactivity. 
 He used sometimes, out of pure irritability, to 
 resume his work ; but he had no grip or vigour; 
 his conceptions were languid, his technical re- 
 sources were dulled ; and then came strange 
 and unmanning dizziness, the horrible feeling,
 
 Illness 177 
 
 in the middle of a cheerful company, that one 
 is hardly accountable for one's actions, when 
 the only escape seems to be to hold on with all 
 one's might to the slenderest thread of conven- 
 tional thought. The difficulty was to know 
 how to fill the time. There was no relish in 
 company, and yet a hatred of solitude: he used 
 to moon about, sit in the garden, take irresolute 
 walks; he read novels, and found them unutter- 
 ably dreary. Music was the only thing that lifted 
 him out of his causeless depression, and gave 
 back a little zest to life ; but the fear that was 
 almost intolerable was the possibility that he 
 would never emerge out of this wretchedness. 
 Day after day passed, and no change was 
 apparent ; till just when he was on the verge 
 of despair, when the darkest visions began to 
 haunt his mind, the cloud began to lift. He 
 found that he could work a little, though the 
 smallest excess was still punished by days of 
 feebleness. But, holding to this thread of hope, 
 Hugh climbed slowly out of the darkness; and 
 it was a day to him of deep and abiding grati- 
 tude when, after a long Swiss holiday, in which 
 his bodily activity had come back to him with 
 an intensity of pleasure, Hugh realised that he 
 was again in his ordinary health. 
 
 But he had at this time a bitter disappoint- 
 ment. Just before his father's death he had
 
 178 Beside Still Waters 
 
 finished preparing a little work for publication, 
 a set of essays on a variety of subjects, to 
 which he had devoted much care and thought. 
 To his deep vexation it met with a very con- 
 temptuous reception. Its errors were merci- 
 lessly criticised, and it was proclaimed to be the 
 work of a sickly sentimental dilettante. Hugh 
 found it hard to believe in the verdict ; but his 
 conviction was established by the opinion of 
 one of his old friends who, as kindly as possi- 
 ble, pointed out that the book was both thin 
 and egotistical. Hugh felt as if he could never 
 write again, and as if the chief occupation of 
 his life would be gone ; but with renewed 
 health his confidence returned, and in a few 
 weeks he was able to look the situation in the 
 face. The reception of the book had brought 
 home to him the direction in which he was 
 drifting. He saw that a certain toughness and 
 hardness of fibre had been wanting. He saw 
 that he had tried to fill a book up out of his 
 own mind, in a leisurely and trifling mood. He 
 had not attempted to grasp his subjects, but 
 had allowed himself to put down loose and 
 half-hearted impressions, instead of trying to 
 see into the essence of the things he was 
 describing. 
 
 But, his illness over, he was astonished to 
 find how little both money anxieties and the
 
 A New Home 179 
 
 shattering of literary hopes distressed him. For 
 the first, it was clear that his mother and sister 
 could live with an adequate degree of comfort 
 and dignity. And as for his literary hopes, he 
 realised that the failure had been a real revela- 
 tion of his own weakness ; but he realised too 
 that other people would forget about the book 
 still faster than he himself, and that no previous 
 failures would damn a further work, if only it 
 possessed the true qualities of art ; and indeed 
 from this time he dated a real increase of artistic 
 faculty, a sense of constraining vocation, a joy 
 in literary labour, which soon, like a sunrise, 
 brightened all his horizon ; and it was pleasant 
 too, though Hugh did not over-value it, to find 
 his work beginning to bring him a definite 
 though slight reputation, and a position among 
 imaginative critics. 
 
 Moreover his new home, began to have a 
 very potent charm for him. His mother had 
 settled in a small ancient house in the depths of 
 the country. They had very few neighbours. 
 The little building itself was full of charm, the 
 charm of mellow beauty and old human owner- 
 ship ; it was embosomed among trees, and had a 
 small walled garden, rich in flowers and shade. 
 He had been there but a few weeks, when he 
 realised that the old feeling of a vague friendli- 
 ness and intimate concern with nature had
 
 i8o Beside Still Waters 
 
 come back. It was as though the spirits, 
 which had peopled the remembered flowers and 
 trees of his first home, had flitted with them, 
 and had taken up their abode in this other gar- 
 den. The flowers seemed to smile at him with 
 the same shy mystery, the trees to surround the 
 house like a troop of loyal sentinels. The ab- 
 sence of the constant social interruptions that 
 had been characteristic of the Rectory was an 
 added charm ; his mother and sister, too, though 
 heavily overshadowed by grief, found the place 
 peaceful and congenial ; and the best joy of all 
 was the sweet and fragrant relation that sprung 
 up among the three. They were like the sur- 
 vivors of a wreck, whose former familiarity 
 had been converted suddenly into a deep and 
 emotional loyalty, by the sad experiences 
 through which they had passed together. The 
 relations had before been affectionate, but in 
 some ways superficial. Hugh to his surprise 
 found himself daily making discoveries about 
 his mother and sister, through the close 
 relationship into which they were brought. 
 Unsuspected tastes and feelings revealed them- 
 selves, and he began to be aware of a whole host 
 of new interests that sprang up between them. 
 Sometimes, when a hedgerow is rooted up, one 
 may notice how a whole crop of unknown 
 flowers, whose seeds had been buried deep in
 
 The New Light 181 
 
 the soil, suddenly emerge to conceal the bare 
 scarred ditch. Hugh thought to himself that 
 the experiences through which they had passed 
 had had this effect of enlarging and extending 
 sympathies which were there all the time, and 
 which had never had an opportunity of reveal- 
 ing themselves. And thus out of sorrow and 
 wretchedness, there sprang to light a whole 
 range of new forces, a vision of new possibilities. 
 It seemed to Hugh that he was like a man who 
 had passed by night through an unfamiliar 
 country, by unknown roads ; that as the dark- 
 ness had begun to glimmer to dawn, the shape- 
 less shadows of things about him had gradually 
 taken shape, and revealed themselves at last to 
 be but the quiet trees with their gentle tapestry 
 of leaves, leaning over his way ; and what had 
 been but a formless horror, became revealed as 
 a company of friendly living things that beck- 
 oned comfortably to his spirit, and grew into 
 purer colour as the dawn began to break from 
 underground. 
 
 A / ) ^ '- 
 
 '
 
 XIX 
 
 HUGH had always felt that he had very little 
 comprehension of the feminine temperament ; 
 he realised to the full how much more generous, 
 unselfish, high-minded, and sympathetic women 
 were than men, their perceptions of personali- 
 ties more subtle, their intuitions more delicate ; 
 in a difficult matter, a crisis involving the rela- 
 tions of people, when it was hard to know how 
 
 I to act, and when, in dealing with the situation, 
 tact and judgment were required, he found it a 
 good rule to consult a woman about what had 
 
 i happened, and a man about what would hap- 
 pen. Women had as a rule a finer instinct about 
 characters and motives, but their advice about 
 how to act was generally too vehement and rash ; 
 a woman could often divine the complexities of 
 a situation better, a man could advise one better 
 how to proceed. But what he could seldom 
 follow was the intellectual processes of women; 
 they intermingled too much of emotion with 
 their logic ; they made bird-like, darting move- 
 ments from point to point, instead of following 
 182
 
 Women 183 
 
 the track ; they tended to be partisans. They 
 forgave nothing in those they disliked ; they 
 condoned anything in those they loved. Hugh 
 lived so much himself in the intellectual region, 
 and desired so constantly a certain equable and 
 direct quality in his relations with others, that 
 he seldom felt at ease in his relations with wo- 
 men, except with those who could give him 
 the sort of sisterly camaraderie that he desired. 
 Women seemed to him to have, as a rule, a 
 curious desire for influence, for personal power ; 
 they translated everything into personal values ; 
 they desired to dominate situations, to have 
 their own way in superficial matters, to have 
 secret understandings. They acted, he thought, 
 as a rule, from personal and emotional motives ; 
 and thus Hugh, whojibove all things desired to 
 live by instinct rather than by impulse, found 
 himself fretted and entangled in a fine network 
 of shadowy loyalties, exacting chivalries, subtle 
 diplomacies, delicate jealousies, unaccountable 
 irritabilities, if he endeavoured to form a friend- 
 ship with a woman. A normal man took a 
 friendship just as it came, exacted neither at- 
 tendance nor communication, welcomed oppor- 
 tunities of intercourse, but did not scheme for 
 them, was not hurt by apparent neglect, de- 
 manded no effusiveness, and disliked senti- 
 ment. Hugh, as he grew older, did not desire
 
 184 Beside Still Waters 
 
 very close relationships with people ; he valued 
 frankness above intimacy, and candour above 
 sympathy. He found as a rule, that women 
 gave too much sympathy, and the result was 
 l/ that he felt himself encouraged to be egotisti- 
 cal. He used to think that when he spoke 
 frankly to women, they tended to express ad- 
 miration for the way he had acted or thought ; 
 and if he met that by saying that he neither 
 deserved nor wanted praise, he received fur- 
 ther admiration for disinterestedness, when all 
 that he desired was to take the matter out of 
 the region of credit altogether. He believed 
 indeed that women valued the pleasure of 
 making an impression, of exercising influence, 
 too highly, and that in this point their per- 
 ception seemed to fail ; they did not under- 
 stand that a man acts very often from impersonal 
 motives, and is interested in the doing of the 
 thing itself, whatever it may happen to be, 
 rather than in the effect that his action may 
 have upon other people. It was part of the 
 high-mindedness of women that they could not 
 understand that a man should be so absorbed 
 in the practical execution of a matter. They 
 looked upon men's ambitions, their desire to 
 do or make something a book, a picture, a 
 poem as a sort of game in which they could not 
 believe that any one could be seriously interest-
 
 The Feminine View 185 
 
 ed. Hugh indeed seemed to divine the curious 
 fact that, generally speaking, men_and women 
 looked upon the preoccupations and employ- 
 ments of the opposite sex as rather childish ; a 
 man would be immersed in practical activities, 
 in business, in organisation, in education, in 
 communicating definite knowledge, in writing 
 books, in attending meetings this he thought 
 to be the serious and real business of the world ; 
 and he was inclined to look upon relationships 
 with other people, sentiment, tender affections, 
 wistful thoughts of others, as a sort of fireside 
 amusement and recreation. 
 
 Women, on the other hand, found their real 
 life in these things, desired to please, to win and 
 
 " ' ' 
 
 retain affection, to admire and to be admired, 
 to love and be loved ; and they tended to look 
 upon material things comfort, wealth, busi- 
 ness, work, art as essentially secondary things, 
 which had of course a certain value, but which 
 were not to be weighed in the scale with emo- 
 tional things. There were naturally many ex- 
 ceptionsto this ; there_were_hard, business-like 
 practical women ; there were emotional, tender- 
 hearted, sensitive men ; but the general princi- 
 ple held good. And thus it was that men 
 and women regarded the supreme emotion of 
 love from such different points of view, and 
 failed so often to comprehend the way in which
 
 1 86 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ^A 
 
 the opposite sex regarded it ; to women it was 
 but the natural climax, the raising and height- 
 ening of their habitual mood into one great 
 momentous passion ; it was the flqw f er of life 
 slowly matured into bloom; tomerfft'was more 
 a surprising and tremendous experience, an 
 amazing episode, cutting across life and inter- 
 rupting its habitual current, contradicting rather 
 than confirming their previous experience. 
 
 Hugh was himself rather on the feminine side; 
 though he had a strong practical turn, and could 
 carry through a matter effectively enough, yet 
 he valued delicate and sincere emotions, disin- 
 terestedness, simplicity, and loyalty, above prac- 
 tical activity and organisation ; the result of this, 
 he supposed, was that he tended, from a sense 
 of the refreshment of contrast, to make his friends 
 rather among men than among women, and this 
 was, he believed, the reason why he had never 
 fallen frankly in love, because he could to a 
 great extent supply out of his own nature the 
 elements which as a rule men sought among 
 women ; and because the complexity and sensi- 
 tiveness of his own temperament took refuge 
 rather in tranquillity and straightforward com- 
 mon-sense. As he grew older, as he became 
 absorbed more and more in literary work, he 
 tended, he thought, to draw more and more 
 away from human relationships; the energy,
 
 Society 187 
 
 the interest, that had formerly gone into mak- 
 ing new relationships now began to run in a 
 narrower channel. Whether it was prudent to 
 yield to this impulse he did not stop to inquire. 
 It seemed to him that many of his friends wasted 
 a great deal of force and activity from semi- 
 prudential motives. As his life became more 
 solitary, an old friend once took him to task on 
 this point. He said that it was all very well 
 for a time, but that Hugh would find his interest 
 in his work flag, and that there would be no- 
 thing to fill the gap. He advised him, at the cost 
 of some inconvenience, to cultivate relations 
 with a wider circle, to go to social gatherings, 
 to make acquaintances. He knew, he said, that 
 Hugh would possibly find it rather tiresome, 
 but it was of the nature of an investment which 
 might some day prove of value. 
 
 Hugh replied that he thought that this was 
 living life too much on the principle of the 
 White Knight in TJirough the Looking-Glass. 
 The White Knight kept a mouse-trap slung to 
 his saddle : when it was objected that he would 
 not be likely to find mice on the back of his 
 horse, he replied that perhaps it was not likely, 
 but that if they were there, he did not choose to 
 have them running about. Hugh confessed that 
 he did find ordinary society tiresome ; but to 
 persist in frequenting it, on the chance that some
 
 1 88 Beside Still Waters 
 
 day it would turn out to be a method of filling 
 up vacant hours, seemed to him to be providing 
 against an unlikely contingency, and indeed an 
 ugly and commercial business. He did not think 
 it probable that he would lose interest in his 
 work, and he thought it better to devote him- 
 self to it while it interested him. If the time 
 ever came when he needed a new set of relation- 
 ships, he thought he could trust himself to form 
 them ; and if he did not desire to form them, 
 well, to be bored was bad enough, but it was 
 
 1 better on the whole to be passively rather than 
 
 1 actively bored. 
 
 But Hugh's theory in reality went deeper than 
 that. He had a strong belief, which grew in 
 intensity with age, that the only chance of realis- 
 ing one's true life was to do something that in- 
 terested one with all one's might. He did not 
 believe that what was done purely from a sense 
 of duty, unless it pleased and satisfied some part 
 of one's nature, was ever effective or even useful. 
 It was not well done, and it was neglected on 
 any excuse. His pilgrimage through the world 
 presented itself to Hugh in the light of a jour- 
 ney through hilly country. The ridge that rose 
 in front of one concealed a definite type of 
 scenery ; that scenery was there ; there were 
 indeed a hundred possibilities about it and the 
 imagination might amuse itself by forecasting
 
 Society 189 
 
 what it was to be like. But it seemed to Hugh 
 that one wasted time in these forecasts : and 
 that it was better to wait and see what it actually 
 was, and then to enjoy it as vigorously as one 
 could. To spend one's time in fantastic specu- 
 lation as to what was corning, was to waste 
 vigcanr and thought, which were better employed 
 in observing and interpreting what was around 
 one. 
 
 And so Hugh resolved that his relations 
 with others should be of this kind; that he 
 would not seek restlessly for particular kinds of 
 friendships ; but that he would accept the circle 
 that he found, the persons with whom relations 
 were inevitable ; and that he would make the 
 most of what he found. Choice and selection ! 
 How little one really employed them! the 
 world streamed past one, an unsuspected, un- 
 looked-for friend would suddenly emerge from 
 the throng, and one would find one's self jour- 
 neying shoulder to shoulder for a space. Hugh 
 thought indeed sometimes that one made no 
 friendships at all of one's self ; butjhat God sent 
 the influences of which one had need, at the 
 very time at which one needed them, and 
 then silently and tenderly withdrew them 
 again for a time, when they had done their 
 work for the soul. One received much 
 and perhaps, however unconsciously, however
 
 i9 Beside Still Waters 
 
 lightly, one gave something of one's own as 
 well. 
 
 But all Hugh's relations with others were 
 overshadowed by the great doubt, which was 
 perhaps the heaviest burden he had to carry, 
 as to whether one's individuality endured. 
 The thought that it might not survive death, 
 made him shrink from establishing a close- 
 ness of emotional dependence on another, the 
 loss of which would be intolerable. The nat- 
 ural flame of the heart seemed quenched and 
 baffled by that cold thought. It was the same 
 instinct that made him, as a boy, refuse the 
 gift of a dog, when a pet collie, that had been 
 his own, had been killed by an accident. The 
 pain of the loss had seemed so acute, so irre- 
 parable, that he preferred to live uncomforted 
 rather than Tace such another parting ; and 
 there seemed, too, a kind of treachery in 
 replacing love. If, on the other hand, individ- 
 uality did endure, the best of all relationships 
 seemed to Hugh a frank and sincere compan- 
 ionship, such as may arise between two way- 
 farers whose road lies together for a little, and 
 who talk easily and familiarly as they walk in 
 the clear light of the dawn. Hugh felt that 
 there was an abundance of fellow-pilgrims, men 
 and women alike, to consort with, to admire, 
 to love; this affability and accessibility made
 
 Frank Relations 191 
 
 it always easy for Hugh to enter into close . 
 relationship with others. He had little desire 
 to guard his heart ; and the sacred intimacy, 
 the sharing of secret thoughts and hopes, 
 which men as a rule give but to a few, Hugh 
 was perhaps too ready to give to all. What 
 he lost in depth and intensity he perhaps 
 gained in breadth. But he also became aware 
 that he had a certain coldness of temperament. 
 Many were dear to him, but none essential. 
 " There was no jealousy about his relations with 
 others. He never demanded of a friend that 
 he should give him a special or peculiar regard. 
 His frankness was indeed sometimes misunder- 
 stood, and people occasionally supposed that 
 they had evoked a nearness of feeling, an im- 
 passioned quality, which was not really there. 
 "You give away your heart in haftdfuls," said 
 a friend to him once in a paroxysm of anger, 
 fancying himself neglected ; and Hugh felt that 
 it was both just and unjust. He had never, he 
 thought, given his heart away at all, except as 
 a boy to his chosen friend. But he gave a 
 smiling and tender affection very easily to all 
 who seemed to desire it. He knew indeed 
 that from that first experience something of 
 the sweet mystery of faithful devotion ; but now 
 he could only idealise, he could not idolise. 
 The world was full of friendly, gracious, inter-
 
 192 Beside Still Waters 
 
 esting people. Circumstance spun one to and 
 fro among the groups and companies ; how 
 could one give a unique regard, when there 
 were so many that claimed allegiance and 
 admiration? He saw others flit from passion 
 to passion, from friendship to friendship 
 Hugh's aim was rather to_be the same, to be 
 loyal and true, to be able to take up a sus- 
 pended friendship where he had laid it down ; 
 the most shameful thing in the world seemed 
 to him the ebbing away of vitality out of a 
 relationship ; and therefore he would not give 
 pledges which he might be unable to redeem. 
 If the conscious soul survived mortal death, 
 then perhaps these limitations of time and 
 space, which suspended friendships, would 
 exist no longer, and he could wait for that 
 with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed 
 away, and was as though it had never been, if 
 life was but a leaping flame, a ripple on the 
 stream, then how could one have the heart to 
 tie indissoluble links? 
 
 Hugh half understood that the weakness of 
 his case was that he could argue about it at all. 
 Others went blindly and ardently into loves 
 and friendships, because an irresistible im- 
 pulse carried them away with Hugh the im- 
 pulse was not irresistible. Meanwhile he would 
 give what he could, offer rather than claim ;
 
 Coldness 193 
 
 he would reject no proffer of friendship, but 
 he would not, or perhaps he could not, fet- 
 ter himself with heavy chains of emotion. But 
 even so he was aware that this temperance, this 
 balance of nature, was not a wholly beautiful 
 or desirable thing. 
 
 The perception of this came home to Hugh 
 with peculiar force on a bright fresh day of 
 early spring, when he walked with a friend in 
 the broad green fields beside the Cam. They _^ 
 had been strolling first in the college gardens, 
 where the snowdrops were pushing up, some of C 
 them bearing on their heads the crust of earth 
 that had sheltered them ; crocuses rose in the 
 borders, like little bursts of flame. A thrush 
 was singing on a high bough, and seemed to 
 be telling, in an eager mystery, the very hopes 
 and dreams of Hugh's heart. He said some- 
 thing that implied as much to his friend, who 
 replied that he did not understand that. 
 
 This friend of Hugh's was much younger than 
 himself, of a fastidious and somewhat secluded 
 nature, but possessing for Hugh the deep at- 
 traction of a peculiar type of character. He had 
 great critical and literary gifts, and seemed to 
 Hugh to bring to the judgment of artistic work 
 an extraordinarily clear and fine criterion of 
 values. But beside this, he seemed to Hugh 
 to have the power of entering into a very close
 
 194 Beside Still Waters 
 
 and emotional relationship with people ; and 
 out in the meadows where the sun shone bright, 
 the breeze blew soft, and the first daisies showed 
 their heads among the grass, Hugh asked him 
 to explain what he felt about his relationship 
 with others. His friend said that it came to this, 
 that it was the only real and vital thing in the 
 world ; and when Hugh pressed him further, 
 and asked him what he felt about the artistic 
 life, his friend said that it was a great mystery, 
 because art also seemed to him a strong, en- 
 trancing, fascinating thing ; but that it ran coun- 
 ter to and cut across his relations with others, 
 and seemed almost like a violent and distract- 
 ing temptation, that tore him away from all 
 vital impulse. He added that_the problem as 
 to whether individuality endured (of which they 
 had spoken earlier, seemed to him noJMro affect 
 the question at all, any more than it affected 
 one's sleep or appetite. At this, for a moment, 
 a mist seemed to roll away from Hugh's eyes, 
 though he knew that it would close in again, and 
 foran instant he understood ; to himself relations 
 with others were but one class of beautiful ex- 
 periences, like art, and music, and nature, and 
 hints of the unseen ; not differing in quality, 
 but only in kind, from other experiences. 
 Hugh saw, too, in the same flash of insight, 
 that what kept him from emotional relation-
 
 Sensitiveness 195 
 
 ships was a certain timidity a dislike of any- 
 thing painful or disturbing ; and that the mis- 
 take he made, if that can be called a mistake 
 which was so purely instinctive, was his desire ,/ 
 to obliterate and annihilate all the unpleasing, 
 painful, and disagreeable elements from all cir- 
 cumstances and situations. The reason why \ { 
 
 ^ 
 
 Hugh did not hunger and thirst after friend- 
 ship was, he saw, that inconveniences, humours, 
 misunderstandings, mannerisms, entourage, were 
 all so many disagreeable incidents which inter- 
 fered with his tranquillity of enjoyment. If he 
 had really loved, these things would have 
 weighed as nothing in comparison with the 
 need of satisfying the desire of relationship ; as 
 it was, they weighed so much with Hugh that 
 they overpowered the other instinct. It was 
 really a sort of luxuriousness of temperament 
 that intervened ; and Hugh felt that for a man 
 to say that he loved his friends, and yet to 
 allow this fastidious sense of discomfort to 
 prevent his seeing them, was as if a man said 
 that he was devoted to music, and yet allowed 
 the tumult of concert-rooms to prevent his 
 ever going to hear music. And yet the lan- 
 guage of friendship was so familiar, and the 
 power of multiplying relations with others was 
 so facile a thing with Hugh, that he saw that 
 his failure in the matter was a deplorable and a
 
 196 Beside Still Waters 
 
 miserable thing. He was singularly and even 
 richly equipped for the pursuit of friendship ; 
 while his very sensitiveness, his inherent epicu- 
 reanism, which made advance so easy, made 
 progress impossible. 
 
 And yet he realised that it was useless to de- 
 plore this ; that no amount of desire for the 
 larger and deeper experience would make him 
 capable of sustaining its pains and penalties. 
 He saw that he was condemned to pass through 
 life, a smiling and courteous spectator of beauty 
 and delight ; but that, through a real and vital 
 deficiency of soul, he could have n^share in 
 the inner and holier mysteries.
 
 XX 
 
 HITHERTO it had seemed to Hugh that Jife 
 was a struggle to_escape from himself, from 
 that haunting personality which, like a shadow, 
 dogged and imitated his movements, but all 
 with a sombre blackness, a species of business- 
 like sadness of gesture, doing heavily and me- 
 chanically what he himself did with such 
 blitheness and joy. Again and again that self 
 seemed to thwart, to hinder, to check him. 
 There were days, it seemed to him, when a 
 conflict was waged, an unequal conflict, between 
 that outer and that inner self. Days when the 
 inner spirit was intense, alert, eager, and when 
 the outer jself was languid, dreary, mockingly 
 sedate and indolent. Again there were days, 
 and these were the saddest of all, when the 
 inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be tranquil, 
 high-rnjnded, and strong; when that outer self 
 was malign, turbulent, and headstrong, and 
 when all the resolution and vigour he possessed 
 appeared to be wasted, not in following the 
 higher aims and imaginings with a patient pur- 
 197
 
 198 Beside Still Waters 
 
 pose, but in curbing and reining the rough and 
 coltish nature that seemed so sadly yoked with 
 his own. He felt on those days like a wearied 
 and fretful charioteer, driving through a scene 
 of rich and moving beauty, on which he would 
 fain feast his eyes and heart, but compelled to 
 an incessant watchfulness, a despairing strain, 
 in watching and guiding his refractory, his 
 spiteful steeds. The control he had never for- 
 feited wholly. Perhaps his sensitiveness, his 
 solitariness, his fastidiousness, had tended to 
 keep his sensuous nature within bounds. 
 
 But he went through strange moods, when 
 he could almost wish that he had not been so 
 cautious, so prudent ; he felt that he had trav- 
 elled through life as a spectator merely ; and 
 the element of passionate feeling, of confessed 
 devotion, of uncalculating love, had passed him 
 by. He used, in these moods, to wish that he 
 had some soul-stirring experience to look back 
 upon, some passionate affection, some over- 
 powering emotion, which might have con- 
 strained him to open and unashamed utterance. 
 How had he missed, he used to ask himself, 
 the experience of a deep and whole-hearted 
 love? There was nothing easier in the world 
 than to establish a certain intimacy of relation. 
 He had, he was aware, a friendly air and a cer- 
 tain simple charm of manner, which made it an
 
 Limitations 199 
 
 easy thing for him to say what was in his mind. 
 A single interview was often enough for him to 
 make a friendship. He had an acute superficial 
 sensibility, which made it very easy for him to 
 divine another's tastes and emotions; and his 
 own emotional experiences, his freedom of ex- 
 pression, gave him the power of interpreting 
 and entering into the feelings of others. But 
 his experience was always the same. He could 
 clasp hands with another soul, he could step 
 pleasantly and congenially through the ante- 
 rooms and corridors of friendship ; but as soon 
 as the great door that led to the inner rooms 
 of the house came in sight, a certain coldness, 
 a shamefacedness held him back ; the hand was 
 dropped, the expected word unspoken. 
 
 Thus Hugh found himself with a great num- 
 ber of close_ friends, and without a single 
 intimate one. He had never bared his heart 
 to another, he had never seen another heart 
 bare before his eyes. He had never let him- 
 self go. Thus he was a master, so to speak, of 
 the emotional elements up to a certain point ; 
 but he had never made a surrender of himself, 
 and had always with a certain coldness checked 
 any signs of a surrender in others. A close 
 friendship had once been abruptly ended by 
 the bestowal of certain deep confidences by his 
 friend, sad and touching confidences. This
 
 200 Beside Still Waters 
 
 incident, had drawn a veil between him and his 
 friend, a veil that he could not withdraw. His 
 evident coldness, on the day following, to the 
 friend who had trusted him, disconcerted and 
 repelled the other. Hugh could remember a 
 mute and appealing look that he gave him ; but 
 though he felt that he was acting ungenerously 
 and even basely, he could only meet it with a 
 blank and repellent gaze, and the friendship had 
 been broken off, never to be renewed. He had 
 made, too, friends with women both of his own 
 age and older ; but the moment that the friend, 
 ship seemed cemented, the emotion on Hugh's 
 part cooled into a camaraderie which was both 
 misunderstood and blamed. Why go so far if 
 you did not mean to go further ? appeared to be 
 the unuttered question which met him ; to 
 which his own temperament seemed always to 
 to reply, Why shake our easy and comfortable 
 friendship by distracting and bewildering emo- 
 tions ? It was, Hugh grew to discern, a real 
 blot in his character ; it was a prudence, a cau- 
 tion in emotional things, a terror, no doubt in 
 a sensitive spirit of giving pledges, of making 
 vows, of surrendering the will and the spirit. It 
 did not indeed bring him unhappiness that was 
 the saddest part of it ; but it left him involved 
 in a kind of selfish isolation. His soul, he felt, 
 was like a smiling island, which with its green
 
 A Barren Land 201 
 
 glades and soft turf invites the wayfarer to set 
 foot therein, with a smiling welcome from the 
 spirit of the place. But the wood once pene- 
 trated, then at the back of the paradise ran a 
 cliff-front of sad-coloured crags, preventing fur- 
 ther ingress. If indeed the shrine of the island 
 had stood guarded within a temple which, in its 
 deep columned and shadowed recesses, had 
 shielded a holy presence, it would have been 
 different ; but the land beyond was bare and 
 desolate. That was, Hugh thought, the solu- 
 tion. The bright foreshore, the waving trees 
 the shelter and fountains, seemed to promise a 
 place of delicate delights ; and there were some 
 of those who landed there, who, on seeing the 
 pale cliff behind, believed, with a deep curiosity, 
 that some very sacred and beautiful thing must 
 there be enshrined. But it was the emptiness 
 of the further land, Hugh thought, that made 
 it imperative to guard the mystery. In that 
 bare land indeed he himself seemed to pace, 
 bitterly pondering ; he would even kneel on 
 the bare rocks, and hold out his hands in 
 intense entreaty to the God who had made him 
 and who withdrew Himself so relentlessly with- 
 in the blank sky, that a blessing might fall upon 
 the stony wilderness. But this blessing was 
 withheld ; whether by his own fault, or through 
 the just will of the Father, Hugh could not
 
 202 Beside Still Waters 
 
 wholly discern. The hard fact remained that 
 the inner fortress was blank and bare, and that 
 no friend or lover could be invited thither. 
 
 But as Hugh's manhood melted into his 
 middle^age, the conflict between the outer and 
 inner spirit decreased. He was still, as ever, con- 
 scious of the coldness of his inner heart ; but he 
 grew to believe that a compromise was possible, 
 and that his work was to cheer and welcome, 
 with all the outer resources at his command, any 
 pilgrims who sought his aid. He became pa- 
 tiently and unwearyingly kind. There was no 
 trouble he would not take for any one who ap- 
 pealed to him. He gave a simple affection, a 
 quiet sympathy, with eager readiness ; and 
 learned that, if..he lacked that fiery and impe- 
 tuous core of emotion, which can make the 
 whole world different to those who can light 
 their torches at its glow, yet he could smooth 
 the path and comfort the steps of less ardent, 
 less impulsive spirits. He could add something 
 of light and warmth to the cold world. If some- 
 times those who were atJua 1 ted_by_Jii_ggiiial 
 bearing and sympathetic kindness were disap- 
 pointed and troubled at finding how slender a 
 stream it was, well, that was inevitable. He 
 realised himself that his was a shallow nature, 
 full of motion and foam, wide but not deep, and 
 that its bright force and swift curves hid from
 
 A Quiet Choice 203 
 
 others, though not from himself, its lack of force 
 and energy. And so when it came to him to lay 
 aside his public work, and to enter a life which 
 seemed an almost disappointingly meagre field 
 to those who had formed high hopes of him, 
 believing that he had a rich and prodigal na- 
 ture, a depth of insight and force, he made the 
 change himself with a fervent and abundant 
 gratitude ; feeling that he was unequal to the 
 larger claims, and would but have attempted to 
 hide his lack of force under a certain brisk live- 
 liness and paradoxical display ; while that in the 
 narrow channel which his life now entered, he 
 would at least be employing all the force of 
 which he was capable. 
 
 He was not free from misgivings ; but he felt 
 that what appeared to be a shrinking and coward- 
 ly diffidence to others, was the inevitable result 
 of the richness of his outer nature, the exuber- 
 ance of which they held to issue front a reservoir 
 of secret force ; but, though he sighed at their 
 disappointment, he felt that he was estimating 
 himself more truly; and that he lacked that 
 inner fulness of spirit, that patient unselfish- 
 ness, which could alone have sustained him. He 
 remained indeed a child, with the charm, the 
 gaiety, the simplicity of a child, but with the 
 wilfulness, the faint-heartedness, the desultori- 
 ness of a child. And he felt that in making his
 
 204 Beside Still Waters 
 
 choice he was indeed following the will of his 
 Father, making the most of his single talent, 
 instead of juggling with it to make it appear to 
 be two or even ten. 
 
 He had his reward in an immediate and simple 
 tranquillity _of spirit. He_neyer doubted nor 
 looked back. Those who saw him, and thought 
 regretfully what he might have been, what he 
 might have done, would sometimes give utter- 
 ance to their disappointment, and even peevish- 
 ly blame him. But here again his coldness of 
 temperament assisted him. He submitted to 
 such criticisms and censures with a regretful air, 
 as though he were half convinced of their truth. 
 But the severer and sterner spirit within was 
 never touched or affected. Ambitious and fond 
 of display as he had been, the loss of dignity 
 and influence weighed nothing with him ; he was 
 even surprised to rind how little it touched him 
 with any sfcnse of regret or yearning. His fear 
 had been once that perhaps he was great, and 
 that indolence and luxuriousness alone held him 
 back from exercising that greatness. But God 
 had been good to him in neither humiliating 
 nor exposing him, and now that he himself had 
 lifted the lid of the ark in the innermost shrine, 
 and had seen how bare and unfurnished it was, 
 he saw in a flash of humble insight how wisely 
 he was held back.
 
 The Vale of Humiliation 205 
 
 Truth, however painful, has always something 
 bracing and sustaining about it ; and the days in 
 which Hugh learned the truth ah^y* himself had 
 nothing of gloom or sadness about them. The 
 discovery indeed surprised him with a certain 
 lightness and freshness of spirit. He smiled to 
 think that he had entered the vale of humilia- 
 tion, and had found it full of greenness and 
 musical with fountains. A great flood of peace 
 flowed in upon him ; and all the delicate love 
 of nature, of trees and skies, of flowers and mov- 
 ing water, came back to him with an increased 
 and deep significance. Before he had seen their 
 outward appearance ; now he looked into their 
 spirit ; and so he passed along the dreary valley 
 light of foot and singing to himself. Mr. Fear- 
 ing, in the Pilgrims Progress, went down from 
 the House Beautiful into the valley, said Mr. 
 Greatheart, " as well as ever I saw man in my 
 life. I never saw him better in all his pilgrim- 
 age than when he was in that valley. Here he 
 would lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss 
 the very flowers that grew in the valley. He 
 would now be up every morning by break of day 
 tracing and walking to and fro in this valley. " 
 
 Even so was it with Hugh. The place that 
 he had feared was revealed to him in a moment 
 as his native air. Men do not lose all of a sud- 
 den their temptations, and least of all those
 
 2o6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 who have desired the prize rather than the la- 
 bour. But Hugh saw that the place where he 
 set his feet was holy. And as for his poor de- 
 sires, he put them in the hands of his Father, 
 and rejoiced to find that they were faithfully 
 and serenely purged away. 
 
 He began to learn, but with what infinite 
 difficulty, what entanglement of delay, that the 
 great mistake that he had made in his religious 
 life, was the limiting the direct influence of 
 God to the pietistic, the devotional region. All 
 the tender and remote associations of child- 
 hood had to be broken off and drawn away one 
 by one, as one snaps and pulls ivy down from a 
 wall, before he could reach the thought he was 
 approaching ; and how often, too, did the old 
 conception surprise him, interrupt him, entangle 
 him again unawares ! It seemed to Hugh, re- 
 flecting on the problem, how strange a thing 
 was the pageant life all about him, the march of 
 invisible winds, the sweeping up of cloudy va- 
 pours, the slow ruin of rocky places, the spill- 
 ing of sweet streams ; and then, in a nearer 
 region, the quaint arbitrary forms of living 
 creatures, their innate instincts, their intelli- 
 gence, so profoundly and delicately organised 
 in one direction, so weak in another ; and then 
 again the horrible threads of cruelty, of suffering, 
 of death, inwoven so relentlessly in the fabric
 
 Contradictions 207 
 
 of the world, the pitiless preying of beast upon 
 beast ; and, further still, the subtle and pathetic 
 wisdom of the human spirit, sadly marking 
 what is amiss, and setting itself so feebly, so 
 pitifully, to amend it ; the shaping of communi- 
 ties, the social moralities, so distinct from, so ad- 
 verse to the morality of nature reflecting, as 
 I say, on these things, Hugh became aware, 
 with a growing astonishment, that though 
 mankind attributed, in an easy and perfunctory 
 way, all these phenomena to the creative hand 
 of God, yet instead of trying to form a concep- 
 tion of Him and His dark thoughts from this 
 legible and gigantic handwriting, which revealed 
 so impenetrable, so imperturbable a will, they 
 sought to trace His influence only in some be- 
 wildered region of the human spirit, the struggles 
 of inherited conscience, the patient charity of 
 men, that would seek to knot up the loose ends 
 which, in their pathetic belief in self-developed 
 principles, they could not help imagining that 
 the Maker of all had left unravelled and untied. 
 To believe in God and yet to seek to im- 
 prove upon His ways ! what a strange and in- 
 credible contradiction ! And yet what made 
 the position a more bewildering one still was 
 the certainty that these_very inner impulses to 
 amend, to improve, came from God as clearly as 
 the very evils that He permitted and indeed
 
 208 Beside Still Waters 
 
 originated. What was the exit from this intol- 
 erable tangle of thought ? Law indeed seemed 
 absolute, law on a scale at once so colossal and 
 so minute, law that sent the planets whirling 
 through space round the central sun and yet 
 dwelt, cell within cell, in the heart of the small- 
 est pebble that rolled upon the sea-beach. And 
 side by side with this law ran a thwarting force, 
 an impulse to make man do blindly the very 
 things that led inevitably to destruction, to en- 
 dow him with an intense desire of life, and yet 
 to leave him ignorant of the laws that hurried 
 him, reluctant and amazed, to death. Hugh 
 grew to feel that some compromise was neces- 
 sary ; that to live in the natural impulses alone, 
 or in the developed impulses alone, wgs_an jm- 
 possibility. A hundred voices called him, a 
 
 F~r- ^ * 
 
 hundred hands beckoned or waved him back ; 
 nature prompted one thing, reason another, as- 
 sociation another, piety another ; and yet each 
 was in a sense the calling of God. The saddest 
 thing was that to obey any of the voices brought 
 no peace or tranquillity ; he obeyed piety, and 
 nature continued fiercely to prompt the oppo- 
 site; he obeyed association, and reason mocked 
 his choice. He became aware that in order to 
 triumph over these manifold and uneasy con- 
 tradictions, a certain tranquillity of mind must 
 be acquired ; he found that to a large extent he
 
 Intuition 209 
 
 must trust intuition, which could at all events 
 settle, if it could not reconcile, conflicting 
 claims ; even when reason indicated a choice of 
 paths, the voice of the soul cried out clearly the 
 way that he must choose ; the obedience to in- 
 tuition was generally approved by experience, 
 until Hugh began to see, at last, that it was the 
 guide of all, and that thus we came nearest to 
 the heart of God. He found, indeed, very often, 
 that even when prudence and reason affordedl 
 excellent reasons for abstaining from action, to- 
 yield to intuition turned out to be the wisest 
 and the kindest course ; until, in practical mat- 
 ters, he learned to trust it unhesitatingly, even if 
 it led him, as the light led the pilgrim, to stum- 
 ble for a time in a field full of dark mountains.
 
 XXI 
 
 THERE was, as I have said, a strong^ yisiqn- 
 aiy. -tendency in Hugh, which had been to a 
 certain extent restricted in the days of his pro- 
 fessional life ; but now that he was free, it be- 
 gan to recur with extraordinary frequency and 
 force. It was when he was reading that this fac- 
 ulty visited him, as a rule, and more especially 
 when he read, as he was accustomed to do, after he 
 was awake in the morning, until the time.came 
 for him to rise. The mind, struggling to free 
 itself from the dominion of sleep, had not yet 
 put on the obedience of the day, but seemed to 
 act with whimsical independence of its own. 
 His thoughts were then most apt to wear 
 a melancholy tinge ; a certain apprehensive 
 shadow often lay upon him, a sense of being un- 
 equal to the claims of the day, a tendency to 
 rehearse, without hopefulness or spring, the 
 part he would have to play, to exaggerate dif- 
 ficulties and obstacles. Reading, as a rule, 
 served to distract his thoughts ; but it was 
 hardly an intellectual so much as a meditative 
 210
 
 A Far-off Day 211 
 
 process ; the thoughts and words of the writer, 
 on such occasions, often seemed to him like 
 beaters going through a covert, tramping the 
 fern and rapping the tree trunks, starting from 
 their lairs all kinds of hidden game. 
 
 One morning he was lying thus, reading 
 quietly, when there suddenly darted into his 
 mind, for no particular reason, the thought of a 
 summer day he had spent as a small boy at his 
 public school. It had been a holiday ; the day 
 cloudless and bright, yet with a delicious cool- 
 ness in the air; and the sunshine fell, he re- 
 membered, on the great trees of the place and 
 the venerable buildings, gleaming through a 
 golden haze, which made it seem as though he 
 viewed everything, not through empty air, but 
 through a tinted and tangible medium, as it 
 were an aerial honey, which lent a liquid sweet- 
 ness to all outlines and surfaces. He had wan- 
 dered off with a friend, in that perfect afternoon, 
 through the meadows, for a long vague ramble, 
 ending up with a bathe in the river. The day 
 was beautifully still, and he could almost smell 
 the hot honeyed fragrance of the flowers, and 
 hear the angry murmur of the busy flies, that 
 sat basking on the leaves of the hedgerow. 
 He seemed to himself to have been full of a 
 vague and restless emotion, a sense of happi- 
 ness that just missed its end, that would have
 
 212 Beside Still Waters 
 
 been complete if there had not been something 
 wanting, some satisfaction of an instinct that 
 he could not put into words. His companion 
 had been a boy of his own age, who, it had 
 seemed to Hugh, was in the same wistful mood. 
 But there had been no attempt to express in 
 words any of these thoughts. They had 
 walked for the most part in silence, interrupted 
 by the vague, inconsequent, and rather gruff re- 
 marks, that are the symbols of equal friendship. 
 They had rambled a long way beside the stream, 
 with the thick water-plants growing deep at the 
 edge. The river came brimming down, clear 
 and cool, the tiny weeds swaying among the 
 dark pools, the rushes bowing and bending, as 
 though plucked by unseen hands. The stream 
 was full of boys in boats, and the eager noise 
 and stir were not congenial to Hugh's medita- 
 tive mood. The bathing-place was by a weir 
 where the green water plunged through the 
 sluices, filling the stream with foam and sound; 
 all about floated the exquisite reedy smell of 
 warm river water, bringing with it a sense of 
 cool and unvisited places, hidden backwaters 
 among green fields, where the willows leaned 
 together, and the fish hung mute in the pools. 
 They had bathed under a tall grove of poplars, 
 and Hugh could remember the delicious fresh- 
 ness of the turf under his naked feet, and the
 
 A Compact 213 
 
 sun- warmed heat of the wooden beams of the 
 wharf. The plunge in the cold bubbling water 
 had swept all his thoughts away into the mere 
 joy of life, but as he sat, after dressing, with the 
 music of the water in his ears, the same wistful 
 mood had settled down on his mind. 
 
 What did it all mean ? Whither was all this 
 beauty, this delight tending? He thought of 
 all the generations of boys who had bathed in 
 this place, full of joy and life. Where were 
 they all now? He thought of those who 
 should come after, when he too was gone to 
 take his place in the world. And then they 
 had gone slowly back through the meadows, 
 with a delicious languor of sensation ; the sun 
 was now beginning to decline, and the blue 
 wooded hills across the stream, with the smoke 
 going up beneath them from unseen houses, 
 wore the same air of holding some simple and 
 sweet secret which they would not tell, and 
 which Hugh could not penetrate. It was sad, 
 too, to think that the beautiful day was done, 
 become a memory only ; and that he must 
 plunge again for the morrow and for many 
 morrows into the tide of affairs and boisterous 
 life. He made one effort to put his thoughts 
 into words. Putting his arm for a moment in 
 the arm of his companion, he said, " Let us 
 remember to-day ! " His friend, who was
 
 Beside Still Waters 
 
 walking sedately along with a stalk of grass 
 between his lips, looked at him in a peculiar 
 manner, smiled and nodded ; this little com- 
 pact, so quietly made, seemed for an instant to 
 have brought Hugh and his friend together 
 into a charmed circle. Had his friend forgot- 
 ten what he remembered ? The last time he 
 had seen him, he had found a prosperous busi- 
 ness man, full of affairs ; and he had not 
 reminded him of the day when they went 
 together by the stream. 
 
 The whole picture came before Hugh as an 
 almost impossible sweet and rapturous mem- 
 ory, clutching with a poignant passion at his 
 heart. What was the secret of the fragrant 
 days that had departed and could never return ? 
 Was it well to recall them ? And what too 
 was the secret of that strange and beautiful 
 alchemy of the mind, that forgot all the trou- 
 bles and cares of the old life, and even touched 
 the few harsh incidents that it did retain with 
 a wistful beauty, as though they had had some 
 desirable element in them ? Would it not be 
 better, more tranquillising for the spirit, if the 
 memory retained only the dark shadows of 
 the past? so that the mind could turn with 
 zest and interest to the joys of the moment? 
 Instead of that, memory tempted the soul, by 
 a kind of magical seduction, to dwell only upon
 
 Fragrant Memories 215 
 
 what was sweet and beautiful in the past, 
 thereby emphasising and heightening the sense 
 of dissatisfaction with the present. Was it 
 true that the very days that were then passing, 
 those sober, uneventful days, would at some 
 future time be touched by the same reluctant, 
 pathetic quality of recollection ? It was cer- 
 tainly so ; the mind, dwelling on the past, had 
 that extraordinary power of rejecting all the 
 dreary debris of life, and leaving only the pure 
 gold, a hundred times refined ; and yet it 
 brought with it that mournful shadow of sad- 
 ness, of the irrevocable, the irreplaceable past. 
 But it seemed, too, to hold a hope within it, a 
 hope that, if the pilgrimage of the soul were 
 not to be ended by death, then memory, un- 
 shadowed by present sadness, in the deep con- 
 tent of a freedom from all material anxieties, 
 might become one of the purest and deepest 
 treasures that it was possible to conceive. 
 Hugh thought that his disembodied spirit 
 might, in the after time, perhaps haunt those 
 very river-banks, and with the mystery solved 
 that had oppressed and darkened his human 
 pilgrimage, might surrender itself to that beau- 
 tiful and absolute tranquillity, that peace which 
 the world could not give, for which he daily 
 and hourly yearned. Perhaps indeed it was 
 the presence of some such invisible, haunting
 
 216 Beside Still Waters 
 
 revenant whispering at his ear, longing even 
 for some contact with healthy humanity, that 
 had given him the wistful sense of mystery 
 and longing. Who could say ? 
 
 And then the mood of recollection lapsed 
 and rolled away like mists from a morning hill, 
 and left Hugh once more confronted with the 
 ugliness and dreariness of the actual world ; 
 only from his vision remained the hope, the 
 resolution, to extract from life, as it passed, the 
 purest and most delicate elements; its sweet- 
 ness, its serenity ; so that he might leave, as far 
 as was possible, an inheritance of undimmed 
 beauty for the memory to traffic with, to rid it 
 so far as he could from all the envy, the dull 
 detail, the tiresome complexities that might 
 poison retrospect, leaving nothing but the fine 
 gold of thought. 
 
 j
 
 XXII 
 
 HUGH was wandering as his custom was, one 
 hot and thunderous day, in the country lanes ; 
 it was very still, and through the soft haze that 
 filledjthe air, the distant trees and fields lost 
 their remoteness, and stood stiffly and quaintly 
 as though painted. There seemed a presage of 
 storm in the church-tower, which showed a ghost- 
 ly white among the elms. A fitful breeze stirred 
 at intervals. Hugh drew near the hamlet, 
 and all of a sudden stepped into a stream of 
 inconceivable swiftness and fragrance ; he saw 
 in a moment what was its origin. The straw- 
 berry-pickers were out in a broad field, and 
 from the crushed berries, however lightly bruis- 
 ed, there poured this flow of scent, at once rich 
 and pure, with all the native soul of the fruit ex- 
 haling upon the air. It was to other familiar 
 scents like ointment poured forth ; it seemed 
 indeed to Hugh that anything so intensely im- 
 pressive to the sense ought to have power to 
 tinge the colourless air, which was thus so 
 exquisitely laden and impregnated. 
 217
 
 218 Beside Still Waters 
 
 He was now close to the church. It was 
 a little, low, ancient structure, with a small, 
 quaint, open belfry, beautifully proportioned, 
 and all built out of a soft and mellow grey 
 stone. The grass grew long in the church- 
 yard, which was not so much neglected as 
 wisely left alone, and an abundance of pink 
 mallow, growing very thickly, gave a touch 
 of bright colour to the grass. He stopped 
 for a while considering the grave of a child, 
 who died at the age of five years, with an 
 artless epitaph painted on a wooden cross. 
 The grave was piously tended, though it 
 bore a date of some ten years back ; there 
 were little rose-trees growing there, and a 
 border of pansies, all the work, Hugh fancied 
 of children, doing gentle honour to a dead 
 sister ; whom they thought of, no doubt, as ly- 
 ing below in all her undimmed childish beauty ; 
 the pale face, the waxen limbs, the flowing 
 hair, as they had looked their last upon her, 
 waiting in a quiet sleep for the dawn of that 
 other morning. How much better to think 
 of her so, than of the dreadful reality which 
 Hugh, in a sudden, almost terrified, flash of 
 fancy, knew to be lying, an almost insup- 
 portable blot upon all that was fair and 
 seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. 
 Yet there was a place for that difficult horror
 
 Death 219 
 
 too in the scheme of things, though the 
 thought seemed almost to taint the sweet air 
 of the place. 
 
 This was only one of the parts of the 
 great mystery over which he brooded so often ; 
 the noisome things of the world, its weakness 
 its decay ; the shivering repugnance of the 
 spirit, the almost impossibility of joy or cour- 
 age in the presence of such thoughts ; that 
 was the strangest part of it, the rebellion of 
 the inmost central spirit against what was so 
 natural, so common. Death was harsh enough, 
 but that it should be attended with such an 
 extremity of disgrace and degradation that 
 seemed an intolerable thing. 
 
 Yet to the charnel-worm, rioting in all the 
 horror of decay, there could be nothing but a 
 blind joy in the conditions which Hugh hardly 
 even dared to imagine. To indulge such 
 thoughts was morbid, perhaps. But here they 
 presented themselves at every turn, and Hugh 
 felt that to turn his back upon them was but to 
 shirk the part of the problem that he disliked. 
 Not so could he attain to any knowledge of the 
 secret of things. The horror must not of course 
 be unduly emphasised ; the morbidity lay there, 
 in the danger of seeing things out of due pro- 
 portion ; but the proportion was just as much 
 sacrificed, indeed more sacrificed, by ignoring
 
 220 Beside Still Waters 
 
 the facts. Neither was he at all afraid of any 
 undue preponderance of the morbid element in 
 his contemplations. He took far too deep a 
 delight in the beautiful and gracious sights and 
 sounds of earth for that ; and the conclusion 
 that he drew, as he turned away, was that a 
 suspension of judgment in the face of an in- 
 soluble mystery was the only course ; to leave 
 the windows of the soul open to every im- 
 pression, to every fact, whether it was the 
 voice and glance of humanity, the sweetness of 
 art and sound, the appeal of ancient buildings, 
 the waving of tall trees, the faces of bright 
 flowers, the songs of lively birds in the thicket 
 ay, and the intimations of death and decay as 
 well, all that was ugly and wretched in human- 
 ity, the coarse song from the alehouse, the 
 slatternly woman about her weary work, the 
 crying of a child that had been punished, 
 the foul oozings of the stockyard. These were 
 all as real, as true impressions as the others. 
 To strike some balance, neither to forget the 
 ideal in the real, or to lose sight of the real in 
 the ideal, that was his task. And the con- 
 solation, though a stern one, lay in the fact 
 that, dark and bitter as the mystery was at 
 one point, gracious and glowing as it was at 
 another, yet it was certainly there. Concrete 
 and abstract, the impressions of sense, the in-
 
 The Real and the Ideal 221 
 
 tuitions of the spirit, each and all had their 
 part. In this life, this swift interchange of 
 darkness and light, of sunshine and gloom, he 
 might never approach the secret nay, he did 
 not even hope that he would. But at least he 
 could draw a few steps nearer, and with a 
 humble heart he would wait for the glory that 
 should be revealed, or for the silence and dark- 
 ness that, it might be, would close upon him. 
 For whatever should be the end, Hugh had no 
 doubt that there was certainly behind life a 
 mind and a will, to which it was not only no 
 mystery, but a truth simple, obvious, and plain ; 
 for him, his duty was to use both observation 
 and imagination ; not to let the imagination 
 outrun the observation, but to mark all that he 
 could, and infer what he could ; while at the 
 same time he felt equally sure that he was not 
 to be a mere observer ; blindly registering im- 
 pressions, content to analyse difficulties. Bet- 
 ter than that was to repose an ardent faith in 
 his intuitions ; but each alike, without the aid 
 of the other, was perilous and insecure. 
 
 While he thus reflected, there seemed to flow 
 into his mind a deep melancholy, which, like a 
 dark liquid dropped into clear water, began to 
 tinge and cloud the translucent tide. To live 
 by a due proportion of emotion and reason, 
 ; but how were they to
 
 222 Beside Still Waters 
 
 be mingled ? One seemed so isolated in the 
 matter, so left without any certainty of guid- 
 ance. tiLone allowed emotion^ too_great a 
 latitude, one became sentimental, unbalanced, 
 personal ; if one was swayed by reason, one 
 became dry, impersonal, cold. Was one indeed 
 meant to stumble along the track, making irre- 
 parable mistakes, seeing only in retrospect, with 
 a shocking clearness of vision, what one ought 
 to have done? Was one to regret alike im- 
 pulse and prudence? And the old faults of 
 temperament, how they appeared and re- 
 appeared ! However clearly one saw one's 
 mistakes, however much one admired nobleness, 
 and generosity, and courage, could one change 
 the innermost character at all? The ghastly 
 fact was that one seemed framed to desire 
 the unattainable. What broken, faded, feeble 
 things the majority of men's lives were ! The 
 pageant of human life seemed nothing more 
 than failure on a gigantic scale. 
 
 Suddenly the lightning writhed and fell, the 
 thunder broke out over Hugh's head, as he 
 walked in the quiet lane, a rattling, furious peal, 
 like leaden weights poured in a cascade upon a 
 vast boarded floor an inconceivable sound, from 
 its sharpness, its tangibility, its solidity, to pro- 
 ceed from those soft regions of the air, in which 
 a velvety greyness dwelt suffused, with a lurid
 
 A Thunder Shower 223 
 
 redness in the west. The rain fell a moment 
 afterwards in a soft sheet, leaping in the road, 
 and making a mist above the ground. 
 
 It was soon over, while Hugh sheltered in a 
 big barn, with a pleasant dark dusty roof, and 
 high piles of fragrant straw all about him. 
 
 What a change when he stepped out ! the 
 thunder had leaped into the west, the air was 
 clean and sweet, and a ravishing scent came 
 from the satisfied fields. 
 
 With the drench of rain, something poisonous 
 seemed to have been washed out of Hugh's 
 mind. All that afternoon, in the sullen heat, 
 he had brooded stupidly and miserably enough, 
 picking up, as it were, dart after dart from his 
 little bundle of cares and miseries, and pricking 
 his heart with them. 
 
 Where was it all gone? In the clear fresh 
 air he felt like a man awaked from a night- 
 mare, and restored to cheerful life again. What 
 did past failures, future anxieties, matter to 
 him ? He had his work, his place, his liberty, 
 and what further could he need ? 
 
 His liberty ! How good that was ! He might 
 go and come as he would, unquestioned, un- 
 blamed. He thought with a pitying horror of 
 what his life had previously h^en the tangle 
 of small engagements, the silly routine work, 
 in which no one believed ; they had all been
 
 224 Beside Still Waters 
 
 bound on a kind of make-believe pilgrimage, 
 carrying burdens round and round, and put- 
 ting them down where they had taken them up. 
 
 He determined that, whatever happened, he 
 would do no more work in which he did not 
 believe, that he would say what he felt, not 
 what traditional formulas required him to say. 
 Work ! he believed in that with all his heart, so 
 long as it had an end, an object. To wrestle 
 with the comprehension of some difficult mat- 
 ter, there were few pleasures like that ! but it 
 must have been an advance, when it was over ; 
 one must feel that one is stronger, more clear- 
 minded, more alert, more sincere ; one must not 
 feel that one was only more weary, more dis- 
 satisfied. His path was clear before him at all 
 events. 
 
 Plans and schemes began to rise in Hugh's 
 brain ; he felt as if he was delivered from the 
 brooding sway of some evil and melancholy 
 spirit. How strange was the power that physi- 
 cal conditions had upon the very stuff of the 
 mind ! Half an hour ago the grievances, the 
 self-pity, the dissatisfaction had appeared to 
 him to be real and tangible troubles ; not in- 
 deed things which it was wise to brood over, 
 but inevitable pains, to be borne with such 
 philosophy as was attainable. But now they 
 seemed as unreal, as untrue, as painful dreams,
 
 Storm and Shadow 225 
 
 from which one wakes with a sharp and great 
 relief. 
 
 What remained with Hugh was the sense of 
 one of the dangers of solitary life the over-in- 
 fluence, the preponderance of sentiment. The 
 only serenity was to be found in claiming and 
 expecting nothing, but in welcoming what came 
 as a gift, as an added joy, to which one had in- 
 deed no right ; but which fell like the sunshine 
 and the rain ; one must be ready to help, to 
 work, to use one's strength at whatever point 
 it could be best applied, and to look for no re- 
 ward. This was what poisoned life, the claim 
 to be paid in the coin that pleased one best. 
 Payment indeed was made largely ; and the 
 blessed thing was that if one was not paid fully 
 for one's efforts, neither was one paid relent- 
 lessly for one's mistakes. 
 
 And then, as to the deeper shadows of the 
 world, the sorrows, the bereavements, the suf- 
 ferings, the dark possibilities, that lay like the 
 shadows of trees across a sunlit road death 
 itself, that grim horizon that closed the view 
 whichever way one looked the mistake lay in 
 attempting to reckon with them beforehand, to 
 anticipate them, to discount them. They were 
 all part of the plan, and one could not alter 
 them. Better to let them come, to husband 
 strength and joy to meet them, rather than to 
 15
 
 226 Beside Still Waters 
 
 dissipate one's courage by dwelling upon them. 
 Indeed all Hugh's experience showed him that 
 troubles, even the deepest, wore a very different 
 aspect when one was inside them. 
 
 The very storm itself was a parable. Those 
 zigzag ribbons of purple fire, the fierce shout- 
 ing of the thunderclap that followed ! In all 
 the wide forest-tracts over which the tempest 
 hung, all that grim artillery did but rend and 
 split some one tough tree. Rather it turned 
 again to gladden the earth, and the tears of 
 heaven, that fell so steeply, only laid the dust 
 of the hot road, and filled the pasture of the 
 lane with the fragrance of the cleansed earth 
 and the comforted brake.
 
 XXIII 
 
 As Hugh became more and more enamoured 
 of his work, and of the sweet peace of the 
 country side, he became more and more averse 
 to visiting London. But he was forced to do 
 this at intervals. One hot summer day he went 
 thus reluctantly to town ; the rattle of the 
 train, the heated crowd of passengers, the 
 warm mephitic air that blew into the car- 
 riage from the stifling, smoke-grimed tunnel 
 all these seemed to him insupporably disgust- 
 ing. But the sight, the sound, the very smell 
 of London itself, was like a dreadful obsession ; 
 he wondered how he could ever have endured * 
 to live there. The streets lay in the steady 
 sun, filled with fatigued, hurrying persons. 
 The air was full of a sombre and oppressive 
 murmur; the smell of the roadways, the hot 
 vapour of cook-shops, the din and whizz of 
 vehicles, the ceaseless motion of faces : all this 
 filled him with a deep pity for those who had 
 to live their lives under such conditions. Was 
 it to this that our boasted civilisation had 
 227
 
 228 Beside Still Waters 
 
 brought us ? and yet it seemed that the normal 
 taste of ordinary people turned by preference 
 to this humming and buzzing life, rather than 
 to the quiet and lonely life in the green spaces 
 of the country ; Hugh had little doubt that 
 the vast majority of those he saw, even the 
 pale, patient work-people who were peeping, 
 as they toiled, grimy and sweat-stained, from 
 the open windows, would choose this life rather 
 than the other, and would have condemned 
 the life of the country as dull. Was it he, 
 Hugh wondered, or they that were out of joint ? 
 Ought he to accept the ordinary, sensible point 
 of view, and try to conform himself to it, 
 crush down his love for trees and open fields 
 and smiling waters ? The sociable, herding 
 instinct was as true, as God-sent an instinct as 
 his own pleasure in free solitude ; and the old 
 adage that God made the country but man made 
 the town was as patently absurd as to say 
 that God made the iceberg, but the ant made 
 the ant-heap. 
 
 He went to his club, a place which he rarely 
 entered ; it was full of brisk and cheerful men, 
 lunching with relish ; some of them had hur- 
 ried in from their work, and were enjoying the 
 hour of leisure ; some were the old frequenters 
 of the place, men whose work in the world was 
 over, as well as men who had never known
 
 The Club 229 
 
 what it was to work. But these men, even 
 some who seemed crippled with age and infirm- 
 ity, seemed as intent upon their pleasures, 
 as avid of news, as eager for conversation, 
 as particular about their food, as if their 
 existence was of a supreme and weighty im- 
 portance. Hugh watched an elderly man, 
 whom he knew by name, who was said to be 
 the most unoccupied man in London, who 
 was administering food and drink to himself 
 with a serious air of delicate zest, as though he 
 were presiding benevolently at some work of 
 charity and mercy. He had certainly flourished 
 on his idleness like a green bay tree ! Hugh 
 was inclined to believe in the necessity to hap- 
 piness of the observance of some primal laws, 
 like the law of labour, but here was a contradic- 
 tion to all his theories. He sighed to think of 
 the mountains of carefully prepared food that 
 this rosy, well-brushed person must have con- 
 sumed in the course of his life ! He was a 
 notoriously selfish man, who never laid out 
 a penny except on his own needs and pleasures. 
 Yet here was he, guarded like the apple of 
 God's eye, and all the good things that the ; 
 earth held ease, comfort, independence, health 
 honour, and the power of enjoyment were 
 heaped upon him with a liberal hand. No 
 wonder he thought so well of the world ! Hugh
 
 230 Beside Still Waters 
 
 had heard him say, with an air of virtuous 
 complacency, that he was generally pretty 
 comfortable. 
 
 Hugh did not grudge his luxurious ease with 
 the great statesman who sat in the corner, 
 with an evening paper propped up on a silver 
 dish, and some iced compound bubbling pleas- 
 antly in his glass, smiling benignly at a carica- 
 ture of himself. He, at all events, paid for his 
 comforts by unremitting labour. But what of 
 the sleek and goodly drones of the hive? 
 
 Hugh had some cheerful unmeaning talk with 
 several of his old friends, who regretted that 
 they saw so little of him; he laughed with 
 careful enjoyment at some ancient stories, very 
 familiar to him, told him with rich zest by an 
 acquaintance. But he could not help speculat- 
 ing what was the point of it all. Some of the 
 happiest and most contented men there were 
 high officials, engaged with a sense of solemn 
 importance in doing work that could have 
 been quite as well done by very ordinary peo- 
 ple, and much of which, indeed, might as well 
 have been left undone altogether. There was 
 a bishop there, an old family friend of Hugh's 
 father, with whom he entered into talk. The 
 bishop had once been a man of great force and 
 ability, who had been a conspicuous university 
 teacher and had written profound books. But
 
 The Club 231 
 
 now he was looking forward with a sense of 
 solemn satisfaction to spending the following 
 day in going down to his diocese in order to 
 preside at a Church ftte y make a humorous 
 speech, and meet a number of important county 
 people. There was no question of any relig- 
 ious element entering into the function, and 
 Hugh found himself dimly wondering whether 
 such a development of the energies of Christ- 
 ian elders was seriously contemplated in the 
 Gospel. But the bishop seemed to have no 
 doubts on the subject. 
 
 Well, anyhow, this was life; this was what 
 men had to do, and what as a rule they enjoyed 
 doing. Hugh had no objection to that, so 
 long as people freely admitted that it was sim- 
 ply their chosen diversion, and that they did it 
 because they liked it. It was only the solemn 
 parade of duty that Hugh disliked. 
 
 One of the friends whom Hugh met said 
 to him smilingly that he heard that he had 
 become quite a hermit adding that he must 
 confess that he did not look like one. Hugh 
 replied laughingly that it was only that he was 
 fortunate enough to discover that his work 
 amused him more and more ; at which his 
 friend smiled again, and told him to beware of 
 eccentricity. 
 
 Hugh began to wonder whether his simple
 
 232 Beside Still Waters 
 
 and solitary life was indeed tinged with that 
 quality ; but he answered that he was finding 
 out to his great delight that he was less afraid 
 than he used to be of living alone, to which his 
 friend, a good-humoured and ineffective man, 
 said that he found that the stir and movement 
 of town kept people from rusting. Hugh won- 
 dered but did not express his wonder what 
 was supposed to be the use of keeping the 
 blade bright to no purpose ; and he wished to 
 ask his contented friend what his object was; 
 but that appeared to be priggish, so Hugh left 
 the question unuttered. 
 
 It was, however, with a huge relief, that 
 his business over, Hugh found himself in the 
 homeward train. But at the same time he 
 took himself to task for finding this suspen- 
 sion of routine, this interruption of his literary 
 work, so unpalatable. He realised that he was 
 becoming inconveniently speculative ; and that 
 his growing impulse to get behind things, to 
 weigh their value, to mistrust the conventional 
 view of life, had its weak side. After all, the 
 conventional, the normal view reflected the 
 tastes of the majority of mankind. Their life 
 was laid out and regulated on those lines ; and 
 the regulating instinct was a perfectly natural 
 development of human temperament. Ought 
 he not to embrace it for himself ? was he not,
 
 The Garden of God 233 
 
 perhaps, by seeking so diligently for fine fla- 
 vours and intense impressions, missing the food 
 of the banquet, and sipping only at the sauces ? 
 If his own work had been of any particular im- 
 portance ; if he was exercising a wide influence 
 through his books, in the direction of leading 
 others to love the simple sources of happi- 
 ness, then his withdrawal from ordinary activi- 
 ties and pleasures would be justifiable. Was 
 it justified as it was? Hugh could not answer 
 the question. He only knew that as the train 
 glided on its way, as the streets became less 
 dense, as the country verdure began to occupy 
 more and more of the horizon ; as the train 
 at last began to speed through wide fields full 
 of ripening grain, and hamlets half hidden in 
 high elms, he felt the blessed consciousness of 
 returning freedom, the sense of recovering the 
 region of peace and purity dear to his spirit ; 
 and the thought of the hot stifling town, with 
 all its veins and arteries full of that endless ebb 
 and flow of humanity, seemed to him like a 
 nightmare from which he was being gradually 
 delivered, and which he was leaving far behind 
 him. 
 
 It was not peace, indeed ! there was the ob- 
 stinate spirit, repining, questioning, reviewing 
 all things, striving to pierce the veil. But the 
 veil was not so thick as it had seemed in the
 
 234 Beside Still Waters 
 
 city. There he was distracted, bewildered, 
 agitated. But in this quiet country the veil 
 seemed thin enough. The trees, the flowers, 
 seemed somehow nearer to God, who of very 
 truth appeared to walk as of old in the garden, 
 in the cool of the day. . ^
 
 XXIV 
 
 THERE were somejdays when the whole air 
 of the place, the houses, the fields, the gardens, 
 even the very people that Hugh met in the 
 streets, seemed to be full of romance and poet- 
 ry. There was no particular quality about the 
 Bays themselves, that Hugh could ever divine, 
 that produced this impression. Perhaps such 
 moods came oftener and more poignantly when 
 the air was cool and fresh, when the temperate 
 sun filled his low rooms from end to end, lay 
 serene upon the pastures, or danced in the rip- 
 ples of the stream. But the mood came j^ust 
 as inevitably on dull days, when the sky was 
 roofed with high grey clouds, or even on raw 
 d,ays of winter, when fitful gusts whirled round 
 corners, and when the spouts and cornices 
 dripped with slow rains. In these hours the ( 
 whole world seemed possessed by some gracious j 
 and sweet mystery ; everything was in the se- 
 cret, everything was included in the eager and 
 high-hearted conspiracy. It was all the same, 
 on such days, whether Hugh was alone or with 
 company; if he was among friends or even 
 235
 
 236 Beside Still Waters 
 
 strangers, they seemed to look upon him, to 
 speak, to move, with a blithe significance ; he 
 seemed to intercept tender messages in a casual 
 glance, to experience the sense of a delighted 
 good-will, such as reigns among a party of friends 
 on an expedition of pleasure. This mood did 
 not produce in Hugh the sense of merriment or 
 high spirits; it was not an excited frame of 
 mind ; it was rather a feeling of widespread 
 ; tenderness, a sort of brotherly admiration. At 
 ; such moments, the most crabbed and peevish 
 person seemed to be transfigured, to be acting 
 a delightful part for the pleasure of a spectator, 
 and an inner benevolence, a desire to contribute 
 zest and amusement to the banquet of life, 
 seemed to underlie the most fractious gestures 
 or irritable speech. On such days, one seemed 
 to have an affectionate understanding with even 
 slight acquaintances, an understanding which 
 seemed to say, " We are all comrades in heart, 
 and nothing but circumstance and bodily limi- 
 tation prevents us from being comrades in life." 
 Hugh used to fancy that this mood was like an 
 earnest of the bodiless joy, the free companion- 
 ship of heaven, if such a place there were, where 
 one should know even as one was known, and 
 be able to enter in and possess, in a flash of 
 thought, the whole fabric of a fellow-creature's 
 soul.
 
 The Romance of Life 237 
 
 And then if Hugh spent such a day alone, his 
 thoughts seemed to have the same enlighten- 
 ing and invigorating quality. He did not fum- 
 ble among dreary details, but saw swiftly into 
 the essence of things, so that he smiled as he 
 sat. A book would, on such occasions, touch 
 into life a whole train of pretty thoughts, as a 
 spark leaps along a scattered line of gunpowder. 
 A few remembered lines of poetry, a few notes 
 played by unseen hands on a musical instru- 
 ment, from a window that he passed in the 
 street, would give a sense of completed happi- 
 ness; so that one said, "Yes, it is like that!" 
 The palings of gardens, the screen of shrubs 
 through which the pleasancie^could be dimly 
 discerned within, the high trees holding up their 
 branches to the air, all half guarded, half revealed 
 the same jocund secret. Here, by a hedgerow, 
 in a lane, Hugh would discern the beady eye of a 
 fat thrush which hopped in the tall grass, or 
 plied some tiny business among the stems, lift- 
 ing his head at intervals to look briskly round. 
 " I see you!" said Hugh, as he used to say long 
 ago to the birds in the Rectory garden, and the 
 bird seemed almost to nod his head in reply. 
 
 And then^ .too, the houses that he passed all 
 breathed the same air of romance. There, 
 perhaps, behind the wall or at the open win- 
 dow, sat or moved the one friend of whom he
 
 238 Beside Still Waters 
 
 was ever in search ; but on these days it mat- 
 tered little that he had not found him ; he 
 could wait, he could be faithful, and Hugh 
 could wait too, until the day when all things 
 should be made new. If_he_walke4^g3jdays 
 like these through some college court, the 
 thought of the happy, careless, cheerful lives, 
 lived there in strength and brightness, bygenera- 
 ^ tion after generation of merry young men, filled 
 Hugh's heart with content ; he liked to think that 
 all the world over, in busy offices, in grave par- 
 lours, in pleasant parsonages, there were seri- 
 ous, commonplace, well-occupied men, who 
 perhaps, in a tiny flash of memory, sent back 
 a wistful thought to the old walls and gables, 
 the towns with their chiming bells, and remem- 
 bered tenderly the days of their blithe youth, 
 the old companions, the lively hours. The 
 whole world seemed knit together by sweet 
 and gentle ties : labour and strife mattered 
 little ; it was but a cloud upon the path, and 
 would melt into the sunlit air at last. 
 
 Hugh used to feel half amused at the irrepress- 
 ible jLejij^rfyjOuth which thrilled him still. As a 
 boy, he had little suspected that the serious 
 / elderly men, of settled habits and close-shaved 
 ' chins, had any such thoughts as these under 
 their battered exteriors. He had thought that 
 such persons were necessarily stolid and com-
 
 The Renewal of Youth 239 
 
 fortable persons, believing in committees and 
 correspondence, fond of food and drink, care- 
 ful of their balance at the bank, and rather 
 disgusted at than tolerant of the irrepressible 
 levity and flightiness of youth. Yet now that 
 he himself was approaching middle age, he was 
 conscious, not indeed of increased levity or 
 high spirits, but of undiminished vigour, wider 
 sympathy, larger joy. Life was not only not 
 less interesting, but it seemed rather to thrill 
 and pulsate with fresh and delightful emotion. 
 If he could not taste it with the same insou- 
 ciance, it was only because he perceived its 
 quality more poignantly. If life were less full 
 of laughter, it was only because there were 
 sweeter and more joyful things to enjoy. What 
 was best of all about this later delight, was 
 that it left no bitter taste behind it ; in youth, 
 a day of abandonment to elation, a day of 
 breezy talk, hearty laughter, active pleasure, 
 would often leave a sense of flatness and dis- 
 satisfaction behind it ; but the later joy had no 
 sort of weariness as its shadow ; it left one 
 invigorated and hopeful. 
 
 The most marked difference of all was in 
 one's relations with others. In youth a new 
 friendship had been a kind of excited capture ; 
 it had been shadowed by jealousy ; it had been 
 a desire for possession. One had not been con-
 
 240 Beside Still Waters 
 
 tent unless one had been sure that one's friend 
 had the same sort of unique regard that one 
 experienced one's self. One had resented his 
 other friendships, and wished to supersede them. 
 But now Hugh had no such feeling. He had 
 no desire to make a relationship, because the 
 relationship seemed already there. If one met 
 a sympathetic and congenial person, one made, 
 as it were, a sort of sunlit excursion in a new 
 and pleasing country. One admired the pro- 
 spects, surveyed the contours. In old days, one 
 had desired to establish a kind of fortress in 
 the centre, and claim the fruitful land for one's 
 own. 
 
 Of course, in Hugh's dealings with the youth- 
 ful persons whom he encountered in his Cam- 
 bridge life, he became aware of the existence 
 of the subtle barrier which is erected between 
 youth and middle age ; he was conscious often 
 that the delightful egotism of youth has, as a 
 .rule, very little deference for, or interest in, the 
 opinions of older persons. Youth is so pro- 
 foundly absorbed in its own visions, that it is 
 very rarely curious about the duller reveries of 
 older people. It regards them as necessarily 
 dreary, grey, wise, and prudent. The only 
 thing it values is sympathy for itself, just as a 
 child is far more interested in the few chords 
 which it can strum on a piano than in the rich-
 
 Youth 241 
 
 est performance of a maestro. But Hugh did 
 not find this to be disagreeable, because he was 
 less and less concerned about the effect he pro- 
 duced. He had found out that the joys of per- 
 ception are at least equal to the joys of expres- 
 sion. Youth cannot wait, it must utter its 
 half-formed wishes, put out its crude fruits ; and 
 it used to seem to Hugh that one of the most 
 pathetic and beautiful things in the world was 
 the intensity of feeling, the limitless dreams, that 
 rose shadowily in a boy's mind side by side 
 with the inarticulateness, the failure to com- 
 mand any medium of expression. One of the 
 reasons why the young and clever men are so 
 desperately anxious to be amusing and hu- 
 morous, is because they desire above all things 
 to see the effect of their words, and long to 
 convulse an audience ; while they lack, as a rule, 
 the finished economy in which humour, to be 
 effective, must be clothed. 
 
 But, after all, what brought Hugh the best 
 comfort, was the discovery that advancing years 
 did not bring with them any lack of sensitive- 
 ness, any dreariness, any sense of dulness. It 
 was indeed rather the reverse. The whole fa- 
 bric of life was richer, more impassioned, more 
 desirable than he had ever supposed. In youth, 
 emotion and feeling had seemed to him like 
 oases in a desert, oases which one had to quit,
 
 242 Beside Still Waters 
 
 when one crossed the threshold of life, to plod 
 wearily among endless sands. But now he had 
 found jthat Jthe desert had a life, an emotion, a 
 beauty of its own, and the oases of youthful 
 fancy seemed to be tame and limited by com- 
 parison. Hugh still thought with a shudder of 
 old age, which lay ahead of him ; but even as 
 he shuddered, he began to wonder whether that 
 too would not open up to him a whole range of 
 experiences and emotions, of which to-day he 
 had no inkling at all. Would life perhaps seem 
 richer still ? That was what he dared to hope. 
 Meanwhile he would neither linger nor make 
 haste: he would not catch at the past as con- 
 taining a lost and faded sweetness ; neither 
 would he anticipate, so far as he could help it, 
 the closing of the windows of the soul.
 
 XXV 
 
 ONE morning when he was sitting in his 
 rooms at Cambridge, Hugh heard a knock at 
 the door ; there presently entered a clergyman, 
 whom at first sight Hugh thought to be a 
 stranger, but whom he almost immediately re- 
 cognised as an old school-fellow, called Ralph 
 Maitland, whom he had not seen for more than 
 twenty years. Maitland had been an idle, good- 
 humoured boy, full of ideas, a great reader and 
 a voluble talker. Hugh had never known him 
 particularly well ; but he remembered to have 
 heard that Maitland had fallen under religious 
 impulses at Oxford, had become serious, had 
 been ordained, and had eventually become a 
 devoted and hard-working clergyman in a north- 
 ern manufacturing town. He had been lately 
 threatened with a break-down in health, and 
 had been ordered abroad ; he had come to 
 Cambridge to see some friends, and hearing 
 that Hugh was in residence there, had called 
 upon him. Hugh was very much interested to 
 see him, and gradually began to discern the 
 243
 
 244 Beside Still Waters 
 
 smooth-faced boy he had known, under the 
 worn and hard-featured mask of the priest. 
 They spent most of that day together, and 
 went out fora long walk. Hugh thought he 
 perceived a touch of fanaticism about Maitland, 
 who found it difficult to talk except on matters 
 connected with his parish. But eventually he 
 began to talk of the religious life, and Hugh 
 gradually perceived that Maitland held a very 
 ardent and almost fierce view of the priestly 
 vocation ; he drew a picture of the joyj, of 
 mortification and self-denial which impressed 
 Hugh, partly because of its intensity, and partly 
 also from an uneasy sense of strain and self- 
 consciousness which it gave him. Maitland's 
 idea seemed to be that all impulses, except the 
 religious impulse in its narrowest sense, needed 
 to be sternly repressed ; that the__highest life 
 was a severe detachment from all earthly 
 things ; that the Christian pilgrim marched 
 along a very narrow way, bristling with pitfalls 
 both of opinion and practice ; that the way was 
 defined, hazily by Scripture, and precisely by 
 the Church, along which the believer must ad- 
 vance ; " Few there be that find it ! " said Mait- 
 land, with a kind of menacing joy. He was full 
 of the errors of other sects and communions. 
 The Roman doctrine was over-developed, not 
 primitive enough ; the Protestant Non-Conform-
 
 A Narrow Path 245 
 
 ists were neglectful of ecclesiastical ordinances. 
 The only people, it seemed, who were in the 
 right path were a small band of rather rigid 
 Anglicans, who appeared to Maitland to be 
 the precise type of humanity that Christ had 
 desired to develop. 
 
 As he spoke, his eye became bright, his lip 
 intolerant, and Hugh was haunted by the text, 
 " The zeal of Thine house hath even eaten / 
 me." Maitland seemed to be literally devoured 
 by an idea, which like the fox in the old story 
 of the Spartan boy, appeared to prey on his 
 vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the 
 argument, but he was no match for Maitland 
 in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his 
 arguments with an armoury of texts, which he 
 used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what 
 he thought was the weak point in Maitland's 
 argument was this that in jryery sect and 
 every church there were certainly people who 
 held with the same inflexible determination to 
 the belief that they were absolutely in the i 
 right, and had unique possession of the exact" 
 faith delivered to the saints ; and that each of' 
 these persons would be able to justify them- 
 selves by a rigid application of texts. Hugh 
 said that it seemed to him to be practically cer- 
 tain that no_one__pjf Jjiejmvas .infallibly in^the 
 right, and that the truth probably lay in certain
 
 
 246 Beside Still Waters 
 
 wide religious ideas which underlay all forms 
 of Christian faith. Maitland rejected this with 
 scorn as a dangerous and nebulous kind of 
 religion " nerveless and flabby, without bone 
 or sinew." They then diverged on to a wider 
 ground, and Hugh tried to defend his theory 
 that, God called souls to Himself by an infinite 
 variety of appeal, and that the contest was not 
 between~~orthodoxy on the one hand and 
 heterodoxy on the other, but between pure 
 and unselfish emotion on the one hand and hard 
 and self-centred materialism on the other. To 
 this Maitland replied by saying that such vague- 
 ness was one of the darkest temptations that 
 beset cultured and intellectual people, and that 
 the duty of a Christian was to follow precise 
 and accurate religious truth, as revealed in 
 Scripture and interpreted by the Church, how- 
 ever much reason and indolence revolted from 
 the conclusions he was forced to draw. They 
 parted, however, in a very friendly way, and 
 pledged themselves to meet again and continue 
 their discussion on Maitland's return. 
 
 A few days afterwards Hugh was surprised 
 to receive a letter from Maitland from Paris 
 which ran as follows : 
 
 " M Y DEAR NE VILLE, // was a great pleasure 
 to see you and to revive the memories of old days.
 
 A Letter 247 
 
 / have thought a good deal over our conversation 
 and have made up my mind that I ought to ivrite 
 to you. But first let me ask your pardon, if in 
 the heat of argument I allowed my zeal to outrun 
 my courtesy. I was over-tired and over-strained, 
 and in the mood when any opposition to one 's own 
 cherished ideals is deeply and perhaps unreason- 
 ably distressing. 
 
 " You seemed to me I will freely grant this 
 to be a real and candid seeker after truth ; but 
 the sheltered and easy life that you have led dis- 
 guises from you the urgency of the struggle. If 
 you had wrestled as I have for years with infi- 
 delity and wickedness, and had seen, as I have 
 a tJwusand times, how any laxity of doctrinal 
 opinion is always visited upon its victim by a 
 corresponding laxity of moral action, you would 
 feel very differently. 
 
 " / think you are treading a very dangerous 
 path. To me it is clear that our Lord and Sa- 
 viour Jesus Christ in His recorded utterances, in 
 a world of incredible wickedness and vague specu- 
 lation, deliberately narrowed the issues of life and 
 death. He originated a society, to which He 
 promised the guidance of the Spirit, and woe to 
 the man who tries to find a religion outside of 
 that Church. 
 
 " You seem to me, if you will forgive the ex- 
 pression, to be more than half a Pagan ; to put
 
 248 Beside Still Waters 
 
 Christianity on a level though you allow it a 
 certain pre-eminence with other refining influ- 
 ences. You spoke of art and poetry as if they 
 could bring men to God, and that in spite of the 
 fact that, as I reminded you, there is not a syllable 
 in our Lord's words that could be construed into 
 the least sympathy with art or poetry at all. You 
 called yourself a Christian, and I have no doubt 
 that you sincerely believe yourself to be one ; but 
 to me you seemed to be more like one of those cul- 
 tured Greeks who gave St. Paul an interested 
 hearing on the Acropolis. A nd yet you seemed to 
 me so genuinely anxious to do what was right, 
 that I am going to ask you, faithfully and sin- 
 cerely, to reconsider your position. You are 
 \. drifting into a kind of vague and epicurean op- 
 / \ tim ism. You spoke of the message of God through 
 nature ; there is no direct message through that 
 channel, it is only symbolical of the inner divine 
 processes. 
 
 " / am not going to argue with you ; but I im- 
 plore you to give some time to a careful study of 
 the New Testament and the Fathers. I feel sure 
 that light will be sent you. Pray earnestly for it, 
 if you have not, as I more than half suspect, given 
 u PJt r Jty r ~.i. n f av ur of a vague aspiration. A nd 
 be sure of this, that I sJiall not forget you in my 
 own prayers. I shall offer the Holy Sacrifice in 
 your intention ; I shall make humble intercession
 
 A Letter 249 
 
 for you, for you seem to me to be so near the truth 
 and yet so far away. Forgive my writing thus^ 
 but I feel called upon to warn you of what is 
 painfully clear to me. Believe me, ever sincerely 
 
 yours, 
 
 u RALPH MAITLAND" 
 
 This letter touched Hugh very much with a 
 kind of melancholy pathos. He contented him- 
 self with writing back that he did indeed, he 
 believed, desire to see the truth, and that he 
 deeply appreciated Maitland's sympathy and 
 interest. 
 
 " No impulse of the heart, on behalf of anoth- 
 er, is ever thrown away, I am sure of that. 
 But you would be the first to confess, I know, 
 that a man must advance by whatever light he 
 has ; that no good can come of accepting the con- 
 clusions of another, if the heart and mind do not 
 sincerely assent ; and that if I differ from your- 
 self as to the precise degree of certainty attain- 
 able in religious matters, it is not because I 
 despise the Spirit, but because I think that I dis- 
 cern a wider influence than you can admit." 
 
 He received in reply a short note to say that 
 Maitland felt that Hugh was making the mis- 
 take of trusting more to reason than to divine
 
 X 
 
 250 Beside Still Waters 
 
 guidance, but adding that he would not cease 
 to pray for him day by day. 
 
 Hugh reflected long and seriously over this 
 strange episode ; but he did not experience the 
 smallest temptation to desert a rational process 
 of inquiry. He read the Gospels again, and 
 they seemed to~confirm him in his TDeTTef that 
 a_wide and simple viewol life was there indicat- 
 ed. He seemed to see that the spirit which 
 Christ inculcated was a kind of mystical up- 
 lifting of the heart to God, not a doctrinal ap- 
 prehension of His nature. It seemed indeed to 
 him that Christ's treatment of life was pro- 
 foundly poetical, that it tended to point men to 
 the aim of discerning a beautiful quality in 
 action and life. Those delicate and moving 
 stories that He told how little they dealt with 
 sacramental processes or ecclesiastical systems ? 
 They rather expressed a vivid and ardent in- 
 terest in the simplest emotions of life. They 
 taught one to be humble, forgiving, sincere, 
 honest, affectionate ; there was, it was true, an 
 absence of intellectual and artistic appeal in 
 them, though there were parables, like the par- 
 able of the talents, which seemed to point to the 
 duty of exercising faithfully a diversity of gifts ; 
 but it was not, Hugh thought, due to a want 
 of sympathy with the things of the mind, but 
 seemed to arise from an intense and burning
 
 Asceticism 251 
 
 desire to prove that the secret lay rather in 
 one's relations to humanity, and even to 
 nature, than in one's intellectual processes and 
 conceptions. 
 
 And then as to the point that Chrisj jenjojced 
 upon men a fierce ideal of mortification and 
 self-denial, Hugh could see no trace of it. 
 Christ did not turn His back upon the world ; 
 He loved to enjoy beautiful sights and sounds, 
 such as birds and flowers. He did indeed clear- 
 ly assert that one must not be at the mercy of 
 material conditions, and that it was the 
 privilege of man to live along the things of the 
 soul. It was the path of simplicity, not the 
 that was indicated. Christ 
 
 seemed to Hugh to be entirely preoccupied 
 with one idea that love was the strongest and 
 most beautiful thing in the world ; and that if 
 one recognised that love alone could be 
 victorious over evil and pain and death, one 
 might be certain that its source and origin lay 
 deepest of all in the vast heart of God, however 
 sadly and strangely that seemed to be contra- 
 dicted by actual experience. And so Hugh 
 felt that whatever befell him, he would not be , 
 persuaded to desert the broad highway of love 
 and beauty and truth, for the narrow and mud- 
 dy alley of ecclesiastical opinion. The kingdom 
 of God seemed to him to have suffered more
 
 252 Beside Still Waters 
 
 disastrous violence from the hands of bigoted 
 ecclesiastics than it had ever suffered from the 
 onslaughts of the world. Ecclesiastics polluted 
 the crystal stream at its very source by confin- 
 ing the river of life to a small and crooked 
 channel. Hugh prayed with all his heart that 
 he might escape from any system that led him 
 to judge others harshly, to condemn their beliefs, 
 to define their errors. That seemed to him to 
 be the one spirit against which the Saviour had 
 uttered denunciations of an almost appalling 
 sternness. The LorcTs. ,,JJtayer and not the 
 Athariasian_Cieed seemed to him to sum up the 
 essential spirit of Christ. He believed himself 
 to be following the will of God in yielding to 
 every emotional impulse that made life more 
 sacred, more beautiful, more tender, more hope- 
 ful. He believed himself, no less sincerely, to 
 be slighting and despising the tender love of 
 God for all the sheep of His hand, when he 
 made religion into either a subtle and meta- 
 physical thing on the one hand, or a conven- 
 tional and ceremonious business on the other. 
 The peace that the world cannot give how 
 desirable, how remote that seemed! How large 
 and free a quality it was! But the peace 
 promised him by his friend seemed to him the 
 apathy of a soul crushed and confined in the 
 narrowest of dungeons, and denying the exist-
 
 The Narrow Soul 253 
 
 ence of the free air and the sun because of the 
 streaming walls and shapen stones which 
 hemmed it round. , ^ ^^j
 
 XXVI 
 
 HUGH went once to spend a few days with 
 an old friend who had held an important 
 living in a big country town. It was a somewhat 
 bewildering experience. His friend was what 
 would be called a practical person and loved 
 organisation the word was often on his lips 
 with a consuming passion. Hugh saw that he 
 was a very happy man ; he was a big fellow, 
 with a sanguine complexion and a resonant 
 voice. He was always in high spirits: he 
 banged doors behind him, and when he hurried 
 upstairs, the whole house seemed to shake. 
 Every moment of his day was full to the brim 
 of occupation. He could be heard shouting 
 directions in the garden and stables at an* early 
 hour ; he received and wrote a great many let- 
 ters ; he attended many committees and meet- 
 ings. He hurried about the country, he made 
 speeches, he preached. Hugh heard one of his 
 sermons.which was delivered with abundant gen- 
 iality. It consisted of a somewhat obvious para- 
 phrase of a Scripture scene the slaughter of 
 254
 
 Activity 255 
 
 the prophets of Baal by Elijah. The preacher 
 described the ugly carnage with much gusto. He 
 then invited his hearers to stamp out evil with 
 similar vigour, and ended with drawing a high- 
 ly optimistic picture of the world, representing 
 evil and sin as a kind of skulking and lingering 
 contagion, which God was doing His best to get 
 rid of, and which was indeed only kept alive 
 by the foolish perversity of a few abandoned 
 persons, and would soon be extirpated alto- 
 gether if only enough committees would meet 
 and take the thing up in a businesslike way. It 
 was in a sense a vigorous performance, and 
 Hugh thought that though there was little 
 attempt to bind up the broken-hearted, yet he 
 could conceive its having an inspiriting effect 
 on people who felt themselves on the right 
 side. 
 
 His friend found time one evening, as they 
 sat smoking together, to inquire into Hugh's 
 occupations, and read him a friendly lecture 
 on the subject of making himself more useful. 
 Hugh felt that it was useless to argue the 
 question ; but when he came away, somewhat 
 dizzied and wearied by the tumultuous energy 
 of his friend's life, he found himself wondering 
 exactly how much resulted from this buzzing 
 and humming organisation. There was not a 
 marked difference between his friend's parish
 
 256 Beside Still Waters 
 
 and other parishes, except that there were 
 certainly more meetings. Hugh had indeed 
 an uneasy sense that a man with less taste 
 for organisation, and more leisure for pastoral 
 / intercourse with his flock, might have effected 
 more. The vicar's chief concern indeed seemed 
 to be with the prosperous and healthy mem- 
 bers of his parish ; if there was a case of desti- 
 tution, of illness, of sorrow, it was certainly 
 inquired into ; some hard-featured lady, with a 
 strong sense of rectitude and usefulness, would 
 be commissioned to go and look into the 
 matter. She generally returned saying cheer- 
 fully that she had put things straight, and that 
 it turned out to be their own fault. 
 
 But Hugh found his reflections taking a still 
 more sceptical turn. The vicar's. theory was 
 that we were all put into the world to be of use 
 to other people. But his idea of helping other 
 
 i people was not to help them to what they 
 1 desired, but to what he thought it was right 
 that they should desire. He had very little 
 compassion, Hugh saw,, for failure and error. 
 If a parishioner was in trouble, the vicar 
 tended to say he had no one to blame but 
 himself for it. Hugh felt that he did not 
 wish to be in his friend's parish. If one was 
 
 . able-bodied and sensible, one was put on a 
 committee or two ; if one was unfortunate or
 
 Work 257 
 
 obscure, one was invaded by a district visitor. 
 If one was a Dissenter, one would be treated 
 with a gloomy courtesy for the vicar was 
 great on not alienating Dissenters, but bringing 
 them in, as he phrased it ; and if a Dissenter 
 became an Anglican, the vicar rejoiced with 
 what he believed to be the joy of the angels 
 over a repentant sinner, and made him a parish 
 worker at once. 
 
 Then Hugh went further and deeper, and 
 tried to ascertain what he really felt on the 
 subject of usefulness. Tracing back the con- 
 stitution of society to its origin, he saw that it 
 was clear that every one owed a certain duty 
 of work to the community. A society could 
 not exist in idleness ; and every one who was 
 capable of work must work to support himself; 
 and then a certain amount of work must be 
 done by the able-bodied to support those who 
 were either too old or too young to support 
 themselves. But the labouring class, the pro- 
 ducers, were forced by the constitution of 
 things to work even more than that ; because 
 there were a certain number of persons in the 
 community, capitalists and leisurely people, 
 who lived in idleness on the labour of the 
 workers. 
 
 He put aside the great majority of simple 
 workers, the labouring classes, because there
 
 258 Beside Still Waters 
 
 was no doubt about their position. If a man 
 did his work honestly, and supported himself 
 and his family, living virtuously, and endeav- 
 ouring to bring up his children virtuously, that 
 was a fine simple life. Then came the profes- 
 sional classes, who were necessary too, doctors, 
 lawyers, priests, soldiers, sailors, merchants, 
 even writers and artists; all of them had a 
 work to do in the world. 
 
 This then seemed the law of one's being: 
 that men were put into the world, and the one 
 thing that was clear was that they were meant 
 to work ; did duty stop there ? had a man, 
 when his work was done, a right to amuse and 
 employ himself as he liked, so long as he did 
 not interfere with or annoy other people? or 
 had he an imperative duty laid upon him to 
 devote his energies, if any were left, to helping 
 other people ? 
 
 What in fact was the obscure purpose for 
 which people were sent into the world ? It 
 was a pleasant place on the whole for healthy 
 persons, but there was still a large number of 
 individuals to whom it was by no means a 
 pleasant place. No choice was given us, so 
 far as we knew, as to whether we would enter 
 the world or not, nor about the circumstances 
 which were to surround us. Our lives indeed 
 were strangely conditioned by an abundance
 
 A Theory of Life 259 
 
 of causes which lay entirely outside our con- 
 trol, such as heredity, temperament, environ- 
 ment. One supposed one's self to be free, but 
 in reality one was intolerably hampered and 
 bound. 
 
 The only_^thejj>n that could satisfactorily 
 account for life as we found it was, that either 
 it was an educational progress, and that we 
 were being prepared for some further exist- 
 ence, for which in some mysterious way our 
 experience, however mean, miserable, and un- 
 gentle must be intended to fit us ; or else it 
 was all a hopeless mystery, the work of some 
 prodigious power who neither loved or hated, 
 but just chose to act so. In any case it was a 
 very slow process ; the world was bound with 
 innumerable heavy chains. There was much 
 cruelty, stupidity, selfishness, meanness abroad ; 
 all those ugly things decreased very slowly, 
 if indeed they decreased at all. Yet there 
 seemed, too, to be a species of development at 
 work. But the real mysjejry lay in _the fact 
 that while our hopes and intuitions pointed to 
 there being a great and glorious scheme in the 
 background, our reason and experience alike 
 tended to contradict that hope. How little 
 one changed as thej^ears \ent pnj[^ How^in-. 
 erad.icable our faults seemed ! How ineffectual 
 efforts! God indeed seemed to implant
 
 260 Beside Still Waters 
 
 in us a wish to improve, and then very often 
 seemed steadily and deliberately to thwart 
 that wish. 
 
 And then, too, how difficult it seemed really 
 to draw near to other people ; in what a terrible 
 
 ; even in the midst 
 
 of a cheerful and merry company, how the 
 secrets of one's heart hung like an invisible 
 veil between us and our dearest and nearest. 
 The most one could hope for was to be a 
 pleasant and kindly influence in the lives of 
 other people, and, when one was gone, one 
 might live a little while in their memories. 
 The fact that some few healthily organised 
 people contrived to live simply and straight- 
 forwardly in the activities of the moment, 
 without questioning or speculating on the 
 causes of things, did not make things simpler 
 for those on whom these questions hourly 
 and daily pressed. The people whom one 
 accounted best, did indeed spend their time in 
 helping the happiness of others ; but did one 
 perhaps only tend to think them so, because 
 they ministered to one's own contentment ? 
 
 The only conclusion for Hugh seemed to be 
 this: that one must have a work to be faithfully 
 and resolutely fulfilled ; and that, outside of 
 that, one must live tenderly, simply, and kindly, 
 adding so far as one might to the happiness of
 
 A Conclusion 261 
 
 others ; and that one might resolutely eschew 
 all the busy multiplication of activities, which 
 produced such scanty results, and were indeed 
 mainly originated in order that so-called active, 
 people might feel themselves to be righteously 
 employed. 
 
 f
 
 XXVII 
 
 ONE hot still summer day Hugh went far 
 afield, and struck into a little piece of country 
 that was new to him. He seemed to discern 
 from the map that it must have once been a 
 large, low island almost entirely surrounded by 
 marshes ; and this turned out to be the case. It 
 was approached along a high causeway crossing 
 the fen, with rich black land on either hand. 
 No high-road led through or out of the village, 
 nothing but grass-tracks and drift-ways. The 
 place consisted of a small hamlet, with an old 
 church and two or three farmhouses of some 
 size and antiquity ; it was all finely timbered 
 with an abundance of ancient elm-trees every- 
 where ; they stood that afternoon absolutely 
 still and motionless, with the sun hot on their 
 towering heads ; and Hugh remembered how, 
 long ago, as a boy at school, he used to watch, 
 out of the windows of a stuffy class-room, the 
 great elms of the school close rising just thus 
 in the warm summer air, while his thoughts 
 wandered from the dull lesson into a region 
 262
 
 The Golden Hour 263 
 
 of delighted, irrecoverable reverie. To-day he 
 sat for a long time in the little churchyard, the 
 bees humming about the limes with a soft mu- 
 sical note, that rose and fell with a lazy cadence, 
 while doves hidden somewhere in the elms lent 
 as it were a voice to the trees. That soft note 
 seemed to brim over from a spring of measure- 
 less content ; it seemed like the calling of the 
 spirit of summer, brooding in indolent joy and 
 innocent satisfaction over the long sweet hours 
 of sunshine, while the day stood still to listen. 
 Hugh resigned himself luxuriously to the soft 
 influences of the place, and felt that for a short 
 space he need neither look backwards nor for- 
 wards, but simply float with the golden hour. 
 
 At last he bestirred himself, realising that he 
 had yet far to go. It was now cold and fresh, 
 and the shadows of the trees lay long across the 
 grass. Hugh struck down on the fen and 
 walked for a long time in the solitary fields, 
 by a dyke, passing a big ancient farm that lay 
 very peacefully among its wide pastures. 
 
 The thought of the happy, quiet-minded 
 people that might be living there, leading their 
 simple lives, so little affected by the current of 
 the world, brought much peace into Hugh's 
 mind. It seemed to him a very beautiful thing, 
 with something ancient and tranquil about it. 
 It was all utterly remote from ambition and
 
 264 Beside Still Waters 
 
 adventure, and even from intellectual efficiency ; 
 and here Hugh felt himself in a dilemma. His 
 /faith Hid .nrtt peflpii: j|im fa {Ifit'frt **[?* the civ- 
 ilisation and development of the world were in 
 accordance with the purpose of God on the 
 one hand, and yet, on the other hand, that ex- 
 pansion brought with it social conditions and 
 problems that appeared to him of an essentially 
 ugly kind, as the herding of human beings into 
 cities, the din and dirt of factories, the millions 
 of lives that were lived under almost servile 
 conditions ; and so much of that sad labour 
 was directed to wrong ends, to aggrandisement, 
 to personal luxury, to increasing the comfort 
 of oligarchies. The simple life of the country- 
 side seemed a better ideal, and yet the lot of 
 the rustic day-labourer was both dull and hard. 
 It looked sweet enough on a day of high sum- 
 mer, such as this, when a man need ask for 
 nothing better than to be taken and kept 
 out of doors ; but the thought of the farm- 
 hand rising in a cheerless wintry dawn, putting 
 on his foul and stiffened habiliments, setting 
 out in a chilly drizzle to uproot a turnip field, 
 row by row, with no one to talk to and nothing 
 to look forward to but an evening in a tiny cot- 
 tage-kitchen, full of noisy children no one 
 could say that this was an ideal life, and he did 
 not wonder that the young men flocked to the
 
 Country Life 265 
 
 towns, where there was at all events some stir, 
 some amusement. That was the dark side of 
 popular education, of easy communications, of 
 newspapers, that it made men discontented 
 with quiet life, without supplying them with 
 intellectual resources. 
 
 Yet with all its disadvantages and discom- 
 forts, Hugh could not help feeling that thejife. 
 of the country was more wholesome and natural 
 f"or the^Tn^joTity^oFnierT, and he wished that 
 the education given in country districts could 
 be directed more to awakening an interest in 
 country things, in trees and birds and flowers, 
 and more, too, to increasing the resources of 
 boys and girls, so that they could find amusing 
 occupation for the long evenings of enforced 
 leisure. The present system of education was 
 directed, Hugh felt, more to training a gen- 
 eration of clerks, than to implanting an aptitude 
 for innocent recreation and sensible amuse- 
 ment. People talked a good deal about tempting 
 men back to the land, but did they not perceive 
 that, to do that, it was necessary to make the 
 agricultural life more attractive ? It was a mis- 
 take that ran through the whole of modern 
 education, that the system was invented by in- 
 tellectual theorists and not by practical philoso- 
 phers. The only real aim ought to be to teach 
 people how to enjoy their work, by making
 
 266 Beside Still Waters 
 
 them efficient, and to enjoy their leisure by 
 arousing the imagination. 
 
 Hugh's musings led him on to wonder how 
 it was possible to cultiva^p ^ sense of fr;}ppiness 
 in people ; that was the darkest problem of all. 
 Children had the secret of it ; they could amuse 
 themselves under the most unpropitious cir- 
 cumstances, and invent games of most surpass- 
 ing interest out of the most grotesque materials. 
 Then came the age when the sexual relations 
 brought in a fierce and intenser joy ; but the 
 romance of courtship and the early days of 
 marriage once over, it seemed that most people 
 settled down on very dull lines, and made such 
 comfort as they could get the only object of 
 their existence. What was it that thus tended 
 to empty life of joy? Was it_the presence of 
 anxiety, the failure of vitality, the dull condi- 
 tions of monotonous labour undertaken for 
 others' gain and not for one's self ? Looking 
 back at his own life, Hugh could not discern 
 that his routine work had ever deprived him of 
 zest and interest. It was rather indeed the 
 other way. The suspension of other interests 
 that his life had involved, had sent him back 
 with renewed delight to the occupations and 
 interests of leisure ; he had been, he thought, 
 perhaps unusually fortunate in receiving his 
 liberty from mechanical work at a time when
 
 Sustained Happiness 267 
 
 his interests were active and his zest undimmed. 
 But how was one to guard .trie-quality: oLjpy. 
 how could it be stimulated and increased, if it 
 began in the course of nature to flag? It was 
 clear that life could not have for every one, 
 nor at all times for any one, that quality of eager 
 and active delight, that uplifting of the heart 
 and mind alike, which sometimes surprised one, 
 when one felt an intensity of gladness and grati- 
 tude at being simply one's self, and at standing 
 just at that point in life, surrounded and enriched 
 by exactly the very things one most loved and 
 desired the feeling that must have darted into 
 Sinbad's mind when he saw that the very sand 
 of the valley in which he lay consisted of pre- 
 cious germs. Probably most people had some 
 moments, oftenest perhaps in youth, of this 
 full-flushed, cons^ious^jhapjnjess. And then 
 again most people had considerable tracts of 
 quiet contentment, times when their work pro- 
 spered and their recreations amused. But how 
 was one to meet the hours when one was neither 
 happy nor contented ; when the mind flapped 
 wearily like a loosened sail in a calm, when 
 there was no savour in the banquet, when one 
 went heavily ? It was of no use then to sum- 
 mon joy to one's assistance, to call spirits from 
 the vast deep, if they did not obey one's call. 
 There ought, Hugh thought, to be a reserve of
 
 268 Beside Still Waters 
 
 sober piety and hopefulness on which one could 
 draw in those dark days. There were no doubt 
 mai^eojjiable and phlegmatic people who, as 
 the old poet said, 
 
 " Perfacile angustis tolerabant finibus aevum." 
 (In narrow bounds an easy life endured.) 
 
 But for those whose perceptions were keen, 
 who lived upon joy, from the very constitution 
 of their nature, how were such natures and 
 he knew that he was of the number to avoid 
 sinking into the mire of the Slough of De- 
 spond, how were they to rejoice in the valley 
 of humiliation ? What was to be their well in 
 the vale of misery ? How were the pools to 
 be filled with water? 
 
 The answer seemed to be that it could jp_nly_ 
 be achieved by work, by effort, by prayer. If 
 
 i __^_^^__^ . i-nnruiiuii ifiimi/ .... JJilJTiin ~ 
 
 one had definite work in hand, it carried one 
 over these languid intervals. How often had 
 the idea of setting to .work in these listless 
 moods seemed intolerable ; yet how soon one 
 forgot one's self in the exercise of congenial 
 labour! Here came in the worth of effort, 
 that one could force one's self to the task, com- 
 mit one's self to the punctual discharge of an 
 unwelcome duty. And if even that failed, 
 then one could cast one's self into an inner re-
 
 Prayer 269 
 
 gion, in the spirit of the Psalmist, when he 
 said, " Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." 
 One could fling one's prayer into the dark void, 
 as the sailors from a sinking ship shoot a rocket 
 with a rope attached to the land, and then, as 
 they haul it in, feel with joy the rope strain 
 tight, and know that it has found a hold. 
 
 Hugh felt that such experience as this, ex- 
 perience, that is, 
 
 _ 
 
 might be called a subjective experience, and 
 could not be put to a scientific test. But for 
 all that, there was nothing which of late years 
 had so grown upon him as the consioiisjQSS~of 
 the effectiveness of a certain kind of prayer. 
 This was not a mechanical repetition of verbal 
 forms, but a strong and secret uplifting of the 
 heart to the Father of all. There were mo- 
 ments when one seemed baffled and powerless, 
 when one's own strength seemed utterly un- 
 equal to the burden ; prayer on such occasions 
 didjiqt necessarily bring a perfect serenity and 
 joy, though there were times when it brought 
 even that ; but it brought sufficient strength ; 
 it made the difficult, the dreaded thing pos- 
 sible. Hugh had proved this a hundred times 
 over, and the marvel to him was that he did 
 not use it more; but the listless_ .mind sqrne- 
 tTmes~couT3 not brace itself.to the,, effort ; and 
 then it seemed to Hugh that he was as one
 
 270 Beside Still Waters 
 
 who lay thirsting, with water in reach of his 
 nerveless hand. Still there were few things of 
 which he was so absolutely certain as he was 
 of til-abo.unding strength of prayer : it seemed 
 to reveal a dim form moving behind the veil of 
 things, which in the moment of entreaty seemed 
 to suspend its progress, to stop, to draw near, 
 to smile. Why the gifts from that wise hand 
 were often such difficult things, stones for 
 bread, serpents for fish, Hugh could not divine. 
 But he tended I, less, .and Jjess^to, ask for^grecise 
 things, but to pray in the spirit of the old 
 Dorian prayer that what was good might be 
 given him, even if he did not perceive it to be 
 good, and that what was evil might be withheld, 
 even if he desired it. 
 
 While he thus mused, walking swiftly, the 
 day darkened about him, drawing the colour 
 out of field and tree. The tides of the sky 
 thickened, and set to a deep enamelled green, 
 and a star came out above the tree-tops. Now 
 and then he passed through currents of cool 
 air that streamed out of the low wooded val- 
 leys, rich with the fragrance of copse and 
 dingle. An owl fluted sweetly in a little holt, 
 and was answered by another far up the hill. 
 He heard in the breeze, now loud, now low, the 
 far-off motions of the wheels of some cart 
 rumbling blithely homewards. All else was
 
 The Twilight 271 
 
 still. At last he came out on the top of the 
 wolds ; the road stretched before him, a pale 
 ribbon among dusky fields ; and the lights of 
 the distant village pierced through the darker 
 gloom of sheltering trees. Hugh seemed that 
 night to walk with his unknown friend close 
 beside him, answering his hopes, stilling his 
 vague discontents with a pure and tender faith- 
 fulness, that left him nothing to desire, but 
 that the sweet nearness might not fail him. At 
 such a moment, dear and wonderful as the 
 world was, he felt that it held nothing so beau- 
 tiful or so dear as that sweet companionship, 
 and that if he had been bidden, in that instant, 
 strong and content as he was, to enter the 
 stream of death, a firm hand and a smiling face 
 would have lifted him, as the stream grew shal- 
 lower about him, safe and satisfied, up on the 
 farther side. o. ~<
 
 XXVIII 
 
 AMONG the most interesting of the new 
 friends that Hugh made at Cambridge was a 
 young Don who was understood to hold ad- 
 vanced socialistic views. What was more im- 
 portant from Hugh's point of view was that he 
 was a singular frank, accessible, and lively per- 
 son, full of ideas and enthusiasms. Hugh was 
 at one time a good deal in his company, and 
 at one time used to feel that the charm of 
 conversation with him was, not that they dis- 
 cussed things, or argued, or had common 
 interests, but that it was like setting a sluice 
 open between two pools ; their two minds, like 
 moving waters, seemed to draw near, to inter- 
 mingle, to linger in a subtle contract. His 
 friend, Sheldon by name, was a great reader of 
 
 J ' miuki -- 
 
 books ; but he read, Hugh thought, in the same 
 way that he himself read, not that he might 
 master subjects, annex ,,a.nd .explore mental 
 provinces, and classify the movement of thought, 
 but rather that he might lean out into a misty 
 haunted prospect, where mysterious groves 
 272
 
 Democracy 273 
 
 concealed the windings of uncertain paths, and 
 the turrets of guarded strongholds peered over 
 the woodland. Hugh indeed guessed dimly 
 that his friend had a whole range of interests of 
 which he knew nothing, and this was confirmed 
 by a conversation they had when they had 
 walked one day together into the deep country. 
 They took a road that seemed upon the map to 
 lead to a secluded village, and then to lose 
 itself among the fields, and soon came to the 
 hamlet, a cluster of old-fashioned houses that 
 stood very prettily on a low scarped gravel hill 
 that pushed out into the fen. They betook 
 themselves to the churchyard, where they found 
 a little ancient conduit that gushed out at the 
 foot of the hill. This they learned had once 
 been a well much visited by pilgrims for its 
 supposed healing qualities. It ran out of an 
 arched recess into a shallow pool, fringed with 
 sedge, and filled with white-flowered cresses 
 and forget-me-not. Below their feet lay a great 
 stretch of rich water-meadows, the wooded hills 
 opposite looming dimly through the haze. Here 
 they sat for a while, listening to the pleasant 
 trickle of the spring, and the conversation 
 turned on the life of villages, the lack of amuse- 
 ment, the dulness of field labour, the steady drift 
 of the young men to the towns. Hugh regretted 
 this and said that he wished the country clergy 
 
 18
 
 274 Beside Still Waters 
 
 would try to counteract the tendency ; he spoke 
 of village clubs and natural-history classes. 
 Sheldon laughed quietly at his remarks, and 
 said, " My dear Neville, it is quite refreshing to 
 hear you talk. It is not for nothing that you 
 bear the name of Neville ; you are a mediaeval 
 aristocrat at heart. These opinions of yours 
 v are as interesting as fossils in a bed of old blue 
 
 clay. Such things are to be found, I believe, 
 imbedded in the works of Ruskin and other 
 patrons of the democracy. Why, you are like 
 a man who sits in a comfortable first-class car- 
 riage in a great express, complacently thinking 
 that the money he has paid for his ticket is the 
 motive force of the train ; you are trying to put 
 out a conflagration with a bottle of eau-de- 
 Cologne. The battle is lost, and the world is 
 transforming itself, while you talk so airily. 
 You and other leisurely people are tolerated, 
 just as a cottager lets houseleek grow on his 
 tiles ; but you are not part of the building, and 
 if there is a suspicion that you are making the 
 roof damp, you will have to be swept away. 
 The democracy you want to form is making 
 itself, and sooner or later you will have to join 
 in the procession." 
 
 Hugh laughed serenely at his companion's 
 vehemence. " Oh," he said, " I am a mild sort 
 of socialist myself; that is, I see that it is
 
 Democracy 275 
 
 coming, I believe in equality, and I don't 
 question the rights of the democracy. But I 
 don't pretend to like it, though I bow to it ; the 
 democracy seems to me to threaten nearly all 
 the things that are to me most beautiful the 
 woodland chase, the old house among its 
 gardens, the village church among its elms, the 
 sedge-fringed pool, the wild moorland and all 
 the pleasant varieties, too, of the human spirit, 
 its fantastic perversities, its fastidious reveries, 
 its lonely dreams. All these must go, of course ; 
 they are luxuries to which no individual has 
 any right ; we must be drilled and organised ; 
 we must do our share of the work, and take our 
 culture in a municipal gallery, or through cheap 
 editions of the classics. No doubt we shall get 
 the ' joys in the widest commonalty spread ' of 
 which Wadsworth speaks ; and the only thing 
 that I pray is that I may not be there to see it." 
 " You are a fine specimen of the individualist," 
 said Sheldon, " and I have no desire to convert 
 you indeed we speak different languages, and 
 I doubt if you could understand me ; there is to 
 be no such levelling as you suppose, rather the 
 other way indeed; we shall not be able to do 
 without individualism, only it will be pleasantly 
 organised. The delightful thing to me is to 
 observe that you are willing to let us have a 
 little of your culture at your own price, but we
 
 276 Beside Still Waters 
 
 shall not want it ; we shall have our own culture 
 and it will be a much bigger and finer thing 
 than the puling reveries of hedonists ; it will 
 be like the sea, not like the scattered moor- 
 land pools." 
 
 " Do you mean," said Hugh, " when you 
 talk so magniloquently of the culture of the 
 future, that it will be different from the culture 
 of the present and of the past?" 
 
 "No, no," said Sheldon," not different at all, 
 only wider and more free. Do you not see that 
 at present it is an elegant monopoly, belonging 
 to a few select persons, who have been refined 
 and civilised up to a certain point? The diffi- 
 culty is that we can't reach that point all at 
 once why, it has taken you thirty or forty 
 centuries to reach it ! and at present we can't 
 get further than the municipal art-gallery, and 
 lectures on the ethical outlook of Browning. 
 But that is not what we are aiming at, and you 
 are not to suppose that yours is a different ideal 
 of beauty and sensibility from ours. What I 
 object to is that you and your friends are so se- 
 lect and so condescending. You seem to have 
 no idea of the movement of humanity, the 
 transformation of the race, the corporate rise of 
 emotion." 
 
 " No," said Hugh, " I have no idea what you 
 are speaking of, and I confess it sounds to me
 
 Individualism 277 
 
 very dull. I have never been able to generalise. 
 I find it easy enough to make friends with 
 homely and simple people, but I think I have 
 no idea of the larger scheme. I can only see 
 the little bit of the pattern that I can hold in 
 my hand. Every human being that I come to 
 know appears to me strangely and appallingly 
 distinct and untypical ; of course one finds that 
 many of them adopt a common stock of con- 
 ventional ideas, but when you get beneath that 
 surface, the character seems to me solitary and 
 aloof. When people use words like 'democracy' 
 and ' humanity,' I feel that they are merely 
 painting themslves large, magnifying and dig- 
 nifying their own idiosyncrasies. It does not 
 uplift and exalt me to feel that I am one of a 
 class. It depresses and discourages me. I 
 hug and cherish my own differences, my own 
 identity. I don't want to suppress my own idio- 
 syncrasies at all; and what is more, I do not 
 think that the race ma "es progress that way. 
 All the people who have really set their mark 
 upon the world have been individualists. Not 
 to travel far for instances, look at the teaching 
 of our Saviour ; there is not a hint of patriotism, 
 of the rights of society, of common effort, of the 
 corporateness of which you speak. He spoke to 
 the individual. He showed that if the indi- 
 vidual could be simple, generous, kindly forgiv-
 
 278 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ing, the whole of society would rise into a region 
 where organisation would be no longer needed. 
 These results cannot be brought about by legis- 
 lation ; the spirit must leap from heart to heart, 
 as the flower seeds itself in the pasture." 
 
 " Would you be surprised to hear," said Shel- 
 don, smiling, " that I am in accordance with 
 most of your views ? Of course legislation is 
 not the end : it is only a way of dealing with 
 refractory minorities. The highest individual 
 freedom is what I aim at. But the mistake you 
 make is in thinking that the individual effects 
 anything; he is only the link in the chain. It is 
 all a much larger tide, which is moving resist- 
 lessly in the background. It is this movement 
 that I watch with the deepest hope and concern. 
 I do not profess to direct or regulate it, it is 
 much too large a thing for that ; I merely de- 
 sire to remove as far as I can the obstacles that 
 hinder the incoming flood." 
 
 " Well," said Hugh, smiling, " as long as you 
 do not threaten my individual freedom, I do 
 not very much care." 
 
 "Ah," said Sheldon, " now you are talking like 
 the worst kind of aristocrat, the early- Victorian 
 Whig, the man who has a strong belief in popu- 
 lar liberty, combined with an equally strong 
 sense of personal superiority." 
 
 " No, indeed ! " said Hugh, " I bow most sin-
 
 Corporateness 279 
 
 cerely before the rights of society. I only claim 
 that as long as I do not interfere with other 
 people, they will not interfere with me. I re- 
 cognise to the full the duty of men to work, but 
 when I have complied with that, I want to ap- 
 proach the world in my own way. I am aware 
 that reason tells me I am one of a vast class, 
 and that I have certain limitations, but at the 
 same time instinct tells me that I am sternly 
 and severely isolated. No one and nothing can 
 intrude into my mind and self ; and I feel in- 
 clined to answer you like Dionysus in the Frogs 
 of Aristophanes, who says to Hercules when he 
 is being hectored, " Don't come pitching your 
 tent in my mind, you have a house of your 
 own ! " Secretum meum mihi, as St. Francis of 
 Assisi said identity is the one thing of which 
 I am absolutely sure. One must go on perceiv- 
 ing, drawing in impressions, feeling, doubting, 
 suffering; one knows that souls like one's own 
 are moving in the mist ; and if one can discern 
 any ray of light, any break in the clouds, one 
 must shout one's loudest to one's comrades ; 
 but you seem to me to want to silence my lonely 
 experience by the vote of the majority, and the 
 majority seems to me essentially a dull and tire- 
 some thing. Of course this sounds to you the 
 direst egotism ; but when one has labelled a 
 thing egotistic, one has not necessarily con-
 
 280 Beside Still Waters 
 
 demned it, because the essence of the world is 
 its egotism. You would no doubt say that we 
 are no more alone than the leaves of a tree, that 
 the sap which is in one leaf at one moment is the 
 next moment in another, and that we are more 
 linked than we know. I would give much to 
 have that sense, but it is denied me, and mean- 
 while the pressure of that corporate force of 
 which you speak seems to me merely to menace 
 my own liberty, which is to me both sacred and 
 dear." 
 
 Sheldon smiled. " Yes," he said, " we do 
 indeed speak different languages. To me this 
 sense of isolation of which you speak is merely 
 a melancholy phantom. I rejoice to see one of 
 a great company, and I exult when the sap of 
 the great tree flows up into my own small veins; 
 but do not think that I disapprove of your po- 
 sition. I only feel that you are doing uncon- 
 sciously the very thing that I desire you to do. 
 But at the same time I think that you are miss- 
 ing a great source of strength, seeing a thing 
 from the outside instead of feeling it from the 
 inside. Yet I think that is the way in which 
 artists help the world, through the passionate 
 realisation of themselves. But you must not 
 think that you are carrying away your share of 
 the spoil to your lonely tent. It belongs to all 
 of us, even what you have yourself won."
 
 Materialism 281 
 
 Hugh felt that Sheldon probably was speak- 
 ing the truth. He thought long and earnestly 
 over his words. But the practical outcome of his 
 reflections was that he realised the uselessness 
 of trying to embrace an idea which one did not 
 instinctively feel. He knew that his real life 
 did not lie, at all events for the present, in move- 
 ments and organisations. They were meaning- 
 less words to him. His only conception of | 
 relationships was the personal conception. He f 
 desired with all his heart the uplifting, the i 
 amelioration of human beings: he could contri- 
 bute best, he thought, to that, by speaking out 
 whatever he perceived and felt, to such a circle 
 as was in sympathy with him. Sheldon, no 
 doubt, was doing exactly the same thing ; there 
 were multitudes of people in the world, who 
 would agree with neither Sheldon nor himself, 
 amiable materialists, whose only instinct was to 
 compass their own prosperity and comfort, and 
 who cared neither for humanity nor for beauty, 
 except in so far as they ministered to their own 
 convenience. Hugh did not sympathise with 
 such people, and indeed he found it hard to 
 conceive, if what philosophers and priests pre- 
 dicated of the purpose of God was true, how such 
 people came into being. The mistake, the gen- j 
 erous mistake, that Sheldon made, was to think * 
 that humanity was righting itself. It was per-
 
 282 Beside Still Waters 
 
 haps being righted, but ah, how slowly ! The 
 error was to believe tha^ pnfi'f theories wprp the 
 right ones. It was all far larger, vaster, more 
 mysterious than that. Hugh knew that the ele- 
 ment in nature and the world to which he him- 
 self responded most eagerly was the element of 
 beauty. The existence of beauty, the appeal it 
 made to the human spirit, seemed to him the 
 most hopeful thing in the world. But he could 
 not be sure that the salvation of the world lay 
 there. Meantime, while he felt the appeal, it 
 was his duty to tell it out among the heathen, 
 just as it was Sheldon's duty to preach the cor- 
 porateness of humanity ; but Hugh believed 
 that the truth lay with neither, but that both 
 these instincts were but as hues of a prism, that 
 went to the making up of the pure white light. 
 They were rather disintegrations of some central 
 truth, component elements of it rather than the 
 truth itself. They were not in the least incon- 
 sistent with each other, though they differed 
 exceedingly ; and so he determined to follow 
 his own path as faithfully as he could, and not 
 in response to strident cries of justice and truth, 
 and still less in deference to taunts of selfish- 
 ness and epithets of shame, to lend a timorous 
 hand to a work in the value of which he indeed 
 sincerely believed, but which he did not believe 
 to be his own work. The tide was indeed rolling
 
 Materialism 283 
 
 in, and the breakers plunging on the beach ; but 
 so far as helping it on went, it seemed to him 
 to matter little whether you sat and watched it 
 with awe and amazement, with rapture and even 
 with terror, or whether you ran to and fro, as 
 Sheldon seemed to him to be doing, busying 
 himself in digging little channels in the sand, 
 that the roaring sea, with the wind at its back, 
 might foam a little higher thus upon the shore. 
 
 "*'
 
 XXIX 
 
 THE morning sun fell brightly on Hugh's 
 breakfast-table ; and a honeycomb that stood 
 there, its little cells stored with translucent 
 sweetness, fragrant with the pure breath of 
 many flowers, sparkled with a golden light. 
 Hugh fell to wondering over it. One's food, 
 as a rule, transformed and dignified by art, and 
 enclosed in vessels of metal and porcelain, had 
 little that was simple or ancient about its asso- 
 ciations ; how the world indeed was ransacked 
 for one's pleasure! meats, herbs, spices, miner- 
 als it was strange to think what a complexity 
 of materials was gathered for one's delight ; 
 but honey seemed to take one back into an old 
 and savage world. Samson had gathered it 
 from the lion's bones, Jonathan had thrust his 
 staff into the comb, and put the bright oozings 
 to his lips ; humanity in its most ancient and 
 barbarous form had taken delight in this 
 patiently manufactured confection. But a fur- 
 ther thought came to him ; the philosopher 
 spoke of a development in nature, a slow mov- 
 284
 
 Bees 285 
 
 ing upward through painfully gathered experi- 1 
 ence. It was an attractive thought, no doubt, 
 and gave a clue to the bewildering differences 
 of the world. But after all how incredibly slow | 
 a progress it was ! The whole course of history 
 was minute enough, no doubt, in comparison 
 with what had been ; but so far as the records 
 of mankind existed, it was not possible to & 
 trace that any great development had taken ? 
 place. The lines of species that one saw to-day 
 were just as distinct as they had been when 
 the records of man began. They seemed to 
 run, like separate threads out of the tapestry, 
 complete and entire from end to end, not mix- 
 ing or intermingling. Fish, birds, quadrupeds 
 some had died out indeed, but no creature | 
 mentioned in the earliest records showed the :] 
 
 A 
 
 smallest sign of approximating or drawing near ; 
 to any other creature; no bird had lost its 
 wings or gained its hands; no quadruped had 
 deserted instinct for reason. Bees were a case 
 in point. They were insects of a marvellous 
 wisdom. They had a community, a govern- 
 ment, almost laws. They knew their own 
 business, and followed it with intense enthu- 
 siasm. Yet in all the centuries during which 
 they had been robbed and despoiled for 
 the pleasure of man, they had learned no pru- 
 dence or caution. They had not even learned
 
 286 Beside Still Waters 
 
 to rebel. Generation after generation, in fra- 
 grant cottage gardens, they made their deli- 
 (cious store, laying it up for their offspring. 
 Year after year that store had been rifled ; yet 
 | for all their curious wisdom, their subtle cal- 
 Sculations, no suspicion ever seemed to have 
 Centered their heads of what was going forward. 
 |They did not even try to find a secret place in 
 the woods for their nest ; they built obediently 
 in the straw-thatched hives, and the same spoli- 
 ation continued. A few days before, Hugh 
 had visited a church in the neighbourhood, and 
 had become aware of a loud humming in the 
 chancel. He found that an immense swarm of 
 bees had been hatched out in the roof, and 
 were dying in hundreds, in their attempt to 
 
 escape through the closed windows. There 
 v, w *^ -*...,, 
 
 were plenty of apertures in the church through 
 | which they could have escaped, if they had 
 I had any idea of exploration. But they were 
 
 content to buzz feebly up and down the 
 i panes, till strength failed them, and they 
 i dropped down on to the sill among the 
 ':; bodies of their brothers. An old man who 
 | was digging in the churchyard told Hugh 
 
 that the same thing had gone on in the 
 
 church every summer for as long as he could 
 
 remember. 
 
 And yet one did not hesitate to accept the
 
 Man's Power 287 
 
 Darwinian theory, on the word of scientific 
 men, though the whole of visible and recorded | 
 experience seemed to contradict it. Even 
 stranger than the amazing complexity of the 
 whole scheme, was the incredible patience with 
 which the matter was matured. What was 
 more wonderful yet, man, by his power of 
 observing the tendencies of nature, could make 
 her laws to a certain extent serve his own ends. 
 He could, for instance, by breeding carefully 
 from short-legged sheep, in itself a fortuitous 
 and unaccountable variation from the normal 
 type, produce a species that should be unable * 
 to leap fences which their long-legged ancestors 
 could surmount ; he could thus save himself the ? 
 trouble of erecting higher fences. This power 
 in man, this faculty for rapid self-improvement, 
 differentiated him from all the beasts of the 
 field ; how had that faculty arisen ? It seemed 
 a gap that no amount of development could 
 bridge. If nature had all been perfect, if its 
 rules had been absolutely invariable, if existence 
 were conditioned by regular laws, it would be 
 easy enough to believe in God. And yet as it 
 was, it seemed so imperfect, and in some ways 
 so unsatisfactory ; so fortuitous in certain re. 
 spects, so wanting in prevision, so amazingly 
 deliberate. Such an infinity of care seemed 
 lavished on the delicate structure of the
 
 288 Beside Still Waters 
 
 smallest insects and plants, such a prodigal 
 fancy ; and yet the laws that governed them 
 seemed so strangely incomplete, like a patient, 
 artistic, whimsical force, working on in spite 
 of insuperable difficulties. It looked some- 
 times like a conflict of minds, instead of one 
 mind. 
 
 And then, too, the wonder which one felt 
 seemed to lead nowhere. It did not even lead 
 t one to ascertain sure principles of conduct and 
 life. The utmost prudence, the most careful 
 attempt to follow the guidance of those natural 
 laws, was liable to be rendered fruitless by what 
 was called an accident. One's instinct to re- 
 tain life, to grasp at happiness, was so strong ; 
 and yet, again and again, one was taught that 
 it was all on sufferance, and that one must 
 count on nothing. One was set, it seemed, in a 
 vast labryinth ; one must go forward, whether 
 one would or no, among trackless paths, over- 
 hung by innumerable perils. The only thing 
 [ that seemed sure to Hugh was that the more 
 ' one allowed the awe, the bewilderment, to pene- 
 trate one's heart and mind, the more that one 
 
 8 
 
 I indulged a fearful curiosity as to the end and 
 
 | purpose of it all, the nearer one came, if not to 
 
 learning the lesson, yet at least towards reaching 
 
 a state of preparedness that might fit one to 
 
 receive the further confidence of God. Such
 
 A Patient Learner 289 
 
 tranquility as one gained by putting aside the 
 problems which encompassed one, must be a 
 hollow and vain tranquillity. One might indeed 
 never learn the secret ; it might be the will of 
 God simply to confront one with the desperate 
 problem ; but a deep instinct in Hugh's heart 
 told him that this could not be so ; and he 
 determined that he, at all events, would go 
 about the world as a patient learner, grasping 
 at any hint that was offered him, whether it 
 came by the waving of grasses on the waste, 
 by the droop of flower-laden boughs over a 
 wall, from the strange horned insect that 
 crawled in the dust of the highway, or from 
 the soft gaze of loving eyes, flashing a message 
 into the depths of his soul. 
 
 The pure faint lines of the wold that he saw 
 from his window on the far horizon, rising so 
 peacefully above the level pasture-land, with 
 the hedgerow elms what did they stand for ? 
 The mind reeled at the thought. They were 
 nothing but a gigantic cemetery. Every inch 
 of that sqft^ chalk had been made up by the 
 life and death, through millions of years, 
 of tiny insects, swimming, dying, mouldering 
 in the depths of some shapeless sea. Surely 
 such a thought had a message for his soul, not 
 less real than the simpler and more direct mes- 
 sage of peace that the soft pale outlines, the
 
 290 Beside Still Waters 
 
 gentle foldings of the hills, seemed to lend to 
 his troubled spirit ; in such a moment his faith 
 rose strong ; he trod a shining track through 
 the deeps of God.
 
 XXX 
 
 THE air that day was full of sunlight like fine 
 gold, and put Hugh in mind of the city that 
 was pure gold like unto clear glass ! he had 
 often puzzled over that as a child ; gold always 
 seemed so opaque a thing, a surface without 
 depth ; but, after all, it was true of the air about 
 him to-day clear and transparent indeed, with 
 a perfect clarity and purity, and yet undoubted- 
 ly all tinged and lucent liquid gold. He sat 
 long on a bench in the college garden, a little 
 paradise for the eye and mind ; it had been 
 skilfully laid out, and Hugh used to think that 
 he had never seen a place so enlarged by art, 
 where so much ground went to the acre ! All 
 the outer edge of it was encircled by trees 
 elms, planes, and limes ; the borders, full of 
 flowering shrubs, were laid out in graceful curves, 
 and in the centre was a great oval bed 
 of low-growing bushes, with the velvet turf 
 all about it, sweeping in sunlit vistas to 
 left and right. It gave somehow a sense 
 of space and extent, achieved Hugh could 
 291
 
 292 Beside Still Waters 
 
 not guess how. To-day all the edges of 
 the borders were full of flowers ; and as he 
 wandered among them he was more than ever 
 struck with a thought that had often come to 
 him, the mystery of flowers ! The extraordi- 
 nary variety of leaf and colour, the whimsical 
 shapes, the astonishing invention displayed, and 
 yet an invention of an almost childish kind. 
 There was a clump of pink blooms, such as a 
 child might have amused itself with cutting out 
 of paper ; here rose tall spires, with sharp-cut, 
 serrated leaves at the base, but the blue 
 flowers on the stem were curiously lipped and 
 horned, more like strange insects than flowers. 
 And then the stainless freshness and delicacy of 
 the texture, that a touch would soil ! These 
 gracious things, uncurling themselves hour by 
 hour, blooming, fading, in obedience to the 
 strange instinct of life, surprised him by a sud- 
 den thrill. Here was a bed of irises, with smooth 
 blade-like stalks, snaky roots, the flowers of in- 
 credible shapes, yet no two exactly alike, all 
 splashed and dappled with the richest colours ; 
 and then the mixture of blended fragrance ; the 
 hot, honeyed smell of the candytuft, with aro- 
 matic spicy scents of flowers that he could not 
 name. Here again was the eschscholtzia, with 
 its pointed horns, its bluish leaf, and the delicate 
 orange petals, yet with a scent, pure but acid,
 
 Flowers 293 
 
 which almost made one shudder. There was 
 some mind behind it all, Hugh felt, but what a 
 mind ! how leisurely, how fanciful, how un- 
 fathomable ! For whose pleasure were all these 
 bright eccentric forms created ? Certainly not 
 for the pleasure of man, for Hugh thought of 
 the acres and acres of wheat now rising in serried t 
 ranks in the deep country, with the poppies or \ 
 the marigolds among them, all quietly unfold- f 
 ing their bells of scarlet flame, their round, sun- / 
 like faces, where no eye could see them, except j 
 the birds that flew over. Could it be for *< 
 God's own pleasure that these flower shapes 
 were made? They could not even see each 
 other, but rose in all their freshness, as by a 
 subtle conspiracy, yet blind to the world 
 about them, conscious only of the sunlight 
 and the rain, with no imaginative knowledge > 
 it would seem, or sympathy with their breth- 
 ren. It always filled Hugh with a sort of pity 
 to think of the sightless life of trees and flowers, 
 each rising in its place, in plain, on hill, and 
 yet each enclosed within itself, with no con- 
 sciousness of its own beauty, and still less I 
 conscious of the beauty of its fellows. And 
 what was the life that animated them ? Where 
 did it come from ? Where did it pass to ? Had 
 they any sense of joy, of sorrow ? It was hard 
 to believe that they had not. It always dis-
 
 294 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ..tressed Hugh to see flowers gathered or boughs 
 broken ; it seemed a hateful tyranny to treat 
 these delicate creatures so for an hour's pleasure. 
 The sjght of flowers picked and then thrown 
 carelessly down by the roadside, gave him a 
 sense of helpless indignation. The idyllic 
 picture of children wandering in spring, filling 
 their hands with flower-heads torn from bank 
 and copse, appeared to Hugh as only painful. 
 Man, from first to last, seemed to spread a ruth- 
 less destruction around him. Hugh's windows 
 overlooked a stream-bend much frequented by 
 fishermen ; and it was a misery to see the poor 
 
 dace, that had lived so cool and merry a life in 
 
 *!*.*/ . 
 
 the dark pools of the stream, poising and dart. 
 
 ing among the river-weed, hauled up struggling 
 to the air, to be greeted with a shout of triumph, 
 and passed about, dying and tortured, among 
 the hot hands, in the thin choking air. Was 
 that what God made them for? What com- 
 pejnsation awaited them for so horrible and 
 shameful an end. 
 
 Hugh felt with a sigh that the mystery was 
 almost unendurable, that God shouM make, 
 hour by hour, these curious and exquisite things, 
 such as flowers and fishes, and thrust them, not 
 into a world where they could live out a peace- 
 * ful and innocent life, but into the midst of 
 dangers and miseries. Sometimes, beneath his
 
 Pain and Suffering 295 
 
 windows, he could see a shoal of little fish flick 
 from the water in all directions at the rush of a 
 pike, one of them no doubt horribly engulfed 
 in the monster's jaws. 
 
 Why was so hard a price to be paid for the 
 delightful privilege of life ? Was it indifference 
 or carelessness, as a child might make a toy 
 and weary of it? It seemed like it, though 
 Hugh could not bear to think that it was so ; 
 and yet for thousands of centuries the same 
 thing had been going on all over the world, and 
 no one seemed an inch nearer to the mystery 
 of it all. How such thoughts seemed to shrivel 
 into nothing the voluble religious systems that 
 professed to explain it all ! The misery of it 
 was that, here and everywhere, God seemed to be 
 explaining it Himself every day and hour, and 
 yet one missed the connection which could 
 make it all intelligible the connection, that is, 
 between God, as man in his heart conceived of 
 Him, and God as He wrote Himself large in 
 every field and wood. On what hypothesis of 
 pure benevolence and perfect justice could all 
 these restless lives, so full of pain and suffering, 
 and all alike ending in death and disappearance, 
 be explained ? 
 
 Yet, stranger still, the mystery did not make 
 him exactly unhappy. The fresh breeze blew 
 through the trees, the flowers blazed and shone
 
 296 Beside Still Waters 
 
 in the steady sun, the intricate lawns lay shim- 
 mering among the shubberies, and Hugh seemed 
 full of a baffling and baffled joy. At that mo- 
 ment, at all events, God wished him well, and 
 spread for him the exquisite pageant of life and 
 colour and scent ; the very sunshine stole like 
 some liquid essence along his veins, and filled 
 him with unreasoning happiness. And yet he 
 too was encompassed by a thousand dangers ; 
 there were a hundred avenues of sense, of emo- 
 tion, by which some dark messenger might steal 
 upon him. Perhaps he lurked behind the trees 
 of that sweet paradise, biding his time to come 
 forth. But to-day it seemed a species of 
 treachery to feel that anything but active love 
 and perfect benevolence was behind these smil- 
 ing flowers, those tall trees rippling in the 
 breeze, that lucent sky. To-day at least it 
 seemed God's will that he should be filled with 
 peaceful content and gratitude. He would 
 drink the cup of sweetness to-day without re- 
 trospect or misgiving. Would the memory of 
 that sweetness stay his heart, and sustain his 
 soul when the dark days came, when the garden 
 should be bare and dishevelled, and a strange 
 dying smell should hang about the walks ; and 
 when perhaps his own soul should be sorrowful 
 even unto death?
 
 XXXI 
 
 THE perception of one of the great truths of 
 personality came upon Hugh in a summer day 
 which he had spent, according to his growing 
 inclination, almost alone. In the morning he 
 had done some business, some writing, and had 
 read a little. It was a week when Cambridge 
 was almost wholly given up to festivity, and the 
 little river that flowed beneath his house echoed 
 all day long Jo the wasfi of boats, the stroke of 
 oars, and the cheerful talk of happy people. 
 Trie streets were full of gaily-dressed persons 
 hurrying to and fro. This background of brisk 
 life pleased Hugh exceedingly, so long as he 
 was not compelled to take any part in it, so 
 long as he could pursue his own reveries. Part 
 of the joy was that he could peep at it from his 
 secure retreat ; it inspirited him vaguely, setting, 
 as it were, a cheerful descant to the soft melody 
 of his own thoughts. In the afternoon he went 
 out leisurely into the country ; it was pleasant < 
 to leave the humming town, so full of active f 
 life and merry gossip, and to find that in the 
 297
 
 298 Beside Still Waters 
 
 country everything was going forward as though 
 there were no pressure, no bustle anywhere. The 
 solitary figures of men hoeing weeds in among 
 the growing wheat, and moving imperceptibly 
 across the wide green fields, pleased him. He 
 wound away through comfortable villages, 
 among elms and orchards, choosing the by-ways 
 rather than the high-roads, and plunging deeper 
 and deeper into country which it seemed that 
 no one ever visited except on rustic business. 
 There was a gentle south wind which rippled in 
 the trees; the foliage had just begun to wear 
 its late burnished look, and the meadows were 
 full of high-seeded grass, gilded or silvered with 
 buttercups and ox-eye daisies. 
 
 He stopped for a time to explore a little rustic 
 church, that stood, in a careless mouldering 
 dignity, in the centre of a small village. Here, 
 with his gentle fondness for little omens, he be- 
 came aware that some good thing was being pre- 
 pared for him, for in the nave of the church, 
 under the eaves, he noted no less than three 
 swarms of bees, that had made their nest under 
 the timbers of the roof, and were just awakening 
 into summer activity. The drones were being 
 cast out of the hives, and in an angle formed by 
 the buttress of the church, Hugh found a small 
 lead cistern of water, which was a curious sight ; 
 it was all full of struggling bees fallen from the
 
 A Man of Science 299 
 
 roof above, either solitary bees who had darted 
 into the surface, and could not extricate them- 
 selves, or dcan.es. with a .working, bee grappled, 
 intent on pinching the life out of the poor be- 
 wildered creature, the day of whose reckoning 
 had come. Hugh spent a long time in pulling 
 the creatures out and setting them in the sun, 
 till at last he was warned by slanting shadows 
 that the evening was approaching, and he set 
 off upon his homeward way. 
 
 In a village near Cambridge he encountered a 
 friend, a bluff man of science, who was engaged 
 in a singular investigation. He kept a large 
 variety of fowls, and tried experiments in cross- 
 br_ee.eling, noting carefully in a register the plum- 
 age and physical characteristics of the chickens. 
 He had hired for the purpose a pleasant house, 
 with a few paddocks attached, where he kept 
 his poultry. He invited Hugh to come in, who 
 in his leisurely mood gladly assented. The 
 great man took him round his netted runs, and 
 discoursed easily upon the principles that he 
 was elucidating. He spoke with a mild enthus- 
 iasm; and it surprised and pleased Hugh that a 
 man of force and gravity should spend many 
 hours of every day in registering facts about the 
 legs, the wattles, and the feathers of chickens, 
 and speak so gravely of the prospect of infinite in- 
 terest that opened before him. He said that he
 
 300 Beside Still Waters 
 
 had worked thus for some years, and as yet 
 felt himself only on the fringe of the subject. 
 They walked about the big garden, where the 
 evening sun lay pleasantly on turf and borders 
 of old-fashioned flowers ; and with the compla- 
 cent delight with which a scientific man likes to 
 show experiments to persons who are engaged 
 in childish pursuits such as literature, the philo- 
 sopher pointed out some other curiosities, as 
 a plant with a striped flower, whose stalk was 
 covered with small red protuberances, full of a 
 volatile and aromatic oil, which, when a lighted 
 match was applied to them, sent off a little airy 
 .flame with a dry and agreeable fragrance, as the 
 tiny ignited cells threw out their inflammable 
 perfume. 
 
 Hugh was pleasantly entertained by these 
 sights, and went home in a very blithe frame 
 of mind ; a little later he sat down to write in 
 his own cool study. He was working at a task 
 of writing which he had undertaken, when a 
 thought darted suddenly into his mind, sug- 
 gested by the image of the man of science who 
 had beguiled an afternoon hour for him. It 
 was a complicated thought at first, but it grew 
 clearer. He perceived, as in a vision, humanity 
 moving onwards to some unseen goal. He 
 took account, as from a great height, of all 
 those who are in the forefront of thought and
 
 Prophets 301 
 
 intellectual movement. He saw them working 
 soberly and patiently in their appointed lines. 
 He discerned that though all these persons im- 
 agined that they had purposely taken up some 
 form of intellectual labour, and were pursuing 
 it with a definite end in view, they had really 
 no choice in the matter, but were being led 
 along certain ways by as sure and faithful an 
 instinct as the bees that he had seen that day 
 intent on their murderous business. Each of 
 these savants, in whatever line his labours lay, 
 felt that he was striding forward on a quest pro- 
 posed, as he imagined, by himself. But Hugh 
 saw, with an inward certainty of vision, that the 
 current which moved them was one with which 
 they could not interfere, and that it was but 
 the inner movement of some larger and wider 
 mind which propelled them. He saw too, that 
 many of his friends, men of practical learning, 
 who were occupied, with a deep sense of im- 
 portance and concern, in accumulating a little 
 treasure of facts and inferences, in science, in 
 history, in language, in philosophy, were but 
 led by an inner instinct, an implanted taste, 
 along the paths they supposed themselves to 
 be choosing and laboriously pursuing. They en- 
 couraged each other at intervals by the bestowal 
 of little honours and dignities; but at this mo- 
 ment Hugh saw them as mere toilers; like the
 
 302 Beside Still Waters 
 
 merchants who spend busy and unattractive 
 lives, sitting in noisy offices, acquiring money 
 with which to found a family, with the curious 
 ambition that descendants of their own, whom 
 they could never see, should lead a pleasant 
 life in stately country-houses, intent upon 
 shooting and games, on social gatherings and 
 petty business. He saw clearly that the mer- 
 chant and the philosopher alike had no clear 
 idea of what they desired to effect, but merely 
 followed a path prepared and indicated. And 
 then he saw that the minds which were really 
 in the forefront of all were the poetical minds, 
 
 ^HgBlMMMBaM 
 
 the interpreters; the prophets, who saw, not in 
 minute detail, and in smalldefinite sections, but 
 with a wide and large view, whither all this dis- 
 covery, this investigation, was tending. The 
 investigation worthless and minute enough in 
 itself, as it seemed to be when examined at a 
 single point, had at least this value, that some 
 principle, some inspiration for life could be ex- 
 tracted from it, something which would perme- 
 ate slowly the thought of the world, set pulses 
 beating, kindle generous visions, and teach men 
 ultimately the lesson that once learnt, puts life 
 into a different plane, the lesson that God is 
 behind and over and in all things, and that it is 
 His purpose and not our own that is growing 
 and ripening.
 
 A Tranquil Faith 303 
 
 This mighty truth came home to Hugh that 
 quiet afternoon with a luminous certitude, a 
 vast increase of hopelessness such as he had 
 seldom experienced before. But the thought 
 in its infinite width narrowed itself like a great 
 stream that passes through a tiny sluice ; and 
 Hugh saw what his own life was to be ; that he 
 
 O .-. ->" "^^'-..v.ir.->.|,M tww ^J*~.l -imnl f ' 
 
 must no longer form plans and schemes, battle 
 with uncongenial conditions, make foolish and 
 fretful efforts in directions in which he 
 had no real strength or force ; but that 
 his only vocation must lie in faithfully and 
 
 *ttmm*m*r4piij.tii!i*,<:- ' jgffff^ ,,.,.* 
 
 simply interpreting to himself and others this 
 gigantic truth : the truth, namely, that no one 
 
 wnflfltS^3W. ji^jgggJM'!**'*- ""** * >< 
 
 ought ever to indulge in gloomy doubts and 
 questionings about what his work in the world 
 was to be, but that men and women alike ought 
 just to advance, quietly and joyfully, upon the 
 path so surely, so inevitably indicated to them. 
 The more, he saw, that one listens to this inner 
 voice, the more securely does the prospect open ; 
 by labour, not by fretful performance of dis- 
 agreeable duty, but by eager obedience to the 
 constraining impulse, is the march of the world 
 accomplished. For some the path is quiet and 
 joyful, for some it is noisy and busy, for some 
 it is dreary and painful ; for some it is even 
 what we call selfish, cruel and vile. But we 
 must advance along it whether we will or no.
 
 304 Beside Still Waters 
 
 And it became clear to Hugh that the more 
 simply and clearly we feel this, the more will 
 all the darker elements of life drop away from 
 the souls of men ; for the darker elements, the 
 delays, the sorrows, the errors, are in vast 
 measure the shadows that come from our be- 
 lieving that it is we who cause and originate, 
 that our efforts and energies are valuable and 
 useful. They are both, when God is behind 
 them ; but when we strive to make them our 
 own, their pettiness and insignificance are 
 revealed. 
 
 It must not be said that Hugh never fell 
 from this deep apprehension of the truth. 
 There were hours when he was haunted by the 
 spectres of his own unregenerate action, when 
 he regretted mistakes, when he searched for 
 occupation ; but he grew to see that even these 
 sad hours only brought out for him, with deep- 
 er and clearer significance, the essential truth 
 of the vision, which did indeed transform his 
 life. When he was ill, anxious, overwrought, 
 he grew to feel that he was being held quietly 
 back for a season ; and it led to a certain 
 deliberate disentangling of himself from the 
 lesser human relations, from a consciousness 
 that his appointed work was not here, but that 
 he was set apart and consecrated for a particular 
 work, the work of apprehending and discerning,
 
 Trustfulness 305 
 
 of interpreting and expressing, the vast design 
 of life ; it represented itself to him in an image 
 of children wandering in fields and meadows, 
 just observing the detail and the petty connec- 
 tion of objects, the hedgerow, the stream 
 appearing in certain familiar places, by ford or 
 bridge, the trees that loomed high over the 
 nearer orchard, and seemed part of it. And 
 then one of these children, he thought, might, 
 on a day of surprises, be taken up to the belfry 
 of the old church-tower in the village, and out 
 :ipon the roof. Then in a moment the plan, 
 the design of all would be made clear, the hid- 
 den connection revealed. Those great tower- 
 ing elms, that rose in soft masses above the 
 orchard, were in reality nothing but the elms 
 that the child knew so well from the other side, 
 that overhung his own familiar garden. There, 
 among the willows, the stream passed from ford 
 to bridge, and on again, circling in loops and 
 curves. The village would be a different place 
 after that, not known by an empirical experi- 
 ence, but apprehended as a construction, as 
 a settled design, where each field and garden 
 had its appointed place. 
 
 And so Hugh, with a great effort of utter 
 resignation, a resignation which had something 
 passionate and eager about it, cast himself into 
 the Father's hands, and prayed that he might
 
 306 Beside Still Waters 
 
 no longer do anything but discern and follow 
 the path that was prepared for him. Long and 
 late these thoughts haunted him ; but when he 
 went at last through the silent house to his own 
 room, it was with a sense that he was reposing 
 in perfect trustfulness upon the will of One 
 who, whether He led him forward or held him 
 back, knew with a deep and loving tenderness 
 one thing that he, and he only, could do in the 
 great complicated world. That world was now 
 hushed in sleep. But the weir rushed and 
 plunged in the night outside ; and over the 
 dark trees that fringed the stream there was a 
 tender and patient light, that stole up from the 
 rim of the whirling globe, as it turned its weary 
 sides, with punctual obedience, to the burning 
 light of the remote sun.
 
 XXXII 
 
 HUGH found that, as he grew older, he 
 
 M"MSto*s^V~'^ : *'* t \ 
 
 tended to read less, or rather that he tended 
 
 -. ......^SOBOiUnur t,.tnnif^-- * 
 
 to recur more and more to the familiar books. 
 
 "I'li'i'l" ^....v^^Y-"*""' 1 **'' 1 * 1 *" 
 
 He had always been a rapid reader, and had 
 followed the line of pure pleasure, rather than 
 pursued any scheme of self-improvement. He 
 became aware, particularly at Cambridge, that 
 he was by no means a well-informed man, and 
 that his mind was very incompletely furnished. 
 He was disposed to blame his education for this, 
 to a certain extent ; it had been almost purely 
 classical ; he had been taught a little science, a 
 little mathematics, and a little French ; but the 
 only history he had done at school had been 
 ancient history, to illustrate the classical au- 
 thors he had been reading ; and the result had 
 been a want of mental balance ; he knew 
 nothing of the modern world or the movement 
 of European history ; the whole education had 
 in fact been linguistic and literary ; it had sac- 
 rificed everything to accuracy, and to the con- 
 sideration of niceties of expression. It might 
 307
 
 308 Beside Still Waters 
 
 have been urged that this was in itself a train- 
 ing in the art of verbal expression ; but here 
 it seemed to Hugh that the whole of the train- 
 ing had confined itself to the momentary effect, 
 the ring of sentences, the adjustment of epi- 
 thets, and that he had received no sort of train- 
 ing in the art of structure. He had never been 
 made to write essays or to arrange his materials. 
 He thought that he ought to have been taught 
 how to deal with a subject ; but his exercises 
 had been almost wholly translations from an- 
 cient classical languages. He had been taught, 
 in fact, how to manipulate texture, but never 
 how to frame a design. The result upon his 
 reading had been that he had always been in 
 search of phrases, of elegant turns of expression 
 and qualification, but he had never learned how 
 to apprehend the ideas of an author. He had 
 not cared to do this for himself, and from the 
 examination point of view it had been simply 
 a waste of time. All that he had ever tried to 
 do had been so to familiarise himself with the 
 style, the idiosyncrasies of authors, that he 
 might be able to reproduce such superficial ef- 
 fects in his compositions, or to disentangle a 
 passage set for translation. He had not arrived 
 at any real mastery of either Greek or Latin, 
 and it seemed to him, reflecting on this process 
 long afterwards, that the system had en-
 
 Classical Education 39 
 
 \\ 
 
 couraged in him a naturally faulty and dilet- 
 tante bent in literature. In reading, for instance, * 
 a dialogue of Plato, he had never cared to l < 
 follow the argument, but only to take pleas 
 ure in beautiful, isolated thoughts and images; 
 in reading a play of Sophocles, he had cared 
 little about the character-drawing or the devel- 
 opment of the dramatic situation ; he had only 
 striven to discover and recollect extracts of 
 gnomic quality, sonorous flights of rhetoric, 
 illustrative similes. 
 
 The same tendency had affected all his own 
 reading, which had lain mostly in the direction 
 of belles-lettres and literary annals ; and, in the 
 course of his official life, literature had been to 
 him more a beloved recreation than a matter of 
 mental discipline. The result had been that he 
 found himself, in the days of his emancipation, 
 with a strong perception of literary quality, and 
 a wide knowledge of poetical and imaginative 
 literature ; he had, too, a considerable acquaint- 
 ance with the lives of authors ; and this was all. 
 He could read French with facility, but with 
 little appreciation of style. Both German and 
 Italian were practically unknown to him. 
 
 Hugh made the acquaintance, which ripened 
 into friendship, of a young Fellow of a neigh- 
 bouring college, whose education had been con- 
 ducted on entirely different lines. This young
 
 310 Beside Still Waters 
 
 man had been educated privately, his health 
 making it impossible for him to go to school. 
 He had read only just enough of classics to en- 
 able him to pass the requisite examinations, 
 and he had been trained chiefly in history and 
 modern languages. He had taken high honours 
 in history at Cambridge, and had settled down 
 as a historical lecturer. As this friendship in- 
 creased, and as Hugh saw more and more of 
 his friend's mind, he began to realise his own 
 deficiencies. His friend had an extraordinary 
 grasp of political and social movements. He 
 was acquainted with the progress of philosophy 
 and with the development of ideas. It was a 
 brilliant, active, well-equipped intellect, moving 
 easily and with striking lucidity in the regions 
 of accurate knowledge. Sometimes, in talking 
 to his friend, Hugh became painfully aware of 
 the weakness of his own slouching, pleasure- 
 loving mind. It seemed to him that, in the in- 
 tellectual region, he was like a dusty and ragged 
 tramp, permeated on sunshiny days with a sort 
 of weak, unsystematic contentment, dawdling 
 by hedge-row ends and fountain-heads, lying 
 in a vacant muse in grassy dingles, and sleeping 
 by stealth in the fragrant shadow of hay-ricks ; 
 while his friend seemed to him to be a brisk 
 gentleman in a furred coat, flashing along the 
 roads in a motor-car, full of useful activity and
 
 Mental Discipline 311 
 
 pleasant business. His friend's idea of educa- 
 tion was of a strict and severe mental discipline ; 
 he did not over-estimate the value of know- 
 ledge, but regarded facts and dates rather as 
 a skilled workman regards his bright and well- 
 arranged tools. What he did above all things 
 value was a keen, acute, clear, penetrating mind, 
 which arrayed almost unconsciously the ele- 
 ments of a problem, and hastened unerringly to 
 a conclusion. The only point in which Hugh 
 rated his own capacity higher, was in a 
 certain relish for literary effect. His friend 
 was a great reader, but Hugh felt that 
 he himself possessed a power of enjoyment, 
 an appreciation of colour and melody, a 
 thrilled delight in what was artistically ex- 
 cellent, of which his friend seemed to have 
 little inkling. 
 
 His friend could classify authors, and could 
 give off-hand a brilliant and well-sustained 
 judgment on their place in literary develop- 
 ment, which fairly astonished Hugh. But the 
 difference seemed to be that his friend had 
 mastered books with a sort of gymnastic agil- 
 ity, and that his mind had reached an aston- 
 ishing degree of technical perfection thereby ; 
 but Hugh felt that to himself books had been 
 a species of food, and that his heart and spirit 
 had gained some intensity from them, some
 
 3i2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 secret nourishment, which his friend had to a 
 certain extent missed. 
 
 Hugh had been so stirred on several occa- 
 sions by a sense of shame at realising the 
 impotence and bareness of his own mind, that 
 jhe laid down an ambitious scheme of self-im- 
 provement, and attacked, hjstory with a^zeatous 
 desire for his own mental reform. But he 
 soon discovered that it was useless. Such an 
 -effort might have been made earlier in life, 
 before habits had been formed of desultory 
 enjoyment, but it was in vain now. He real- 
 ised that accurate knowledge simply fell 
 through his mind like a shower of sand ; a little 
 of it lodged on inaccessible ledges, but most of 
 it was spilled in the void. He saw that his only 
 hope was to strengthen and enlarge his exist- 
 ing preferences, and that the best that he could 
 hope to arrive at was to classify and systema- 
 tise such knowledge as he at present possessed. 
 It was too late to take a new departure, or to 
 aim at any completeness of view. The mental 
 discipline that he required, and of which he 
 
 "BMMMHMOMn^ 
 
 felt an urgent need, must be attained by a 
 diligent sorting of his own mental stores, hap- 
 hazard and disjointed as they were. And after 
 all, he felt, there was room in the world for 
 many kinds of minds. Mental discipline from 
 the academical point of view was a very import-
 
 Mental Fertilisation 313 
 
 ant thing, perhaps the thing that the ordinary 
 type of public schoolboy was most in need of. 
 But there was another province too, the pro- 
 vince of mental appreciation, and it was in this 
 field that Hugh felt himself competent to 
 labour. It seemed to him that there were 
 many young men at the university, capable of 
 intellectual pleasure, who had been starved by 
 the at once diffuse and dignified curriculum 
 of classical education. Hugh felt that he him- 
 self had been endowed with an excess of the 
 imaginative and artistic quality, and that, 
 owing to natural instincts and intellectual 
 home-surroundings, he had struck out a path 
 
 for himself: books had been to Hugh from his 
 
 . & 
 
 earliest years cnaririets of communication with 
 other minds. He could not help doubting 
 whether they ever developed qualities or de- 
 lights that did not naturally exist in a rudi- 
 mentary form in the mind which fell under 
 their influences. He could not, in looking 
 back, trace the originating power of any book w 
 on his own mind ; the ideas of others had 
 rather acted in fertilising the germs which lay 
 dormant in his own heart. They had deep- 
 ened the channels of his own thoughts, they 
 had revealed him to himself; but there had 
 always been, he thought, an unconscious power 
 of selection at work ; so that uncongenial ideas,
 
 314 Beside Still Waters 
 
 unresponsive thoughts, had merely danced off 
 the surface without affecting any lodgment. 
 He had gained in taste and discrimination, but 
 he could not trace any impulse from literature 
 which had set him exploring a totally unfamil- 
 iar region. Sometimes he had resolutely sub- 
 mitted his mind to the leadership of a new 
 author ; but he had always known in his heart 
 that the pilgrimage would be in vain. He felt 
 that he would have gained if he had known 
 this more decisively, and if he had spent his 
 energies more faithfully in pursuing what was 
 essentially congenial to him. 
 
 There were cej[taia,,aw.thQrs, certain poets 
 who, he had instinctively felt from the outset, 
 viewed life, nature, and art from the same 
 standpoint as himself. His mistake had been 
 in not defining that standpoint more clearly, 
 but in wandering vaguely about, seeking for a 
 guide, for way-posts, for beaten tracks. What 
 he ought to have done was to have fixed his 
 eyes upon the goal, and fared directly thither. 
 
 But this misdirected attempt, over which he 
 wasted some precious months, to enlarge the 
 horizon of his mind, had one valuable effect. 
 It revealed to him at last what the object of 
 his search was. He become aware that he was 
 vowed to the pursuit of beauty, of a definite 
 and almost lyrical kind. He saw that his mind
 
 Poetry 3*5 
 
 was not made to take in, with a broad and vig- 
 orous sweep, the movement of human en- 
 deavour; he saw that he had no conception of 
 wide social or political forces, of the development 
 of communities, of philosophical ideals. These 
 were great and high things, and his studies 
 gave him an increased sense of their greatness 
 and significance. But Hugh saw that he could 
 neither be a historian nor a philosopher, but 
 that his work must be of an individualistic 
 type. He saw that the side of the world which 
 appealed to himself was the subtle and myste- 
 rious essence of beauty the beauty of nature, 
 of art, of music, of comradeship, of relations 
 with other souls. The generalisations of science 
 had often a great poetical suggestiveness ; but 
 he had no vestige of the scientific temper 
 which is content to deduce principles from 
 patient and laborious investigation. He saw 
 that his own concern must be with the emo- 
 tions and the hearts of his fellows, rather than 
 with their minds ; that if he possessed any 
 qualities at all, they were of a poetical kind. 
 The mystery of the world was profound and 
 dark, though Hugh could see that science was 
 patiently evolving some order out of the chaos. 
 But the knowledge of the intricate scheme was 
 but a far-off vision, an august hope; and mean- 
 while men had to meet life as they could, to
 
 316 Beside Still Waters 
 
 evolve enough hopefulness, enough inspiration 
 from their complicated conditions to enable 
 them to live a full and vigorous life. 
 
 Poetry, to give a large name to the various 
 interpretations of subtle beauty, could offer in 
 some measure that hope, that serenity ; could 
 lend the dignity to life which scientific in- 
 vestigations tended to sweep away. Science 
 seemed to reveal the absolute pettiness, the 
 minute insignificance of all created things, to 
 show how inconsiderable a space each separate 
 ndividual occupied in the sum of forces; the 
 thought weighed heavily upon Hugh that he 
 was only as the tiniest of the drops of water in a 
 vast cataract that had rushed for thousands of 
 years to the sea ; it was a paralysing concep- 
 tion. It was true that the water-drop had a 
 definite place ; yet it was the outcome and the 
 victim of monstrous forces ; it leaped from the 
 mountain to the river, it ran from the river to 
 the sea ; it was spun into cloud-wreaths; it fell 
 on the mountain-top again ; it was perhaps con- 
 gealed for centuries in some glacier-bed ; then 
 it was free again to pursue its restless progress. 
 But to feel that one was like that, was an un- 
 utterably dreary and fatiguing thought. The 
 weary soul perhaps was hurried thus from zone 
 to zone of life, never satisfied, never tranquil ; 
 with a deep instinct for freedom and tran-
 
 The August Soul 317 
 
 quillity, yet never tranquil or free. Then, into 
 this hopeless and helpless prospect, came the 
 august message of poetry, revealing the tran- 
 scendent dignity, the solitariness, the majesty 
 of the indomitable soul ; bidding one remember 
 that though one was a humble atom in a vast 
 scheme, yet one had the sharp dividing sense 
 of individuality; that each individual was to 
 himself the measure of all things, a fortress of 
 personality ; that one was not merely whirled 
 about in a mechanical order ; but that each 
 man was as God Himself, able to weigh and 
 survey the outside scheme of things, to approve 
 and to disapprove; and that the human will 
 was a mysterious stronghold, impregnable, se- 
 cure, into which not even God Himself could 
 intrude unsummoned. How small a thing to 
 the eye of the scientist were the human pas- 
 sions and designs, the promptings of instinct 
 and nature ; but to the eye of the poet how 
 sublime and august ! These tiny creatures 
 could be dominated by emotions love, honour, 
 patriotism, liberty which could enable them, 
 frail and impotent as they were, to rise ma- 
 jestically above the darkest and saddest limita- 
 tions of immortality. They could be racked 
 with pain, crushed, tormented, silenced ; but 
 nothing could make them submit, nothing 
 could force them to believe that their pains
 
 318 Beside Still Waters 
 
 were just. Herein lay the exceeding dignity 
 of the human soul, that it could arraign its 
 Creator before its own judgment-seat, and could 
 condemn Him there. It could not, it seemed, 
 refuse to be called into being, but, once exist- 
 ent, it could obey or not as it chose. Its joys 
 might be clouded, its hopes shattered, but it 
 need not acquiesce ; and this power of rebellion, 
 of criticism, of questioning, seemed to Hugh 
 one of the most astonishing and solemn things 
 in the world. And thus to Hugh the history 
 of the individual, the aspirations and longings 
 of mankind, seemed to contain a significance, 
 a sanctity that nothing could remove. 
 
 He did not believe that this rebellious ques- 
 tioning was justified, but this did not lessen his 
 astonishment at the fact that the human soul 
 could claim a right to decide, by its own in- 
 tuitions, what was just and what was unjust, 
 and could accuse the Eternal Lord of Life of 
 not showing it enough of the problem for it to 
 be able to acquiesce in the design, as it desired 
 to do. Hugh believed that he was justified in 
 holding that as Love was the strongest power 
 in the world, the Creator and Inspirer of that 
 love probably represented that quality in the 
 supremest degree, though this was an inference 
 only, and not supported by all the phenomena 
 of things. But it seemed to him the one clue
 
 The Secret of a Star 3 J 9 
 
 through the darkness ; and this secret hope was 
 perhaps the highest and best thought that 
 came to him from searching the records of 
 humanity and the conceptions of mortal minds. 
 And therefore Hugh felt that he was on the 
 side of the individual ; and that he touched life 
 in that relation. Literature then must be for 
 him, in some form or other, an attempt to 
 quicken the individual pulse, to augment the in- 
 dividual sense of significance. He must abstain 
 from what was probably a higher work; but he 
 must not lose faith thereby. He must set him- 
 self with all his might to preach a gospel of 
 beauty to minds which, like his own, were in- 
 capable of the larger mental sweep, and could 
 only hope to disentangle the essence of the mo- 
 ment, to refine the personal sensation. That 
 was the noble task of high literature, of art, 
 of music, of the contemplation of nature, that 
 it could give the mind a sense of largeness, of 
 dim and wistful hope, of ultimate possibilities. 
 The star that hung in the silent heaven it was 
 true that it was the creation of mighty forces, 
 that it had a place, a system, a centrifugal 
 energy, a radiation of its own. That was in a 
 sense the message of a star ; but it had a further 
 appeal, too, to the imaginative mind, in that it 
 hung a glowing point of ageless light, infinitely 
 remote, intolerably mysterious, a symbol of all
 
 320 Beside Still Waters 
 
 the lustrous energies of the aspiring soul. And 
 in one sense, indeed, the pure imagination could 
 invest such vast creatures of God with even 
 a finer, freer charm than scientific apprehension. 
 Science could indicate its bulk, its motions, 
 its distance, even analyse its very bones ; but it 
 could do no more ; while the spirit could glide, 
 as in an aerial chariot, through the darkness of 
 the impalpable abyss, draw nearer and nearer 
 in thought to the vast luminary, see unscathed 
 its prodigious vents spouting flame and smoke, 
 and hear the roar of its furnaces ; or softly alight 
 upon fields of dark stones, and watch with awe 
 the imagined progress of forms intolerably huge, 
 swollen as with the bigness of nightmare.. Here 
 was the strange contrast, that science was all on 
 fire to learn the truth ; while the incomprehen- 
 sible essence of the soul, with its limitless vis- 
 ions, was capable of forming conceptions which 
 the truth should disappoint. And here again 
 came in a strange temptation. If life and iden- 
 tity were to be indefinitely prolonged, then 
 Hugh had no wish but to draw nearer to the 
 truth, however hard and even unpalatable it 
 might be ; but if, on the other hand, this 
 life were all, then it seemed that one might be 
 even the happier for comfortable and generous 
 delusions. 
 
 Hugh, then, felt that if the old division of
 
 Idealistic and Scientific 321 
 
 more highly developed minds was the true one ; 
 if one was either Aristotelian or Platonist, that 
 is to say, if one's tendencies were either scien- 
 tific or idealistic, there was no doubt on which 
 side of the fight he was arrayed ; not that he 
 thought of the two tendencies as antagonistic; 
 and if indeed, the scientific mind tended to con- 
 temn the idealistic mind, as concerning itself 
 with fancies rather than with facts, he felt that 
 there could not be a greater mistake than for 
 the idealistic mind to contemn the scientific. 
 Rather, he thought, the idealists should use the 
 scientific toilers as patient, humble, and service- 
 able people, much as the Dorian conquerors of 
 Sparta used the Helots, and encouraged them to 
 perform the necessary and faithful work of in. 
 vestigation for which the idealists were unfitted. 
 The mistake which men of scientific temper 
 made, Hugh thought, was to concern them- 
 selves only or mainly, with material phenomena. 
 The idealistic and imaginative tendencies of 
 man were just as much realities, and no amount 
 of materialism could obliterate them. What 
 was best of all was to import if possible a scien- 
 tific temper into idealistic matters ; not to draw 
 hasty or insecure generalisations, nor to neglect 
 phenomena however humble. Books, then, for 
 Hugh were, in their largest aspect, indications 
 and manifestations of the idealistic nature of
 
 322 Beside Still Waters 
 
 man. The interest about them was the perceiv- 
 ing of the different angles at which a thought 
 struck various minds, the infusion of personality 
 into them by individuals, the various interpre- 
 tations which they put upon perceptions, the 
 insight into various kinds of beauty and hope- 
 fulness which the writers displayed. 
 
 And thus Hugh turned more and more away 
 from the critical apprehension of imaginative 
 literature to the mystical apprehension of it. 
 A critical apprehension of it was indeed neces- 
 sary, for it initiated one into the secrets of 
 expression and of structure, in which the force 
 of personality was largely displayed, taking shape 
 from the thought in them, as clothes take shape 
 from their wearers. But deeper still lay the 
 mystical interpretation. In the world of books 
 he heard the voice of the soul, sometimes 
 lamenting in desolate places, sometimes singing 
 blithely to itself, as a shepherd sings upon a 
 headland, in sight of the blue sea ; sometimes 
 there came a thrill of rapture into the voice, 
 when the spirit was filled to the brim with the 
 unclouded joys of the opening world, the scent 
 of flowers, the whispering of foliage in great 
 woods, the sweet harmonies of musical chords, 
 the glance of beloved eyes, or the accents of 
 some desired voice ; and then again all this 
 would fade and pale, and the soul would sit
 
 The End of Reading 323 
 
 wearied out, lamenting its vanished dreams and 
 the delicate delights of the springtime, in some 
 wild valley overhung with dark mountains, un- 
 der the dreadful and inscrutable eye of God. Life, 
 how insupportable, how beautiful it seemed ! 
 Full of treasures and terrors alike, its joys 
 and its woes alike unutterable. The strangest 
 thing of all : that the mind of man was capable 
 of seeing that there was a secret, a mystery 
 about it all ; could desire so passionately to 
 know it and to be satisfied, and yet forbidden 
 even dimly to discern its essence. 
 
 What, after all, Hugh reflected, was thejejjd 
 of reading? Not erudition nor information. 
 though many people seemed to think that this 
 was a meritorious object. Professed historians 
 must indeed endeavour to accumulate facts, and 
 to arrive if possible at a true estimate of ten- 
 dencies and motives ; the time had not yet 
 come, said the most philosophical historians, 
 for any deductions to be drawn as to the de- 
 velopment of the mind of the world, the slow 
 increase of knowledge and civilisation ; and yet 
 that was the only ultimate value of their work, 
 to attempt, namely, to arrive at the complex 
 causes and influences that determined the 
 course of history and progress. Hugh felt in- 
 stinctively that his mind, impatient, inaccurate, 
 subtle rather than profound, was ill adapted for
 
 324 Beside Still Waters 
 
 such work as this. He felt that it was rather 
 his work to arrive, if he could, at a semi-poet- 
 J ical, semi-philosophical intrepretation of life, 
 and to express this as frankly as he could. And 
 thus reading must be for him an attempt to 
 refine and quicken his insight into the human 
 mind, working in the more delicate regions of 
 art. He must study expression and personality; 
 he must keep his spirit sensitive to any hint of 
 truth or beauty, any generous and ardent intui- 
 tion, any grace and seemliness of thought. He 
 atas-innd of .bgflfe of r travel, as opening to him 
 a larger perspective of human life, and reveal- 
 ing to him the conclusions to which experience 
 and life had brought men of other nationali- 
 ties and other creeds. Biography was his 
 most beloyedl, study? because it opened out 
 to him the vast complexity of human motive ; 
 but he thought that its chief value had been 
 in revealing to him the extraordinary part 
 that conventional and adopted beliefs and 
 motives played in the majority of lives. 
 
 HJsjrjgajj^n.g, then, began to have for him a 
 djjypj3$d_special significance. He was no philo- 
 sopher ; he found that the metaphysical region, 
 where one stumbled among the dim ultimate 
 causes of things, only gave him a sense of 
 insecurity and despair ; but he was in a sense 
 a psychologist ; his experience of life had taught
 
 Sweet Voices 325 
 
 him to have an inkling of the influences that 
 affect character, and still more of the stubborn 
 power of character in resisting influences. Poet- 
 ry was to him a region in which one became 
 aware of strange and almost magical forces, 
 which came floating out of unknown and mys- 
 terious depths it was a world of half-heard 
 echoes, momentary glimpses, mysterious ap- 
 peals. In history and in biography one saw 
 more of the interacting forces of temperament ; 
 but in poetry, as the interpreter of nature, one 
 found one's self among cries and thrills which 
 seemed to rise from the inner heart of the world. 
 It was the same with religion ; but here the 
 forces at work so often lost their delicacy and 
 subtlety by being compounded with grosser 
 human influences, entangled with superstitions, 
 made to serve low and pitiful ends. In poetry 
 there was none of this it was the most disin- 
 terested thing in the world. In the pure medium 
 of words, coloured by beauty and desire, all the 
 remote, holy, sweet secrets of the heart were 
 blended into a rising strain ; and it was well to 
 submit one's self, tranquilly and with an open 
 heart, to the calling of these sweet voices. 
 
 Hugh was aware that his view was not what 
 would be called a practical one ; that he had no 
 fibre of his being that responded to what were 
 called civic claims, political urgencies, social
 
 326 Beside Still Waters 
 
 reforms, definite organisations; he felt increas- 
 ingly that these things were but the cheerful 
 efforts of well-meaning and hard-headed persons 
 to deal with the bewildering problems, the un- 
 satisfactory debris of life. Hugh felt that the 
 only possible hope of regeneration and uprais- 
 ing lay in the individual ; and that if the tone 
 of individual feeling could be purified and 
 strengthened, these organisations would become 
 mere unmeaning words. The things that they 
 represented seemed to Hugh unreal and even 
 contemptible, the shadows cast on the mist by 
 the evil selfishnesses, the stupid appetites, the 
 material hopes of men. As simplicity of life 
 and thought became more and more dear to him, 
 he began to recognise that, though there was 
 no doubt room in the world, as it was, for 
 these other busy and fertile ideas, yet that his 
 own work did not lie there. Rather it lay in 
 defining and classifying his own life and experi- 
 ence ; in searching for indubitable motives, and 
 noble possibilities that had almost the force of 
 certainties ; of gathering up the secrets of ex- 
 istence, and speaking them as frankly, as ardent- 
 ly, as melodiously as his powers would admit, if 
 by any means he might awaken other hearts to 
 the truths which had for him so sweet and con- 
 straining an influence.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 AN art which had for Hugh an almost divine 
 quality was the art of jnu^sic ; an art dependent 
 upon such frail natural causes, the vibration of 
 string and metal, yet upon the wings of which 
 the soul could fly abroad further than upon the 
 wings of any other art. There was a little vig- 
 nette of Bewick's, which he had loved as a 
 child, where a minute figure sits in a tiny 
 horned and winged car, in mid-air, throwing 
 out with a free gesture the reins attached to 
 the bodies of a flight of cranes; the only sym- 
 bol of his destination a crescent moon, shining 
 in dark skies beyond him. That picture had 
 always seemed to Hugh a parable of music, 
 that it gave one power to fly upon the regions of 
 the upper air, to use the wings of the morning. 
 
 And yet, if one analysed it, what a totally 
 inexplicable pleasure it was. Part of it, the 
 orderly and rhymthical beat of metre, such 
 as comes from striking the fingers on the 
 table, or tapping the foot upon the floor ; how 
 deep lay the instinct to bring into strict se- 
 327
 
 328 Beside Still Waters 
 
 quence, where it was possible, the mechanical 
 movements of nature, the creaking of the 
 boughs of trees, the drip of water from a foun- 
 tain-lip, the beat of rolling wheels, the recurrent 
 song of the thrush on the high tree; and then 
 there came the finer sense of intricate vibration. 
 The lower notes of great organ-pipes had little 
 indeed but a harsh roar, that throbbed in the 
 leaded casements of the church ; but climbing 
 upwards they took shape in the delicate noises, 
 the sounds and sweet airs of which Prospero's 
 magic isle was full. And yet the rapture of it 
 was inexpressible in words. Sometimes those 
 airy flights of notes seemed to stimulate in some 
 incomprehensible way the deepest emotions of 
 the human spirit ; not indeed the intellectual 
 and moral emotions, but the primal and ele- 
 mental desires and woes of the heart. 
 
 Hugh could hardly say in what region of the 
 soul this all took place. It seemed indeed the 
 purest of all emotions, for the mind lost itself 
 in a delight which hardly even seemed to be 
 sensuous at all, because in the case of other 
 arts, one was conscious of pleasure, conscious 
 of perception, of mingling identity with the 
 thing seen or perceived ; but in music one 
 was rapt almost out of mortality, in a kind of 
 bodiless joy. 
 
 One of Hugh's causes of dissatisfaction with
 
 Music 329 
 
 the education he had received was that, though 
 he had a considerable musical gift, he had never 
 been taught to play any musical instrument. 
 Partly indolence and partly lack of opportunity 
 had prevented him from attaining any measure 
 of skill by his own exertions, though he had 
 once worked a little, very fitfully, at the theory 
 of music, and had obtained just enough know- 
 ledge of the composition of chords to give him 
 an intelligent pleasure in disentangling the ele- 
 ments of simple progressions. Another trifling 
 physical characteristic had prevented his hear- 
 ing as much music as he would have wished. 
 The presence of a crowd, the heat and glare of 
 concert-rooms, the uncomfortable proximity of 
 unsympathetic or possibly loquacious persons, 
 combined with a dislike of fixed engagements 
 outside of the pressure of official hours of work, 
 had kept him, very foolishly, from musical per- 
 formances. Thus almost the only music with 
 which he had a solid acquaintance was ecclesiasti- 
 cal music ; he had been accustomed as a boy to 
 frequent the cathedral services in the town 
 where he was at school ; and in London he con- 
 stantly went on Sundays to St. Paul's or West- 
 minster. It was no doubt the stately mise-en- 
 scene of these splendid buildings that affected 
 Hugh as much even as the music itself, though 
 the music was like the soul's voice speaking
 
 330 Beside Still Waters 
 
 gently from beautiful lips. Hugh always, if he 
 could, approached St. Paul's by a narrow lane 
 among tall houses, that came out opposite the 
 north transept. At a certain place the grey 
 dome became visible, strangely foreshortened, 
 like a bleak mountain-head, and then there ap- 
 peared, framed by the house-fronts, the sculp- 
 tured figure of the ancient lawgiver, with a 
 gesture at once vehement and dignified, that 
 crowded the top of the pediment. Then fol- 
 lowed the hush of the mighty church, the dumb 
 falling of many foot-falls upon the floor, the 
 great space of the dome, in which the mist 
 seemed to float, the liberal curves, the firm pro- 
 portions of arch and pillar ; the fallen daylight 
 seemed to swim and filter down, stained with 
 the tincture of dim hues; the sounds of the 
 busy city came faintly there, a rich murmur of 
 life ; then the soft hum of the solemn bell was 
 heard, in its vaulted cupola; and then the organ 
 awoke, climbing from the depth of the bour- 
 don ; the movement of priestly figures, the 
 ./sweet order of the scene, the sense of high 
 solemnity, made a shrine for the holy spirit of 
 beauty to utter its silvery voice. In West- 
 minster it was different ; the richer darkness, 
 the soaring arches, the closer span, the incredible 
 treasure of association and memory made it a 
 more mysterious place, but the sound lacked the
 
 Church Music 331 
 
 smothered remoteness that gave such a strange, 
 repressed economy to the music of St. Paul's. 
 At Westminster it was more cheerful, more 
 tangible, more material. But the tranquillising, 
 the inspiring effect upon the spirit was the 
 same. Perhaps it was not technical religion of 
 which Hugh was in search. But it was the relig- 
 ion which was as high above doctrine and creed 
 and theology as the stars were above the clouds. 
 The high and holy spirit inhabiting eternity 
 seemed to emerge from the metaphysic, the 
 science of religion, from argument and strife 
 and dogma, as the moon wades, clear and cold, 
 out of the rack of dusky vapours. Such a voice, 
 as that gentle, tender, melancholy, and still 
 joyful voice, that speaks in the iigth Psalm, 
 telling of misunderstanding and persecution, 
 and yet dwelling in a further region of peace, 
 came speeding into the very labyrinth of Hugh's 
 troubled heart. " I have gone astray like a 
 sheep that is lost ; O seek Thy servant, for I do 
 not forget Thy commandments." It was not 
 inspiration, not a high-hearted energy, that 
 music brought with it ; it was rather a recon- 
 ciliation of all that hurt or jarred the soul, an 
 earnest of intended peace. 
 
 But, after all, this was not music pure and 
 simple ; it was music set in a rich frame of 
 both sensuous and spiritual emotions. Hugh
 
 33 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 realised that music had never played a large 
 part in his life, but had been one of many artis- 
 tic emotions that had spoken to him in divers 
 manners. There was one fact about music 
 which lessened its effect upon Hugh, and that 
 was the fact that it seemed to depend more than 
 v other arts upon what one brought to it. In cer- 
 tain moods, particularly melancholy moods, when 
 the spirit was fevered by dissatisfaction or sor- 
 row, its appeal was irresistible ; it came flying 
 out of the silence, like an angel bearing a vial 
 of fragrant blessings. It came flooding in, like 
 the cool brine over scorched sands, smoothing, 
 refreshing, purifying. There seemed some- 
 thing direct, authentic, and divine about the 
 message of music in such moods ; there seemed 
 no interfusion of human personality to distract, 
 because the medium was more pure. 
 
 Sometimes, for weeks together at Cambridge, 
 Hugh wouldgo without hearing any music at all, 
 until an almost physical thirst would fall upon 
 him. In such an arid mood, he would find him- 
 self tyrannously affected by any chance frag- 
 ment of music wafted past him ; he would go 
 to some cheerful party, where, after the meal 
 was over, a piano would be opened, and a sim- 
 ple song sung or a short piece played. This 
 would come like a draught of water to a weary 
 traveller, bearing Hugh away out of his sur-
 
 Musicians 333 
 
 foundings, away from gossip and lively talk, 
 into a remote and sheltered place ; it was like 
 opening a casement from a familiar and lighted 
 room, and leaning out over a dim land, where 
 the sunset was slowly dying across the rim of 
 the tired world. 
 
 Hugh always found it easy to make friends 
 with musicians. They generally seemed to him 
 to be almost a race apart ; their art seemed to 
 withdraw them in a curious way from the world, 
 and to absorb into itself the intellectual vigour 
 which was as a rule, with ordinary men, distribu- 
 ted over a variety of interests. He knew some 
 musicians who were men of wide cultivation, but 
 they were very much the exception ; as a rule, 
 they seemed to Hugh to be a simple, and almost 
 childlike species, fond of laughter and elemen- 
 tary jests, with emotions rather superficial than 
 deep, and not regarding life from the ordinary- 
 standpoint at all. The reason lay, Hugh be- 
 lieved, in the nature of the medium in which 
 they worked ; the writer and the artist were 
 brought into direct contact with humanity ; it 
 was their business to interpret life, to investi- 
 gate emotion ; but the musician was engaged 
 with an art that was almost mathematical in its 
 purity and isolation ; he worked under the strict- 
 est law, and though it required a severe and 
 strong intellectual grip, it was not a process
 
 334 Beside Still Waters 
 
 which had any connection with emotions or 
 .with life. But Hugh always felt himself to be 
 inside the charmed circle, and though he knew 
 but little of the art, musical talk always had a 
 deep interest for him, and he seemed to divine 
 and understand more than he could explain or 
 express. 
 
 But still it was true that music had played 
 no part in his intellectual development ; he had 
 never approached it on that side ; it had merely 
 ministered to him at intervals a species of emo- 
 tional stimulus ; it had seemed to him to speak 
 a language, dim and unintelligible, but the pur- 
 port of which he interpreted to be somehow 
 high and solemn. There seemed indeed to be 
 nothing in the world that spoke in such myste- 
 rious terms of an august destiny awaiting the 
 soul. The origin, the very elements of the joy 
 of music were so absolutely inexplicable. There 
 seemed to be no assignable cause for the fact 
 that the mixture of rhythmical progress and 
 natural vibration should have such a singular 
 and magical power over the human soul, and 
 affect it with such indescribable emotion. 
 
 He had sometimes seen, half with amusement, 
 half with a far deeper interest, the physical ef- 
 fect which the music of some itinerant piano- 
 organ would produce upon street children ; they 
 seemed affected by some curious intoxication ;
 
 The Organ 335 
 
 their gestures, their smiles, their self-conscious 
 glances, their dancing movements, so unnatural 
 in a sense, and yet so instinctive, made the 
 process appear almost magical in its effects. 
 Though it did not affect him so personally, it 
 seemed to have a similarly intoxicating effect 
 on Hugh's own mind. Even if the particular 
 piece that he was listening to had no appeal to 
 his spirit, even if it were only a series of lively 
 cascades of tripping notes, his thoughts, he 
 found, took on an excited, an irrepressible tinge. 
 But if, on the other hand, the time and the 
 mood were favourable, if the piece were solemn 
 or mournful, or of a melting sweetness, it 
 seemed for a moment to bring a sense of true 
 values into life, to make him feel, by a silent 
 inspiration, the Tightness and the perfection of 
 the scheme of the world. 
 
 One evening a friend of Hugh's, who was or- 
 ganist of one of the important college chapels, 
 took him and a couple of friends into the build- 
 ing. It had been a breathlessly hot summer 
 day, but the air inside had a coolness and peace 
 which revived the languid frame. It was nearly 
 dark, but the great windows smouldered with 
 deep fiery stains, and showed here and there a 
 pale face, or the outline of a mysterious form, 
 or an intricacy of twined tabernacle-work. 
 Only a taper or two were lit in the shadowy
 
 336 Beside Still Waters 
 
 choir ; and a light in the organ-loft sent strange 
 shadows, a waving hand or a gigantic arm, across 
 the roof, while the quiet movements of the 
 player were heard from time to time, the pas- 
 sage of his feet across the gallery, or the rustling 
 of the leaves of a book. Hugh and his friends 
 seated themselves in the stalls ; and then for an 
 hour the great organ uttered its voice now a 
 soft and delicate strain, a lonely flute or a lan- 
 guid reed outlining itself upon the movement 
 of the accompaniment ; or at intervals the sym- 
 phony worked up to a triumphant outburst, the 
 trumpets crashing upon the air, and a sudden 
 thunder outrolling ; the great pedals seeming to 
 move, like men walking in darkness, treading 
 warily and firmly ; until the whole ended with 
 a soft slow movement of perfect simplicity and 
 tender sweetness, like the happy dying of a very 
 old and honourable person, who has drunk his 
 fill of life and blessings, and closes his eyes for 
 very weariness and gladness, upon labour and 
 praise alike. 
 
 The only shadow of this beautiful hour was 
 that injjiis jrapt space of tranquil reflection one 
 seemed to have harmonised and explainecTlIfe, 
 joy, and disaster alike, to have wound up a clue, 
 to have brought it all to a peaceful and perfect 
 climax of silence, like a tale that is told ; and 
 then it was necessary to go out to the world
 
 False Asceticism 337 
 
 again with all its bitterness, its weariness, and 
 its dissatisfaction till one almost wondered 
 whether it was wise or brave to have chased 
 and captured this strange phantom of imagined 
 peace. 
 
 Yes, it was wise sometimes, Hugh felt sure! 
 to have refused it would have been like refus- 
 ing to drink from a cool and bubbling way- 
 side spring, as one fared on a hot noon over 
 the shimmering mountain-side refused, in a 
 spirit of false austerity, for fear that one would 
 thirst again through the dreary leagues ahead. 
 As long as one remembered that it was but an 
 imagined peace, that one had not attained it, it 
 was yet well to remember that the peace was 
 real, that it existed somewhere, even though it 
 was still shut within the heart of God. How- 
 ever slow the present progress, however long the 
 road, it was possible to look forward in hope, to 
 know that one would move more blithely and 
 firmly when the time should come for the de- 
 sired peace to be given one more abundantly ; 
 it helped one, as one stumbled and lingered, to 
 look a little further on and to say, "I will run 
 the way of Thy commandments, when Thou 
 hast set my heart at liberty."
 
 XXXIV 
 
 HUGH'S professional life had given him 
 little opportunity for indulging artistic tastes. 
 He had been very fond as a boy of sketching, 
 especially architecturaTsubjects ; it had trained 
 his powers of observation ; but there had come 
 a time when, as a young man, he had deliber- 
 ately laid his sketching aside. The idea in his 
 mind had been that if one desired to excel 
 in any form of artistic expression, one must de- 
 vote all one's artistic faculty to that. He had 
 been conscious of a certain diffuseness of 
 taste, a love of music and a love of pictorial 
 art being both strong factors in his mind ; 
 but he was also dimly conscious that he 
 matured slowly ; that he had none of the facile 
 grasp of difficult things which characterised 
 some of his more able companions ; his progress 
 was always slow, and he arrived at mastery 
 through a long wrestling with inaccuracy and 
 half knowledge ; his perception was quick, but 
 his grasp feeble, while his capacity for forgetting 
 and losing his hold on things was great. He 
 338
 
 Pictorial Art 339 
 
 therefore made a deliberate choice in the mat- 
 ter, guided, he now felt, rather by a kind of 
 intuition than by any very definite principle, 
 and determined to restrict his artistic energies 
 to a single form of art. His father, he remem- 
 bered, had remonstrated with him, and had said 
 that by giving up sketching he was sacrificing 
 a great resource of recreation and amusement. 
 He had no answer at the time to the criticism, 
 but it seemed to him that he knew his own 
 mind in the matter, and that as he could not 
 hope, he thought, to attain to any real excel- 
 lence in draughtsmanship, it had better be 
 cut off altogether, and his energies, such as 
 they were he knew that the spring was 
 not a copious one confined to a more definite 
 channel. 
 
 As life went on, and as time became more and 
 more precious, as his literary work more and 
 more absorbed him, he drew away from the 
 artistic region ; in his early years of manhood 
 he had travelled a good deal, and the seeing of 
 pictures had always been part of the pro- 
 gramme ; but his work became heavier, and the 
 holidays had tended more and more to be spent 
 in some quiet English retreat, where he could 
 satisfy his delight in nature, and re-read some 
 of the old beloved books. A certain physical 
 indolence was also a factor, an indolence which
 
 340 Beside Still Waters 
 
 made wandering in a picture-gallery always 
 rather a penance ; but he contrived at intervals 
 to go and look at pictures in London in a lei- 
 surely way, both old and new ; and he had one or 
 two friends who possessed fine works of art, 
 which could be enjoyed calmly and quietly. 
 He was aware that he was losing some catholi- 
 city of mind by this but he knew his limita- 
 tions, and more and more became aware that 
 his constitutional energy was not very great, 
 and needed to be husbanded. He was quite 
 aware that he was not what would be called a 
 cultivated person, that his knowledge both of 
 art and music was feeble and amateurish ; but 
 he saw, or thought he saw, that people of wide 
 cultivation often sacrificed in intensity what 
 they gained in width; and as he became gradually 
 aware that the strongest faculty he possessed 
 was the literary faculty, he saw that he could 
 not hope to nourish it without a certain renun- 
 ciation. He had no taste for becoming an 
 expert or a connoisseur ; he had not the slighest 
 wish to instruct other people, or to arrive at 
 a technical and professional knowledge of art. 
 He was content to leave it to be a rare luxury, 
 a thing which, when the opportunity and the 
 mood harmonised, could open a door for him 
 into a beautiful world of dreams. He was quite 
 aware that he often liked what would be called
 
 Hand and Soul 341 
 
 the wrong things ; but what he was on the look- 
 out for in art was not technical perfection or 
 finished skill, but a certain indefinable poet- 
 ical suggestion, which pictures could give him, 
 when they came before him in certain moods. 
 The mood, indeed, mattered more than the 
 picture ; moreover it was one of the strangest 
 things about pictorial art, that the work of cer- 
 tain artists seemed able to convey poetical sug- 
 gestion, even when the poetical quality seemed 
 to be absent from their own souls. He knew a 
 certain great artist well, who seemed to Hugh 
 to be an essentially materialistic man, fond of 
 sport and society, of money, and the pleasures 
 that money could buy, who spoke of poetical 
 emotion as moonshine, and seemed frankly 
 bored by any attempt at the mystical apprehen- 
 sion of beautiful things, who could yet produce, 
 by means of his mastery of the craft, pictures 
 full of the tenderest and loveliest emotion and 
 poetry. Hugh tried hard to discern this quality 
 in the man's soul, tried to believe that it was 
 there, and that it was deliberately disguised by 
 a pose of bluff unaffectedness. But he came to 
 the conclusion that it was not there, and that 
 the painter achieved his results only by being 
 able to represent with incredible fidelity the 
 things in nature that held the poetical quality. 
 On the other hand he had a friend of real poet-
 
 342 Beside Still Waters 
 
 ical genius, who was also an artist, but who 
 could only produce the stiffest and hardest 
 works of art, that had no quality about them 
 except the quality of tiresome definiteness. This 
 was a great mystery to Hugh ; but it ended 
 eventually, after a serious endeavour to appre- 
 ciate what was approved by the general verdict 
 to be of supreme artistic value, in making him 
 resolve that he would just follow his own inde- 
 pendent taste, and discern whatever quality of 
 beauty he could, in such art as made an appeal 
 to him. Thus he was not even an eclectic ; 
 he was a mere amateur; he treated art just as a 
 possible vehicle of the poetical suggestion, 
 and allowed it to speak to him when and 
 where it could and would. 
 
 He had moreover a great suspicion of con- 
 ventionality in taste. A man of accredited 
 taste often seemed to him little more than a 
 man who had the faculty of admiring what it 
 was the fashion to admire. Hugh had been for 
 a short time under the influence of Ruskin, and 
 had tried sincerely to see the magnificence of 
 Turner, and to loathe the artificiality of Claude 
 Lorraine. But when he arrived at his more 
 independent attitude, he found that there was 
 much to admire in Claude; that exquisite 
 golden atmosphere, syffusing a whole picture 
 with an evening glow, enriching the lavish fore-
 
 Turner 343 
 
 ground, and touching into romantic beauty 
 headland after headland, that ran out, covered 
 with delicate woodland, into the tranquil lake ; 
 those ruinous temples with a quiet flight of 
 birds about them ; the mysterious figures of 
 men emerging from the woods on the edges 
 of the water, bent serenely on some simple busi- 
 ness, had the magical charm ; and then those 
 faint mountains closing the horizon, all rounded 
 with the golden haze of evening, seemed to 
 hold, in their faintly indicated heights and 
 folds, a delicate peace, a calm repose, as though 
 glad just to be, just to wait in that reposeful 
 hour for the quiet blessing of waning light, 
 the sober content so richly shed abroad. It 
 was not criticism, Hugh thought, to say that it 
 was all impossibly combined, falsely conceived. 
 It was not, perhaps, a transcript of any one 
 place or one hour ; but it had an inner truth 
 for all that ; it had the spirit of evening with 
 its pleasant weariness, its gentle recollection, its 
 waiting for repose ; or it had again the fresh- 
 ness of the morning, the vital hope that makes 
 it delightful to rise, to cast off sleep, to go 
 abroad, making light of the toil and heat that 
 the day is to bring. 
 
 And then, in studying Turner, he learned to 
 see that, lying intermingled~winr~all the power 
 and nobility of much of his work, there was a
 
 344 Beside Still Waters 
 
 displeasing extravagance, a violence, a faulti- 
 ness of detail, an exaggeration that often ruined 
 his pictures. Neither he nor Claude were true 
 to life ; but there was an insolence sometimes 
 about Turner's variation from fact, which made 
 him shudder. How he seemed sometimes, in 
 his pictures of places familiar to Hugh such, 
 for instance, as the drawing of Malham Cove 
 to miss, by his heady violence, all the real, the 
 essential charm of the place. Nature was not 
 what Turner depicted it ; and he did not even 
 develop and heighten its beauty, but substi- 
 tuted for the real charm an almost grotesque 
 personal mannerism. Turner's idea of nature 
 seemed to Hugh often purely theatrical and 
 melo-dramatic, wanting in restraint, in repose. 
 The appeal of Turner seemed to him to be 
 constantly an appeal to childish and unpercep- 
 tive minds, that could not notice a thing unless 
 it was forced upon them. Some of the earlier 
 pictures indeed, such as that of the frost-bound 
 lane, with the boy blowing on his fingers, and the 
 horses nibbling at the stiff grass, with the cold 
 light of the winter's dawn coming slowly up 
 beyond the leafless hedge, seemed to him to be 
 perfectly beautiful ; but the Turner of the later 
 period, the Turner so wildly upheld by Ruskin, 
 seemed to Hugh to have lost sight of nature, in 
 the pleasure of constructing extravagant and
 
 Pictures with a Message 345 
 
 fantastic schemes of colour. The true art 
 seemed to Hugh not to be the art that trumpets 
 beauty aloud, and that drags a spectator rough- 
 ly to admire ; but the art that waits quietly 
 for the sincere nature-lover, and gives a soft hint 
 to which the soul of the spectator can add its 
 own emotion. To Hugh it was much a matter 
 of mood. He would go to a gallery of ancient 
 or modern art, and find that there many 
 pictures had no message or voice for him ; and 
 then some inconspicuous picture would sudden- 
 ly appeal to him with a mysterious force the 
 pathetic glance of childish eyes, or an old face 
 worn by toil and transfigured by some inner light 
 of hopefulness ; or a woodland scene, tree-trunks 
 rising amid a copse ; or the dark water of a sea- 
 cave, lapping, translucent and gem-like, round 
 rock ledges ; or a reedy pool, with the chimneys 
 of an old house rising among the elms hard by ; 
 in a moment the mood would come upon him, 
 and he would feel that a door had been opened 
 for his spirit into a place of sweet imaginings, 
 of wistful peace, bringing to him a hope of 
 something that might assuredly be, some deep 
 haven of God where the soul might float upon 
 a golden tide. One day, for instance, two old 
 line-engravings of Italian pictures which he had 
 inherited, and which hung in his little library, 
 gave him this sense ; he had known them ever
 
 34 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 since he was a child, and they had never spoken 
 to him before. Had they hung all these years 
 patiently waiting for that moment ? One was 
 The Betrothal of the Virgin, by Raphael, 
 where the old bearded priest in his tiara, with 
 his robes girt precisely about him, casts an in- 
 quiring look on the pair, as Joseph, a worn, 
 majestic figure, puts the ring on the Virgin's 
 finger. Some of it was hard and formal enough ; 
 the flowers on Joseph's rod might have been 
 made of china; the slim figure of the disap- 
 pointed suitor, breaking his staff, had an unpleas- 
 ingtrimness ; and the companions of the Virgin 
 were models of feeble serenity. But the great 
 new octagonal temple in the background, an 
 empty place it seemed for the open doors 
 gave a glimpse of shadowy ranges the shallow 
 steps, the stone volutes, the low hills behind, 
 with the towered villa even the beggars beg- 
 ging of the richly dressed persons on the new- 
 laid pavement all these had a sudden appeal 
 for him. 
 
 The other picture was the Communion of 
 Jerome, by Domenichino a stiff, conven- 
 tional design enough. The cherubs hanging 
 in air might have been made of wax or even 
 metal there was no aerial quality about them 
 they cumbered the place ! But the wistful look 
 of the old worn saint, kneeling so faintly, so
 
 Secrets of Art 347 
 
 wearily, the pure lines of the shrine, the wax- 
 lights, the stiff robes of the priest, the open 
 arch showing an odd, clustered, castellated 
 house, rising on its steep rocks among dark 
 brushwood, with a glimmering pool below, and 
 mysterious persons drawing near it all had a 
 tyrannical effect on Hugh's mind. Probably a 
 conventional critic would have spoken approv- 
 ingly of the Raphael and disdainfully enough 
 of the Domenichino but the point to Hugh 
 was not in the art revealed, but in the associa- 
 tion, the remoteness, the suggestiveness of the 
 pictures. The faults of each were patent to 
 him ; but something in that moment shone 
 through ; one looked through a half-open door, 
 and saw some beautiful mystery being cele- 
 brated within, something that one could not 
 explain or analyse, but which was none the less 
 certainly there. 
 
 Thus art became to Hugh, like nature, an 
 echoing world that lay all about him, which 
 could suddenly become all alive with constrain- 
 ing desire and joy. There was a scientific ap- 
 prehension of both nature and art possible, no 
 doubt. The very science that lay behind art 
 had a suggestiveness of its own ; that again 
 had its own times for appeal. But Hugh felt 
 that here again he must realise his limitations, 
 and that life, to be real, must be a constant re-
 
 348 Beside Still Waters 
 
 sisting of diffuse wanderings in knowledge and 
 perception. That his own medium was the 
 medium of words, and that his task was to 
 discern their colour and weight, their signifi- 
 cance, whether alone or in combination ; that 
 he must be able to upraise the jointed fabric of 
 thought, like a framework of slim rods of firm 
 metal, not meant to be seen or even realised by 
 the reader, but which, when draped with the 
 rich tapestry of words, would lend shape and 
 strong coherence to the whole. All other art 
 must simply minister light and fragrance; it 
 might be studied, indeed, but easily and super- 
 ficially ; not that it would not be better, per- 
 haps, if he could have approached other arts 
 with penetrating insight ; but that he felt that 
 for himself, with his limitations, his feebleness, 
 his faltering grasp, nothing must come between 
 him and his literary preoccupation. The other 
 arts might feed his soul indeed, but he could 
 not serve them. He found that he took great 
 delight, and was always at ease, in the company 
 of musicians and painters, because he could 
 understand and interpret their point of view, 
 their attitude of mind ; while, on the other hand, 
 he could approach them with the humility, the 
 perceptive humility, which the artist desires as 
 an atmosphere ; he did not know enough about 
 the technical points to controvert and differ,
 
 Secrets of Art 349 
 
 while he knew enough to feel inspired by the 
 tense feeling of secrets, understood and prac- 
 tised, which were yet hidden from ordinary 
 eyes. Art, then, and music became for Hugh 
 as a sweet and remote illustration of his own 
 consecration and indeed there were moments 
 when, wearied by his own strenuous toil, plough- 
 ing sadly through the dreary sands of labour, 
 that must close at intervals round the feet of 
 the serious craftsman, the sight of a picture 
 hanging perhaps in a room full of cheerful com- 
 pany, or the sound of music a few bars rippling 
 from an open window, or stealing in faint gusts 
 from the buttressed window of a church lighted 
 for even song came to him like a sacred cup, 
 carried in the hovering hands of a ministering 
 angel, revealing to him the delicate hidden joy 
 of beauty of which he had almost lost sight in 
 his painful hurrying to some appointed end. 
 Hinc lucem et pocula sacra, said the old motto 
 of Cambridge. The light was clear enough, 
 and led him forward, as it led the pilgrim of old, 
 shining across a very wide field. But the holy 
 refreshment that was tendered him upon the 
 way, this was the blessed gift of those other 
 arts which he dared not to follow, but which 
 he knew held within themselves secrets as dear 
 as the art which in his loneliness he pursued.
 
 XXXV 
 
 HUGH had found himself one evening in the 
 Combination-room of his college, in a little 
 group of Dons who were discussing with great 
 subtlety and ardour the question of retaining 
 Greek in the entrance examinations of the uni- 
 versity. It seemed to Hugh that the argu- 
 ments employed must be identical with those 
 that might formerly have been used to justify 
 the retention of Hebrew in the curriculum 
 the advisability of making acquaintance at 
 first hand with a noble literature, the mental 
 discipline to be obtained ; " Greek has such a 
 noble grammar ! " said one of these enthusiasts. 
 Hugh grew a little nettled at the tone of the 
 discussion. The defenders of Greek seemed 
 to be so impervious to facts which told against 
 them. They erected their theories, like um- 
 brellas, over their heads, and experience pat- 
 tered harmlessly on the top. Hugh advanced 
 his own case as an instance of the failure, of 
 the melancholy results of a classical curriculum. 
 It was deplorable, he said, that he should have 
 350
 
 Artistic Susceptibility 35 1 
 
 realised, as he did when he left the university, 
 that his real education had then to begin. He 
 had found himself totally ignorant of modern 
 languages and modern history, of science, and 
 indeed of all the ideas with which the modern 
 world was teeming. The chief defender of 
 Greek told him blithely that he was indulging 
 the utilitarian heresy; that the object of his 
 education had been to harden and perfect his 
 mind, so as to make it an instrument capable 
 of subtle appreciation and ardent self-improve- 
 ment. When Hugh pleaded the case of the 
 immense numbers of boys who, after they had 
 been similarly perfected and hardened, had 
 been left, not only ignorant of what they 
 had been supposed to be acquiring, but with- 
 out the slightest interest in or appreciation of 
 intellectual or artistic ideas at all, he was told 
 that, bad as their case was, it would have been 
 still worse if they had not been subjected to 
 the refining process. Hugh, contrary to his 
 wont, indulged in a somewhat vehement tirade 
 against the neglect of the appreciative and 
 artistic faculties in the case of the victims of 
 a classical education. He maintained that the 
 theory of mental discipline was a false one 
 altogether, and that boys ought to be prepared 
 on the one hand for practical life, and on the 
 other initiated into mental culture. He com-
 
 35 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 pared the mental condition of a robust English 
 boy, his sturdy disbelief in intellectual things, 
 with the case of a young Athenian, who was, if 
 we could trust Plato, naturally and sponta- 
 neously interested in thoughts and ideas, sensi- 
 tive to beautiful impressions, delicate, subtle, 
 intelligent, and not less bodily active. He went 
 on to carry the war into the enemy's country, 
 and to attack the theory of mental discipline 
 altogether, which he maintained was the same 
 thing as to train agricultural labourers in high- 
 jumping and sprinting, or like trying to put a 
 razor-edge on a hoe. What he said was neg- 
 lected altogether was the cultivation of artistic 
 susceptibility. In nature, in art, in literature, 
 he maintained, lay an immense possibility of 
 refined and simple pleasure, which was never 
 cultivated at all. The mental discipline, he 
 argued, which average boys received, was 
 doubly futile, because it neither equipped them 
 for practical life nor opened to them any vista 
 of intellectual or artistic pleasure. What he 
 himself desired to do was, on the one hand, to 
 equip boys for practical life, and on the other 
 to initiate them into the possibilities of in- 
 tellectual recreation. The ordinary boy, he 
 thought, was turned out with a profound dis- 
 belief in intellectual things, and a no less 
 profound belief in games as the only source of
 
 Artistic Susceptibility 353 
 
 rational pleasure. His own belief was that a 
 great many English boys had the germs of 
 simple artistic pleasures dormant in their 
 spirits, and that they might be encouraged to 
 believe in books, in art, in music, as sources of 
 tranquil enjoyment, instead of regarding them 
 as slightly unwholesome and affected tastes. 
 He was aware that his views were being 
 regarded as dangerously heterodox, and as 
 tainted indeed with a kind of aesthetic languor. 
 He felt that he was appearing to pose as the 
 champion, not only of an unpopular cause, but 
 of an essentially effeminate system. His oppon- 
 ents were certainly not effeminate ; but they 
 were masculine only in the sense in which the 
 soldier is masculine, in his sturdy contempt for 
 the arts of peace ; whereas to Hugh the soldier 
 was only an inevitable excrescence on the com- 
 munity, a disagreeable necessity which would 
 disappear in the light of a rational and humane 
 civilisation. 
 
 A young Don, a friend of Hugh's, who had 
 taken part in the discussion, a few days after, 
 in the course of a walk, attacked Hugh on the 
 subject. Hugh was aware that he defended 
 himself very indifferently at the time ; but 
 some remarks of his friend, who was a brisk 
 and practical young man with a caustic wit, 
 rankled in Hugh's mind. His friend had said 
 23
 
 354 Beside Still Waters 
 
 that the danger of Hugh's scheme was that it 
 tended to produce people of the Maudle and 
 Postlethwaite type, who made life into a mere 
 pursuit of artistic impressions and sensations. 
 " The fact is, Neville," he said, " that you up- 
 held Epicureanism pure and simple; or, if you 
 x dislike the word because of its associations, 
 you taught a mere Neo-Cyrenaicism. You may 
 say that the kind of pleasure you defended is a 
 refined and intellectual sort of pleasure, but for 
 all that it tends to produce men who withdraw 
 from practical life into a mild hedonism ; you 
 would develop a coterie of amiable, secluded 
 persons, fastidious and delicate, indifferent citi- 
 zens, individualistic and self-absorbed ; the train- 
 ing of character retires into the background ; 
 and the meal that you press upon us is a meal 
 of exquisite sauces, but without meat. Fortu- 
 nately," his friend added, " the necessity of 
 earning a living keeps most people from drifting 
 into a life of this kind. It is only consistent 
 with comfortable private means." 
 
 These phrases stuck in Hugh's memory with 
 a painful insistence. He felt as if he had been 
 rolled among thorns. He determined to think 
 the matter carefully out. Was he himself drift- 
 ing into a species of my^sticaljie.don ism ? It was 
 very far from his purpose to do that. He de- 
 termined that he would prepare a little apologia
 
 An Apologia 355 
 
 on the subject, to send to his friend ; and this 
 was what he eventually despatched : 
 
 " Your conversation with me the other day gave 
 me a good deal to think about. What you said_ 
 practically amounted to a charge of hedonism. 
 Of course much depends upon the way m wfitck 
 the word is applied, because I suppose that the 
 large majority o men are hedonists, in the sense 
 tJiat theypursue as far as possible their own V 
 pleasure. But the particular kind of hedonism 
 of which you spoke, Epicureanism , bears the 
 sense of a certain degree of malingering. It im- 
 plies TTTat the person who pursiiesthe course 
 which I indicated is for some reason or other 
 shirking his duty in the world. It is against 
 this that I wish to defend myself ; I would say 
 in tJie first place that what I was recommending 
 was a very different sort of thing. I was rather 
 attacking a certain sheepishncss of character V 
 which seems to me to be the danger of our present 
 education. The practical ideal held up before 
 boys at our public schools is that they should be 
 virtuous and industrious ; and that after they 
 have satisfied both these claims, they should amuse 
 themselves in what is held to be a manly 
 
 they should fill their vacant hours with open-air 
 exercise and talk about games ; a little light 
 reading is not objected to ; but it is tacitly
 
 35 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 assumed that to be interested in ideas, in litera- 
 ture, art, and music is rather a dilettante 
 business. I was reminded of a -memorable conver- 
 sation I once had with a man of some note, a 
 great landowner and prominent politician. He 
 ^vas talking confidentially to me about his sons 
 and their professions. One of the boys mani- 
 fested a really remarkable artistic gift ; he was 
 a draughtsman of extraordinary skill, and I said 
 something about his taking up art seriously. The 
 great man said that it would never do. ' I con- 
 sider it almost a misfortune, ' he added, ' that 
 the boy is so clever an artist, because it would 
 be out of the question for him, in his position, to 
 take up what is, after all, ratJier a disreputable 
 profession. I have talked to him seriously about 
 it, and I have said that there is no harm in his 
 amusing himself in that way ; but he must have 
 a serious occupation! 
 
 " That is a very fair instance of the way in 
 which the pursuit of art is regarded among our 
 solid classes as distinctly a trade for an adven- 
 turer. It will be a long time before we alter 
 that. But the truth is that this kind of conven- 
 tionalism, is what makes us so stupid a nation. 
 We have no sort of taste for simplicity in life. 
 A man who lived in a cottage, occupied in quiet 
 and intellectual pursuits, would be held to be a 
 failure, even if he lived in innocent happiness
 
 An Educative Process 357 
 
 to the age of eighty. My own firm belief is that 
 this is all wrong. It opens up all sorts of obscure 
 aud bewildering questions as to why we are sent 
 into the world at all ; but my idea is that we 
 are meant to be happy if we can, and that a 
 great many people miss happiness, because they 
 have not the courage to pursue it in their own 
 way. I cannot believe myself that the compli- 
 cated creature, so frail of frame, so limitless in 
 dreams and hopes, is the result of a vortex. I 
 cannot believe that we can be created except by 
 a poiver that in a certain degree resembles our- 
 selves. If we have remote dreams of love and 
 liberty, of justice and truth, I believe that those 
 ideas must exist in a sublime degree in the mind 
 of our Maker. I believe, on the whole, though 
 there are many difficulties in the way of the 
 theory, that life is meant for 'most of us to be an 
 educative process ; that we are meant to quit the 
 world wiser, nobler, more patient than we en- 
 tered it ; why the whole business is so intolerably 
 slow, why we are so hampered by traditions and 
 instincts that retard the process, I cannot con- 
 ceive ; but my belief is that we must as far as 
 possible choose a course which leads us in the 
 direction of the thoughts that we conceive to be 
 noble and true. We may make mistakes, we 
 may wander sadly from the way, but I believe 
 that it is our duty, our best hope, to try and
 
 358 Beside Still Waters 
 
 perceive what it is that God is trying to teach 
 us. Now, our choice must be to a great extent 
 a matter of temperament. Some men like work, 
 activity, injluence, relations with others. Well, 
 if they sincerely believe that they are meant to 
 pursue these things, it is their duty to do so. 
 Others t like myself, seem to be gifted with a 
 sensitiveness of perception, and appreciation of 
 beauty in many forms. I cannot believe that 
 such an organisation is given me fortuitously, 
 and that I am merely meant to suppress it. Of 
 course the same argument could be used sophis- 
 tically by a man with strong sensual passions 
 and appetites, who could similarly urge that he 
 must be intended to gratify them. But such 
 gratification leads both to personal disaster and 
 to the increase of unhappiness in the race. Such 
 instincts as I recognise in myself seem to me to 
 do neither. I believe that poets, artists, and 
 musicians, to say nothing of religious teachers, 
 have effected almost more for the welfare of the 
 race than statesmen, patriots, and philanthrop- 
 ists. Of course the necessary work of the world 
 has got to be done ; but my own belief is that a 
 good deal more than is necessary is done, because 
 people pursue luxury rather than simplicity. I 
 recognise to the full the duty of work ; but, to be 
 quite honest, I tliink that a serious man who will 
 preach simplicity, disseminate ideas, suggest pos-
 
 Criticism of Life 359 
 
 sibilities of intellectual and artistic pleasure, can 
 do a very real work. Such a man must be dis- 
 inter esttd ; he must not desire fame or influence ; 
 he must be content if he can sow the seeds of 
 beauty in a few minds. 
 
 " Now the Maudle and Postlethwaite school 
 are not concerned with anything of the kind. 
 They merely desire to make a sort of brightly 
 polished mirror of their minds, capable of re- 
 flecting all sorts of beautiful effects, and this is 
 an essentially effeminate thing to do, because it 
 exalts the appreciation of sensation above all 
 other aims ; that is the pursuit of artistic lux- 
 ury, and it is, as you say, quite inconsistent with 
 good citizenship. I have no admiration for the 
 citizenship the end of wJiich is to make a com- 
 fortable corner for one's self at the expense of oth- 
 ers ; I do not at all believe that every man of 
 ideals is bound to take a part in the administra- 
 tion of the community. We can easily have too 
 many administrators ; and that ends in the dis- 
 mal slough of municipal politics. After all, we 
 must nowadays all be specialists, and a man 
 has as much right to specialise in beauty as he 
 has to specialise in Greek Grammar. In fact a 
 specialist in Greek Grammar has as his ulti- 
 mate vieiv the clearer and nicer appreciation of 
 the shades of Greek expression, and is merely 
 serving a high ideal of mental refinement. It
 
 360 Beside Still Waters 
 
 seems to me purely conventional to accept as val- 
 uable the work of a commentator on Sophocles, 
 because it is traditionally respectable, and to say 
 that a commentator on sunsets, as I once heard 
 a poet described, is an effeminate dilettante. It 
 is the motive that matters. Personally, I think 
 that a man who has drifted into writing a 
 commentary on Sophocles , because he happens to 
 find that he can earn a living that way, is no 
 more worthy of admiration than a man who 
 earns his living by billiard-marking. Neither 
 are necessary to the world. But the commentator 
 and the billiard-marker are alike admirable, if 
 they are working out a theory, if they think 
 that thus and thus they can best help on the pro- 
 gress of the world. 
 
 " My own desire is, so to speak, to be a commen- 
 tator on life, in one particular aspect. I think 
 the world would be all the better(if \here were a 
 finer appreciation of what is noble and beautiful, 
 a deeper discrimination of motives, a larger 
 speculation as to the methods and objects 
 of our pilgrimage. I think the coarseness of the 
 intellectual and spiritual palate that prevails 
 widely nowadays is not only a -misfortune, I 
 think it is of the nature of sin. If people could 
 live more in the generous visions of poets, if they 
 could be taught to see beauty in trees and fields 
 and buildings, I think they would be happier and
 
 A Theory of Life 3 61 
 
 better. Most people are obliged to spend the solid 
 hours of the day in necessary work. The more 
 sordid that work is, the more advisable it is to 
 cultivate a perception of the quality of things. 
 Every one has hours of recreation in every 
 day ; the more such hours are filled with pleasant, 
 simple, hopeful, beautiful thoughts, the better 
 for us all. 
 
 " Of course I may be quite wrong ; I may 
 be meant to find out my mistake ; but I seem to 
 discern in the teaching of Christ a desire to 
 make men see the true values of life, to appreciate 
 what is beautiful and tender in simple lives 
 and homely relationships. The teaching of Christ 
 seems to me to be uniquely and essentially poeti- 
 cal, and to point to the fact that the uplifting of 
 the human heart in admiration, hope, and love, 
 is the cure for some, at least, of our manifold 
 ills. That is my own theory of life, and I do 
 not see that it is effeminate, or even unpracti- 
 cal ; and it is a mere caricature of it to call 
 it Epicurean. What does complicate life is the 
 feeble acceptance of conventional views, the 
 doing of things, not because one hopes for 
 happiness out of them, not even because one 
 likes them, but because one sees other people doing 
 them. Even in the most sheltered existence, like 
 my own, there are plenty of things which provide 
 a bracing tonic against self-satisfaction. There
 
 362 Beside Still Waters 
 
 are the criticism and disapproval of others, con- 
 tempt, hostility ; there are illness, and sorrow, 
 and the fear of death. No one of a sensitive 
 nature can hope to live an untroubled life ; but 
 to court unhappiness for the sake of its tonic 
 qualities seems to me no more reasonable than to 
 refuse an anesthetic on the ground that it is 
 interfering with natural processes. 
 
 " / don't know that I expect to convert you ; 
 but at least I am glad to make my position 
 clear. I don't assume that I am in the right. 
 I only know that I am trying to do what ap- 
 pears to me to be right, trying to simplify 
 the issues of life, to unravel the tangle in 
 which so many people seem to me to acquiesce 
 helplessly and timidly''
 
 XXXVI 
 
 THERE were days, of course, when Hugh's 
 reflections took an irrepressibly optimistic turn. 
 Such was a bright day in the late summer, when 
 
 ^*^^*^^*^*^ L : i i 
 
 the sun shone with a temperate clearness, and 
 big white clouds, like fragments torn from some 
 aerial pack of cotton-wool, moved blithely in 
 the sky. Hugh rode he was staying at his 
 mother's house to a little village perched a- 
 stride on a great ridge. He diverged from the 
 road to visit the ancient church, built of mas- 
 sive stone and roofed with big stone-tiles ; up 
 there, swept by strong winds, splashed by fierce 
 rains, it has grown to look like a crag rather 
 than a building. By the side of it ran a little, 
 steep, narrow lane, which he had never ex- 
 plored ; he rode cautiously down the stony track, 
 among thick hazel copses ; occasionally, through 
 a gap, he had a view of a great valley, all wild 
 with wood ; once or twice he passed a timbered 
 farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The coun. 
 try round about was much invaded by new 
 pert houses, but there were none here ; and 
 363
 
 364 Beside Still Waters 
 
 Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed 
 the only track into the valley, was of so forbid- 
 ding a steepness that it had not occurred to any 
 one to settle there. The road became more 
 and more precipitous, and at the very bottom, 
 having descended nearly three hundred feet, 
 Hugh found himself in a very beautiful place. 
 He thought he had never seen anything more 
 sweetly, more characteristically English. On 
 one side was a rough^ field, encircled by forest 
 on all sides; here stood some old wooden sheds 
 and byres ; and one or two green rides passed 
 glimmering into the thick copse, with a charm- 
 ing air of mystery, as though they led to 
 some sequestered woodland paradise. To the 
 right was a mill, with a great pond thick with 
 bulrushes and water-lilies, full of water-birds, 
 coots, and moor-hens, which swam about, utter- 
 ing plaintive cries. The mill was of wood, the 
 planks warped and weather-stained, the tiled 
 roof covered with mosses ; the mill-house itself 
 was a quaint brick building, with a pretty 
 garden, full of old-fashioned flowers, sloping 
 down to the pool ; a big flight of pigeons cir- 
 cled round and round in the breeze, turning 
 with a sudden clatter of wings ; behind the 
 house were small sand-stone bluffs, fringed with 
 feathery ashes, and the wood ran up steeply 
 above into the sky. It looked like an old steel-
 
 The Mill 365 
 
 engraving, like a picture by Morland or Con- 
 stable. The blue smoke went up from the 
 chimneys in that sheltered nook, rising straight 
 into the air, lending a rich colour to the trees 
 behind. Hugh thought it would be a beautiful 
 place to live in, so remote from the world, in 
 that still valley, where the only sound was the 
 wind of the copses, the trickle of the mill-leat, 
 and the slow thunder of the dripping wheel 
 within. Yet he supposed that the simple peo- 
 ple who lived there were probably unconscious 
 of its beauty, and only aware that the roads 
 which led to the spot were inconveniently steep. 
 Still, it was hard to think that the charm of the 
 place would not pass insensibly into the hearts, 
 perhaps even into the faces, of the dwellers 
 there. 
 
 He stood for a little to see the bright water 
 leaping clear and fresh from the sluice. There 
 was a delicious scent of cool river-plants every- 
 where. It was hard not to think that the stream, 
 bickering out in the sun from the still pool, had 
 a sense of joy and delight. It was passing, 
 passing; Hugh could trace in thought every 
 mile of the way ; down the wooded valley it 
 was bound, running over the brown gravel, by 
 shady wood-ends and pasture sides ; then it 
 would pass out into the plain, and run, a full 
 and brimming stream, between sandy banks,
 
 366 Beside Still Waters 
 
 half hidden by the thick, glossy-leaved alders. 
 Hugh knew the broad water-meadows down 
 below, with the low hills on either side, where 
 big water-plants grew in marshy places, and 
 where the cattle moved slowly about through 
 the still hours. Soon the stream would be run- 
 ning by the great downs it was a river now, 
 bearing boats upon it till it passed by the 
 wharves and beneath the bridges of the little 
 town, and out into the great sea-flat, meeting, 
 with how strange a wonder, the upward-creeping 
 briny tide, with its sharp savours and its whole, 
 some smell; till it flowed at last by the docks, 
 where the big steamers lay unlading, blowing 
 their loud sea-horns, past weed-fringed piers 
 and shingly beaches, until it was mingled with 
 the moving deep, where the waves ran higher 
 on the blue sea-line, and the great buoy rolled 
 and dipped above the shoal. 
 
 And then, perhaps, it would be drawn up 
 again in twisted wreaths of mist, rising in vapour 
 beneath the breathless sun, to flock back, per- 
 haps, in clouds over the earth, and begin its 
 little pilgrimage again. 
 
 Was the same true, he wondered, of himself, 
 of everything about him ? Was it all a never- 
 ending, and unwearying pilgrimage ? Was 
 death itself but the merging of the atom in the 
 element, and then, perhaps, the race began
 
 The Stream's Pilgrimage 367 
 
 again ? On such a day as this, of bright sun 
 and eager air. it seemed sweet to think that it 
 was even so. This soul-stuff, that one called 
 one's self, wafted out of the unknown, strangely 
 entangled with the bodily elements, would it 
 perhaps mingle again with earthly conditions, 
 borne round and round in an endless progres- 
 sion ? Yet, if this was so, why did one seem, 
 not part of the world, but a thing so wholly 
 distinct and individual? To-day, indeed, Hugh 
 seemed to be akin to the earth, and felt as 
 though all that breathed or moved and lived 
 had a brotherly, a sisterly greeting for him. As 
 he moved slowly on up the steep road, a child 
 playing by the wayside, encouraged perhaps by 
 a loving brightness that rose from Hugh's 
 heart into his face, nodded and smiled to him 
 shyly. Hugh smiled back, and waved his 
 hand. That childish smile came to him as a 
 confirmation of his blithe mood ; there were 
 others, then, bound on the same pilgrimage as 
 himself, who wished him well, and shared his 
 happiness. To pass thus smiling through the 
 world, heedless as far as might be of weariness 
 and sorrow, taking the simple joys that flowed so 
 freely, if only one divested one's self of the hard 
 and dull ambitions that made life into a struggle 
 and a contest that was, perhaps, the secret ! 
 There would be days, no doubt, of gloom and
 
 368 Beside Still Waters 
 
 heaviness ; days when life would run, like the 
 stream which he could hear murmuring below 
 him, through dark coverts, dripping with rain ; 
 days of frost, when nature was leafless and be- 
 numbed, and when the rut was barred with icy 
 spikes. But one could live in hope and faith, 
 waiting for the summer days, when life ran 
 swift and bright, under a pale sunset sky till 
 the streaks of crimson light died into a trans- 
 parent green ; and the stream ran joyfully, 
 under the stars, wondering what sweet un- 
 familiar place might stand revealed, when the 
 day climbed slowly in the east, and the dew 
 globed itself upon the fresh grass, in the invig- 
 orating sweetness, the cool fragrance of the 
 dawn.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 ONE hot cloudless day of summer, Hugh 
 took a train, and, descending at a quiet wayside 
 station, walked to a little place deep in the 
 country, to see the remains of an ancient house 
 which he was told had a great beauty. He 
 found the place with some difficulty. The 
 church, to which he first directed his steps, was 
 very ancient and almost ruinous. It was evi- 
 dently far too big for the needs of the little 
 hamlet, and it was so poorly endowed that it was 
 difficult to find any one who would take the liv- 
 ing. A great avenue of chestnuts, with a grass- 
 grown walk beneath, led up to the porch. He 
 entered by a curious iron-bound door, under 
 a Norman arch of very quaint workmanship. 
 The crunch., was of different dates, and the very 
 neglect which it suffered gave it an extreme 
 picturesqueness. One of its fine features was a 
 brick chapel, built at the east end of one of the 
 aisles, where an old baron lay in state, in black 
 armour, his eyes closed quietly, his pointed 
 beard on his breast, his hands folded, as though 
 24 369
 
 370 Beside Still Waters 
 
 he lay praying to himself. The heavy marble 
 pillars of the shrine were carved with a stiff 
 ornament of vine-leaves and grape-clusters, and 
 the canopy rose pompously to the roof, with 
 its cognisances and devices. There were many 
 monuments in the church, on which Hugh 
 read the history of the ancient family, now en- 
 gulfed in a family more wealthy and ancient 
 still ; the latest of the memorials was that of a 
 lady, whose head, sculptured by Chantrey, with 
 its odd puffs of hair, had a discreet and smiling 
 mien, as of one who had known enough sorrow 
 to purge prosperity of its grossness. From the 
 churchyard there led a little path, which skirted 
 a wide moat of dark water, full of innumerable 
 fish, basking in the warmth ; in the centre of the 
 moat stood a dark grove of trees, with a thick 
 undergrowth. Suddenly, through an opening, 
 Hugh saw the turrets of an ancient gatehouse, 
 built of mellow brick, rising into the sunlight, 
 with an astonishing sweetness and nobleness of 
 air ; below was a lawn, bordered by yew-hedges, 
 where a party of people, ladies in bright dresses 
 and leisurely men, were sitting talking with a 
 look of smiling content. It was more like a 
 scene in a romance than a thing in real life. 
 Hugh stood unobserved beneath a tree, and 
 looked long at the delightful picture ; and then 
 presently wandered further by a grassy lane,
 
 A Garden Scene 37 * 
 
 with high hedges full of wild roses and elder- 
 blooms, where the air had a hot, honied per- 
 fume. He came in a moment to a great clear 
 stream running silently between banks full 
 of meadow-sweet and loosestrife. The turrets 
 of the gate-house looked pleasantly over the 
 trees of the little park that lay on the other side 
 of the stream. The air was still but fresh. The 
 trees stood silent, with the metallic look of high 
 summer upon their stiff leaves, as though seen 
 in a picture. The whole landscape seemed to 
 have a consecration of quiet joy and peace over 
 it. It seemed a place made for the walks of 
 rustic lovers, on summer evenings, under a low- 
 hung moon. The whole scene, the homely 
 bridge, the murmur of the water in the pool, 
 the blossoming hedges, had a sense of delicate 
 romance about it. It seemed to stand for so 
 much happiness, and to draw Hugh into the 
 charmed circle. 
 
 The difficulty was somehow to believe that 
 the place was in reality a centre of real and 
 ordinary life ; it seemed almost impossibly 
 beautiful and delicious to Hugh, like a play en- 
 acted for his sole benefit, a sweet tale told. 
 Those gracious persons in the garden seemed 
 like people in a scene out of Boccaccio, whose 
 past and whose future are alike veiled and un- 
 known and who just emerge, in the light of art,
 
 37 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 as a sweet company seen for an instant, and yet 
 somehow eternally there. But the thought 
 that they were persons like himself, with cares, 
 schemes, anxieties, appeared inconceivable; 
 that was one of the curious illusions of life, that 
 the world through which one moved seemed to 
 group itself for one's delight into a pleasant 
 vision, which had no concern for one's self ex- 
 cept to brighten and enhance the warm sunlit 
 day with an indescribable grace and beauty. 
 How hard to think that it was all changing and 
 shifting, even while one gazed ! that the clear 
 water, lapsing through the sluice, was passing 
 onwards, and could never again be at that one 
 sweet point of its seaward course ; that the 
 roses were fading and dying beside him ; that 
 the pleasant group on the lawn must soon break 
 up, never perhaps to reassemble. If one could 
 but arrest the quiet flow of things for a moment, 
 suspend it for a period, however brief ! That 
 was after all the joy of art, that it caught such 
 a moment as that, while the smiling faces 
 turned to each other, while the sun lay warm 
 on the brickwork, and made it immortal ! 
 
 There came into Hugh's mind the thought 
 that this deep thirst for peace might somehow 
 yet be satisfied. How could he otherwise con- 
 ceive of it, how could he dream so clearly of it, 
 if it were not actually there ? He thought that
 
 A Vision 373 
 
 there must be a region where the pulse of time 
 should cease to beat, where there should be no 
 restless looking backwards and forwards, but 
 where the spirit should brood in an unend- 
 ing joy; but now, the world thrust one for- 
 ward, impatient, unsatisfied ; even as he gazed, 
 the shadows had shifted and lengthened, and 
 the thought of the world, that called him 
 back to care and anxiety, began to over- 
 shadow him. Was it a phantom that mocked 
 him ? or was it not rather a type, an allegory of 
 something unchanged and unchangeable, that 
 waited for him beyond ? And then in that 
 still afternoon, there came to him a sense 
 that occasionally visited him, and that seemed, 
 when it came, the truest and best thing \^S 
 in the world, the vision of an unseen Friend, 
 to Whom he was infinitely dear, closer to 
 Him even than to himself, Who surrounded 
 and enveloped him with care and concern 
 and love ; Who brought him tenderly into 
 the fair green places of the earth, such as he 
 had visited to-day, whispered to him the secret 
 of it all, and only did not reveal it in its 
 fulness because the time for him to know 
 it was not yet, and because the very delay 
 arose from some depth of unimaginable, love. 
 In such a mood as this, Hugh felt that he could 
 wait in utter confidence ; that he could drink
 
 374 Beside Still Waters 
 
 in with glad eyes and ears the beautiful and 
 delicate things that were shown to him, the 
 rich, luxuriant foliage, the dim sun-warmed 
 stream, the silent trees, the old towers. There 
 seemed to him nothing that he could not 
 bear, nothing that he could not gladly do, 
 when so tender a hand was leading him. He 
 knew indeed that he would again be impa- 
 tient, restless, wilful ; but for the moment it 
 was as though he had tasted of some mys- 
 terious sacrament ; that the wine of some holy 
 cup had been put to his lips ; that he knew 
 that he was not alone, but in the very heart 
 of a wise and patient God.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 IT was in the later weeks of a hot, still mid- 
 summer that Hugh escaped from Cambridge to 
 the Lakes. He did not realise, until he found 
 himself driving in the cool of the evening be- 
 side Windermere, how parched and dry his very 
 mind had become in the long heats of the sun- 
 dried flats. Sometimes the road wound down 
 to the very edge of the water, lapping deliciously 
 among the stones; sometimes it skirted the 
 pleasances of a cool sheltered villa which lay 
 embowered in trees, blinking contentedly across 
 the lake. The sight of the great green hills 
 with their skirts clothed with wood, with trees 
 straggling upwards along the water-courses, the 
 miniature crags escaping from oak-coppices, the 
 black heads of bleak mountains, filled him with 
 an exquisite and speechless delight. 
 
 It was sunset before he reached his destina- 
 tion, which was a large house of rough stone, 
 much festooned with creepers, which crowned a 
 little height at the base of the fells, in the cen- 
 tre of a wild wood. The house was that of a 
 very old man, hard on his ninetieth year, a 
 375
 
 37 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 relative of Hugh's, and an old friend of his 
 family. There was a short cut to the house 
 among the woods, and Hugh left the carriage to 
 go round by the drive, while he himself walked 
 up. The path was a little track among copses, 
 roofed over by interlacing boughs, and giving an 
 abundance of pretty glimpses to right and left 
 of the unvisited places of the wood ; old brown 
 boulders covered with moss, with ash-suckers 
 shooting out among the stones, little streams 
 rippling downwards, small green lawns fringed 
 with low trees. The western valley was full of 
 a rich golden light, and the wooded ridges rose 
 quietly one after another, with the dark solemn 
 form of mountains on the horizon. A few dap- 
 pled clouds, fringed with fire, floated high in 
 the green sky. It all seemed to him to be 
 screening some sacred and mysterious pageant, 
 which was, as it were, being celebrated out in 
 the west, where the orange sunset lay dying. 
 He thought of the lonely valleys among the 
 hills, slowing filling with twilight gloom, the high 
 ridges from which one could discern the sun 
 sinking in glory over the far-spread flashing sea 
 with its misty rim. The house loomed up 
 suddenly over the thickets, with a light or two 
 burning in the windows which pierced the thick 
 wall. 
 
 Within, all was as it had been for many a year ;
 
 Tranquil Life 377 
 
 it was a house in which everything seemed 
 to stand still, the day passing smoothly in a 
 simple and pleasant routine. He received a 
 very kindly and gentle welcome from his host, 
 and was pleased to find that the party was of 
 the quietest an old friend or two, a_widowed 
 daughter of the house, one or two youthful 
 cousins. Hugh slipped into his place in the 
 household as if he had never been absent ; he 
 established his books in a corner of the dark 
 library ful of old volumes. It was always a 
 pleasure to him to see his host, a courtly, silent 
 old man, with snow-white hair and beard, who 
 sat smiling, eating so little that Hugh wonder- 
 ed how he sustained life, reading for an hour 
 or two, walking a little about the garden, sitting 
 long in contented meditation, never seeming to 
 be weary or melancholy. Hugh remembered 
 that, some years before, he had wondered that 
 any one could live so, neither looking back- 
 wards nor forwards, with no designs or cares or 
 purposes, simply_t_aking.-each..xlay. as it jcame 
 with a perfect tranquillity, not overshadowed 
 by the thought of how few years of life were 
 left him. But now he seemed to understand it 
 better; it was just the soft close of a kindly 
 and innocent life, dying like a tree or a flower. 
 The old man liked to have Hugh as the com- 
 panion of his morning ramble, showed him
 
 378 Beside Still Waters 
 
 many curious plants and flowers, and spoke 
 often of the reminiscences of his departed youth 
 with no shadow of desire or regret. At first 
 the grateful coolness of the place revived Hugh ; 
 but the soft, moist climate brought with it a 
 fatigue of its own, an indolent dejection, which 
 made him averse to work and even to bodily 
 activity. He took, however, one or two lonely 
 walks among the mountains. In his listless 
 mood, he was vexed and disquieted by the 
 contrast between the utter peace and beauty of 
 the hills, which seemed to uplift themselves, 
 half in majesty and half in appeal, into the still 
 sky, as though they had struggled out of the 
 world, and yet desired a further blessing, the 
 contrast between their meek and rugged pa- 
 tience and the noisy, dusty crowd of shameless 
 and indifferent tourists, that circulated among 
 the green valleys, like a poisonous fluid in the 
 veins of the wholesome mountains. They 
 brought a kind of a blight upon the place ; and 
 yet they were harmless, inquisitive people, 
 tempted thither, most of them by fashion, a 
 few perhaps by a feeble love of beauty, and 
 only desirous to bring their own standard of 
 comforts with them. The world seemed out 
 of joint ; the radical ugliness and baseness of 
 man an insult to the purity and sweetness of 
 nature.
 
 On the Fell 379 
 
 Hugh walked back, in a close and heavy after- 
 noon, across the fell, with these thoughts strug- 
 gling together in his heart. The valley was 
 breathlessly still, and the flies buzzed round him 
 as he disturbed them from the bracken. The 
 whole world looked so sweet and noble, that it 
 was impossible not to think that it was moulded 
 and designed by a Will of unutterable gracious- 
 ness and beauty. From the top, beside a little 
 crag full of clinging trees, that held on tena- 
 ciously to the crevices and ledges, with so per- 
 fect an accommodation to their precarious sit- 
 uation, Hugh surveyed the wide valleys, and 
 saw the smoke ascend from hamlets and houses, 
 the lake as still as a mirror, while the shadows 
 lengthened on the hills, which seemed indeed to 
 change their very shapes by delicate gradations. 
 It looked perfectly peaceful and serene. Yet 
 in how many houses were there unquiet and suf- 
 fering hearts, waiting in vain for respite or re- 
 lease ! The rjain of the world pressed_ heavily 
 upon Hugh ; it seemed that if he could have 
 breathed out his life there upon the hill-top 
 among the fern, to mingle with the incense of 
 the evening, that would be best ; and yet even 
 while he thought it, there seemed to contend 
 with his sadness an immense desire for joy, for 
 life; how many beautiful things there were to 
 see, to hear, to feel, to say ; to be loved, to be
 
 3^0 Beside Still Waters 
 
 needed how Hugh craved for that ! While 
 he sat, there alighted on his knee, with much 
 deliberation, a dry, varnished-looking, orange- 
 banded fly, which might have almost been 
 turned out of a manufactory a moment before. 
 It sent out a thin and musical buzzing, as it 
 cleaned its brown large-eyed head industriously 
 with its long legs. It seemed to wish to sit 
 with Hugh ; and again and again, after a short 
 flight, it returned to the same place. What was 
 the meaning of this tiny, definite life, with its 
 short space of sun and shade, made with so 
 curious and elaborate an art, so whimsically 
 adorned and glorified ? Here again he was 
 touched close by the impenetrable mystery of 
 things. But presently the cheerful and com- 
 placent creature flew off on some secret errand, 
 and Hugh was left alone again. 
 
 He descended swiftly into the valley ; the 
 road was full of dust. The vehicles, full of 
 chattering, smoking, vacuous persons were 
 speeding home. The hands of many were full 
 of poor fading flowers, torn from lawn and ledge 
 to please a momentary whim. Yet beside the 
 road slid the clear stream over its shingle, pass- 
 ing from brisk cascades into dark and silent 
 pools, fringed with rich water-plants, the trees 
 bowing over the water. How swiftly one 
 passed from disgust and ugliness into unimag-
 
 Peace 381 
 
 ined peace ! It was all going forwards, all 
 changing, all tending to some unknown goal. 
 
 Hugh found his host sitting on the terrace, 
 under a leafy sycamore, a perfect picture of jioly 
 age and serenity. He listened to the recital of 
 HughVlitHe adventures with a smile, and said 
 that he had often walked over the fell in the old 
 days, but did not suppose he would ever see it 
 again. " I am just waiting for my release," he 
 said, with a little nod of his head ; " every time 
 that I sit here, I think it may very likely be 
 thejast." Hugh longed to ask him the secret 
 of this contented and passionless peace, but he 
 knew there could be no answer; it was the 
 kindly gift of God. 
 
 The sunset died away among the blue hill- 
 ranges, and a soft breeze began to stir among 
 the leaves of the sycamore overhead. A night- 
 jar sent out its liquid, reiterated note from the 
 heather, and a star climbed above the edge of 
 the dark hill. Here was peace enough, if he 
 could but reach it and seize it. Yet it softly 
 eluded his grasp, and seemed only to mock him 
 as unattainable. Should he ever seize it ? 
 There was no answer possible ; yet a message 
 seemed to come wistfully and timidly, flying 
 like a night-bird out of the wild woodland, as 
 though it would have settled near him , but it 
 left him with the same inextinguishable hunger
 
 382 Beside Still Waters 
 
 of the heart, that seemed to be increased rather 
 than fed by the fragrant incense of the garden, 
 the sight of the cool, glimmering paths, the pale 
 rock rising from the turf, the silent pool.
 
 XXXIX 
 
 HUGH was staying in the country with his 
 mother. It was a bright morning in the late 
 summer, and he had just walked out on to 
 the little gravel-sweep before the house, which 
 commanded~a view of a pleasant wooded valley 
 with a stream running through ; it was one of 
 those fresh days, with a light breeze rustling 
 the trees, when it seemed good to be alive ; 
 rain had fallen in the night, and had washed 
 the dust of a long drought off the trees ; some 
 soft aerial pigment seemed mingled with the air, 
 lending a rich lustre to everything ; the small 
 woods on the hillside opposite had a mellow 
 colour, and the pastures between were of radi- 
 ant and transparent freshness ; the little gusts 
 whirled over the woodland, turning the under 
 sides of the leaves up, and brightening the 
 whole with a dash of lighter green. 
 
 Just at this moment a telegram was put into 
 
 Hugh's hand, announcing the sudden death of 
 
 an elderly lady, who had been a good friend to 
 
 him for over twenty years. Death seemed to 
 
 383
 
 384 Beside Still Waters 
 
 be everywhere about him, and the bright scene 
 suddenly assumed an almost heartless aspect of 
 mirth ; but he put the thought from him, and 
 strove rather to feel that life and death rejoice 
 together. 
 
 Later in the day he heard more particu- 
 lars. His friend was a wealthy woman who 
 had lived a very quiet life for many years 
 in a pleasant country-house. She had often 
 spoken to Hugh of her fear of a long and 
 tedious illness, wearing alike to both the suf- 
 ferer and those in attendance, when the mind 
 may become fretful, fearful, and impatient in 
 the last scene, just when one most desires 
 that the latest memories of one's life may be 
 cheerful, brave, and serene. Her prayer had 
 been very tenderly answered ; she had been 
 ailing of late ; but she had been sitting talking 
 in her drawing-room the day before, to a quiet 
 family group, when she had been seized with a 
 sudden faintness, and had died gently, in a few 
 minutes, smiling palely, and probably not even 
 knowing that she was in any sort of danger. 
 
 Hugh spent the day mostly in solitude, and 
 retraced in tender thought the stages of their 
 long friendship. His friend had been a woman 
 of strong and marked individuality, who had 
 loved life, and had made many loyal friends. 
 She was intensely, almost morbidly, aware of
 
 A Friend 385 
 
 the suffering of the world, especially of animals ; 
 and Hugh remembered how she had once told 
 him that a shooting-party in the neighbouring 
 squire's woods had generally meant for her a 
 sleepless night, at the thought of wounded 
 birds and beasts suffering and bleeding the 
 long hours through, couched in the fern, faint 
 with pain, and wondering patiently what hard 
 thing had befallen them. She had been a wo- 
 man of strong preferences and prejudices, 
 marked likes and dislikes ; intensely critical of 
 others, even of those she loved best. Her 
 talk was lively, epigrammatic, and pungent ; 
 she was the daughter of a famous Whig house, 
 and had the strong aristocratical prejudices, 
 coupled with a theoretical belief in popular 
 equality, so often found in old Whig families. 
 But this superiority betrayed itself not in any 
 obvious arrogance or disdain, but in a high and 
 distinguished personal courtesy, that penetrated 
 as if by a subtle aroma all that she said or 
 did. Though careless of personal appearance, 
 with no grace of beauty, and wearing habitu- 
 ally the oldest clothes, she was yet indisputably 
 the first person in any society in which she 
 found herself. She was intensely reserved 
 about herself, her family, her possessions, and 
 her past ; but Hugh had an inkling that there 
 had been some deep disappointment in the 
 25
 
 386 Beside Still Waters 
 
 background, which had turned a passionately 
 affectionate nature into a fastidious and critical 
 temperament. She had a wonderful contralto 
 voice, and a real genius for music ; she could 
 rarely be persuaded to touch an instrument ; 
 but occasionally, with a small and familiar party, 
 she would sing a few old songs with a pas- 
 sion and a depth of melancholy feeling that 
 produced an almost physical thrill in her 
 audiences. She was of an indolent tempera- 
 ment, read little, never worked, had few phil- 
 anthropic or social instincts ; she was always 
 ready to talk, but was equally content to 
 spend long afternoons sitting alone before a 
 fire, just shielding her eyes from the blaze, 
 meditating with an intentness that seemed 
 as though she were revolving over and over 
 again some particular memory, some old and 
 sad problem for which she could find no 
 solution. Hugh used to think that she blamed 
 herself for something irreparable. 
 
 But her gift of humour, of incisive penetra- 
 tion, of serious enthusiasm, made it always re- 
 freshing to be with her; and Hugh found himself 
 reflecting that though it had been in many ways 
 so inarticulate and inactive a life, it yet seemed, 
 by virtue of a certain vivid quality, a certain 
 subdued fire, a life of imperishable worth. She 
 had been both generous and severe in her
 
 The Gate of Life 387 
 
 judgments ; but there had never been anything 
 tame or mild or weak about her. She had al- 
 ways known her own mind ; she yielded freely 
 to impulse without ever expressing regret or re- 
 pentance. Small as her circle had been, Hugh 
 yet felt that she had somehow affected the 
 world ; and yet he could indicate nothing that 
 she had accomplished, except for the fact that 
 she had been a kind of bracing influence in the 
 lives of all who had come near her. 
 
 Her last message to him had been an in- 
 tensely sympathetic letter of outspoken en- 
 couragement. She had heard that a severe 
 judgment had been passed upon Hugh's writ- 
 ings by a common friend. She knew that this 
 had been repeated to Hugh, and judged rightly 
 that it had hurt and wounded him. Her letter 
 was to the effect that the judgment was entirely 
 baseless, and that he was to pursue the line he 
 had taken up without any attempt to deviate 
 from it. It went to Hugh's heart that he had 
 made little effort of late, owing to circum- 
 stances and pressure of work, to see her; but 
 he knew that she was aware of his affection, 
 and he had never doubted hers. He felt, too, 
 that if there had been anything to forgive, any 
 shadow of dissatisfaction, it was forgiven in 
 that moment. Her death seemed somehow to 
 Hugh to be the strongest proof he had ever
 
 388 Beside Still Waters 
 
 received of the permanent identity of the soul; 
 it was impossible to think of her as not there ; 
 equally impossible was it to think of her as 
 wrapped in sleep, or even transformed to a heav- 
 enly meekness ; he could think of her, with per- 
 haps an added brightness of demeanour, at the 
 knowledge of how easy a thing after all had 
 been the passage she had feared, with the dark 
 eyes that he knew so well, like wells of fire in 
 the pale face, smiling almost disdainfully at the 
 thought that others should grieve for her ; she 
 was one whom it was impossible ever to com- 
 passionate, and Hugh could not compassionate 
 her now. She would have had no sort of tol- 
 erance for any melancholy or brooding grief; 
 she would desire to be tenderly remembered, 
 but she would have been utterly impatient of 
 the thought that any grief for her should 
 weaken or darken the outlook of her friends 
 upon the world. Hugh resolved, with a great 
 flood of strong love for his friend, that he would 
 grieve for her as she would have had him grieve, 
 as though they were but separated for a little. 
 She had left, he learned, the most decisive di- 
 rection that no one should be summoned to her 
 funeral : that was so like .her brave, sensible 
 nature; she desired the grief for her to be whole- 
 some and temperate grief, with no lingering 
 over the sad accidents of mortality. Hugh felt
 
 The Gate of Lile 389 
 
 the strong bond of friendship, that had existed 
 between them, grow and blossom into a vigor- 
 ous and enduring love. She seemed close 
 beside him all that day, approving his efforts 
 after a joyful tranquillity. He could almost see 
 her, if he sank for a moment into a tearful sor- 
 sow, casting upward that impatient look he 
 knew so well, if any instance of human weakness 
 were related in her presence. 
 
 And thus the death of his old friend seemed, 
 as the day drew on, to have brought a strange 
 brightness into his life, by making the darkless 
 terrible, the unknown more familiar. She was 
 there, with the same brave courtesy, the same 
 wholesome scorn, the same humorous decisive- 
 ness ; and though the thought of the gap came 
 like an ache into his mind, again and again, he 
 resolved that he would not yield to ineffectual 
 sadness ; but that he would be worthy of the 
 friendship which she had given him, not easily, 
 he remembered, but after long testing and 
 weighing his character ; and that he would be 
 faithful he prayed that he might be that to 
 so pure and generous a gift.
 
 XL 
 
 IN Hugh's temperament, sensitive and eager 
 as it was, there was a strong tendency to live 
 in the future and in the past rather than in the 
 present. In the past, he realised, he could live 
 without dismay, and without languor, because 
 the mind has so extraordinary a power of sift- 
 ing its memories, of throwing away and dis- 
 regarding all that is sordid, ugly, and base, and 
 retaining only the finest gold. But there was 
 ajdanger of dwelling two much upon the future, 
 because the anxious mind, fertile in imagination, 
 was so apt to weave for itself pictures of dis- 
 couragement and failure, sad dilemmas, dreary 
 dishonours, calamities, shadows, woes. How 
 often had the thought of what might be in 
 .store clouded the pure sunshine of some bright 
 day of summer ; how often had the thought of 
 isolation, of loss, of bereavement, hung like a 
 cloud between himself and his intercourse even 
 with those whom he most feared to lose ! He 
 thought sometimes of that sad and yet bracing 
 sentiment, uttered by one whose life had been 
 390
 
 A Funeral Pomp 39 l 
 
 / 
 
 filled with every delight that wealth, guided 
 by cultivated taste, could purchase. " My life," 
 said this wearied man, " has been clouded by 
 troubles, most of which never happened." But 
 even apart from the sorrows which he knew 
 might or might not befall him, there was 
 one darkest shadow, the shadow of death, the 
 cessation of beloved energies, of delightful 
 prospects, of the sweet interchange of friend- 
 ship, of the bright and brave things of life. 
 Could one, he asked himself, ever come to re- 
 gard death as a natural, a beautiful thing, a 
 delicious resting from life, an appointed goal ? 
 It was the one thing certain and inevitable, the 
 last terror, the final silence, which it seemed 
 nothing could break. 
 
 The thought came to him with a deep insist- 
 ence on a day when the funeral services for a 
 great personage, called away without a single 
 warning, were held in the chapel of his own 
 college. There was a great gathering of friends 
 and residents. The long procession, blackrobed 
 and bareheaded, with the chilly winter sun 
 shining down on the court, wound slowly 
 through the college buildings, with many halts, 
 and at last entered the great chapel, the organ 
 playing softly a melody of pathetic grief, in 
 which the sad revolt of human hearts that had 
 loved life and the warm, kind world, made
 
 39 2 Beside Still Waters 
 
 itself heard. They passed to their places, and 
 then very slowly and heavily the sad and 
 helpless burden, the coffin, veiled and palled, 
 freighted with the rich scents of the dying 
 flowers that lay in stainless purity upon it, 
 was borne to its place. The life of their brother 
 had been a very useful, happy, and innocent 
 life, full of quiet energies, of simple activi- 
 ties, of refined pleasures. There seemed no 
 need for its suspension. The very suddenness 
 of the summons had been a beautiful and 
 kindly thing, attended by no fears and little 
 suffering but kindly, only upon the sup- 
 position that it was necessary. The holy 
 service proceeded, the voice of old human 
 sorrow, of tender hope, of ardent faith, thrill- 
 ing through the mournful words. It was well, 
 no doubt, as acquiescence was inevitable, to 
 acquiesce as patiently, even as eagerly as 
 possible. But there were two alternatives : 
 one that the beloved life had gone out utterly, 
 as an expiring flame ; if so was it not well 
 to know it, so that one might frame one's 
 life upon that sad knowledge? yet the heart 
 could not bear to think it ; and then Faith 
 seemed to step in, dimly smiling, finger 
 on lip, and pointing upwards. If that smile, 
 that pointing hand, meant anything, why 
 could there not be sent some hint of cer-
 
 Fear 393 
 
 tainty that the sweet, fragrant life that was 
 over, so knit up with love and friendship 
 and regard, had a further, a serener future 
 awaiting it? The question was, did such a 
 scene as was then enacted hold any real 
 and vital message of hope for the soul ; or 
 was it a thing to turn the back upon, to forget, 
 to banish, as merely casting a shadow upon the 
 joyful energies of life? 
 
 It seemed to Hugh, when the sad rites were 
 done, and he was left alone, that there was but 
 one solution possible the thought shaped itself 
 dimly and wistfully out of the dark that there 
 was one element that was out of place, one ele- 
 ment over which the mind had a certain power, 
 that one must resolve to exorcise and cast out 
 the element of fear. And yet fear, that unman- 
 ning, abominable thing, that struck the light 
 out of life, that made one incapable of energy 
 and activity alike, was that, too, not a dark gift 
 from the Father's hand? Had it a purifying, a 
 restoring influence? It seemed to Hugh that 
 it had none. Yet why was it made so terribly 
 easy, so insupportably natural, if it had not its 
 place in the great economy of God ? Was not 
 this the darkest of dark dilemmas? Slowly re- 
 flecting on it, Hugh seemed to see that fear had 
 one effect of good about it ; it was one of those 
 things, and alas they were many, that seemed
 
 394 Beside Still Waters 
 
 strewn about us only that we might learn to tri- 
 umph over them. /'For one who really believed 
 in the absolutely infinite and all-embracingwill 
 of God, there was no room for fear at all. j( If me 
 things of life were sent wisely, tenderly," and 
 graciously, not care, not suffering, not even 
 death admitted of any questioning ; and yet 
 fear seemed a deeper, more instinctive thing 
 than reasoning itself. The very fear of non- 
 existence, in the light of reason, seemed a 
 wholly unreal thing. No shadow of it attached 
 to the long dark years of the world, which had 
 passed before one's own conscious life began. 
 One could look back in the pages of history to 
 the ancient pageant of the world in which one 
 had no part, and not feel one's self wronged or 
 I misused in having had no share in those vivid 
 ' things. Why should we regard a past in which 
 we had had no conscious part with such a blithe 
 serenity, and yet look forward to that future in 
 which, for all we knew, we could have no part 
 either, with such an envious despair? The 
 thought was unreasonable enough, but it was 
 there. But it was possible, by thus boldly 
 and tranquilly confronting the problem, to 
 diminish the pressure of the shadow. A man 
 could throw himself, could he not, in utter con- 
 fidence before the feet of God, claiming nothing, 
 demanding nothing but the sense of perfect
 
 The Daily Manna 395 
 
 acquiescence in His will and deed? The secret 
 again was, not to forecast and forebode, but to 
 live in the day and for the day, practising labour, 
 kindliness, gentleness, peace. That was a true 
 image, the image of those old pilgrims who 
 gathered the manna for their daily use ; little or 
 much, it sufficed ; and no one might, through 
 indolence or prudence, evade the daily labour 
 by laying up a store ; the store vanished in 
 corruption. So it was with all ambitious 
 dreams, all attempts to lay a jealous hand on 
 what might be ; it was that which poisoned life. 
 Those far-reaching plans, those hopes of ease 
 and glory, that wealth laid up for many years, 
 they were the very substance of decay. Even 
 fear itself must be accepted, when it was whole- 
 somely and inevitably there ; but not amplified, 
 added to, dwelt upon. How rarely was one in 
 doubt about the next, the immediate duty. 
 And one could surely win^by patient practice, 
 by resolute effort, the power of casting out of 
 the moment the shadow of the uneasy days 
 ahead. How simple, how brief those very un- 
 easinesses turned out to be ! Things were never 
 as bad as one feared, ever easier than one had 
 hoped. It was a false prudence, a foolish cal- 
 culation, to think that by picturing the terrors 
 of a crisis one made it easier when it came ; just 
 as one so sadly discounted joys by anticipation
 
 39 6 Beside Still Waters 
 
 and found them hollow, disappointing husks 
 when they lay open in the hand. 
 
 Hugh rose from his thoughts and walked to 
 the window. The day was dying, robed in a sol- 
 emn pomp. The fields were shrouded in mist 
 but the cloud-rims in the west were touched 
 with intense edges of gold ; Hugh thought of 
 the little churchyard that lay beyond those 
 trees, where, under the raw mould heaped up so 
 mutely, under the old wall, beside the yew-tree, 
 in the shadow of the chancel-gable, lay the per- 
 ishing vesture of the spirit of his friend, ban- 
 ished from light and warmth to his last cold 
 house. How lonely, how desolate it seemed ; 
 and the mourners, too, sitting in the dreary 
 rooms, with the agony of the gap upon them, 
 the empty chair, the silent voice, the folded 
 papers, the closed books ! How could God 
 atone for all that, even though He made all 
 things new? It was not what was new, but 
 what was old, for which one craved ; that long 
 perspective of summer mornings, of pacings to 
 and fro, of happy work, of firelit evenings, of 
 talk, of laughter, the groups breaking up and 
 reforming how little one had guessed and val- 
 ued the joy, the content, the blessing of them at 
 the time ! In the midst of them, one was reach- 
 ing forwards, restlessly and vainly, to the fut- 
 ure that was to be richer yet. Then the future
 
 The Lapsing Moment 397 
 
 became the happy present, and still one had 
 leaned forward. How idle it was ! even while he 
 waited and gazed, the light of evening was gone, 
 the clouds were lustreless and wan, the sunset, 
 that band of golden light, was flying softly, a 
 girdle of beauty round the world ; but the twi- 
 light and the night had their beauty, too, their 
 peace, their refreshment, their calm. 
 
 J
 
 XLI 
 
 IT must not be thought that because this lit- 
 tle book attempts to trace the more secret and 
 solitary thoughts of Hugh, as his soul took 
 shape under the silent influences of pensive re- 
 flection, that the current of his life was all passed 
 in lonely speculation. He had a definite place 
 in the world, and mjxejLjwitJLJiis fellow-men, 
 withjK) jiyoidance of the little cares of daily 
 life. He only tended, as solitude became more 
 dear to him, and as the thoughts that he loved 
 best rose more swiftly and vividly about him, 
 to frame his life, as far as he could, upon simple 
 and unambitious lines. 
 
 In this he acted according to the dictates of 
 a kind of intuition. It was useless, he felt, to 
 analyse motives ; it was impossible to discover 
 how much was disinterestedness, how much un- 
 worldliness, how much the pursuit of truth, how 
 much the avoidance of anxious responsibility, 
 how much pure indolence. He was quite ready 
 to believe that a certain amount of the lat- 
 ter came in, though Hugh was not indolent in 
 398
 
 Following the Light 399 
 
 the ordinary sense of the word. He was 
 incapable of pure idling ; but he was also in- 
 capable of carrying out prolonged and patient 
 labour, unless he was keenly interested in an 
 object; and the fact thatjhe found the renun- jj 
 ciation of ambitions so easy and simple a thing 
 was a sufficient proof to him that his interest 
 in mundane things was not very vital. But 
 Hugh above all things desired to have no illu- 
 sions about himself; and he was saved from 
 personal vanity not so much by humility of na- 
 ture as from a deep sense of the utter depend- 
 ence of all created things on their Creator. He 
 did not look upon his own powers, his own good 
 qualities, as redounding in anyway to his credit, 
 but as the gift of God. He never fell into the 
 error of imagining himself to have achieved 
 anything by his own ability or originality, but 
 only as the outcome of a desire implanted in 
 him by God, who had also furnished him with 
 the requisite perseverance to carry them out. 
 He could not lay his finger on any single quality, 
 and say that he had of his own effort im- 
 proved it. And, in studying the lives and tem- 
 peraments of others, he did not think of their 
 achievements as things which they had accom- 
 plished ; but rather as a sign of the fuller great- 
 ness of glory which had been revealed to them. 
 Life thus became to him a following of light ;
 
 400 Beside Still Waters 
 
 he desired to know his own limitations, not be- 
 cause of the interest of them, but as indicating 
 to him more clearly what he might undertake. 
 It was a curious proof to him of the appropriate- 
 / ness of each man's conditions and environment 
 / to his own particular nature, when he reflected 
 that no one whom he had ever known, however 
 V unhappy, however faulty, would ..ever .willingly 
 X have exchanged identities with any one else. 
 People desired to be rid of definite afflictions, 
 definite faults ; they desired and envied particu- 
 lar qualities, particular advantages that others 
 possessed, but he could not imagine that any 
 one in the world would exchange any one 
 else's identity for his own ; one would like per- 
 haps to be in another's place, and this was 
 generally accompanied by a feeling that one 
 would be able to make a much better thing of 
 another's sources of happiness and enjoyment, 
 than the person whose prosperity or ability one 
 envied seemed to make. But he could hardly 
 conceive of any extremity of despair so great as 
 to make a human being willing to accept the lot 
 of another in its entirety. Eye_n. one's own 
 faults and limitations were dear to one ; the 
 whole thing character, circumstances, rela- 
 tions with others, position made up to each 
 person the most interesting problem in the 
 world; and this immense consciousness of sepa-
 
 Sincerity 401 
 
 rateness ; even of essential superiority, was per- 
 haps the strongest argument that Hugh knew in 
 favour of the preservation of a personal identity 
 after death. 
 
 Hugh then found himself in this position : he 
 was no longer young, but he seemed to him- 
 self to have retained the best part of youth, 
 its openness to new impressions, its zest, its 
 sense of the momentousness of occasions, its 
 hopefulness; he found himself with duties 
 which he felt himself capable of discharging; 
 with a trained literary instinct and a real 
 power of expression ; even if he had not hith- 
 erto produced any memorable work, he felt that 
 he was equipped for the task, if only some 
 great and congenial theme presented itself 
 to his mind. He found himself with a 
 small circle of friends, with a competence, 
 sufficient for his simple needs; day by day! 
 there opened upon his mind ideas, thoughts,' 
 and prospects of ever-increasing mystery and 
 beauty ; as to his character and temperament, he 
 found himself desiring to empty himself of all 
 extraneous elements, all conventional traditions > 
 all adopted ideas; his idea of life indeed was 
 that it was an educative process, and that the 
 further that the soul could advance upon the 
 path of self-knowledge and sincerity, the more } 
 that it could cast away all the things that were 
 
 26
 
 402 Beside Still Waters 
 
 not of its essence, the better prepared one 
 was to be filled with the divine wisdom. The 
 deeper that he plunged into the consideration 
 of the mysterious conditions and laws which 
 surrounded him, the greater the mystery be- 
 came ; but instead of becoming more hopeless, it 
 seemed to him that the dawn appeared to 
 brighten every moment, as one came closer to 
 the appreciation of one's own ignorance, weak- 
 ness and humility. Instead of drawing nearer to 
 despair, he drew every day nearer to a tender 
 simplicity, a larger if more distant hope, an in- 
 tenser desire to be at one with the vast Will 
 that had set him where he was, and that denied 
 him as yet a knowledge of the secret. As he 
 ascended with slow steps into the dark moun- 
 tain of life, the kingdoms of the world became 
 more remote, the noise of their shouting more 
 faint. He thought, with no compassion, but 
 with a wondering tenderness, of the busy 
 throng beneath ; but he saw that, one by one, 
 spirits smitten with the divine hope slipped 
 from that noisy world, and, like himself, began 
 to climb the solitary hills. What lay on the 
 other side ? That he could not even guess ; 
 but he had a belief in the richness, the large- 
 ness of the mind of God ; and he saw as in 
 a vision the day breaking on a purer and 
 sweeter world, full of great surprises, mighty
 
 A Better World 403 
 
 thoughts, pure joys ; he knew not whether it 
 was near or far, but something in his heart told 
 him that it was assuredly there ! *s
 
 XLII 
 
 How swiftly the summer melted into the 
 autumn ! the old lime-trees in the college court 
 were soon all gold ; how bravely that gold seemed 
 to enrich the heart, on the still, clear, fresh morn- 
 ings of St. Luke's summer ! That wise physician 
 of souls has indeed had set aside for him the 
 most inspiriting, the most healing days of the 
 year, days of tonic coolness, of invigorating 
 colour, of bracing sun ; and then the winter 
 closes in, when light is short, and the sun is low 
 and cold ; when the eye is grateful for the rich 
 brown of naked fields, leafless woods, and misty 
 distances. Yet there is a solemn charm about 
 the darkening day, when the sun sets over the 
 wide plain rolled in smoky vapours and gilded 
 banks of cloud ; and then there is the long fire- 
 lit evening to follow, when books give up their 
 secrets and talk is easiest. 
 
 The summer, for all its enervating heat, its 
 
 piercing light, was the time, so Hugh thought, 
 
 for reflection. In winter the mind is often 
 
 sunk in a sort of comfortable drowsiness, and 
 
 404
 
 Aconite 405 
 
 hibernates within its secure cell. Hugh found 
 the activities of work very absorbing in those 
 darker days: his thoughts took on a more 
 placid, more contented tinge. Early in the 
 year he walked alone along the Backs at Cam- 
 bridge. He passed the great romantic gate- 
 posts of St. John's, with the elms of the high 
 garden towering over them, his mind occu- 
 pied with a hundred small designs. It was a 
 shock of inexpressible surprise, as he passed by 
 the clear stream that runs over its sandy shal- 
 lows, and feeds the garden moats, to see that 
 in the Wilderness the ground was bright with 
 the round heads of the yellow aconite, the 
 first flower to hear the message of spring. 
 The appearance of that brave and hardy 
 flower in that particular place had a peculiar 
 and moving association for Hugh. More than 
 twenty years before, in his undergraduate 
 days, in a time of deep perplexity of mind, he 
 had walked that way on a bright Sunday 
 morning, his young heart burdened with sor- 
 rowful preoccupation. How hard those youth- 
 ful griefs had been to bear ! they were so 
 unfamiliar, they seemed so irreparably over- 
 whelming ; one had not learned to look over 
 them or through them ; they darkened the 
 present, they hung like a black cloud over the 
 future. How fantastic, how exaggerated those
 
 406 Beside Still Waters 
 
 woes had been, and yet how unbearably real ! 
 He had stood, he remembered, to watch the 
 mild sunlight strike in soft shafts among the 
 trees. The hardy blossoms, cold and scentless, 
 but so unmistakably alive, had given him a deep 
 message of hope, a thrill of expectation. He 
 had gone back, he remembered, and in a glow 
 of impassioned emotion had written a little 
 poem on the theme, in a locked note-book, to 
 which he confided his inmost thoughts. He 
 could recall some of the poor stanzas still, so 
 worthless in expression, yet with so fiery a 
 heart. 
 
 The thought of the long intervening years 
 came back to Hugh with a sense of wonder 
 and gratitude. He had half expected then, he 
 remembered, that some great experience would 
 perhaps come to him, and lift him out of his 
 shadowed thoughts, his vague regrets. That 
 great experience had not befallen him, but 
 how far more wisely and tenderly he had been 
 dealt with instead ! Experience had been 
 lavished upon him ; he had gained interest, 
 he had practised activity, and he had found 
 patience and hope by the way. He knew no 
 more than he knew then of the great and dim 
 design that lay behind the world, and now he 
 hardly desired to know. He had been led, he
 
 A Calm 407 
 
 had been guided, with a perfect tenderness, 
 a deliberate love. The only lost hours, after 
 all, had been the hours which he had given to 
 anxiety and doubt, to ambition and desire. 
 When the moment had come, which he had 
 heavily anticipated, there had never been any 
 question as to how he should act ; and yet he 
 had not been a mere puppet moved by forces 
 outside his control. He could not harmonise 
 the sense of guidance with the sense of free- 
 dom, and yet both had undoubtedly been 
 there. He had been dealt with both frankly 
 and tenderly ; not saved from fruitful mistakes, 
 not forbidden to wander; and yet his mistakes 
 had never been permitted to be irreparable, his 
 wanderings had taught him to desire the road 
 rather than to dread the desert. 
 
 A great sense of tranquillity and peace 
 settled down upon his spirit. He cast himself 
 in an utter dependence upon the mighty will 
 of the Father ; and in that calm of thought 
 his little cares, and they were many, faded like 
 wreaths of steam cast abroad upon the air. 
 To be sincere and loving and quiet, that was 
 the ineffable secret ; not to scheme for fame, 
 or influence or even for usefulness ; to receive 
 as in a channel the strength and sweetness 
 of God.
 
 408 Beside Still Waters 
 
 A bird hidden in a dark yew-tree began 
 softly to flute, in that still afternoon, a little 
 song that seemed like a prayer for bright days 
 and leafy trees and embowered greenness; a 
 prayer that should be certainly answered, and 
 the fulfilment of which should be dearer 
 for the delay. Hugh knew in that moment 
 that the life he had lived and would live was, 
 in its barreness and bleakness, its veiling cloud, 
 its chilly airs, but the preface to some vast and 
 glorious springtime of the spirit, when hill and 
 valley should break together into sunlit bloom, 
 when the trees should be clothed with leaf, 
 when birds should sing clear for joy, and the 
 soul should be utterly satisfied. The old poet 
 had said that the saddest thing was to remem- 
 ber happy days in hours of sorrow ; but to 
 remember the dreary days in a season of calm 
 content, what joy could be compared to that? 
 His heart was slowly filled, as a cup with wine, 
 with an unutterable hope ; but he desired no 
 longer that some great thing should come to 
 him, which should exalt him above his fellows 
 and make him envied and admired. Rather 
 should the humblest and the lowest place suf- 
 fice, some corner of life which he should deck, 
 and tend, and keep bright and sweet ; a few 
 hands to grasp, a few hearts to encourage ; and
 
 The Dropping Veil 409 
 
 even so to do that with no set purpose, but 
 by merely letting the gentle joy of the soul 
 overflow, like a spring of brimming waters, fed 
 from high hills of faith. 
 
 And so, like a figure that passes down a cor- 
 ridor and enters at an open door, Hugh passes 
 from our sight. He mingles with his fellows, 
 he goes to and fro, he speaks and he is 
 silent, he smiles and weeps ; he may not be 
 distinguished from other men, and there lies 
 his best happiness, because he is waiting upon 
 God. His life may be long or short ; he may 
 mix with the crowd or sit solitary. If he dif- 
 fers at all from others, it is in this, that he 
 desires no costly thread of gold, no bright- 
 hued skein that he may weave his texture of 
 life. Upon that tapestry will be depicted no 
 knight in shining armour; no nymphs with 
 floating vestures, no paradise of bowers ; rather 
 dim hills and cloud-hung valleys, and the dark- 
 ness of haunted groves; with one figure of 
 shadowy hue in sober raiment, walking ear- 
 nestly as one that has a note of the way ; he 
 would desire nothing but what may uphold 
 him ; he would fear nothing but what may 
 stain him; he would shun the company of none 
 who need him ; he would clasp the hand of 
 any gentle-hearted pilgrim. So would he walk
 
 410 Beside Still Waters 
 
 in quietness to the dim valley and the dark 
 stream, believing that the Father has a place 
 and a work and a joy for the smallest thing 
 that His hands have made. 
 
 THE END
 
 A Selection from the 
 Catalogue of 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Complete Catalogues sent 
 on application
 
 By 
 
 ARTHUR C. BENSON ("T. B.") 
 (Eighth Impression) 
 
 From a College Window 
 
 A collection of essays in which the reader 
 is brought under the spell of a singularly 
 interesting and attractive personality. The 
 book is a frank outpouring of the author's 
 intimate thoughts, a frank expression of 
 what he prizes in life and what he expects 
 from life. Mr. Benson's papers are character- 
 ized by the intimacy of self-revelation and 
 allusiveness and sense of overflow that 
 belong to the familiar essay at its best 
 
 " Mr. Benson has written nothing equal to this mellow and 
 full-flavored book. From cover to cover it is packed with per- 
 sonality; from phrase to phrase it reveals a thoroughly sincere 
 and unaffected effort of self-expression; full-orbed and four- 
 square, it is a piece of true and simple literature." 
 
 London Chronicle, 
 
 (Eighth Impression) 
 
 The Upton Letters 
 
 "A piece of real literature of the highest order, beautiful and 
 fragrant. To review the book adequately is impossible. . . . 
 It is in truth a precious thing." Week's Survey. 
 
 "A book that we have read andjaggadJf only for the sake of 
 its delicious flavor. There has Been nothing so good of its 
 kind since the Etchingham Letters. The letters are beautiful, 
 quiet, and wise, dealing with deep things in a dignified way." 
 
 Christian Register. 
 Crown 8vo. Each, $1.25 net. 
 
 Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 New York London
 
 Shelburne Essays 
 
 By Paul Elmer More 
 
 4 vofs. Crown octavo. 
 Sold separately. Net, $1.25. (By mail, $1.35) 
 
 Contents 
 
 FIRST SERIES : A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau The Soli- 
 tude of Nathaniel Hawthorne The Origins of Haw- 
 thorne and Poe The Influence of Emerson The Spirit 
 of Carlyle The Science of English Verse Arthur 
 Sympnds : The Two Illusions The Epic of Ireland 
 Two Poets of the Irish Movement Tolstoy } or, The 
 Ancient Feud between Philosophy and Art The Re- 
 ligious Ground of Humanitarianism. 
 
 SECOND SERIES : Elizabethan Sonnets Shakespeare's Son- 
 nets Lafcadio Hearn The First Complete Edition of 
 Hazlitt Charles Lamb Kipling and FitzGerald 
 George Crabbe The Novels of George Meredith 
 Hawthorne : Looking before and after Delphi and 
 Greek Literature Nemesis ; or, The Divine Envy. 
 
 THIRD SERIES : The Correspondence of William Cowper - 
 Whittier the Poet The Centenary of Sainte-Beuve 
 The Scotch Novels and Scotch History Swinburne- 
 Christina Rossetti Why is Browning Popular? A Note 
 on Byron's "Don Juan" Laurence Sterne J. Henry 
 Shorthouse The Quest. 
 
 FOURTH SERIES : The Vicar of Morwenstow Fanny Bur- 
 ney A Note on " Daddy" Crisp George Herbert John 
 Keats Benjamin Franklin Charles Lamb Again Walt 
 Whitman William Blake The Letters of Horace Wai- 
 pole The Theme of Paradise Lost.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 x>k Slip-25m-9,'60 (.2,93684)4280
 
 L 005 659 402 1 
 
 . 
 
 $"/ 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PQ 
 U099 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIL 
 
 -....- J I III! II II I. 
 
 A 001 165467 o