Greeks rewarded and dismissed a guide who had led them through dangerous
country.  The man himself was in peril of his life; laden with valuable
things which the soldiers had given him in their gratitude, he turned to
make his way through the hostile region.  [Greek text].  "When evening
came he took leave of us, and went his way by night."  To my mind, words
of wonderful suggestiveness.  You see the wild, eastern landscape, upon
which the sun has set.  There are the Hellenes, safe for the moment on
their long march, and there the mountain tribesman, the serviceable
barbarian, going away, alone, with his tempting guerdon, into the hazards
of the darkness.

Also in the fourth book, another picture moves one in another way.  Among
the Carduchian Hills two men were seized, and information was sought from
them about the track to be followed.  "One of them would say nothing, and
kept silence in spite of every threat; so, in the presence of his
companion, he was slain.  Thereupon that other made known the man's
reason for refusing to point out the way; in the direction the Greeks
must take there dwelt a daughter of his, who was married."

It would not be easy to express more pathos than is conveyed in these few
words.  Xenophon himself, one may be sure, did not feel it quite as we
do, but he preserved the incident for its own sake, and there, in a line
or two, shines something of human love and sacrifice, significant for all
time.



X.


I sometimes think I will go and spend the sunny half of a twelvemonth in
wandering about the British Isles.  There is so much of beauty and
interest that I have not seen, and I grudge to close my eyes on this
beloved home of ours, leaving any corner of it unvisited.  Often I wander
in fancy over all the parts I know, and grow restless with desire at
familiar names which bring no picture to memory.  My array of county
guide-books (they have always been irresistible to me on the stalls) sets
me roaming; the only dull pages in them are those that treat of
manufacturing towns.  Yet I shall never start on that pilgrimage.  I am
too old, too fixed in habits.  I dislike the railway; I dislike hotels.  I
should grow homesick for my library, my garden, the view from my windows.
And then--I have such a fear of dying anywhere but under my own roof.

As a rule, it is better to revisit only in imagination the places which
have greatly charmed us, or which, in the retrospect, seem to have done
so.  Seem to have charmed us, I say; for the memory we form, after a
certain lapse of time, of places where we lingered, often bears but a
faint resemblance to the impression received at the time; what in truth
may have been very moderate enjoyment, or enjoyment greatly disturbed by
inner or outer circumstances, shows in the distance as a keen delight, or
as deep, still happiness.  On the other hand, if memory creates no
illusion, and the name of a certain place is associated with one of the
golden moments of life, it were rash to hope that another visit would
repeat the experience of a bygone day.  For it was not merely the sights
that one beheld which were the cause of joy and peace; however lovely the
spot, however gracious the sky, these things external would not have
availed, but for contributory movements of mind and heart and blood, the
essentials of the man as then he was.

Whilst I was reading this afternoon my thoughts strayed, and I found
myself recalling a hillside in Suffolk, where, after a long walk I rested
drowsily one midsummer day twenty years ago.  A great longing seized me;
I was tempted to set off at once, and find again that spot under the high
elm trees, where, as I smoked a delicious pipe, I heard about me the
crack, crack, crack of broom-pods bursting in the glorious heat of the
noontide sun.  Had I acted upon the impulse, what chance was there of my
enjoying such another hour as that which my memory cherished?  No, no; it
is not the _place_ that I remember; it is the time of life, the
circumstances, the mood, which at that moment fell so happily together.
Can I dream that a pipe smoked on that same hillside, under the same
glowing sky, would taste as it then did, or bring me the same solace?
Would the turf be so soft beneath me?  Would the great elm-branches
temper so delightfully the noontide rays beating upon them?  And, when
the hour of rest was over, should I spring to my feet as then I did,
eager to put forth my strength again?  No, no; what I remember is just
one moment of my earlier life, linked by accident with that picture of
the Suffolk landscape.  The place no longer exists; it never existed save
for me.  For it is the mind which creates the world about us, and, even
though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see
what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with
which yours is touched.



XI.


I awoke a little after four o'clock.  There was sunlight upon the blind,
that pure gold of the earliest beam which always makes me think of
Dante's angels.  I had slept unusually well, without a dream, and felt
the blessing of rest through all my frame; my head was clear, my pulse
beat temperately.  And, when I had lain thus for a few minutes, asking
myself what book I should reach from the shelf that hangs near my pillow,
there came upon me a desire to rise and go forth into the early morning.
On the moment I bestirred myself.  The drawing up of the blind, the
opening of the window, only increased my zeal, and I was soon in the
garden, then out in the road, walking light-heartedly I cared not
whither.

How long is it since I went forth at the hour of summer sunrise?  It is
one of the greatest pleasures, physical and mental, that any man in
moderate health can grant himself; yet hardly once in a year do mood and
circumstance combine to put it within one's reach.  The habit of lying in
bed hours after broad daylight is strange enough, if one thinks of it; a
habit entirely evil; one of the most foolish changes made by modern
system in the healthier life of the old time.  But that my energies are
not equal to such great innovation, I would begin going to bed at sunset
and rising with the beam of day; ten to one, it would vastly improve my
health, and undoubtedly it would add to the pleasures of my existence.

When travelling, I have now and then watched the sunrise, and always with
an exultation unlike anything produced in me by other aspects of nature.
I remember daybreak on the Mediterranean; the shapes of islands growing
in hue after hue of tenderest light, until they floated amid a sea of
glory.  And among the mountains--that crowning height, one moment a cold
pallor, the next soft-glowing under the touch of the rosy-fingered
goddess.  These are the things I shall never see again; things, indeed,
so perfect in memory that I should dread to blur them by a newer
experience.  My senses are so much duller; they do not show me what once
they did.

How far away is that school-boy time, when I found a pleasure in getting
up and escaping from the dormitory whilst all the others were still
asleep.  My purpose was innocent enough; I got up early only to do my
lessons.  I can see the long school-room, lighted by the early sun; I can
smell the school-room odour--a blend of books and slates and wall-maps
and I know not what.  It was a mental peculiarity of mine that at five
o'clock in the morning I could apply myself with gusto to mathematics, a
subject loathsome to me at any other time of the day.  Opening the book
at some section which was wont to scare me, I used to say to myself:
"Come now, I'm going to tackle this this morning!  If other boys can
understand it, why shouldn't I?"  And in a measure I succeeded.  In a
measure only; there was always a limit at which my powers failed me,
strive as I would.

In my garret-days it was seldom that I rose early: with the exception of
one year--or the greater part of a twelvemonth--during which I was
regularly up at half-past five for a special reason.  I had undertaken to
"coach" a man for the London matriculation; he was in business, and the
only time he could conveniently give to his studies was before breakfast.
I, just then, had my lodgings near Hampstead Road; my pupil lived at
Knightsbridge; I engaged to be with him every morning at half-past six,
and the walk, at a brisk pace, took me just about an hour.  At that time
I saw no severity in the arrangement, and I was delighted to earn the
modest fee which enabled me to write all day long without fear of hunger;
but one inconvenience attached to it.  I had no watch, and my only means
of knowing the time was to hear the striking of a clock in the
neighbourhood.  As a rule, I awoke just when I should have done; the
clock struck five, and up I sprang.  But occasionally--and this when the
mornings had grown dark--my punctual habit failed me; I would hear the
clock chime some fraction of the hour, and could not know whether I had
awoke too soon or slept too long.  The horror of unpunctuality, which has
always been a craze with me, made it impossible to lie waiting; more than
once I dressed and went out into the street to discover as best I could
what time it was, and one such expedition, I well remember, took place
between two and three o'clock on a morning of foggy rain.

It happened now and then that, on reaching the house at Knightsbridge, I
was informed that Mr. --- felt too tired to rise.  This concerned me
little, for it meant no deduction of fee; I had the two hours' walk, and
was all the better for it.  Then the appetite with which I sat down to
breakfast, whether I had done my coaching or not!  Bread and butter and
coffee--such coffee!--made the meal, and I ate like a navvy.  I was in
magnificent spirits.  All the way home I had been thinking of my day's
work, and the morning brain, clarified and whipped to vigour by that
brisk exercise, by that wholesome hunger, wrought its best.  The last
mouthful swallowed, I was seated at my writing-table; aye, and there I
sat for seven or eight hours, with a short munching interval, working as
only few men worked in all London, with pleasure, zeal, hope. . . .

Yes, yes, those were the good days.  They did not last long; before and
after them were cares, miseries, endurance multiform.  I have always felt
grateful to Mr. --- of Knightsbridge; he gave me a year of health, and
almost of peace.



XII.


A whole day's walk yesterday with no plan; just a long ramble of hour
after hour, entirely enjoyable.  It ended at Topsham, where I sat on the
little churchyard terrace, and watched the evening tide come up the broad
estuary.  I have a great liking for Topsham, and that churchyard,
overlooking what is not quite sea, yet more than river, is one of the
most restful spots I know.  Of course the association with old Chaucer,
who speaks of Topsham sailors, helps my mood.  I came home very tired;
but I am not yet decrepit, and for that I must be thankful.

The unspeakable blessedness of having a _home_!  Much as my imagination
has dwelt upon it for thirty years, I never knew how deep and exquisite a
joy could lie in the assurance that one is _at home_ for ever.  Again and
again I come back upon this thought; nothing but Death can oust me from
my abiding place.  And Death I would fain learn to regard as a friend,
who will but intensify the peace I now relish.

When one is at home, how one's affections grow about everything in the
neighbourhood!  I always thought with fondness of this corner of Devon,
but what was that compared with the love which now strengthens in me day
by day!  Beginning with my house, every stick and stone of it is dear to
me as my heart's blood; I find myself laying an affectionate hand on the
door-post, giving a pat, as I go by, to the garden gate.  Every tree and
shrub in the garden is my beloved friend; I touch them, when need is,
very tenderly, as though carelessness might pain, or roughness injure
them.  If I pull up a weed in the walk, I look at it with a certain
sadness before throwing it away; it belongs to my home.

And all the country round about.  These villages, how delightful are
their names to my ear!  I find myself reading with interest all the local
news in the Exeter paper.  Not that I care about the people; with barely
one or two exceptions, the people are nothing to me, and the less I see
of them the better I am pleased.  But the _places_ grow ever more dear to
me.  I like to know of anything that has happened at Heavitree, or
Brampford Speke, or Newton St. Cyres.  I begin to pride myself on knowing
every road and lane, every bridle path and foot-way for miles about.  I
like to learn the names of farms and of fields.  And all this because
here is my abiding place, because I am home for ever.

It seems to me that the very clouds that pass above my house are more
interesting and beautiful than clouds elsewhere.

And to think that at one time I called myself a socialist, communist,
anything you like of the revolutionary kind!  Not for long, to be sure,
and I suspect that there was always something in me that scoffed when my
lips uttered such things.  Why, no man living has a more profound sense
of property than I; no man ever lived, who was, in every fibre, more
vehemently an individualist.



XIII.


In this high summertide, I remember with a strange feeling that there are
people who, of their free choice, spend day and night in cities, who
throng to the gabble of drawing-rooms, make festival in public eating-
houses, sweat in the glare of the theatre.  They call it life; they call
it enjoyment.  Why, so it is, for them; they are so made.  The folly is
mine, to wonder that they fulfil their destiny.

But with what deep and quiet thanksgiving do I remind myself that never
shall I mingle with that well-millinered and tailored herd!  Happily, I
never saw much of them.  Certain occasions I recall when a supposed
necessity took me into their dismal precincts; a sick buzzing in the
brain, a languor as of exhausted limbs, comes upon me with the memory.
The relief with which I stepped out into the street again, when all was
over!  Dear to me then was poverty, which for the moment seemed to make
me a free man.  Dear to me was the labour at my desk, which, by
comparison, enabled me to respect myself.

Never again shall I shake hands with man or woman who is not in truth my
friend.  Never again shall I go to see acquaintances with whom I have no
acquaintance.  All men my brothers?  Nay, thank Heaven, that they are
not!  I will do harm, if I can help it, to no one; I will wish good to
all; but I will make no pretence of personal kindliness where, in the
nature of things, it cannot be felt.  I have grimaced a smile and
pattered unmeaning words to many a person whom I despised or from whom in
heart I shrank; I did so because I had not courage to do otherwise.  For
a man conscious of such weakness, the best is to live apart from the
world.  Brave Samuel Johnson!  One such truth-teller is worth all the
moralists and preachers who ever laboured to humanise mankind.  Had _he_
withdrawn into solitude, it would have been a national loss.  Every one
of his blunt, fearless words had more value than a whole evangel on the
lips of a timidly good man.  It is thus that the commonalty, however well
clad, should be treated.  So seldom does the fool or the ruffian in
broadcloth hear his just designation; so seldom is the man found who has
a right to address him by it.  By the bandying of insults we profit
nothing; there can be no useful rebuke which is exposed to a _tu quoque_.
But, as the world is, an honest and wise man should have a rough tongue.
Let him speak and spare not!



XIV.


Vituperation of the English climate is foolish.  A better climate does
not exist--for healthy people; and it is always as regards the average
native in sound health that a climate must be judged.  Invalids have no
right whatever to talk petulantly of the natural changes of the sky;
Nature has not _them_ in view; let them (if they can) seek exceptional
conditions for their exceptional state, leaving behind them many a
million of sound, hearty men and women who take the seasons as they come,
and profit by each in turn.  In its freedom from extremes, in its common
clemency, even in its caprice, which at the worst time holds out hope,
our island weather compares well with that of other lands.  Who enjoys
the fine day of spring, summer, autumn, or winter so much as an
Englishman?  His perpetual talk of the weather is testimony to his keen
relish for most of what it offers him; in lands of blue monotony, even as
where climatic conditions are plainly evil, such talk does not go on.  So,
granting that we have bad days not a few, that the east wind takes us by
the throat, that the mists get at our joints, that the sun hides his
glory too often and too long, it is plain that the result of all comes to
good, that it engenders a mood of zest under the most various aspects of
heaven, keeps an edge on our appetite for open-air life.

I, of course, am one of the weaklings who, in grumbling at the weather,
merely invite compassion.  July, this year, is clouded and windy, very
cheerless even here in Devon; I fret and shiver and mutter to myself
something about southern skies.  Pshaw!  Were I the average man of my
years, I should be striding over Haldon, caring not a jot for the heavy
sky, finding a score of compensations for the lack of sun.  Can I not
have patience?  Do I not know that, some morning, the east will open like
a bursting bud into warmth and splendour, and the azure depths above will
have only the more solace for my starved anatomy because of this
protracted disappointment?



XV.


I have been at the seaside--enjoying it, yes, but in what a doddering,
senile sort of way!  Is it I who used to drink the strong wind like wine,
who ran exultingly along the wet sands and leapt from rock to rock,
barefoot, on the slippery seaweed, who breasted the swelling breaker, and
shouted with joy as it buried me in gleaming foam?  At the seaside I knew
no such thing as bad weather; there were but changes of eager mood and
full-blooded life.  Now, if the breeze blow too roughly, if there come a
pelting shower, I must look for shelter, and sit with my cloak about me.
It is but a new reminder that I do best to stay at home, travelling only
in reminiscence.

At Weymouth I enjoyed a hearty laugh, one of the good things not easy to
get after middle age.  There was a notice of steamboats which ply along
the coast, steamboats recommended to the public as being "_replete with
lavatories and a ladies' saloon_."  Think how many people read this
without a chuckle!



XVI.


In the last ten years I have seen a good deal of English inns in many
parts of the country, and it astonishes me to find how bad they are.  Only
once or twice have I chanced upon an inn (or, if you like, hotel) where I
enjoyed any sort of comfort.  More often than not, even the beds are
unsatisfactory--either pretentiously huge and choked with drapery, or
hard and thinly accoutred.  Furnishing is uniformly hideous, and there is
either no attempt at ornament (the safest thing) or a villainous taste
thrusts itself upon one at every turn.  The meals, in general, are coarse
and poor in quality, and served with gross slovenliness.

I have often heard it said that the touring cyclist has caused the
revival of wayside inns.  It may be so, but the touring cyclist seems to
be very easily satisfied.  Unless we are greatly deceived by the old
writers, an English inn used to be a delightful resort, abounding in
comfort, and supplied with the best of food; a place, too, where one was
sure of welcome at once hearty and courteous.  The inns of to-day, in
country towns and villages, are not in that good old sense inns at all;
they are merely public-houses.  The landlord's chief interest is the sale
of liquor.  Under his roof you may, if you choose, eat and sleep, but
what you are expected to do is to drink.  Yet, even for drinking, there
is no decent accommodation.  You will find what is called a bar-parlour,
a stuffy and dirty room, with crazy chairs, where only the sodden dram-
gulper could imagine himself at ease.  Should you wish to write a letter,
only the worst pen and the vilest ink is forthcoming; this, even in the
"commercial room" of many an inn which seems to depend upon the custom of
travelling tradesmen.  Indeed, this whole business of innkeeping is
incredibly mismanaged.  Most of all does the common ineptitude or
brutality enrage one when it has possession of an old and picturesque
house, such as reminds you of the best tradition, a house which might be
made as comfortable as house can be, a place of rest and mirth.

At a public-house you expect public-house manners, and nothing better
will meet you at most of the so-called inns or hotels.  It surprises me
to think in how few instances I have found even the pretence of civility.
As a rule, the landlord and landlady are either contemptuously superior
or boorishly familiar; the waiters and chambermaids do their work with an
indifference which only softens to a condescending interest at the moment
of your departure, when, if the tip be thought insufficient, a sneer or a
muttered insult speeds you on your way.  One inn I remember, where,
having to go in and out two or three times in a morning, I always found
the front door blocked by the portly forms of two women, the landlady and
the barmaid, who stood there chatting and surveying the street.  Coming
from within the house, I had to call out a request for passage; it was
granted with all deliberation, and with not a syllable of apology.  This
was the best "hotel" in a Sussex market town.

And the food.  Here, beyond doubt, there is grave degeneracy.  It is
impossible to suppose that the old travellers by coach were contented
with entertainment such as one gets nowadays at the table of a country
hotel.  The cooking is wont to be wretched; the quality of the meat and
vegetables worse than mediocre.  What!  Shall one ask in vain at an
English inn for an honest chop or steak?  Again and again has my appetite
been frustrated with an offer of mere sinew and scrag.  At a hotel where
the charge for lunch was five shillings, I have been sickened with pulpy
potatoes and stringy cabbage.  The very joint--ribs or sirloin, leg or
shoulder--is commonly a poor, underfed, sapless thing, scorched in an
oven; and as for the round of beef, it has as good as
disappeared--probably because it asks too much skill in the salting.  Then
again one's breakfast bacon; what intolerable stuff, smelling of
saltpetre, has been set before me when I paid the price of the best
smoked Wiltshire!  It would be mere indulgence of the spirit of grumbling
to talk about poisonous tea and washy coffee; every one knows that these
drinks cannot be had at public tables; but what if there be real reason
for discontent with one's pint of ale?  Often, still, that draught from
the local brewery is sound and invigorating, but there are grievous
exceptions, and no doubt the tendency is here, as in other things--a
falling off, a carelessness, if not a calculating dishonesty.  I foresee
the day when Englishmen will have forgotten how to brew beer; when one's
only safety will lie in the draught imported from Munich.



XVII.


I was taking a meal once at a London restaurant--not one of the great
eating-places to which men most resort, but a small establishment on the
same model in a quiet neighbourhood--when there entered, and sat down at
the next table, a young man of the working class, whose dress betokened
holiday.  A glance told me that he felt anything but at ease; his mind
misgave him as he looked about the long room and at the table before him;
and when a waiter came to offer him the card, he stared blankly in
sheepish confusion.  Some strange windfall, no doubt, had emboldened him
to enter for the first time such a place as this, and now that he was
here, he heartily wished himself out in the street again.  However, aided
by the waiter's suggestions, he gave an order for a beef-steak and
vegetables.  When the dish was served, the poor fellow simply could not
make a start upon it; he was embarrassed by the display of knives and
forks, by the arrangement of the dishes, by the sauce bottles and the
cruet-stand, above all, no doubt, by the assembly of people not of his
class, and the unwonted experience of being waited upon by a man with a
long shirt-front.  He grew red; he made the clumsiest and most futile
efforts to transport the meat to his plate; food was there before him,
but, like a very Tantalus, he was forbidden to enjoy it.  Observing with
all discretion, I at length saw him pull out his pocket handkerchief,
spread it on the table, and, with a sudden effort, fork the meat off the
dish into this receptacle.  The waiter, aware by this time of the
customer's difficulty, came up and spoke a word to him.  Abashed into
anger, the young man roughly asked what he had to pay.  It ended in the
waiter's bringing a newspaper, wherein he helped to wrap up meat and
vegetables.  Money was flung down, and the victim of a mistaken ambition
hurriedly departed, to satisfy his hunger amid less unfamiliar
surroundings.

It was a striking and unpleasant illustration of social differences.
Could such a thing happen in any country but England?  I doubt it.  The
sufferer was of decent appearance, and, with ordinary self-command, might
have taken his meal in the restaurant like any one else, quite unnoticed.
But he belonged to a class which, among all classes in the world, is
distinguished by native clownishness and by unpliability to novel
circumstance.  The English lower ranks had need be marked by certain
peculiar virtues to atone for their deficiencies in other respects.



XVIII.


It is easy to understand that common judgment of foreigners regarding the
English people.  Go about in England as a stranger, travel by rail, live
at hotels, see nothing but the broadly public aspect of things, and the
impression left upon you will be one of hard egoism, of gruffness and
sullenness; in a word, of everything that contrasts most strongly with
the ideal of social and civic life.  And yet, as a matter of fact, no
nation possesses in so high a degree the social and civic virtues.  The
unsociable Englishman, quotha?  Why, what country in the world can show
such multifarious, vigorous and cordial co-operation, in all ranks, but
especially, of course, among the intelligent, for ends which concern the
common good?  Unsociable!  Why, go where you will in England you can
hardly find a man--nowadays, indeed, scarce an educated woman--who does
not belong to some alliance, for study or sport, for municipal or
national benefit, and who will not be seen, in leisure time, doing his
best as a social being.  Take the so-called sleepy market-town; it is
bubbling with all manner of associated activities, and these of the quite
voluntary kind, forms of zealously united effort such as are never dreamt
of in the countries supposed to be eminently "social."  Sociability does
not consist in a readiness to talk at large with the first comer.  It is
not dependent upon natural grace and suavity; it is compatible, indeed,
with thoroughly awkward and all but brutal manners.  The English have
never (at all events, for some two centuries past) inclined to the purely
ceremonial or mirthful forms of sociability; but as regards every prime
interest of the community--health and comfort, well-being of body and of
soul--their social instinct is supreme.

Yet it is so difficult to reconcile this indisputable fact with that
other fact, no less obvious, that your common Englishman seems to have no
geniality.  From the one point of view, I admire and laud my fellow
countryman; from the other, I heartily dislike him and wish to see as
little of him as possible.  One is wont to think of the English as a
genial folk.  Have they lost in this respect?  Has the century of science
and money-making sensibly affected the national character?  I think
always of my experience at the English inn, where it is impossible not to
feel a brutal indifference to the humane features of life; where food is
bolted without attention, liquor swallowed out of mere habit, where even
good-natured accost is a thing so rare as to be remarkable.

Two things have to be borne in mind: the extraordinary difference of
demeanour which exists between the refined and the vulgar English, and
the natural difficulty of an Englishman in revealing his true self save
under the most favourable circumstances.

So striking is the difference of manner between class and class that the
hasty observer might well imagine a corresponding and radical difference
of mind and character.  In Russia, I suppose, the social extremities are
seen to be pretty far apart, but, with that possible exception, I should
think no European country can show such a gap as yawns to the eye between
the English gentleman and the English boor.  The boor, of course, is the
multitude; the boor impresses himself upon the traveller.  When relieved
from his presence, one can be just to him; one can remember that his
virtues--though elementary, and strictly in need of direction--are the
same, to a great extent, as those of the well-bred man.  He does not
represent--though seeming to do so--a nation apart.  To understand this
multitude, you must get below its insufferable manners, and learn that
very fine civic qualities can consist with a personal bearing almost
wholly repellent.

Then, as to the dogged reserve of the educated man, why, I have only to
look into myself.  I, it is true, am not quite a representative
Englishman; my self-consciousness, my meditative habit of mind, rather
dim my national and social characteristics; but set me among a few
specimens of the multitude, and am I not at once aware of that
instinctive antipathy, that shrinking into myself, that something like
unto scorn, of which the Englishman is accused by foreigners who casually
meet him?  Peculiar to me is the effort to overcome this first impulse--an
effort which often enough succeeds.  If I know myself at all, I am not an
ungenial man; and yet I am quite sure that many people who have known me
casually would say that my fault is a lack of geniality.  To show my true
self, I must be in the right mood and the right circumstances--which,
after all, is merely as much as saying that I am decidedly English.



XIX.


On my breakfast table there is a pot of honey.  Not the manufactured
stuff sold under that name in shops, but honey of the hive, brought to me
by a neighbouring cottager whose bees often hum in my garden.  It gives,
I confess, more pleasure to my eye than to my palate; but I like to taste
of it, because it is honey.

There is as much difference, said Johnson, between a lettered and an
unlettered man as between the living and the dead; and, in a way, it was
no extravagance.  Think merely how one's view of common things is
affected by literary association.  What were honey to me if I knew
nothing of Hymettus and Hybla?--if my mind had no stores of poetry, no
memories of romance?  Suppose me town-pent, the name might bring with it
some pleasantness of rustic odour; but of what poor significance even
that, if the country were to me mere grass and corn and vegetables, as to
the man who has never read nor wished to read.  For the Poet is indeed a
Maker: above the world of sense, trodden by hidebound humanity, he builds
that world of his own whereto is summoned the unfettered spirit.  Why
does it delight me to see the bat flitting at dusk before my window, or
to hear the hoot of the owl when all the ways are dark?  I might regard
the bat with disgust, and the owl either with vague superstition or not
heed it at all.  But these have their place in the poet's world, and
carry me above this idle present.

I once passed a night in a little market-town where I had arrived tired
and went to bed early.  I slept forthwith, but was presently awakened by
I knew not what; in the darkness there sounded a sort of music, and, as
my brain cleared, I was aware of the soft chiming of church bells.  Why,
what hour could it be?  I struck a light and looked at my watch.
Midnight.  Then a glow came over me.  "We have heard the chimes at
midnight, Master Shallow!"  Never till then had _I_ heard them.  And the
town in which I slept was Evesham, but a few miles from
Stratford-on-Avon.  What if those midnight bells had been to me but as
any other, and I had reviled them for breaking my sleep?--Johnson did not
much exaggerate.



XX.


It is the second Jubilee.  Bonfires blaze upon the hills, making one
think of the watchman on Agamemnon's citadel.  (It were more germane to
the matter to think of Queen Elizabeth and the Armada.)  Though wishing
the uproar happily over, I can see the good in it as well as another man.
English monarchy, as we know it, is a triumph of English common sense.
Grant that men cannot do without an overlord; how to make that
over-lordship consist with the largest practical measure of national and
individual liberty?  We, at all events, have for a time solved the
question.  For a time only, of course; but consider the history of
Europe, and our jubilation is perhaps justified.

For sixty years has the British Republic held on its way under one
President.  It is wide of the mark to object that other Republics, which
change their President more frequently, support the semblance of over-
lordship at considerably less cost to the people.  Britons are minded for
the present that the Head of their State shall be called King or Queen;
the name is pleasant to them; it corresponds to a popular sentiment,
vaguely understood, but still operative, which is called loyalty.  The
majority thinking thus, and the system being found to work more than
tolerably well, what purpose could be served by an attempt at _novas
res_?  The nation is content to pay the price; it is the nation's affair.
Moreover, who can feel the least assurance that a change to one of the
common forms of Republicanism would be for the general advantage?  Do we
find that countries which have made the experiment are so very much
better off than our own in point of stable, quiet government and of
national welfare?  The theorist scoffs at forms which have survived their
meaning, at privilege which will bear no examination, at compromises
which sound ludicrous, at submissions which seem contemptible; but let
him put forward his practical scheme for making all men rational,
consistent, just.  Englishmen, I imagine, are not endowed with these
qualities in any extraordinary degree.  Their strength, politically
speaking, lies in a recognition of expediency, complemented by respect
for the established fact.  One of the facts particularly clear to them is
the suitability to their minds, their tempers, their habits, of a system
of polity which has been established by the slow effort of generations
within this sea-girt realm.  They have nothing to do with ideals: they
never trouble themselves to think about the Rights of Man.  If you talk
to them (long enough) about the rights of the shopman, or the ploughman,
or the cat's-meat-man, they will lend ear, and, when the facts of any
such case have been examined, they will find a way of dealing with them.
This characteristic of theirs they call Common Sense.  To them, all
things considered, it has been of vast service; one may even say that the
rest of the world has profited by it not a little.  That Uncommon Sense
might now and then have stood them even in better stead is nothing to the
point.  The Englishman deals with things as they are, and first and
foremost accepts his own being.

This Jubilee declares a legitimate triumph of the average man.  Look back
for threescore years, and who shall affect to doubt that the time has
been marked by many improvements in the material life of the English
people?  Often have they been at loggerheads among themselves, but they
have never flown at each other's throats, and from every grave dispute
has resulted some substantial gain.  They are a cleaner people and a more
sober; in every class there is a diminution of brutality; education--stand
for what it may--has notably extended; certain forms of tyranny have been
abolished; certain forms of suffering, due to heedlessness or ignorance,
have been abated.  True, these are mere details; whether they indicate a
solid advance in civilization cannot yet be determined.  But assuredly
the average Briton has cause to jubilate; for the progressive features of
the epoch are such as he can understand and approve, whereas the doubt
which may be cast upon its ethical complexion is for him either
non-existent or unintelligible.  So let cressets flare into the night
from all the hills!  It is no purchased exultation, no servile flattery.
The People acclaims itself, yet not without genuine gratitude and
affection towards the Representative of its glory and its power.  The
Constitutional Compact has been well preserved.  Review the record of
kingdoms, and say how often it has come to pass that sovereign and people
rejoiced together over bloodless victories.



XXI.


At an inn in the north I once heard three men talking at their breakfast
on the question of diet.  They agreed that most people ate too much meat,
and one of them went so far as to declare that, for his part, he rather
preferred vegetables and fruit.  "Why," he said, "will you believe me
that I sometimes make a breakfast of apples?"  This announcement was
received in silence; evidently the two listeners didn't quite know what
to think of it.  Thereupon the speaker, in rather a blustering tone,
cried out, "Yes, I can make a very good breakfast on _two or three pounds
of apples_."

Wasn't it amusing?  And wasn't it characteristic?  This honest Briton had
gone too far in frankness.  'Tis all very well to like vegetables and
fruits up to a certain point; but to breakfast on apples!  His
companions' silence proved that they were just a little ashamed of him;
his confession savoured of poverty or meanness; to right himself in their
opinion, nothing better occurred to the man than to protest that he ate
apples, yes, but not merely one or two; he ate them largely, _by the
pound_!  I laughed at the fellow, but I thoroughly understood him; so
would every Englishman; for at the root of our being is a hatred of
parsimony.  This manifests itself in all sorts of ludicrous or
contemptible forms, but no less is it the source of our finest qualities.
An Englishman desires, above all, to live largely; on that account he not
only dreads, but hates and despises, poverty.  His virtues are those of
the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the
sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches
in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most
part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position.



XXII.


For a nation of this temper, the movement towards democracy is fraught
with peculiar dangers.  Profoundly aristocratic in his sympathies, the
Englishman has always seen in the patrician class not merely a social,
but a moral, superiority; the man of blue blood was to him a living
representative of those potencies and virtues which made his ideal of the
worthy life.  Very significant is the cordial alliance from old time
between nobles and people; free, proud homage on one side answering to
gallant championship on the other; both classes working together in the
cause of liberty.  However great the sacrifices of the common folk for
the maintenance of aristocratic power and splendour, they were gladly
made; this was the Englishman's religion, his inborn _pietas_; in the
depths of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning
attached to lordship.  Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by
descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them
forth in act.  A poor noble was a contradiction in terms; if such a
person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as
though he were the victim of some freak of nature.  The Lord was
Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words virtually constituted
the code of honour whereby the nation lived.

In a new world, beyond the ocean, there grew up a new race, a scion of
England, which shaped its life without regard to the principle of
hereditary lordship; and in course of time this triumphant Republic began
to shake the ideals of the Motherland.  Its civilization, spite of
superficial resemblances, is not English; let him who will think it
superior; all one cares to say is that it has already shown in a broad