Were one to look at the literary journals only, and thereafter judge of
the time, it would be easy to persuade oneself that civilization had
indeed made great and solid progress, and that the world stood at a very
hopeful stage of enlightenment.  Week after week, I glance over these
pages of crowded advertisement; I see a great many publishing-houses
zealously active in putting forth every kind of book, new and old; I see
names innumerable of workers in every branch of literature.  Much that is
announced declares itself at once of merely ephemeral import, or even of
no import at all; but what masses of print which invite the attention of
thoughtful or studious folk!  To the multitude is offered a long
succession of classic authors, in beautiful form, at a minimum cost;
never were such treasures so cheaply and so gracefully set before all who
can prize them.  For the wealthy, there are volumes magnificent; lordly
editions; works of art whereon have been lavished care and skill and
expense incalculable.  Here is exhibited the learning of the whole world
and of all the ages; be a man's study what it will, in these columns, at
one time or another he shall find that which appeals to him.  Here are
labours of the erudite, exercised on every subject that falls within
learning's scope.  Science brings forth its newest discoveries in earth
and heaven; it speaks to the philosopher in his solitude, and to the
crowd in the market-place.  Curious pursuits of the mind at leisure are
represented in publications numberless; trifles and oddities of
intellectual savour; gatherings from every byway of human interest.  For
other moods there are the fabulists; to tell truth, they commonly hold
the place of honour in these varied lists.  Who shall count them?  Who
shall calculate their readers?  Builders of verse are many; yet the
observer will note that contemporary poets have but an inconspicuous
standing in this index of the public taste.  Travel, on the other hand,
is largely represented; the general appetite for information about lands
remote would appear to be only less keen than for the adventures of
romance.

With these pages before one's eyes, must one not needs believe that
things of the mind are a prime concern of our day?  Who are the
purchasers of these volumes ever pouring from the press?  How is it
possible for so great a commerce to flourish save as a consequence of
national eagerness in this intellectual domain?  Surely one must take for
granted that throughout the land, in town and country, private libraries
are growing apace; that by the people at large a great deal of time is
devoted to reading; that literary ambition is one of the commonest spurs
to effort?

It is the truth.  All this may be said of contemporary England.  But is
it enough to set one's mind at ease regarding the outlook of our
civilization?

Two things must be remembered.  However considerable this literary
traffic, regarded by itself, it is relatively of small extent.  And, in
the second place, literary activity is by no means an invariable proof of
that mental attitude which marks the truly civilized man.

Lay aside the "literary organ," which appears once a week, and take up
the newspaper, which comes forth every day, morning and evening.  Here
you get the true proportion of things.  Read your daily news-sheet--that
which costs threepence or that which costs a halfpenny--and muse upon the
impression it leaves.  It may be that a few books are "noticed"; granting
that the "notice" is in any way noticeable, compare the space it occupies
with that devoted to the material interests of life: you have a gauge of
the real importance of intellectual endeavour to the people at large.  No,
the public which reads, in any sense of the word worth considering, is
very, very small; the public which would feel no lack if all
book-printing ceased to-morrow, is enormous.  These announcements of
learned works which strike one as so encouraging, are addressed, as a
matter of fact, to a few thousand persons, scattered all over the English-
speaking world.  Many of the most valuable books slowly achieve the sale
of a few hundred copies.  Gather from all the ends of the British Empire
the men and women who purchase grave literature as a matter of course,
who habitually seek it in public libraries, in short who regard it as a
necessity of life, and I am much mistaken if they could not comfortably
assemble in the Albert Hall.

But even granting this, is it not an obvious fact that our age tends to
the civilized habit of mind, as displayed in a love for intellectual
things?  Was there ever a time which saw the literature of knowledge and
of the emotions so widely distributed?  Does not the minority of the
truly intelligent exercise a vast and profound influence?  Does it not in
truth lead the way, however slowly and irregularly the multitude may
follow?

I should like to believe it.  When gloomy evidence is thrust upon me, I
often say to myself: Think of the frequency of the reasonable man; think
of him everywhere labouring to spread the light; how is it possible that
such efforts should be overborne by forces of blind brutality, now that
the human race has got so far?--Yes, yes; but this mortal whom I caress
as reasonable, as enlightened and enlightening, this author,
investigator, lecturer, or studious gentleman, to whose coat-tails I
cling, does he always represent justice and peace, sweetness of manners,
purity of life--all the things which makes for true civilization?  Here
is a fallacy of bookish thought.  Experience offers proof on every hand
that vigorous mental life may be but one side of a personality, of which
the other is moral barbarism.  A man may be a fine archaeologist, and yet
have no sympathy with human ideals.  The historian, the biographer, even
the poet, may be a money-market gambler, a social toady, a clamorous
Chauvinist, or an unscrupulous wire-puller.  As for "leaders of science,"
what optimist will dare to proclaim them on the side of the gentle
virtues?  And if one must needs think in this way of those who stand
forth, professed instructors and inspirers, what of those who merely
listen?  The reading-public--oh, the reading-public!  Hardly will a
prudent statistician venture to declare that one in every score of those
who actually read sterling books do so with comprehension of their
author.  These dainty series of noble and delightful works, which have so
seemingly wide an acceptance, think you they vouch for true appreciation
in all who buy them?  Remember those who purchase to follow the fashion,
to impose upon their neighbour, or even to flatter themselves; think of
those who wish to make cheap presents, and those who are merely pleased
by the outer aspect of the volume.  Above all, bear in mind that busy
throng whose zeal is according neither to knowledge nor to conviction,
the host of the half-educated, characteristic and peril of our time.
They, indeed, purchase and purchase largely.  Heaven forbid that I should
not recognize the few among them whose bent of brain and of conscience
justifies their fervour; to such--the ten in ten thousand--be all aid and
brotherly solace!  But the glib many, the perky mispronouncers of titles
and of authors' names, the twanging murderers of rhythm, the maulers of
the uncut edge at sixpence extra, the ready-reckoners of bibliopolic
discount--am I to see in these a witness of my hope for the century to
come?

I am told that their semi-education will be integrated.  We are in a
transition stage, between the bad old time when only a few had academic
privileges, and that happy future which will see all men liberally
instructed.  Unfortunately for this argument, education is a thing of
which only the few are capable; teach as you will, only a small
percentage will profit by your most zealous energy.  On an ungenerous
soil it is vain to look for rich crops.  Your average mortal will be your
average mortal still: and if he grow conscious of power, if he becomes
vocal and self-assertive, if he get into his hands all the material
resources of the country, why, you have a state of things such as at
present looms menacingly before every Englishman blessed--or cursed--with
an unpopular spirit.



XXIII.


Every morning when I awake, I thank heaven for silence.  This is my
orison.  I remember the London days when sleep was broken by clash and
clang, by roar and shriek, and when my first sense on returning to
consciousness was hatred of the life about me.  Noises of wood and metal,
clattering of wheels, banging of implements, jangling of bells--all such
things are bad enough, but worse still is the clamorous human voice.
Nothing on earth is more irritating to me than a bellow or scream of
idiot mirth, nothing more hateful than a shout or yell of brutal anger.
Were it possible, I would never again hear the utterance of a human
tongue, save from those few who are dear to me.

Here, wake at what hour I may, early or late, I lie amid gracious
stillness.  Perchance a horse's hoof rings rhythmically upon the road;
perhaps a dog barks from a neighbour farm; it may be that there comes the
far, soft murmur of a train from the other side of Exe; but these are
almost the only sounds that could force themselves upon my ear.  A voice,
at any time of the day, is the rarest thing.

But there is the rustle of branches in the morning breeze; there is the
music of a sunny shower against the window; there is the matin song of
birds.  Several times lately I have lain wakeful when there sounded the
first note of the earliest lark; it makes me almost glad of my restless
nights.  The only trouble that touches me in these moments is the thought
of my long life wasted amid the senseless noises of man's world.  Year
after year this spot has known the same tranquillity; with ever so little
of good fortune, with ever so little wisdom, beyond what was granted me,
I might have blessed my manhood with calm, might have made for myself in
later life a long retrospect of bowered peace.  As it is, I enjoy with
something of sadness, remembering that this melodious silence is but the
prelude of that deeper stillness which waits to enfold us all.



XXIV.


Morning after morning, of late, I have taken my walk in the same
direction, my purpose being to look at a plantation of young larches.
There is no lovelier colour on earth than that in which they are now
clad; it seems to refresh as well as gladden my eyes, and its influence
sinks deep into my heart.  Too soon it will change; already I think the
first radiant verdure has begun to pass into summer's soberness.  The
larch has its moment of unmatched beauty--and well for him whose chance
permits him to enjoy it, spring after spring.

Could anything be more wonderful than the fact that here am I, day by
day, not only at leisure to walk forth and gaze at the larches, but
blessed with the tranquillity of mind needful for such enjoyment?  On any
morning of spring sunshine, how many mortals find themselves so much at
peace that they are able to give themselves wholly to delight in the
glory of heaven and of earth?  Is it the case with one man in every fifty
thousand?  Consider what extraordinary kindness of fate must tend upon
one, that not a care, not a preoccupation, should interfere with his
contemplative thought for five or six days successively!  So rooted in
the human mind (and so reasonably rooted) is the belief in an Envious
Power, that I ask myself whether I shall not have to pay, by some
disaster, for this period of sacred calm.  For a week or so I have been
one of a small number, chosen out of the whole human race by fate's
supreme benediction.  It may be that this comes to every one in turn; to
most, it can only be once in a lifetime, and so briefly.  That my own lot
seems so much better than that of ordinary men, sometimes makes me
fearful.



XXV.


Walking in a favourite lane to-day, I found it covered with shed blossoms
of the hawthorn.  Creamy white, fragrant even in ruin, lay scattered the
glory of the May.  It told me that spring is over.

Have I enjoyed it as I should?  Since the day that brought me freedom,
four times have I seen the year's new birth, and always, as the violet
yielded to the rose, I have known a fear that I had not sufficiently
prized this boon of heaven whilst it was with me.  Many hours I have
spent shut up among my books, when I might have been in the meadows.  Was
the gain equivalent?  Doubtfully, diffidently, I hearken what the mind
can plead.

I recall my moments of delight, the recognition of each flower that
unfolded, the surprise of budding branches clothed in a night with green.
The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me.  By its
familiar bank, I watched for the earliest primrose, and in its copse I
found the anemone.  Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with
the marsh marigold held me long at gaze.  I saw the sallow glistening
with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold.  These
common things touch me with more of admiration and of wonder each time I
behold them.  They are once more gone.  As I turn to summer, a misgiving
mingles with my joy.




SUMMER


I.


To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume--some
hidden link of association in what I read--I know not what it may have
been--took me back to school-boy holidays; I recovered with strange
intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away
to the seaside, which is one of childhood's blessings.  I was in the
train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober
train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white
steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass.  Thanks to
a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where
crowds assemble; I am speaking, too, of a time more than forty years ago,
when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England,
east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its
beauty and its solitude.  At every station the train stopped; little
stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine
where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar
dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue.
Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide
was high or low--stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets
frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with
convolvulus.  Of a sudden, _our_ station!

Ah, that taste of the brine on a child's lips!  Nowadays, I can take
holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it pleases me; but that salt
kiss of the sea air I shall never know again.  My senses are dulled; I
cannot get so near to Nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her
winds, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and
leapt exultingly.  Were it possible, but for one half-hour, to plunge and
bask in the sunny surf, to roll on the silvery sand-hills, to leap from
rock to rock on shining sea-ferns, laughing if I slipped into the
shallows among starfish and anemones!  I am much older in body than in
mind; I can but look at what I once enjoyed.



II.


I have been spending a week in Somerset.  The right June weather put me
in the mind for rambling, and my thoughts turned to the Severn Sea.  I
went to Glastonbury and Wells, and on to Cheddar, and so to the shore of
the Channel at Clevedon, remembering my holiday of fifteen years ago, and
too often losing myself in a contrast of the man I was then and what I am
now.  Beautiful beyond all words of description that nook of oldest
England; but that I feared the moist and misty winter climate, I should
have chosen some spot below the Mendips for my home and resting-place.
Unspeakable the charm to my ear of those old names; exquisite the quiet
of those little towns, lost amid tilth and pasture, untouched as yet by
the fury of modern life, their ancient sanctuaries guarded, as it were,
by noble trees and hedges overrun with flowers.  In all England there is
no sweeter and more varied prospect than that from the hill of the Holy
Thorn at Glastonbury; in all England there is no lovelier musing place
than the leafy walk beside the Palace Moat at Wells.  As I think of the
golden hours I spent there, a passion to which I can give no name takes
hold upon me; my heart trembles with an indefinable ecstasy.

There was a time of my life when I was consumed with a desire for foreign
travel; an impatience of everything familiar fretted me through all the
changing year.  If I had not at length found the opportunity to escape,
if I had not seen the landscapes for which my soul longed, I think I must
have moped to death.  Few men, assuredly, have enjoyed such wanderings
more than I, and few men revive them in memory with a richer delight or
deeper longing.  But--whatever temptation comes to me in mellow autumn,
when I think of the grape and of the olive--I do not believe I shall ever
again cross the sea.  What remains to me of life and of energy is far too
little for the enjoyment of all I know, and all I wish to know, of this
dear island.

As a child I used to sleep in a room hung round with prints after English
landscape painters--those steel engravings so common half a century ago,
which bore the legend, "From the picture in the Vernon Gallery."  Far
more than I knew at the time, these pictures impressed me; I gazed and
gazed at them, with that fixed attention of a child which is half
curiosity, half reverie, till every line of them was fixed in my mind; at
this moment I see the black-and-white landscapes as if they were hanging
on the wall before me, and I have often thought that this early training
of the imagination--for such it was--has much to do with the passionate
love of rural scenery which lurked within me even when I did not
recognize it, and which now for many a year has been one of the emotions
directing my life.  Perhaps, too, that early memory explains why I love a
good black-and-white print even more than a good painting.  And--to draw
yet another inference--here may be a reason for the fact that, through my
youth and early manhood, I found more pleasure in Nature as represented
by art than in Nature herself.  Even during that strange time when
hardships and passions held me captive far from any glimpse of the
flowering earth, I could be moved, and moved deeply, by a picture of the
simplest rustic scene.  At rare moments, when a happy chance led me into
the National Gallery, I used to stand long before such pictures as "The
Valley Farm," "The Cornfield," "Mousehold Heath."  In the murk confusion
of my heart these visions of the world of peace and beauty from which I
was excluded--to which, indeed, I hardly ever gave a thought--touched me
to deep emotion.  But it did not need--nor does it now--the magic of a
master to awake that mood in me.  Let me but come upon the poorest little
woodcut, the cheapest "process" illustration, representing a thatched
cottage, a lane, a field, and I hear that music begin to murmur.  It is a
passion--Heaven be thanked--that grows with my advancing years.  The last
thought of my brain as I lie dying will be that of sunshine upon an
English meadow.



III.


Sitting in my garden amid the evening scent of roses, I have read through
Walton's _Life of Hooker_; could any place and time have been more
appropriate?  Almost within sight is the tower of Heavitree
church--Heavitree, which was Hooker's birthplace.  In other parts of
England he must often have thought of these meadows falling to the green
valley of the Exe, and of the sun setting behind the pines of Haldon.
Hooker loved the country.  Delightful to me, and infinitely touching, is
that request of his to be transferred from London to a rural
living--"where I can see God's blessing spring out of the earth."  And
that glimpse of him where he was found tending sheep, with a Horace in
his hand.  It was in rural solitudes that he conceived the rhythm of
mighty prose.  What music of the spheres sang to that poor,
vixen-haunted, pimply-faced man!

The last few pages I read by the light of the full moon, that of
afterglow having till then sufficed me.  Oh, why has it not been granted
me in all my long years of pen-labour to write something small and
perfect, even as one of these lives of honest Izaak!  Here is literature,
look you--not "literary work."  Let me be thankful that I have the mind
to enjoy it; not only to understand, but to savour, its great goodness.



IV.


It is Sunday morning, and above earth's beauty shines the purest, softest
sky this summer has yet gladdened us withal.  My window is thrown open; I
see the sunny gleam upon garden leaves and flowers; I hear the birds
whose wont it is to sing to me; ever and anon the martins that have their
home beneath my eaves sweep past in silence.  Church bells have begun to
chime; I know the music of their voices, near and far.

There was a time when it delighted me to flash my satire on the English
Sunday; I could see nothing but antiquated foolishness and modern
hypocrisy in this weekly pause from labour and from bustle.  Now I prize
it as an inestimable boon, and dread every encroachment upon its restful
stillness.  Scoff as I might at "Sabbatarianism," was I not always glad
when Sunday came?  The bells of London churches and chapels are not
soothing to the ear, but when I remember their sound--even that of the
most aggressively pharisaic conventicle, with its one dire clapper--I
find it associated with a sense of repose, of liberty.  This day of the
seven I granted to my better genius; work was put aside, and, when Heaven
permitted, trouble forgotten.

When out of England I have always missed this Sunday quietude, this
difference from ordinary days which seems to affect the very atmosphere.
It is not enough that people should go to church, that shops should be
closed and workyards silent; these holiday notes do not make a Sunday.
Think as one may of its significance, our Day of Rest has a peculiar
sanctity, felt, I imagine, in a more or less vague way, even by those who
wish to see the village lads at cricket and theatres open in the town.
The idea is surely as good a one as ever came to heavy-laden mortals; let
one whole day in every week be removed from the common life of the world,
lifted above common pleasures as above common cares.  With all the abuses
of fanaticism, this thought remained rich in blessings; Sunday has always
brought large good to the generality, and to a chosen number has been the
very life of the soul, however heretically some of them understood the
words.  If its ancient use perish from among us, so much the worse for
our country.  And perish no doubt it will; only here in rustic solitude
can one forget the changes that have already made the day less sacred to
multitudes.  With it will vanish that habit of periodic calm, which, even
when it has become so largely void of conscious meaning, is, one may
safely say, the best spiritual boon ever bestowed upon a people.  The
most difficult of all things to attain, the most difficult of all to
preserve, the supreme benediction of the noblest mind, this calm was once
breathed over the whole land as often as sounded the last stroke of
weekly toil; on Saturday at even began the quiet and the solace.  With
the decline of old faith, Sunday cannot but lose its sanction, and no
loss among the innumerable that we are suffering will work so effectually
for popular vulgarization.  What hope is there of guarding the moral
beauty of the day when the authority which set it apart is no longer
recognized?--Imagine a bank-holiday once a week!



V.


On Sunday I come down later than usual; I make a change of dress, for it
is fitting that the day of spiritual rest should lay aside the livery of
the laborious week.  For me, indeed, there is no labour at any time, but
nevertheless does Sunday bring me repose.  I share in the common
tranquillity; my thought escapes the workaday world more completely than
on other days.

It is not easy to see how this house of mine can make to itself a Sunday
quiet, for at all times it is well-nigh soundless; yet I find a
difference.  My housekeeper comes into the room with her Sunday smile;
she is happier for the day, and the sight of her happiness gives me
pleasure.  She speaks, if possible, in a softer voice; she wears a
garment which reminds me that there is only the lightest and cleanest
housework to be done.  She will go to church, morning and evening, and I
know that she is better for it.  During her absence I sometimes look into
rooms which on other days I never enter; it is merely to gladden my eyes
with the shining cleanliness, the perfect order, I am sure to find in the
good woman's domain.  But for that spotless and sweet-smelling kitchen,
what would it avail me to range my books and hang my pictures?  All the
tranquillity of my life depends upon the honest care of this woman who
lives and works unseen.  And I am sure that the money I pay her is the
least part of her reward.  She is such an old-fashioned person that the
mere discharge of what she deems a duty is in itself an end to her, and
the work of her hands in itself a satisfaction, a pride.

When a child, I was permitted to handle on Sunday certain books which
could not be exposed to the more careless usage of common days; volumes
finely illustrated, or the more handsome editions of familiar authors, or
works which, merely by their bulk, demanded special care.  Happily, these
books were all of the higher rank in literature, and so there came to be
established in my mind an association between the day of rest and names
which are the greatest in verse and prose.  Through my life this habit
has remained with me; I have always wished to spend some part of the
Sunday quiet with books which, at most times, it is fatally easy to leave
aside, one's very knowledge and love of them serving as an excuse for
their neglect in favour of print which has the attraction of newness.
Homer and Virgil, Milton and Shakespeare; not many Sundays have gone by
without my opening one or other of these.  Not many Sundays?  Nay, that
is to exaggerate, as one has the habit of doing.  Let me say rather that,
on many a rest-day I have found mind and opportunity for such reading.
Nowadays mind and opportunity fail me never.  I may take down my Homer or
my Shakespeare when I choose, but it is still on Sunday that I feel it
most becoming to seek the privilege of their companionship.  For these
great ones, crowned with immortality, do not respond to him who
approaches them as though hurried by temporal care.  There befits the
garment of solemn leisure, the thought attuned to peace.  I open the
volume somewhat formally; is it not sacred, if the word have any meaning
at all?  And, as I read, no interruption can befall me.  The note of a
linnet, the humming of a bee, these are the sounds about my sanctuary.
The page scarce rustles as it turns.



VI.


Of how many dwellings can it be said that no word of anger is ever heard
beneath its roof, and that no unkindly feeling ever exists between the
inmates?  Most men's experience would seem to justify them in declaring
that, throughout the inhabited world, no such house exists.  I, knowing
at all events of one, admit the possibility that there may be more; yet I
feel that it is to hazard a conjecture; I cannot point with certainty to
any other instance, nor in all my secular life (I speak as one who has
quitted the world) could I have named a single example.

It is so difficult for human beings to live together; nay, it is so
difficult for them to associate, however transitorily, and even under the
most favourable conditions, without some shadow of mutual offence.
Consider the differences of task and of habit, the conflict of
prejudices, the divergence of opinions (though that is probably the same
thing), which quickly reveal themselves between any two persons brought
into more than casual contact, and think how much self-subdual is
implicit whenever, for more than an hour or two, they co-exist in seeming
harmony.  Man is not made for peaceful intercourse with his fellows; he
is by nature self-assertive, commonly aggressive, always critical in a
more or less hostile spirit of any characteristic which seems strange to
him.  That he is capable of profound affections merely modifies here and
there his natural contentiousness, and subdues its expression.  Even
love, in the largest and purest sense of the word, is no safeguard
against perilous irritation and sensibilities inborn.  And what were the
durability of love without the powerful alliance of habit?

Suppose yourself endowed with such power of hearing that all the talk
going on at any moment beneath the domestic roofs of any town became
clearly audible to you; the dominant note would be that of moods,
tempers, opinions at jar.  Who but the most amiable dreamer can doubt it?
This, mind you, is not the same thing as saying that angry emotion is the
ruling force in human life; the facts of our civilization prove the
contrary.  Just because, and only because, the natural spirit of conflict
finds such frequent scope, does human society hold together, and, on the
whole, present a pacific aspect.  In the course of ages (one would like
to know how many) man has attained a remarkable degree of self-control;
dire experience has forced upon him the necessity of compromise, and
habit has inclined him (the individual) to prefer a quiet, orderly life.
But by instinct he is still a quarrelsome creature, and he gives vent to
the impulse as far as it is compatible with his reasoned interests--often,
to be sure, without regard for that limit.  The average man or woman is
always at open discord with some one; the great majority could not live
without oft-recurrent squabble.  Speak in confidence with any one you
like, and get him to tell you how many cases of coldness, alienation, or
downright enmity, between friends and kinsfolk, his memory registers; the
number will be considerable, and what a vastly greater number of everyday
"misunderstandings" may be thence inferred!  Verbal contention is, of
course, commoner among the poor and the vulgar than in the class of well-
bred people living at their ease, but I doubt whether the lower ranks of
society find personal association much more difficult than the refined
minority above them.  High cultivation may help to self-command, but it
multiplies the chances of irritative contact.  In mansion, as in hovel,
the strain of life is perpetually felt--between the married, between
parents and children, between relatives of every degree, between
employers and employed.  They debate, they dispute, they wrangle, they
explode--then nerves are relieved, and they are ready to begin over
again.  Quit the home and quarrelling is less obvious, but it goes on all
about one.  What proportion of the letters delivered any morning would be
found to be written in displeasure, in petulance, in wrath?  The postbag
shrieks insults or bursts with suppressed malice.  Is it not
wonderful--nay, is it not the marvel of marvels--that human life has
reached such a high point of public and private organization?

And gentle idealists utter their indignant wonder at the continuance of
war!  Why, it passes the wit of man to explain how it is that nations are
ever at peace!  For, if only by the rarest good fortune do individuals
associate harmoniously, there would seem to be much less likelihood of
mutual understanding and good-will between the peoples of alien lands.  As
a matter of fact, no two nations are ever friendly, in the sense of truly
liking each other; with the reciprocal criticism of countries there
always mingles a sentiment of animosity.  The original meaning of
_hostis_ is merely stranger, and a stranger who is likewise a foreigner
will only by curious exception fail to stir antipathy in the average
human being.  Add to this that a great number of persons in every country
find their delight and their business in exasperating international
disrelish, and with what vestige of common sense can one feel surprise
that war is ceaselessly talked of, often enough declared.  In days gone
by, distance and rarity of communication assured peace between many
realms.  Now that every country is in proximity to every other, what need
is there to elaborate explanations of the distrust, the fear, the hatred,
which are a perpetual theme of journalists and statesmen?  By
approximation, all countries have entered the sphere of natural quarrel.
That they find plenty of things to quarrel about is no cause for
astonishment.  A hundred years hence there will be some possibility of
perceiving whether international relations are likely to obey the law
which has acted with such beneficence in the life of each civilized
people; whether this country and that will be content to ease their
tempers with bloodless squabbling, subduing the more violent promptings
for the common good.  Yet I suspect that a century is a very short time
to allow for even justifiable surmise of such an outcome.  If by any
chance newspapers ceased to exist . . .

Talk of war, and one gets involved in such utopian musings!



VII.


I have been reading one of those prognostic articles on international
politics which every now and then appear in the reviews.  Why I should so
waste my time it would be hard to say; I suppose the fascination of
disgust and fear gets the better of me in a moment's idleness.  This
writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the
certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar
satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind.  His
phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of
his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces
which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent
irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the
"inevitable."  Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the
event.

But I will read no more such writing.  This resolution I make and will
keep.  Why set my nerves quivering with rage, and spoil the calm of a
whole day, when no good of any sort can come of it?  What is it to me if
nations fall a-slaughtering each other?  Let the fools go to it!  Why
should they not please themselves?  Peace, after all, is the aspiration
of the few; so it always; was, and ever will be.  But have done with the
nauseous cant about "dire calamity."  The leaders and the multitude hold
no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or
they are driven to it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them.  Let
them rend and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till--if that
would ever happen--their stomachs turn.  Let them blast the cornfield and
the orchard, fire the home.  For all that, there will yet be found some
silent few, who go their way amid the still meadows, who bend to the
flower and watch the sunset; and these alone are worth a thought.



VIII.


In this hot weather I like to walk at times amid the full glow of the
sun.  Our island sun is never hot beyond endurance, and there is a
magnificence in the triumph of high summer which exalts one's mind.  Among
streets it is hard to bear, yet even there, for those who have eyes to
see it, the splendour of the sky lends beauty to things in themselves
mean or hideous.  I remember an August bank-holiday, when, having for
some reason to walk all across London, I unexpectedly found myself
enjoying the strange desertion of great streets, and from that passed to
surprise in the sense of something beautiful, a charm in the vulgar
vista, in the dull architecture, which I had never known.  Deep and clear-
marked shadows, such as one only sees on a few days of summer, are in
themselves very impressive, and become more so when they fall upon
highways devoid of folk.  I remember observing, as something new, the
shape of familiar edifices, of spires, monuments.  And when at length I
sat down, somewhere on the Embankment, it was rather to gaze at leisure
than to rest, for I felt no weariness, and the sun, still pouring upon me
its noontide radiance, seemed to fill my veins with life.

That sense I shall never know again.  For me Nature has comforts,
raptures, but no more invigoration.  The sun keeps me alive, but cannot,
as in the old days, renew my being.  I would fain learn to enjoy without
reflecting.

My walk in the golden hours leads me to a great horse-chestnut, whose
root offers a convenient seat in the shadow of its foliage.  At that
resting-place I have no wide view before me, but what I see is enough--a
corner of waste land, over-flowered with poppies and charlock, on the
edge of a field of corn.  The brilliant red and yellow harmonize with the
glory of the day.  Near by, too, is a hedge covered with great white
blooms of the bindweed.  My eyes do not soon grow weary.

A little plant of which I am very fond is the rest-harrow.  When the sun
is hot upon it, the flower gives forth a strangely aromatic scent, very
delightful to me.  I know the cause of this peculiar pleasure.  The rest-
harrow sometimes grows in sandy ground above the seashore.  In my
childhood I have many a time lain in such a spot under the glowing sky,
and, though I scarce thought of it, perceived the odour of the little
rose-pink flower when it touched my face.  Now I have but to smell it,
and those hours come back again.  I see the shore of Cumberland, running
north to St. Bee's Head; on the sea horizon a faint shape which is the
Isle of Man; inland, the mountains, which for me at that time guarded a
region of unknown wonder.  Ah, how long ago!



IX.


I read much less than I used to do; I think much more.  Yet what is the
use of thought which can no longer serve to direct life?  Better,
perhaps, to read and read incessantly, losing one's futile self in the
activity of other minds.

This summer I have taken up no new book, but have renewed my acquaintance
with several old ones which I had not opened for many a year.  One or two
have been books such as mature men rarely read at all--books which it is
one's habit to "take as read"; to presume sufficiently known to speak of,
but never to open.  Thus, one day my hand fell upon the _Anabasis_, the
little Oxford edition which I used at school, with its boyish sign-manual
on the fly-leaf, its blots and underlinings and marginal scrawls.  To my
shame I possess no other edition; yet this is a book one would like to
have in beautiful form.  I opened it, I began to read--a ghost of boyhood
stirring in my heart--and from chapter to chapter was led on, until after
a few days I had read the whole.

I am glad this happened in the summer-time, I like to link childhood with
these latter days, and no better way could I have found than this return
to a school-book, which, even as a school-book, was my great delight.

By some trick of memory I always associate school-boy work on the
classics with a sense of warm and sunny days; rain and gloom and a chilly
atmosphere must have been far the more frequent conditions, but these
things are forgotten.  My old Liddell and Scott still serves me, and if,
in opening it, I bend close enough to catch the _scent_ of the leaves, I
am back again at that day of boyhood (noted on the fly-leaf by the hand
of one long dead) when the book was new and I used it for the first time.
It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page,
viewed with childish tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellow
sunshine, which was to linger for ever in my mind.

But I am thinking of the _Anabasis_.  Were this the sole book existing in
Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order
to read it.  The _Anabasis_ is an admirable work of art, unique in its
combination of concise and rapid narrative with colour and
picturesqueness.  Herodotus wrote a prose epic, in which the author's
personality is ever before us.  Xenophon, with curiosity and love of
adventure which mark him of the same race, but self-forgetful in the
pursuit of a new artistic virtue, created the historical romance.  What a
world of wonders in this little book, all aglow with ambitions and
conflicts, with marvels of strange lands; full of perils and rescues,
fresh with the air of mountain and of sea!  Think of it for a moment by
the side of Caesar's Commentaries; not to compare things incomparable,
but in order to appreciate the perfect art which shines through
Xenophon's mastery of language, his brevity achieving a result so
different from that of the like characteristic in the Roman writer.
Caesar's conciseness comes of strength and pride; Xenophon's, of a vivid
imagination.  Many a single line of the _Anabasis_ presents a picture
which deeply stirs the emotions.  A good instance occurs in the fourth
book, where a delightful passage of unsurpassable narrative tells how the