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Belloc</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: First and Last</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. Belloc</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 19, 2003 [eBook #7352]<br /> +[Most recently updated: May 1, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIRST AND LAST ***</div> + +<h1>FIRST AND LAST</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">BY H. BELLOC</h2> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">ON WEIGHING ANCHOR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">THE REVEILLON</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">ON CHEESES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">THE INVENTOR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">THE VIEWS OF ENGLAND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">THE LUNATIC</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">THE INHERITANCE OF HUMOUR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">THE OLD GENTLEMAN’S OPINIONS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">ON HISTORICAL EVIDENCE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">THE ABSENCE OF THE PAST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">ST. PATRICK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">THE LOST THINGS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">ON THE READING OF HISTORY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">THE VICTORY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">REALITY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">ON THE DECLINE OF THE BOOK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">JOSÉ MARIA DE HEREDIA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap19">NORMANDY AND THE NORMANS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap20">THE OLD THINGS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap21">THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap22">THE ROMAN ROADS IN PICARDY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap23">THE REWARD OF LETTERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap24">THE EYE-OPENERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap25">THE PUBLIC</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap26">ON ENTRIES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap27">COMPANIONS OF TRAVEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap28">ON THE SOURCES OF RIVERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap29">ON ERROR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap30">THE GREAT SIGHT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap31">THE DECLINE OF A STATE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap32">ON PAST GREATNESS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap33">MR. THE DUKE: THE MAN OF MALPLAQUET</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap34">THE GAME OF CARDS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap35">“KING LEAR”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap36">THE EXCURSION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap37">THE TIDE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap38">ON A GREAT WIND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap39">THE LETTER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap40">THE REGRET</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap41">THE END OF THE WORLD</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>FIRST AND LAST</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01">On Weighing Anchor</a></h2> + +<p> +Personally I should call it “Getting It up,” but I have always seen it in print +called “weighing anchor”—and if it is in print one must bow to it. It does +weigh. +</p> + +<p> +There are many ways of doing it. The best, like all good things, has gone for +ever, and this best way was for a thing called a capstan to have sticking out +from it, movable, and fitted into its upper rim, other things called +capstan-bars. These, men would push singing a song, while on the top of the +capstan sat a man playing the fiddle, or the flute, or some other instrument of +music. You and I have seen it in pictures. Our sons will say that they wish +they had seen it in pictures. Our sons’ sons will say it is all a lie and was +never in anything but the pictures, and they will explain it by some myth or +other. +</p> + +<p> +Another way is to take two turns of a rope round a donkey-engine, paying in and +coiling while the engine clanks. And another way on smaller boats is a sort of +jack arrangement by which you give little jerks to a ratchet and wheel, and at +last It looses Its hold. Sometimes (in this last way) It will not loose Its +hold at all. +</p> + +<p> +Then there is a way of which I proudly boast that it is the only way I know, +which is to go forward and haul at the line until It comes—or does not come. If +It does not come, you will not be so cowardly or so mean as to miss your tide +for such a trifle. You will cut the line and tie a float on and pray Heaven +that into whatever place you run, that place will have moorings ready and free. +</p> + +<p> +When a man weighs anchor in a little ship or a large one he does a jolly thing! +He cuts himself off and he starts for freedom and for the chance of things. He +pulls the jib a-weather, he leans to her slowly pulling round, he sees the wind +getting into the mainsail, and he feels that she feels the helm. He has her on +a slant of the wind, and he makes out between the harbour piers. I am +supposing, for the sake of good luck, that it is not blowing bang down the +harbour mouth, nor, for the matter of that, bang out of it. I am supposing, for +the sake of good luck to this venture, that in weighing anchor you have the +wind so that you can sail with it full and by, or freer still, right past the +walls until you are well into the tide outside. You may tell me that you are so +rich and your boat is so big that there have been times when you have anchored +in the very open, and that all this does not apply to you. Why, then, your +thoughts do not apply to me nor to the little boat I have in mind. +</p> + +<p> +In the weighing of anchor and the taking of adventure and of the sea there is +an exact parallel to anything that any man can do in the beginning of any human +thing, from his momentous setting out upon his life in early manhood to the +least decision of his present passing day. It is a very proper emblem of a +beginning. It may lead him to that kind of muddle and set-back which attaches +only to beginnings, or it may get him fairly into the weather, and yet he may +find, a little way outside, that he has to run for it, or to beat back to +harbour. Or, more generously, it may lead him to a long and steady cruise in +which he shall find profit and make distant rivers and continue to increase his +log by one good landfall after another. But the whole point of weighing anchor +is that he has chosen his weather and his tide, and that he is setting out. The +thing is done. +</p> + +<p> +You will very commonly observe that, in land affairs, if good fortune follows a +venture it is due to the marvellous excellence of its conductor, but if ill +fortune, then to evil chance alone. Now, it is not so with the sea. +</p> + +<p> +The sea drives truth into a man like salt. A coward cannot long pretend to be +brave at sea, nor a fool to be wise, nor a prig to be a good companion, and any +venture connected with the sea is full of venture and can pretend to be nothing +more. Nevertheless there is a certain pride in keeping a course through +different weathers, in making the best of a tide, in using cats’ paws in a dull +race, and, generally, in knowing how to handle the thing you steer and to judge +the water and the wind. Just because men have to tell the truth once they get +into tide water, what little is due to themselves in their success thereon they +are proud of and acknowledge. +</p> + +<p> +If your sailing venture goes well, sailing reader, take a just pride in it; +there will be the less need for me to write, some few years hence, upon the art +of picking up moorings, though I confess I would rather have written on that so +far as the fun of writing was concerned. For picking up moorings is a far more +tricky and amusing business than Getting It up. It differs with every +conceivable circumstance of wind, and tide, and harbour, and rig, and +freeboard, and light; and then there are so many stories to tell about it! +As—how once a poor man picked up a rich man’s moorings at Cowes and was visited +by an aluminium boat, all splendid in the morning sun. Or again—how a stranger +who had made Orford Haven (that very difficult place) on the very top of an +equinoctial springtide, picked up a racing mark-buoy, taking it to be moorings, +and dragged it with him all the way to Aldborough, and that right before the +town of Orford, so making himself hateful to the Orford people. +</p> + +<p> +But I digress.... +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02">The Reveillon</a></h2> + +<p> +There was in the regiment with which I served a man called Frocot, famous with +his comrades because he had seen The Dead, for this experience, though common +among the Scotch, is rare among the French, a sister nation. This man Frocot +could neither write nor read, and was also the strongest man I ever knew. He +was quite short and exceedingly broad, and he could break a penny with his +hands, but this gift of strength, though young men value it so much, was +thought little of compared with his perception of unseen things, for though the +men, who were peasants, professed to laugh at it, and him, in their hearts they +profoundly believed. It had been made clear to us that he could see and hear +The Dead one night in January during a snowstorm, when he came in and woke me +in barrack-room because he had heard the Loose Spur. Our spurs were not buckled +on like the officers’; they were fixed into the heel of the boot, and if a nail +loosened upon either side the spur dragged with an unmistakable noise. There +was a sergeant who (for some reason) had one so loosened on the last night he +had ever gone the rounds before his death, for in the morning as he came off +guard he killed himself, and the story went about among the drivers that +sometimes on stable guard in the thick of the night, when you watched all alone +by the lantern (with your three comrades asleep in the straw of an empty +stall), your blood would stop and your skin tauten at the sound of a loose spur +dragging on the far side of the stable, in the dark. But though many had heard +the story, and though some had pretended to find proof for it, I never knew a +man to feel and know it except this man Frocot on that night. I remember him at +the foot of my bed with his lantern waking me from the rooted sleep of bodily +fatigue, standing there in his dark blue driver’s coat and staring with +terrible eyes. He had undoubtedly heard and seen, but whether of himself from +within, imagining, or, as I rather believe, from without and influenced, it is +impossible to say. He was rough and poor, and he came from the Forest of +Ardennes. +</p> + +<p> +The reason I remember him and write of him at this season is not, however, this +particular and dreadful visitation of his, but a folly or a vision that befell +him at this time of the year, now seventeen years ago; for he had Christmas +leave and was on his way from garrison to his native place, and he was walking +the last miles of the wood. It was the night before Christmas. It was clear, +and there was no wind, but the sky was overcast with level clouds and the +evening was very dark. He started unfed since the first meal of the day; it was +dark three hours before he was up into the high wood. He met no one during all +these miles, and his body and his mind were lonely; he hoped to press on and be +at his father’s door before two in the morning or perhaps at one. The night was +so still that he heard no noise in the high wood, not even the rustling of a +leaf or a twig crackling, and no animal ran in the undergrowth. The moss of the +ride was silent under his heavy tread, but now and then the steel of his +side-arm clicked against a metal button of the great cloak he wore. This sharp +sound made him so conscious of himself that he seemed to fill that forest with +his own presence and to be all that was, there or elsewhere. He was in a mood +of unreal and not holy things. The mood, remaining, changed its aspect, and now +he was so far from alone that all the trunks around him and the glimmers of sky +between bare boughs held each a spirit of its own, and with the powerful +imagination of the unlearned he could have spoken and held communion with the +trees; but it would have an evil communion, for he felt this mood of his take +on a further phase as he went deeper and deeper still into these forests. He +felt about him uneasily the sense of doom. He was in that exaltation of fancy +or dream when faint appeals are half heard far off, but not by our human ears, +and when whatever attempts to pierce the armour of our mortality appeals to us +by wailing and by despairing sighs. It seemed to him that most unhappy things +passed near him in the air, and that the wood about him was full of sobbing. +Then, again, he felt his own mind within him begin to be occupied by doubtful +troubles worse than these terrors, an anxious straining for ill news, for +bitter and dreadful news, mixed with a confused certitude that such news had +come indeed, disturbed and haunted him; and all the while about him in that +stillness the rushing of unhappy spirits went like a secret storm. He was +clouded with the mingled emotions of apprehension and of fatal mourning; he +attempted to remember the expectations that had failed him, friends untrue, and +the names of parents dead; but he was now the victim of this strange night and +unable (whether from hunger or fatigue, or from that unique power of his to +discern things beyond the world) to remember his life or his definite aims at +all, or even his own name. He was mixed with the whole universe about him, and +was suffering some loss so grievous that very soon the gait of his march and +his whole being were informed by a large and final despair. +</p> + +<p> +It was in this great and universal mood (granted to him as a seer, though he +was a common man) that he saw down the ride, but somewhat to one side of it in +the heart of the high wood, a great light shining from a barn or shed that +stood there in the undergrowth, and to this light, though his way naturally led +him to it, he felt also impelled by an influence as strong as or stronger than +the despair that had filled his soul and all the woods around. He went on +therefore quickly, straining with his eyes, and when he came into the light +that shone out from this he saw a more brilliant light within, and men of his +own kind adoring; but the vision was confused, like light on light or like +vapours moving over bright metals in a cauldron, and as he gazed his mind +became still and the dread left him altogether. He said it was like shutting a +gentleman’s great oaken door against a driving storm. +</p> + +<p> +This is the story he told me weeks after as we rode together in the battery, +for he hid it in his heart till the spring. As I say, I believed him. +</p> + +<p> +He was an unlearned man and a strong; he never worshipped. He was of that plain +stuff and clay on which has worked since all recorded time the power of the +Spirit. +</p> + +<p> +He said that when he left (as he did rapidly leave) that light, peace also left +him, but that the haunting terror did not return. He found the clearing and his +father’s hut; fatigue and the common world indeed returned, but with them a +permanent memory of things experienced. +</p> + +<p> +Every word I have written of him is true. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03">On Cheeses</a></h2> + +<p> +If antiquity be the test of nobility, as many affirm and none deny (saving, +indeed, that family which takes for its motto “Sola Virtus Nobilitas,” which +may mean that virtue is the only nobility, but which may also mean, mark you, +that nobility is the only virtue—and anyhow denies that nobility is tested by +the lapse of time), <i>if</i>, I say, antiquity be the only test of nobility, +then cheese is a very noble thing. +</p> + +<p> +But wait a moment: there was a digression in that first paragraph which to the +purist might seem of a complicated kind. +</p> + +<p> +Were I writing algebra (I wish I were) I could have analysed my thoughts by the +use of square brackets, round brackets, twiddly brackets, and the rest, all +properly set out in order so that a Common Fool could follow them. +</p> + +<p> +But no such luck! I may not write of algebra here; for there is a rule current +in all newspapers that no man may write upon any matter save upon those in +which he is more learned than all his human fellows that drag themselves so +slowly daily forward to the grave. +</p> + +<p> +So I had to put the thing in the very common form of a digression, and very +nearly to forget that great subject of cheese which I had put at the very head +and title of this. +</p> + +<p> +Which reminds me: had I followed the rule set down by a London journalist the +other day (and of the proprietor of his paper I will say nothing—though I might +have put down the remark to his proprietor) I would have hesitated to write +that first paragraph. I would have hesitated, did I say? Griffins’ tails! +Nay—Hippogriffs and other things of the night! I would not have dared to write +it at all! For this journalist made a law and promulgated it, and the law was +this: that no man should write that English which could not be understood if +all the punctuation were left out. Punctuation, I take it, includes brackets, +which the Lord of Printers knows are a very modern part of punctuation indeed. +</p> + +<p> +Now let the horripilised reader look up again at the first paragraph (it will +do him no harm), and think how it would look all written out in fair uncials +like the beautiful Gospels of St. Chad, which anyone may see for nothing in the +cathedral of Lichfield, an English town famous for eight or nine different +things: as Garrick, Doctor Johnson, and its two opposite inns. Come, read that +first paragraph over now and see what you could make of it if it were written +out in uncials—that is, not only without punctuation, but without any division +between the words. Wow! As the philosopher said when he was asked to give a +plain answer “Yes” or “No.” +</p> + +<p> +And now to cheese. I have had quite enough of digressions and of follies. They +are the happy youth of an article. They are the springtime of it. They are its +riot. I am approaching the middle age of this article. Let us be solid upon the +matter of cheese. +</p> + +<p> +I have premised its antiquity, which is of two sorts, as is that of a nobleman. +First, the antiquity of its lineage; secondly, the antiquity of its self. For +we all know that when we meet a nobleman we revere his nobility very much if he +be himself old, and that this quality of age in him seems to marry itself in +some mysterious way with the antiquity of his line. +</p> + +<p> +The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record. What did the faun in +the beginning of time when a god surprised him or a mortal had the misfortune +to come across him in the woods? It is well known that the faun offered either +of them cheese. So he knew how to make it. +</p> + +<p> +There are certain bestial men, hangers-on of the Germans, who would contend +that this would prove cheese to be acquired by the Aryan race (or what not) +from the Dolichocephalics (or what not), and there are certain horrors who +descend to imitate these barbarians—though themselves born in these glorious +islands, which are so steep upon their western side. But I will not detain you +upon these lest I should fall head foremost into another digression and forget +that my article, already in its middle age, is now approaching grey hairs. +</p> + +<p> +At any rate, cheese is very old. It is beyond written language. Whether it is +older than butter has been exhaustively discussed by several learned men, to +whom I do not send you because the road towards them leads elsewhere. It is the +universal opinion of all most accustomed to weigh evidence (and in these I very +properly include not only such political hacks as are already upon the bench +but sweepingly every single lawyer in Parliament, since any one of them may +tomorrow be a judge) that milk is older than cheese, and that man had the use +of milk before he cunningly devised the trick of squeezing it in a press and by +sacrificing something of its sweetness endowed it with a sort of immortality. +</p> + +<p> +The story of all this has perished. Do not believe any man who professes to +give it you. If he tells you some legend of a god who taught the Wheat-eating +Race, the Ploughers, and the Lords to make cheese, tell him such tales are true +symbols, but symbols only. If he tells you that cheese was an evolution and a +development, oh! then!—bring up your guns! Open on the fellow and sweep his +intolerable lack of intelligence from the earth. Ask him if he discovers +reality to be a function of time, and Being to hide in clockwork. Keep him on +the hop with ironical comments upon how it may be that environment can act upon +Will, while Will can do nothing with environment—whose proper name is mud. +Pester the provincial. Run him off the field. +</p> + +<p> +But about cheese. Its noble antiquity breeds in it a noble diffusion. +</p> + +<p> +This happy Christendom of ours (which is just now suffering from an indigestion +and needs a doctor—but having also a complication of insomnia cannot recollect +his name) has been multifarious incredibly—but in nothing more than in cheese! +</p> + +<p> +One cheese differs from another, and the difference is in sweeps, and in +landscapes, and in provinces, and in countrysides, and in climates, and in +principalities, and in realms, and in the nature of things. Cheese does most +gloriously reflect the multitudinous effect of earthly things, which could not +be multitudinous did they not proceed from one mind. +</p> + +<p> +Consider the cheese of Rocquefort: how hard it is in its little box. Consider +the cheese of Camembert, which is hard also, and also lives in a little box, +but must not be eaten until it is soft and yellow. Consider the cheese of +Stilton, which is not made there, and of Cheddar, which is. Then there is your +Parmesan, which idiots buy rancid in bottles, but which the wise grate daily +for their use: you think it is hard from its birth? You are mistaken. It is the +world that hardens the Parmesan. In its youth the Parmesan is very soft and +easy, and is voraciously devoured. +</p> + +<p> +Then there is your cheese of Wensleydale, which is made in Wensleydale, and +your little Swiss cheese, which is soft and creamy and eaten with sugar, and +there is your Cheshire cheese and your little Cornish cheese, whose name +escapes me, and your huge round cheese out of the Midlands, as big as a fort +whose name I never heard. There is your toasted or Welsh cheese, and your +cheese of Pont-l’evêque, and your white cheese of Brie, which is a chalky sort +of cheese. And there is your cheese of Neufchâtel, and there is your Gorgonzola +cheese, which is mottled all over like some marbles, or like that Mediterranean +soap which is made of wood-ash and of olive oil. There is your Gloucester +cheese called the Double Gloucester, and I have read in a book of Dunlop +cheese, which is made in Ayrshire: they could tell you more about it in +Kilmarnock. Then Suffolk makes a cheese, but does not give it any name; and +talking of that reminds me how going to Le Quesnoy to pass the people there the +time of day, and to see what was left of that famous but forgotten fortress, a +young man there showed me a cheese, which he told me also had no name, but +which was native to the town, and in the valley of Ste. Engrace, where is that +great wood which shuts off all the world, they make their cheese of ewe’s milk +and sell it in Tardets, which is their only livelihood. They make a cheese in +Port-Salut which is a very subtle cheese, and there is a cheese of Limburg, and +I know not how many others, or rather I know them, but you have had enough: for +a little cheese goes a long way. No man is a glutton on cheese. +</p> + +<p> +What other cheese has great holes in it like Gruyere, or what other is as round +as a cannon-ball like that cheese called Dutch? which reminds me:— +</p> + +<p> +Talking of Dutch cheese. Do you not notice how the intimate mind of Europe is +reflected in cheese? For in the centre of Europe, and where Europe is most +active, I mean in Britain and in Gaul and in Northern Italy, and in the valley +of the Rhine—nay, to some extent in Spain (in her Pyrenean valleys at +least)—there flourishes a vast burgeoning of cheese, infinite in variety, one +in goodness. But as Europe fades away under the African wound which Spain +suffered or the Eastern barbarism of the Elbe, what happens to cheese? It +becomes very flat and similar. You can quote six cheeses perhaps which the +public power of Christendom has founded outside the limits of its ancient +Empire—but not more than six. I will quote you 253 between the Ebro and the +Grampians, between Brindisi and the Irish Channel. +</p> + +<p> +I do not write vainly. It is a profound thing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04">The Captain of Industry</a></h2> + +<p> +The heir of the merchant Mahmoud had not disappointed that great financier +while he still lived, and when he died he had the satisfaction of seeing the +young man, now twenty-five years of age, successfully conducting his numerous +affairs, and increasing (fabulous as this may seem) the millions with which his +uncle entrusted him. +</p> + +<p> +Shortly after Mahmoud’s death the prosperity of the firm had already given rise +to a new proverb, and men said: “Do you think I am Mahmoud’s-Nephew?” when they +were asked to lend money or in some other way to jeopardize a few coppers in +the service of God or their neighbour. +</p> + +<p> +It was also a current expression, “He’s rich as Mahmoud’s-Nephew,” when +comrades would jest against some young fellow who was flusher than usual, and +could afford a quart or even a gallon of wine for the company; while again the +discontented and the oppressed would mutter between their teeth: “Heaven will +take vengeance at last upon these Mahmoud’s-Nephews!” In a word, +“Mahmoud’s-Nephew” came to mean throughout the whole Caliphate and wherever the +True Believers spread their empire, an exceedingly wealthy man. But Mahmoud +himself having been dead ten years and his heir the fortunate head of the +establishment being now well over thirty years of age, there happened a very +inexplicable and outrageous accident: he died—and after his death no +instructions were discovered as to what should be done with this enormous +capital, no will could be found, and it happened moreover to be a moment of +great financial delicacy when the manager of each department in the business +needed all the credit he could get. +</p> + +<p> +In such a quandary the Chief Organizer and confidential friend, Ahmed, upon +whom the business already largely depended, and who was so circumstanced that +he could draw almost at will upon the balances, imagined a most intelligent way +of escaping from the difficulties that would arise when the death of the +principal was known. +</p> + +<p> +He caused a quantity of hay, of straw, of dust and of other worthless materials +to be stuffed into a figure of canvas; this he wrapped round with the usual +clothes that Mahmoud’s-Nephew had worn in the office, he shrouded the face with +the hood which his chief had commonly worn during life, and having so dressed +the lay figure and secretly buried the real body, he admitted upon the morning +after the death those who first had business with his master. +</p> + +<p> +He met them at the door with smiles and bows, saying: “You know, gentlemen, +that like most really successful men, my chief is as silent as his decisions +are rapid; he will listen to what you have to say, and it will be a plain yes +or no at the end of it.” +</p> + +<p> +These gentlemen came with a proposal to sell to the firm for the sum of one +million dinars a barren rock in the Indian Sea, which was not even theirs, and +on which indeed not one of them had ever set eyes. Their claim to advance so +original a proposal was that to their certain knowledge two thousand of the +wealthiest citizens of their town were willing to buy the rock again at a +profit from whoever should be its possessor during the next few weeks in the +fond hope of selling it once again to provincials, clerics, widows, orphans, +and in general the uninstructed and the credulous—among whom had been +industriously spread the report that the rock in question consisted of one +solid and flawless diamond. +</p> + +<p> +These gentlemen sitting round the table before the shrouded figure laid down +their proposals, whereupon the manager briefly summed up what they had said, +and having done so, replied: “Gentlemen, his lordship is a man of few words; +but you will have your answer in a moment if you will be good enough to rise, +as he is at this moment expecting a deputation from the Holy Men who are +entreating him to provide the cost of a mosque in one of the suburbs.” +</p> + +<p> +The proposers of the bargain rose, greatly awed and pleased by the silence and +dignity of the financier who apparently remained for a moment discussing their +proposals without gesture and in a tone too low for them to hear, while his +manager bent over to listen. +</p> + +<p> +“It is ever so,” said one of them, “you may ever know the greatest men by their +silence.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” said another, “he is not one to be easily deceived.” +</p> + +<p> +The manager in a moment or two rejoined them at the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, +smiling, “my chief has heard your arguments and has expressed his assent to +your conditions.” +</p> + +<p> +They went out, delighted at the success of their mission, and congratulated +Ahmed upon the financier’s genius. +</p> + +<p> +“He does not,” said the manager, laughing in hearty agreement, “bestow himself +as a present upon all and sundry. Nor is he often caught indulging in short +bouts of sleep, nor are flies diabolically left to repose undisturbed upon his +features—but you must excuse me, I hear the Holy Men,” and indeed from the +inner room came a noise of speechifying in that doleful sing-song which is +associated in Bagdad with the practice of religion. +</p> + +<p> +The gentlemen who had thus had the luck to interview Mahmoud’s-Nephew with such +success in the matter of the Diamond Island, soon spread about the news, and +confirmed their fellow-citizens in the certitude that a great financier is +neither talkative nor vivacious. “Still waters run deep,” they said, and all +those to whom they said it nodded in a wise acquiescence. Nor had the Manager +the least difficulty in receiving one set of customers after another and in +negotiating within three weeks an infinite amount of business, all of which +confirmed those who had the pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that +great fortunes were made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial +weakness. +</p> + +<p> +At last the ingenious man of affairs, to whom the whole combination was due, +was not a little disturbed to receive from the Caliph a note couched in the +following terms: +</p> + +<p> +“The Commander of the Faithful and the Servant of the Merciful whose name be +exalted, to the Nephew of Mahmoud: +</p> + +<p> +“My Lord:— +</p> + +<p> +“It has been the custom since the days of my grandfather (May his soul see +God!) for the more wealthy of the Faithful to be called to my councils, and +upon my summoning them thither it has not been unusual for them to present sums +varying in magnitude but always proportionate to their total fortunes. My court +will receive signal honour if you will present yourself after the morning +prayer of the day after to-morrow. My treasurer will receive from you with +gratitude and remembrance upon the previous day and not later than noon, the +sum of one million dinars.” +</p> + +<p> +Here, indeed, was a perplexity. The payment of the money was an easy matter and +was duly accomplished; but how should the lay figure which did duty in such +domestic scenes as the negotiation of loans, the bullying of debtors, the +purchase of options, and the cheating of the innocent and the embarrassed, take +his place in the Caliph’s council and remain undiscovered? For great as was the +reputation of Mahmoud’s-Nephew for discretion and for golden silence, such as +are proper to the accumulation of great wealth, there would seem a necessity in +any political assembly to open the mouth from time to time, if only for the +giving of a vote. +</p> + +<p> +But Ahmed, who had by this time accumulated into his own hands the millions +formerly his master’s, finally solved the problem. Judicious presents to the +servants of the palace and the public criers made his way the easier, and on +the summoning of the council Mahmoud’s-Nephew, whose troublesome affection of +the throat was now publicly discussed, was permitted to bring into the +council-room his private secretary and manager. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover at the council, as at his private office, the continued taciturnity of +the millionaire could not but impress the politicians as it had already +impressed the financial world. +</p> + +<p> +“He does not waste his breath in tub-thumping,” said one, looking reverently at +the sealed figure. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” another would reply, “they may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest, quiet +Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back them against all +the brilliant paradoxical young fellows of our day.” +</p> + +<p> +“They say he is very kind at heart and lovable,” a third would then add, upon +which a fourth would bear his testimony thus: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and though he says nothing about it, his charitable gifts are enormous.” +</p> + +<p> +By the second meeting of the council the lay figure had achieved a reputation +of so high a sort that the Caliph himself insisted upon making him a domestic +adviser, one of the three who perpetually associated with the Commander of the +<i>Faithful</i> and directed his policy. For the universal esteem in which the +new councillor was held had affected that Prince very deeply. +</p> + +<p> +Here there arose a crux from which there could be no escape, as one of the +three chief councillors, Mahmoud’s-Nephew, must speak at last and deliver +judgments! +</p> + +<p> +The Manager, first considering the whole business, and next adding up his +private gains, which he had carefully laid out in estates of which the firm and +its employés knew nothing, decided that he could afford to retire. What might +happen to the general business after his withdrawal would not be his concern. +</p> + +<p> +He first gave out, therefore, that the millionaire was taken exceedingly ill, +and that his life was despaired of: later, within a few hours, that he was +dead. +</p> + +<p> +So far from attempting to allay the panic which ensued, Ahmed frankly admitted +the worst. +</p> + +<p> +With cries of despair and a confident appeal to the justice of Heaven against +such intrigues, the honest fellow permitted the whole of the vast business to +be wound up in favour of newcomers, who had not forgotten to reward him, and +soothing as best he could the ruined crowds of small investors who thronged +round him for help and advice, he retired under an assumed name to his highly +profitable estates, which were situated in the most distant provinces of the +known world. +</p> + +<p> +As for Mahmoud’s-Nephew, three theories arose about him which are still +disputed to this day: +</p> + +<p> +The first was that his magnificent brain with its equitable judgment and its +power of strict secrecy, had designed plans too far advanced for his time, and +that his bankruptcy was due to excess of wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +The second theory would have it that by “going into politics” (as the phrase +runs in Bagdad) he had dissipated his energies, neglected his business, and +that the inevitable consequences had followed. +</p> + +<p> +The third theory was far more reasonable. Mahmoud’s-Nephew, according to this, +had towards the end of his life lost judgment; his garrulous indecision within +the last few days before his death was notorious: in the Caliph’s council, as +those who should best know were sure, one could hardly get a word in edgewise +for his bombastic self-assurance; while in matters of business, to conduct a +bargain with him was more like attending a public meeting than the prosecution +of negotiations with a respectable banker. +</p> + +<p> +In a word, it was generally agreed that Mahmoud’s-Nephew’s success had been +bound up with his splendid silence, his fall, bankruptcy, and death, with a +lesion of the brain which had disturbed this miracle of self-control. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05">The Inventor</a></h2> + +<p> +I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and I spent +it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very comfortable old +posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some few hours there and to +take the last train out in the evening, and I had meant to spend those hours +alone and resting; but this was not permitted me, for just as I had taken up +the local paper, which was a humble, reasonable thing, empty of any passion and +violence and very reposeful to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow +sharply: a gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who +is trying to read his paper. +</p> + +<p> +I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age. He had +on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat; he stooped and +shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and his eyes were +astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together. +</p> + +<p> +He said, “I beg your pardon.” +</p> + +<p> +I said, “Eh, what?” +</p> + +<p> +He said again “I beg your pardon” in the tones of a man who almost commands, +and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a chair quite close +to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets out of his pocket. His +manner was that of a man who engages your attention and has a right to engage +it. There were no preliminaries and there was no introduction. This was +apparently his manner, and I submitted. +</p> + +<p> +“I have here,” he said, fixing me with his intense eyes, “the plans for a +speedometer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“You know what a speedometer is?” he asked suspiciously. +</p> + +<p> +I said yes. I said it was a machine for measuring the speed of vehicles, and +that it was compounded of two (or more) Greek words. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded; he was pleased that I knew so much, and could therefore listen to +his tale and understand it. He pulled his grey baggy trousers up over the knee, +settled himself, sitting forward, and opened his document. He cleared his +throat, still fixing me with those eyes of his, and said— +</p> + +<p> +“Every speedometer up to now has depended upon the same principle as a Watt’s +governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each by a limb to a +central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed of rotation, and +this movement is indicated upon a dial.” +</p> + +<p> +I nodded. +</p> + +<p> +He cleared his throat again. “Of course, that is unsatisfactory.” +</p> + +<p> +“Damnably!” said I, but this reply did not check him. +</p> + +<p> +“It works tolerably well at high speeds; at low speeds it is useless; and then +again there is a very rapid fluctuation, and the instrument is of only +approximate precision.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not it!” said I to encourage him. +</p> + +<p> +“There is one exception,” he continued, “to this principle, and that is a +speedometer which depends upon the introduction of resistance into a current +generated by a small magneto. The faster the magneto turns the stronger the +current generated, and the change is indicated upon a dial.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said I sadly, “as in the former case so in this; the change of speed is +indicated upon a dial.” And I sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“But this method also,” he went on tenaciously, “has its defects.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may lay to that,” I interrupted. +</p> + +<p> +“It has the defect that at high speeds its readings are not quite correct, and +at very low speeds still less so. Moreover, it is said that it slightly +deteriorates with the passage of time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now that,” I broke in emphatically, “is a defect I have discovered in——” +</p> + +<p> +But he put up his hand to stop me. “It slightly deteriorates, I say, with the +passage of time.” He paused a moment impressively. “No one has hitherto +discovered any system which will accurately record the speed of a vehicle or of +any rotary movement and register it at the lowest as at the highest speeds.” He +paused again for a still longer period in order to give still greater emphasis +to what he had to say. He concluded in a new note of sober triumph: “I have +solved the problem!” +</p> + +<p> +I thought this was the end of him, and I got up and beamed a congratulation at +him and asked if he would drink anything, but he only said, “Please sit down +again and I will explain.” +</p> + +<p> +There is no way of combating this sort of thing, and so I sat down, and he went +on: +</p> + +<p> +“It is perfectly simple....” He passed his hand over his forehead. “It is so +simple that one would say it must have been thought of before; but that is what +is always said of a great invention.... Now I have here” (and he opened out his +foolscap) “the full details. But I will not read them to you; I will summarize +them briefly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you a plan or anything I could watch?” said I a little anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he answered sharply, “I have not, but if you like I will draw a rough +sketch as I go along upon the margin of your newspaper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +He drew the newspaper towards him and put it on his knee. He pulled out a +pencil; he held the foolscap up before his eye, and he began to describe. +</p> + +<p> +“The general principle upon which my speedometer reposes,” he said solemnly, +“is the coordination of the cylinder and the cone upon an angle which will have +to be determined in practice, and will probably vary for different types. But +it will never fall below 15 nor rise over 43.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have thought——” I began, but he told me I could not yet have grasped +it, and that he wished to be more explicit. +</p> + +<p> +“On a king bolt,” he said, occasionally consulting his notes, “runs a pivot in +bevel which is kept in place by a small hair-spring, which spring fits loosely +on the Conkling Shaft.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” said I, “I see what is coming.” +</p> + +<p> +But he wouldn’t let me off so easily. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, of course you are going to say that the whole will be keyed together, and +that the T-pattern nuts on a movable shank will be my method of attachment to +the fixed portion next to the cam? Eh? So it is, but” (and here his eye +brightened), “<i>anyone</i> could have arranged that. My particularity is that +I have a freedom of movement even at the lowest speeds, and an accuracy of +notation even at the highest, which is secured in a wholly novel manner ... and +yet so simply. What do you think it is?” +</p> + +<p> +I affected to look puzzled, and thought for a moment. “I cannot imagine,” said +I, “unless——” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he interrupted, “do not try to guess it, for you never will. <i>I turn +the flange inward</i> on a Wilkinson lathe and give it a parabolic section so +that the axes are always parallel to each other and to the shaft.... There!” +</p> + +<p> +I had no idea the man could be so moved: there was jubilation in his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“There!” he said again, as though some effort of the brain had exhausted him. +“It can’t be touched, mind you,” he added suspiciously; “I’ve taken out the +provisional patents. There’s one man I know wants to fight it in the courts as +an infringement on Wilkinson’s own patent, but it can’t be touched!” He shook +his head decisively. “No! my lawyer’s certain of that—and so’m I!” +</p> + +<p> +Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had +apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched him with +a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his head back, and +sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion. He folded up his +specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore off the incomprehensible +sketch he had made with his pencil while he was speaking, and put it by me on +the mantelshelf. “You might like to keep it,” he said pathetically; “it’s a +document, that is; it will be famous some day.” He looked at it lovingly, +almost as though he was going to take it back again: but he thought better of +it. +</p> + +<p> +I was waiting, I will not say itching, for him to take his leave, when a god or +demon, that same perhaps which had treated the poor fellow as a jest for a +whole lifetime, inspired him to take a very false step indeed. He had already +taken up his hat and was turning as though to go to the door, when the +unfortunate thought struck him. +</p> + +<p> +“What would you do?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” I answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what would you do to try and get it taken up and talked about?” +</p> + +<p> +Then it was my turn, and I let him have it. +</p> + +<p> +“You must get the Press and the Government to work together,” I said rapidly, +“and particularly in connection with the new Government Service of Camion’s +Fettle-Trains and Cursory Circuits.” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded like one who thoroughly understands and desires to hear more. +</p> + +<p> +“Speed,” I added nonchalantly, “and the measure of it are of course essentials +in their case.” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded again. +</p> + +<p> +“And they have never really settled the problem ... especially about +Fettle-Trains.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said he ponderously, “so I understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well now,” I went on, full of the chase, “you will naturally ask me who are +you to go to?” I scratched my nose. “You know the Fusionary Office, as we call +it? It is really, of course, a part of the Stannaries. But the Chief Permanent +Secretary likes to have it called the Fusionary Office; it’s his vanity.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said he eagerly, “yes, go on!” +</p> + +<p> +“They always have the same hours,” I said, “four to eleven.” +</p> + +<p> +“Four to <i>what</i>?” he asked, looking up. +</p> + +<p> +“To eleven,” I repeated sharply; “but you’d much better call round about +three.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked bewildered. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t interrupt,” I said, seeing him open his lips, “or I shall lose the +thread. It’s rather complicated. You call at three by the little door in +Whitehall on the Embankment side towards the Horse Guards looking south, and +<i>don’t</i> ring the bell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” he asked. I thought for the moment he might begin to cry. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well,” I said testily, “you mustn’t ask those questions. All these +institutions are very old institutions with habits and prejudices of their own. +You mustn’t ring the bell, that’s all; they don’t like it; you must just wait +until they open; and then, if you take <i>my</i> advice, don’t write a note or +ask to interview the First Analyist. Don’t do any of the usual things, but just +fill up one of the regular Treasury forms and state that you have come with +regard to the Perception and Mensuration advertisements.” +</p> + +<p> +His face was pained and wrinkled as he heard me, but he said, “I beg your +pardon ... but shall I have it all explained to me at the office?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not!” I said, aghast; “it’s just because you might have so much +difficulty there that I’m explaining everything to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know,” he said doubtfully; “thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you’ll try and follow what I say,” I continued a little wearily; “I +have special opportunities for knowing.... Political, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” he said, “certainly; but about those forms?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” I said, “you didn’t suppose they supplied them, did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I almost did,” he ventured. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you did,” said I, with a loud laugh, “well, you’re wrong there. However, I +dare say I’ve got one on me.” He looked up eagerly as I felt in my pockets. I +brought out a telegraph blank, two letters, and a tobacco pouch. I looked at +them for a moment. “No,” said I, “I haven’t got one; it’s a pity, but I’ll tell +you who will give you one; you know the place opposite, where the bills are +drafted?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said, admitting ignorance for the first time in this +conversation and perhaps in his life. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said I impatiently, “never mind, anyone will show you. Go there, and if +they don’t give you a form they’ll show you a copy of Paper B, which is much +the same thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said he humbly, and he got up to move out. He was going a little +groggily, his eyes were dull and sodden. He presented all the aspect of a man +under a heavy strain. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got it all clear, I hope?” I asked cheerfully as he neared the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes!” he said. “Thank you; yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything else?” I shouted as he passed out into the courtyard. “Anything else +I can do? You’ll always find me in the room over the office, Room H, down the +little iron staircase,” I nodded genially to him as he disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +In this way did we exchange, the Inventor and I, those expert confidences and +mutual aids in either’s technical skill which are too rarely discovered in +modern travel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06">The Views of England</a></h2> + +<p> +England is a country with edges and with a core. It is a country very small for +the number of people who live in it, and very appreciable to the eye for the +traveller who travels on foot or in a boat from place to place. Considering the +part it has in the making of the world, it might justly be compared to a jewel +which is very small and very valuable and can almost be held in the hand. The +physical appreciation of England is to be reached by an appreciation of +landscape. +</p> + +<p> +It so happens that England is traversed by remarkable and sudden ranges; hills +with a sharp escarpment overlooking great undulating plains. This is not true +of any other one country of Europe, but it is true of England, and a man who +professes to consider, to understand, to criticize, to defend, and to love this +country, must know the Pennines, the Cotswolds, the North and the South Downs, +the Chilterns, the Mendips, and the Malverns; he must know Delamere Forest, and +he must know the Hill of Beeston, from which all Cheshire may be perceived. If +he knows these heights and has long considered the prospects which they afford, +he can claim to have seen the face of England. +</p> + +<p> +It is deplorable that our modern method of travel does cut us off from such +experiences. They were not only common to, they were necessary to our fathers; +the roads would not be at the expense of tunnelling through hills, and (what is +more important) when those men who most mould the knowledge of the country by +the country (the people who deal with its soil, who live separate upon its +separate farms) visited each other upon horses; and horses, unlike railway +trains, cannot climb hills. They puff, they heave, they snort, as do railway +trains, but they climb them well. +</p> + +<p> +On this account, because the roads for the carriages went over hills, and +because the method of visiting even a near neighbour would permit you to go +over hills, the England of quite a little time ago was familiar with the +half-dozen great landscapes of England. You may see it in that most individual, +that most peculiar, and, I think, that most glorious school of painters, the +English landscape painter, Constable with his thick colours, Turner with his +wonderment, and even the portrait painters in their backgrounds depend upon the +view of the plains from a height. To-day our landscape painters sometimes do +the same, but the market for that emotion is capricious, it is no longer the +secure and natural way of presenting England to English eyes. +</p> + +<p> +If you will consider these plains at the foot of the English hills you will +find in them the whole history of the country, and the whole meaning of it as +well. Two occur to me first: The view of the Weald (both Kentish and Sussex) +through which the influence of Europe perpetually approached the island, not +only in the crisis of the Roman or the Norman invasions, but in a hundred +episodes stretched out through two thousand years—and the view of the Thames +Valley as one gets it on a clear day from the summits of the North Downs when +one looks northward and sees very faintly the Chilterns along the horizon. +</p> + +<p> +This last is obscured by London. One needs a very particular circumstance in +which to appreciate it. The air must be dry and clear, there must be little or +no wind, or if there is a wind it must be a strong one from the south and west +that has already driven the smoke from the western edge of the town. When this +is so, a man looks right across to the sandy heights just north of the Thames, +and far beyond he sees the Chilterns, like a landfall upon the rim of the +world. He looks at all that soil on which the government of this country has +been rooted. He sees the hill of Windsor. He overlooks, though he cannot +perceive at so great a distance, the two great schools of the rich; he has +within one view the principal Castle of the Kings, the place of their council, +and the cathedral of their capital city: so true is it that the Thames made +England. +</p> + +<p> +Then, if you consider the upper half of that valley, the view is from the ridge +of the Berkshire hills, or, better still, from Cumnor, or from the clump of +trees above Faringdon. From such look-outs the astonishing loneliness which +England has had the strength to preserve in this historic belt of land +profoundly strikes a man. You can see to your left and, a long way off, the +hill where, as is most probable, Alfred thrust back the Pagans, and so saved +one-half of Christendom. Oxford is within your landscape. The roll upwards in a +glacis of the Cotswold, the nodal point of the Roman roads at Cirencester, and +the ancient crossings of the Thames. +</p> + +<p> +From the Cotswold again westward you look over a sheer wall and see one of +those differences which make up England. For the passage from the Upper Thames +to the flat and luxuriant valley floor of the Severn is a transition (if it be +made by crossing the hills) more sudden than that between many countries +abroad. Had our feudalism cut England into provinces we should here have two +marked provincial histories marching together, for the natural contrast is +greater than between Normandy and Brittany at any part of their march or +between Aragon and Castile at any part of theirs. I do not know what it is, but +the view of the jagged Malvern seen above the happy mists of autumn, when these +mists lie like a warm fleece upon the orchards of the vale, preserving them of +a morning until the strengthening of the sun, the sudden aspect, I say, of +those jagged peaks strikes one like a vision of a new world. How many men have +thought it! How often it ought to be written down! It hangs in the memory of +the traveller like a permanent benediction, and remains in his mind a standing +symbol of peace. +</p> + +<p> +I have no space to speak of how from Beeston you see all Cheshire; the Vale +Royal to your left, and the main plain of the county to your right. The whole +stretch is framed in with definite hills, the last and highly marked line of +the Pennines bounds the view upon the east; upon the west the first of the +Welsh hills stands sharply in a long even line against the fading sun; and on +the north you see the height of Delamere. There are three other views in the +North of England, the first easy, the last two difficult to obtain, all between +them making up a true picture of what the North of England is. The first (and +it is very famous) is the view over the industrial ferment of South Lancashire, +seen from the complete silence of the hills round the Peak. No matter where you +cross that summit, even if you take the high road from the Snake Inn to +Glossop, where the easiest, and therefore the least striking, passage has been +chosen, much more if you follow the wild heights a little to the south until +you come to a more abrupt descent on which there are not even paths, there +comes a point where there is presented to you in one great offering, without +introduction, a vision of the vast energies of England. +</p> + +<p> +I remember once in winter when the sun sets early (it was December, and seven +years ago) coming upon this sight. The clouds were so arranged after an +Atlantic storm that all the heaven (which here is always spacious and noble) +was covered with a rolling curtain as though a man had pulled it with his +hands. But far off, westward, there was a broad red band of sunset, and against +this the smoke, the tall stacks, the violence and the wealth of that cauldron. +One could almost hear the noise. It did arrest one; it was as though someone +had painted something unreal, to be a mystical emblem, and to sum up in one +picture all those million despairs, misfortunes, chances, disciplines, and +acquirements which make up the character of Lancashire men. This vision also +many men have seen and many men shall write of. Very rarely upon the surface of +the earth does the soul take on so immediate and obvious a physical body as +does the soul of that industrial world in the view of which I speak. +</p> + +<p> +And the two other views are, first, that difficult one which one must pick and +choose but which can be obtained from several sites (especially at the end of +Wensleydale), and which is the view of that rich, old, and agricultural +Yorkshire, from which the county draws its traditions and in which, perhaps, +the truest spirit of the county still abides; for Yorkshire is at heart farmer, +and possibly after three generations of a town, a man from this part of England +still looks more lively when he sees a lively horse put before him for +judgment. Second, the view from Cross Fell, very, very difficult to obtain, for +often when one climbs Cross Fell in sunny weather, one gets up over the Scar +under the threat of cloud, and one only reaches the summit by the time the +evening or the mist has fallen; but if one has the luck to see the view of +which I speak, then one sees all that rugged remaining part of the Northwest +exactly as the Romans saw it, and as it has been for two thousand years, with +the high land of the lakes and the stony nature and the sparseness of all the +stretch about one, and the approach to a foreign land. +</p> + +<p> +I have often thought when I have heard men blaming the story of England or her +present mood for false reasons, or, what is worse, praising her for false +reasons; when I have heard the men of the cities talking wild talk got from +maps and from print, or the disappointed men talking wild talk of another kind, +expecting impossible or foreign perfections from their own kindred—I have often +thought, I say, when I have heard the folly upon either side (and the mass of +it daily increases)—that it would be a wholesome thing if one could take such a +talker and make him walk from Dover to the Solway, exercising some care that he +should rise before the sun, and that he should see in clear weather the views +of which I speak. A man who has done that has seen England—not the name or the +map or the rhetorical catchword, but the thing. And it does not take so very +long. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07">The Lunatic</a></h2> + +<p> +Those who are interested in what simple straightforward people call the +Pathology of Consciousness have gathered a great body of evidence upon the +various manias that affect men, and there is an especially interesting +department of this which concerns illusion upon matters which in the sane are +determinable by the senses and common experience. Thus one man will believe +himself to be the Emperor of China, another to be William Shakespeare or some +other impossible person, though one would imagine that his every accident of +daily life would convince him to the contrary. +</p> + +<p> +I had recently occasion to watch one of the most harmless and yet one of the +most striking of these illusions in a private asylum which has specialized, if +I may so express myself, upon men of letters. The case was harmless and even +benign, for the poor fellow was not of a combative disposition to begin with, +was of too careful and dignified a temperament to show more than slight +irritation if his delusion were contradicted. This misfortune, however, very +rarely overtook him, for those who came to visit him were warned to humour his +whim. This eccentricity I will now describe. +</p> + +<p> +He imagined, nay he was convinced, that he was existing fifty years in the +future, and that the interest of his conversation for others would lie in his +reminiscence of the state of society in which we are actually living today. If +anyone who had not been warned was imprudent enough to suggest that the +conversation was taking place in 1909 would smile gently, nod, and say rather +bitterly, “Yes, I know, I know,” as though recognizing a universal plot against +him which he was too weary to combat. But when he had said this he would +continue to talk on as though both parties to the conversation were equally +convinced that the year was really 1960 or thereabouts. Whether to add zest to +what he said or from some part of his malady consonant with all the rest, my +poor friend (who had been a journalist and will very possibly be a journalist +again) presupposed that the whole structure of society as we now know it had +changed and that his reminiscences were those of a past time which, on account +of some great revolution or other, men imperfectly comprehended, so that it +must be of the highest interest and advantage to listen to the testimony of an +eye-witness upon them. +</p> + +<p> +What especially delighted him (for he was a zealous admirer of the society he +described) was the method of government. +</p> + +<p> +“There was no possibility of going wrong,” he said to me with curious zeal, +“not a shadow of danger! It would be difficult for you to understand now how +easily the system worked!” And here he sighed profoundly. “And why on earth,” +he continued, “men should have destroyed such an instrument when they had it is +more than I can understand. There it was in every country in Europe; there were +elections; all the men voted. And mind you, the elections were not so very far +apart. Most people living at one election could remember the last, so there was +no time for abuses to spring up.... Well, everybody voted. If a man wanted one +thing he voted one way, and if he wanted another thing he voted the other way. +The people for whom he voted would then meet, and with a sense of duty which I +cannot exaggerate they would work month after month exactly to reproduce the +will of those who had appointed them. It was a great time!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet,” said I, “even so there must have been occasional divergences between +what these people did and what the nation wanted.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see what you mean,” he said, musing, “you mean that all the devotion in the +world, the purest of motives and the most devoted sense of duty, could not keep +the elected always in contact with the electors. You are right. But you must +remember that in every country there was a machinery, with regard to the most +important measures at least, which could throw the matter before the electors +to be re-decided. I can remember no important occasion upon which the machinery +was not brought into use.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, after all, the value of the decisions of the electorate you are +describing,” said I, continuing to humour him, “would depend upon the +information which the electorate had received as well as upon their judgment.” +</p> + +<p> +“As for their judgment,” he said, a little shortly, “it is not for our time to +criticize theirs. Human judgment is not infallible, but I can well remember how +in every nation of Europe it was the fixed conviction of the citizens that +judgment was their chief characteristic, and especially judgment in national +affairs. I cannot believe that so universal an attitude of the mind could have +arisen had it not been justified. But as for information, they had the Press +... a free Press!” Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed +memories affect him. +</p> + +<p> +I was willing to lead him on, because this kind of illness is best met by +sympathy, and also because I was not uninterested to discover how his own trade +had affected him. +</p> + +<p> +“You would hardly understand it,” he said sadly; “what you hear from me is +nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those great houses +with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as clear, from every hidden +corner of the world, digested by master brains into the most lucid and terse +presentment of it possible, and then whirled out on great wheels to be +distributed by the thousand and the hundred thousand, to the hungry +intelligence of Europe. There was nothing escaped it—nothing. In every capital +were crowds of men dispatched from the other capitals of our civilization, +moving with ease in the wealthiest houses, and exquisitely in touch with the +most delicate phases of national life everywhere. And these men were such +experts in selection that a picture of Europe as a whole was presented every +morning to each particular part of Europe; and nowhere was this more +successfully accomplished than in my own beloved town of London.” +</p> + +<p> +“It must have been useful,” I said, “not only for the political purposes you +describe, but also for investors. Indeed, I should imagine that the two things +ran together.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” he said with interest, “the wide knowledge which even the +poorest of the people possessed upon foreign affairs, through the action of the +Press, was, further, of the utmost and most beneficent effect in teaching even +the smallest proprietor what he need do with his capital. A discovery of +metallic ore—especially of gold—a new invention, anything which might require +development, was at once presented in its most exact aspect to the reader.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was probably upon that account,” said I, “that property was so equally +distributed, and that so general a prosperity reigned as you have often +described to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” said he; “it was mainly this accurate and universal daily +information which produced such excellent results.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it occurs to me,” said I, by way of stimulating his conversation with an +objection, “that if so passionate and tenacious a habit of telling the exact +truth upon innumerable things was present in this old institution of which you +speak, it cannot but have bred a certain amount of dissension, and it must +sometimes even have done definite harm to individuals whose private actions +were thus exposed.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” said he; “the danger of such misfortunes was always present, +and with the greatest desire in the world to support only what was worthy the +writers of the journals of which I speak would occasionally blunder against +private interests; but there was a remedy.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was that?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, the law provided that in this matter twelve men called a jury, instructed +by a judge, after the matter had been fully explained to them by two other men +whose business it was to examine the truth boldly for the sake of justice—I say +the law provided that the twelve men after this process should decide whether +the person injured should receive money from the newspaper or no, and if so, in +what amount. And, lest there should still be any manner of doubt, the judge was +permitted to set aside their verdict if he thought it unjust. To secure his +absolute impartiality as between rich and poor he was paid somewhat over £100 a +week, a large salary in those days, and he was further granted the right of +imprisoning people at will or of taking away their property if he believed them +to obstruct his judgment. Nor were these the only safeguards. For in the case +of very rich men, to whom justice might not be done on account of the natural +envy of their poorer fellow-citizens, it was arranged that the jury should +consist only of rich men. In this way it was absolutely certain that a complete +impartiality would reign. We shall never see those days again,” he concluded. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you not think,” I said before I left him, “that the social perfection +of the kind you have described must rather have been due to some spirit of the +time than to particular institutions? For after all the zealous love of justice +and the sense of duty which you describe are not social elements to be produced +by laws.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly,” he said, wearily, “possibly, but we shall never see it again!” +</p> + +<p> +And I left him looking into the fire with infinite sadness and reflecting upon +his lost youth and the year 1909: a pathetic figure, and one whose upkeep +during the period of his deficiency was a very serious drain upon the resources +of his family. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08">The Inheritance of Humour</a></h2> + +<p> +There are some truths which seem to get old almost as soon as they are born, +and that simply because they are so astonishingly true that people soon get to +feel as though they have known them all their lives; and such a truth is that +which first one writer and then another in the last five years has been +insisting upon, until it is already a perfect commonplace that nations do not +know their own qualities. The inmost, the characteristic thing, that which +differentiates one community from another, as tastes or colours differentiate +things—<i>that</i> a nation hardly ever knows until it is pointed out to it by +some foreigner or by some observer from within. It cannot know it, because one +cannot tell the very atmosphere in which one lives. It is universal and +therefore unnoticed. Now, if this is true of any nation, it is particularly +true of England. And English people need to be told morning, noon, and night, +not indeed the particular national characteristic which they have, since for +this no particular name could be found, but rather what its evidences are; as, +for instance, spontaneity in design, a passion for the mystical in poetry and +the arts; a power in water-colour, in which they are perhaps quite alone, and +certainly the first in Europe; and, above all, the chief, the master thing of +all, humour. +</p> + +<p> +There is not nor ever will be anything like English humour. It is a thing quite +apart, and by it for now more than two hundred years you may know England. It +does not puzzle the foreigner (as the more blatant kind of intellectual man is +too fond of boasting that it does); he simply admires it as a rule and wonders +at it always; sometimes he actually dislikes it, but by it he knows that the +thing he is reading is English and has the savour and taste of England. +</p> + +<p> +It is impossible to define it, because it is so full of stuff and so organic a +quality; but in our own time it was principally the pencil of Charles Keene +that has summed it up and presented it in a moment and at once to the eye—the +pencil of Charles Keene and that profound instinct whereby he chose the legends +for his drawing, whether he found them by his own sympathy with the people or +whether they were suggested to him by friends. +</p> + +<p> +It is the verdict of the men most competent perhaps to judge upon these things +that he had the greatest graphic power of his time, and that no one had had +that power to such an extent since Hogarth. Upon these things the men of the +trade must dispute; the layman cannot doubt that he had here a genius and a +genius comprehensively national. It is the essence of a good draughtsman that +what he wants to draw, that he draws. The line that he desires to see upon the +paper appears there as his fingers move. It is a quality extremely rare in its +perfection. And Charles Keene had it in perfection, as in totally different +manner had the offensive and diseased talent of Beardsley. +</p> + +<p> +But more important than the power to do is the quality of the thing done, and +the work of Charles Keene, multitudinous, varied, always great, is an +inheritance for English people comparable to the inheritance they have in +Dickens. It has also what Dickens had, a power of representing, as it were, the +essential English. Just that which makes people say (with some truth) that +Dickens never drew a gentleman would make them say with equal truth that what +was interesting in the gentlemen of Charles Keene (and he perpetually drew +them) was not the externals upon which gentlemen so pride themselves, but the +soul. Thus I have in mind one picture wherein Keene drew a gentleman; true, he +was a gentleman who had just swallowed a bad oyster, and therefore he was a man +as well. I recall another of an old gentleman complaining of the caterpillar on +his chop: he is a gentleman of the professional rather than the territorial +classes, and, great heavens! what a power of line! All you see beneath the +round of his hat is the end of his nose, the curve of his mouth, and two bushy +ends of whiskers. Yet one can tell all about that man; one could write a book +on him. One knows his economics, his religion, his accent, and what he thought +of the Third Napoleon and what of Garibaldi. I have called draughtsmanship of +this quality an inheritance—I might have called it perhaps with better +propriety a monument. It is possible that England in the near future will look +back with great envy, as she will certainly look back with great pride, to the +generation preceding our own: they were a solid and a happy community of men. +How much they owed to fortune, how much to themselves, it is not the place of +such random stuff as mine to consider. +</p> + +<p> +They were nearly impregnable in their island; they were not bellicose. They +made and sold for all the world. Whether the very different future which we are +now entering is to be laid to their door or to our own, that generation will +still remain one of the principal things in English history, like the +Elizabethan generation, or the group of men who organized the Seven Years’ War, +or the group of men who fought in the Peninsula. And of that generation the +note of health and of stability is represented by its humour. I am not sure +that of all things educational to young men with no personal memory of that +time, and especially to young men with no family tradition of it to reflect it +in their books and their furniture; and—this yet more particularly—to young men +born out of England yet claiming communion with England, the Anglo-Indians and +the Colonials—I am not sure, I say, that the thing most educational to these +would not be some hundred of Charles Keene’s drawings, for therein they would +find what it was that gave them the power and the wealth that can hardly be +defended unless its traditions are continued. Note how Victorian England dealt +with the humour of a Volunteer review; note how it dealt with the humour of +excessive wealth; and note how it dealt with the humour of schools and of Dons. +One might almost define it by negations. There is in all of it no—but here I +lack a word.... When things ring false it is because they have got by +exaggeration or by some other form of falsity <i>beside</i> themselves. +Appreciation of rank or even of worth becomes snobbishness; appreciation of +another’s judgment false taste; and patriotism, the most beautiful, the +noblest, the most necessary of the great emotions, corrupts into something very +vile indeed. +</p> + +<p> +Well, the Victorians, and notably this man of whose power of the pencil I am +speaking, did lack that false savour, that savour of just missing what one +wishes to say or to feel, which haunts us to-day; and I should imagine that +whether it were cause or effect the salt present in the preservation of the +moral health of that society was humour. Let us enjoy it like an heirloom. It +is more national than the language; at least it is more national than what the +language has become under foreign pressure; it is infinitely more national than +our problems and our tragedies. It is so national that—who knows?—it may crop +up again of itself one of these days; and may that not be long. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09">The Old Gentleman’s Opinions</a></h2> + +<p> +I had occasion about a fortnight ago to meet a man more nearly ninety than +eighty years of age, who had had special opportunity for discovering the +changes of Europe during his long life. He was of the English wealthier classes +by lineage, but his mother had been of the French nobility and a Huguenot. His +father had been prominent in the diplomacy of a couple of generations ago. He +had travelled widely, read perhaps less widely, but had known and appreciated +an astonishing number of his contemporaries. +</p> + +<p> +I was interested (without any power of my own to judge whether his decisions +were right or wrong) to discover what most struck him in the changes produced +by that great stretch of years, all of which he had personally observed: he was +born just after Waterloo, and he could remember the Reform Bill. +</p> + +<p> +He surprised me by telling me, in the first place, that the material changes +and discoveries, enormous though they were in extent, were not, in his view, +the most striking. He was ready to leave it open whether these material changes +were the causes of moral changes more remarkable, or merely effects concomitant +with these. When I asked him what had struck him most of the great material +developments, he told me the phonograph and the aeroplane among inventions; +Mendel’s observations in the sphere of experimental knowledge; and, in the +sphere of pure theory, the breakdown of many things that had been dogmas of +physical science in his early manhood. +</p> + +<p> +Since I did not quite understand what he meant by this last, he gave me, after +some hesitation, a few examples: That the interior of the earth was molten; +that a certain limited number of elements—not all yet isolated, but certainly +few in their total—were at the base of all material forms, and were immutable; +that the ultimate unit of each of these was a certain indivisible, eternal +thing called the Atom; and so forth. +</p> + +<p> +He assured me that views of this sort, extending over a hundred or a thousand +other points, were so universally accepted in his time that to dispute them was +to be ranked with the unlettered or the fantastic. I asked him if it were so in +economics. He said: Yes, in England, where there was a similar dogma of Free +Trade: not abroad. +</p> + +<p> +When I asked him why Mendel’s published experiments and the theory based upon +them had so much impressed him, he said because it was almost the first attempt +to apply to the speculative dogmas of biology some standard demonstrably true; +and here he wandered off to explain to me why the commonly accepted views upon +biology, which had so changed thought in the latter part of his life, were +associated with the name of Darwin. Darwin, he assured me, had brought forward +no new discovery, but only a new hypothesis, and that only a small and +particular hypothesis, whereby to explain the general theory of transformism. +This theory, he told me—the unbroken descent of living organisms and their +physical connection with one another and with common parents—had been a +favourite idea from the beginning of history with many great thinkers, from +Lucretius to Buffon and from Augustus of Hippo to Lamarck. Darwin’s, the old +gentleman assured me, which he had defended with infinite toil, was that the +method in which this continuity of descent proceeded was by an infinitely slow +process of very small changes differentiating each minute step from the one +before and the one after it, and these small changes Darwin’s hypothesis +referred to a natural selection. Nothing else in Darwin’s work, he assured me, +was novel, and yet it was the one thing which subsequent research had rendered +more and more doubtful. Darwin (he said) said nothing new that was also true. +</p> + +<p> +At this point I was moved to contradict the old gentleman, and to say that one +unquestioned contribution to science of Darwin, as novel as it was secure, was +his patient discovery of the work of earthworms, and of its vast effect. The +old gentleman was willing to admit that I was right, but he said he was only +speaking of Darwin in connection with transformism and the whimsical way in +which his private name (and his errors) had become identified with evolution in +general. +</p> + +<p> +I asked him, since he had such a knowledge of men from observation, why this +was so. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems at first sight,” he said, “as ridiculous as though we should +associate the theory of light with the name of Newton, who inclined to the +exploded corpuscular hypothesis, or the general conception of orbital motion in +the universe to the great Bacon, who, in point of fact, rudely repudiated the +Copernican theory in particular.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he, indeed?” said I, interested. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe so,” said the old gentleman; “at any rate you were asking me why +Darwin, with his single contribution to the theory of transformism, and that a +doubtful one—or, to be accurate, an exploded one—should be associated in the +popular mind with the invention of so ancient a theory as that of evolution. +The reason is, I think, no more than that he came at a particular moment when +any man doing great quantities of detailed work in this field was bound to +stand out exaggeratedly. The society in which he appeared had, until just +before his day, accepted a narrow cosmogony, quite unknown to its ancestors. +Darwin’s book certainly exploded that, and the mind of his time—ignorant as it +was of the past—was ready to accept the shattering of its father’s idols as a +new revelation.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you were saying,” said I, when he had thus dealt harshly with a great +name, “that not the material but the moral changes of your time seemed to you +the greatest. Which did you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, in the first place,” said the old man thoughtfully and with some +hesitation, “the curiously rapid decline of intelligence, or if you will have +it differently, the clouding of thought that has marked the last thirty years. +Men in my youth knew what they held and what they did not hold. They knew why +they held it or why they did not hold it; but the attempt to enjoy the +advantages of two contradictory systems at the same time, and, what is worse, +the consulting of a man as an authority upon subjects he had never professed to +know, are intellectual phenomena quite peculiar to the later years of my life.” +</p> + +<p> +I said we of the younger generation had all noticed it, as, for instance, when +an honest but imperfectly intelligent chemist was listened to in his exposition +of the nature of the soul, or a well-paid religious official was content to +expound the consolations of Christianity while denying that Christianity was +true. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” I continued, “we are usually told that this unfortunate decline in the +express powers of the brain is due to the wide and imperfect education of the +populace at the present moment.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is not the case,” answered the old man sharply, when I had made myself +clear by repeating my remarks in a louder tone, for he was a little deaf. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not the case. The follies of which I speak are not particularly to be +discovered among the poorer classes who have passed through the elementary +schools. <i>These</i>” (it was to the schools that he was alluding with a +comprehensive pessimism) “may account for the gross decline apparent in the +public manners of our people, but not for faults which are peculiar to the +upper and middle classes. It is not in the populace, but in those wealthier +ranks that you will find the sort of intellectual decay of which I spoke.” +</p> + +<p> +I asked him whether he thought the tricks it was now considered cultured to +play with mathematics came within the category of this intellectual decay. The +old gentleman answered me a little abruptly that he could not judge what I was +talking about. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” said I, “do you believe that parallel straight lines <i>converge</i> or +<i>diverge</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“Neither,” said he, a little bewildered. “If they are parallel they cannot by +definition either diverge or converge.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are, then,” said I, “an old-fashioned adherent of the theory of the +parabolic universe?” At which sensible reply of mine the old man muttered +rather ill-temperedly, and begged me to speak of something else. +</p> + +<p> +I asked him whether the knowledge of languages had not declined in his time. He +said, somewhat emphatically, yes, and especially the knowledge of French, +assuring me that in his early years many a Fellow of a College at Oxford or at +Cambridge was capable of speaking that tongue in such a fashion as to make +himself understood. On the other hand, he admitted that German and Spanish were +more widely known than they had been, and Arabic certainly far more widely +diffused among those officials of the Empire who took their work seriously. +</p> + +<p> +When I asked him whether politics were more corrupt as time proceeded, he said +No, but more cynical; and as to morals he would not judge, for he was certain +that as one vice was corrected another appeared in its place. +</p> + +<p> +What he told me he most deplored in the social system of his country was the +power of the police and of the statistician by whom the policeman was guided. +This he ascribed to the growth of great towns, to civic cowardice, and to a new +taboo laid upon uniformed and labelled public authorities, who are now regarded +as sacred, and also inordinately feared. +</p> + +<p> +“In my youth,” he said, “there was a joke that every man in Paris was known to +the police. Today that is universally true, and no joke with regard to every +man in London. Our movements are marked, our earnings, our expenses, and our +most private affairs known to the innumerable officials of the Treasury, our +records of every sort, however intimate, are exactly and correctly maintained. +The obtaining of work and a livelihood is dependent upon strong organizations. +There is hardly an ailment or a domestic habit, from drinking wine to eating +turnips, which some crank who has obtained the ear of a politician does not +control or threaten in the immediate future to control.” +</p> + +<p> +“As for doctors!” he began, his voice cracking with indignation, “their +abominable....” but here the old gentleman fell into so violent a fit of +coughing that he nearly turned black in the face, and when I respectfully +slapped him on the back, in the hopes of granting him relief, he made matters +worse by shaking himself at me with an energy worthy of 1842. His nurse rushed +in, clapped him upon his pillows, and was prepared to vent her wrath upon me +for having caused this paroxysm, when the old man’s exhaustion and laboured +breathing captured all her attention, and I had the opportunity to withdraw. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10">On Historical Evidence</a></h2> + +<p> +The last book to be published upon the last Dauphin of France set me thinking +upon what seems to me the chief practical science in which modern men should +secure themselves. I mean the science of history—and in this science almost all +lies in the appreciation of evidence, for one of the chief particular problems +presented to the student of history at the present moment is whether the +Dauphin did or did not survive his imprisonment in the Temple. +</p> + +<p> +Let me first say why, to so many of us, the science of history and the +appreciation of the evidence upon which it depends is of the first moment. It +is because, short of vision or revelation, history is our only extension of +human experience. It is true that a philosophy common to all citizens is +necessary for a State if it is to live—but short of that necessity the next +most necessary factor is a knowledge of the stuff of mankind: of how men act +under certain conditions and impulses. This knowledge may be acquired, and is +in some measure, during the experience of one wise lifetime, but it is +indefinitely extended by the accumulation of experience which history affords. +</p> + +<p> +And what history so gives us is always of immediate and practical moment. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, men sometimes speak with indifference of the rival theories as to +the origin of European land tenure; they talk as though it were a mere academic +debate whether the conception of private property in land arose comparatively +late among Europeans or was native and original in our race. But you have only +to watch a big popular discussion on that very great and at the present moment +very living issue, the moral right to the private ownership in land, to see how +heavily the historic argument weighs with every type of citizen. The instinct +that gives that argument weight is a sound one, and not less sound in those who +have least studied the matter than in those who have most studied it; for if +our race from its immemorial origins has desired to own land as a private thing +side by side with communal tenures, then it is pretty certain that we shall not +modify that intention, however much we change our laws. If, on the other hand, +it could be shown that before the advent of a complex civilization Europeans +had no conception of private property in land, but treated land as a thing +necessarily and always communal, then you could ascribe modern Socialist +theories with regard to the land to that general movement of harking back to +the origins which Europe has been assisting at through over a hundred years of +revolution and of change. +</p> + +<p> +It sounds cynical, but it is perfectly true, that much the largest factor in +the historical conception of men is assertion. It is literally true that when +men (with the exception of a very small proportion of scholars who are also +intelligent) consider the past, the picture on which they dwell is a picture +conveyed to them wholly by authority and by unquestioned authority. There was +never a time when the original sources of history were more easily to be +consulted by the plain man; but whether because of their very number, or +because the habit is not yet formed, or because there are traditions of +imaginary difficulty surrounding such reading, original sources were perhaps +never less familiar to fairly educated opinion than they are today; and +therefore no type of book gives more pleasure when one comes across it than +those little cheap books, now becoming fairly numerous, in which the original +sources, and the original sources alone, are put before the reader. Mr. Rait +has already done such work in connection with Mary Queen of Scots, and Mr. +Archer did it admirably in connection with the Third Crusade. +</p> + +<p> +But apart from the importance of consulting original sources—which is like +hearing the very witnesses themselves in court—there is a factor in historical +judgment which by some unhappy accident is peculiarly lacking in the +professional historian. It is a factor to which no particular name can be +attached, though it may be called a department of common sense. But it is a +mental power or attitude easily recognizable in those who possess it, and +perhaps atrophied by the very atmosphere of the study. It goes with the open +air with a general knowledge of men and with that rapid recognition of the way +in which things “fit in” which is necessarily developed by active life. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, when you know the pace at which Harold marched down from the +north to Hastings you recognize, if you use that factor of historic judgment of +which I spake, that the affair was not barbaric. There must have been fairly +good roads, and there must have been a high organization of transport. You have +only to consider for a moment what a column looks like, even if it be only a +brigade, to see the truth of that. Again, this type of judgment forbids anyone +who uses it to ascribe great popular movements (great massacres, great +turmoils, and so forth) to craft. It is a very common thing, especially in +modern history, to lay such things to the power of one or two wealthy or one or +two bloody leaders, but you have only to think for a few moments of what a mob +is to see the falsity of that. Craft can harness this sort of explosive force, +it can control it, or persuade it, or canalize it to certain issues, but it +cannot create it. +</p> + +<p> +Again, this sort of sense easily recognizes in historic types the parallels of +modern experience. It avoids the error of thinking history a mistake and making +of the men and women who appear there something remote from humanity, extreme, +and either stilted or grandiose. +</p> + +<p> +In aid of this last feature in historical judgment there is nothing of such +permanent value as a portrait. Obtain your conception (as, indeed, most boys +do) of the English early sixteenth century from a text, then go and live with +the Holbeins for a week and see what an enormously greater thing you will +possess at the end of it. It is indeed one of the misfortunes of European +history that from the fifth century to at least the eleventh we are, so far as +Western European history is concerned, deprived of portraits. And by an +interesting parallel the writers of the dark time seemed to have had neither +the desire nor the gift of vivid description. Consider the dreariness of the +hagiographers, every one of them boasting the noble rank and the conventional +status of his hero, and you may say not one giving the least conception of the +man’s personality. You have the great Gallo-Roman noble family of Ferreolus +running down the centuries from the Decline of the Empire to the climax of +Charlemagne. Many of those names stand for some most powerful individuality, +yet all we have is a formula, a lineage, with symbols and names in the place of +living beings, and even that established only by careful work, picking out and +sifting relationships from various lives. The men of that time did not even +think to tell us that there was such a thing as a family tradition, nor did it +seem important to them to establish its Roman origin and its long succession in +power. +</p> + +<p> +Next it must be protested that the smallness and particularity of the questions +upon which historical discussion rages are no proof either of its general +purposelessness nor of <i>their</i> insignificance. All advance of knowledge +proceeds in this fashion. Physical science affords innumerable examples of the +way in which progress has depended upon a curiosity directed towards apparently +insignificant things, and there is something in the mind which compels it to +select a narrow field for the exercise of its acutest powers. Moreover, special +points, discussion upon which must evidently be lengthy and may be indefinite, +are peculiarly attractive to just that kind of man who by a love of prolonged +research enlarges the bounds of knowledge and at the same time strengthens and +improves for his fellows by continual exercise all the instruments of their +common trade. Take, for instance, this case of the little Dauphin, Louis XVII. +It really does not matter to day whether the boy got away or whether he died in +prison. It does not prolong the line of the Capetians—the heir to that is +present in the Duke of Orleans. It does not even affect our view of any other +considerable part of history—save possibly the policy of Louis XVIII—and it is +of no direct interest to our pockets or to our affections. Yet the masses of +work which have accumulated round that one doubt have solved twenty other +doubts. They have illuminated all the close of the Terror; they are beginning +to make us understand that most difficult piece of political psychology, the +reaction of Thermidor, and with it how Europeans lose their balance and regain +it in the course of their quasi-religious wars; for all our wars have something +in them of religion. +</p> + +<p> +Three elements appear to enter into the judgment of history. First, there is +the testimony of human witnesses; next, there are the non-human boundaries +wherein the action took place, boundaries which, by all our experience, impose +fixed limits to action; thirdly, there is that indefinable thing, that mystic +power, which all nations deriving from the theology of the Western Church have +agreed to call, with the schoolman, <i>common sense</i>; a general appreciation +which transcends particular appreciations and which can integrate the +differentials of evidence. Of this last it is quite impossible to afford a test +or to construct a measure; its presence in an argument is none the less as +readily felt as fresh air in a room; without it nothing is convincing however +laboured, with it, even though it rely upon slight evidence, one has the +feeling of walking on a firm road. But it must be “common sense”—it must be of +the sort, that is, which is common to man various and general, and it is in +this perhaps that history suffers most from the charlatanism and ritual common +to all great matters. +</p> + +<p> +Men will have pomp and mystery surrounding important things, and therefore the +historians must, consciously or unconsciously, tend to strut, to quote solemn +authorities in support, and to make out the vulgar unworthy of their +confidence. Hence, by the way, the plague of footnotes. +</p> + +<p> +These had their origin in two sources: the desire to show that one was honest +and to prove it by a reference; the desire to elucidate some point which it was +not easy to elucidate in the text itself without making the sentence too +elaborate and clumsy. Either use may be seen at its best in Gibbon. With the +last generation they have served mainly, and sometimes merely, for ritual +adornment and terror, not to make clearer or more honest, but to deceive. Thus +Taine in his monstrously false history of the Revolution revels in footnotes; +you have but to examine a batch of them with care to turn them completely +against his own conclusions—they are only put there as a sort of spiked paling +to warn off trespassers. Or, again, M. Thibaut, who writes under the name of +“Anatole France,” gives footnotes by the score in his romance of Joan of Arc, +apparently not even caring to examine whether they so much as refer to his +text, let alone support it. They seem to have been done by contract. +</p> + +<p> +Another ailment in this department is the negative one, whereby an historian +will leave out some aspect which to him, cramped in a study, seems unimportant, +but which any plain man moving in the world would have told him to be the +essential aspect of the whole matter. For instance, when Napoleon left Madrid +on his forced march to intercept Sir John Moore before that general should have +reached Benevente, he thought Moore was at Valladolid, when as a fact he was at +Sahagun. In Mr. Oman’s history of the Peninsular War the error is put thus: +“Napoleon had not the comparatively easy task of cutting the road between +Valladolid and Astorga, but the much harder one of intercepting that between +Sahagun and Astorga.” +</p> + +<p> +Why is this egregious nonsense? The facts are right and so are the dates and +the names, yet it makes one blush for Oxford history. Why? Because the +all-important element of <i>distance</i> is omitted. The very first question a +plain man would ask about the case would be, “What were the distances +involved?” The academic historian doesn’t know, or, at least, doesn’t say; yet +without an appreciation of the distances the statement has no value. As a fact +the distances were such that in the first case (supposing Moore had been at +Valladolid) Napoleon would have had to cover nearly three miles to Moore’s one +to intercept him—an almost superhuman task. In the second case (Moore being as +a fact at Sahagun) he would have had to go over <i>four miles</i> to his +opponent’s one—an absolutely impossible feat. +</p> + +<p> +To march <i>three</i> miles to the enemy’s <i>one</i> is what Mr. Oman calls “a +comparatively easy task”; to march four to his one is what Mr. Oman calls a +“much harder” task; and to write like that is what an informed critic calls bad +history. +</p> + +<p> +The other two factors in an historical judgment can be more easily measured. +</p> + +<p> +The non-human elements which, as I have said, are irremovable (save to +miracle), are topography, climate, season, local physical conditions, and so +forth. They have two valuable characters in aid of history; the first is that +they correct the errors of human memory and support the accuracy of details; +the second is that they enable us to complete a picture. We can by their aid +“see” the physical framework in which an action took place, and such a +landscape helps the judgment of things past as it does of things contemporary. +Thus the map, the date, the soil, the contours of Crécy field make the +traditional spot at which the King of Bohemia fell doubtful; the same factors +make it certain that Drouet did not plunge haphazard through Argonne on the +night of June 21, 1791, but that he must have gone by one path—which can be +determined. +</p> + +<p> +Or, again, take that prime question, why the Prussians did not charge at Valmy. +On their failure to do so all the success of the Revolution turned. A man may +read Dumouriez, Kellermann, Pully, Botidoux, Massenback, Goethe—there are fifty +eye-witnesses at least whose evidence we can collect, and I defy anyone to +decide. (Brunswick himself never knew.) But go to that roll of land between +Valmy and the high road; go after three days’ rain as the allies did, and you +will immediately learn. That field between the heights of “The Moon” and the +site of old Valmy mill, which is as hard as a brick in summer (when the experts +visit it), is a marsh of the worst under an autumn drizzle; no one could have +charged. +</p> + +<p> +As for human testimony, three things appear: first, that the witness is not, as +in a law court, circumscribed. His relation may vary infinitely in degree of +proximity of time or space to the action, from that of an eye-witness writing +within the hour to that of a partisan writing at tenth hand a lifetime after. +That question of proximity comes first, from the known action of the human mind +whereby it transforms colours and changes remembered things. Next there is the +character of the witness <i>for the purposes of his testimony</i>. Historians +write, too often, as though virtue—or wealth (with which they often confound +it)—were the test. It is not, short of a known motive for lying; a murderer or +a thief casually witnessing to a thing with which he is familiar is worth more +than the best man witnessing in a matter which he understands ill. It was this +error which ruined Croker’s essay on Charlotte Robespierre’s Memoirs. Croker +thought, perhaps wisely, that all radicals were scoundrels; he could not accept +her editor’s evidence, and (by the way) the view of this amateur collector +without a tincture of historical scholarship actually imposed itself on Europe +for nearly seventy years! +</p> + +<p> +And the third character in the witness is support: the support upon converging +lines of other human testimony, most of it indifferent, some (this is +essential) casual and by the way—deprived therefore of motive. +</p> + +<p> +When I shall find these canons satisfied to oppose the strong probability and +tradition of the Dauphin’s death in prison I shall doubt that death, but not +before. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11">The Absence of the Past</a></h2> + +<p> +It is perhaps not possible to put into human language that emotion which rises +when a man stands upon some plot of European soil and can say with certitude to +himself: “Such and such great, or wonderful, or beautiful things happened +here.” +</p> + +<p> +Touch that emotion ever so lightly and it tumbles into the commonplace, and the +deadest of commonplace. Neglect it ever so little and the Present (which is +never really there, for even as you walk across Trafalgar Square it is +yesterday and tomorrow that are in your mind), the Present, I say, or rather +the immediate flow of things, occupies you altogether. But there is a mood, and +it is a mood common in men who have read and who have travelled, in which one +is overwhelmed by the sanctity of a place on which men have done this or that a +long, long time ago. +</p> + +<p> +Here it is that the gentle supports which have been framed for human life by +that power which launched it come in and help a man. Time does not remain, but +space does, and though we cannot seize the Past physically we can stand +physically upon the site, and we can have (if I may so express myself) a +physical communion with the Past by occupying that very spot which the past +greatness of man or of event has occupied. +</p> + +<p> +It was but the other day that, with an American friend at my side, I stood +looking at the little brass plate which says that here Charles Stuart faced (he +not only faced, but he refused) the authority of his judges. I know not by what +delicate mechanism of the soul that record may seem at one moment a sort of +tourist thing, to be neglected or despised, and at another moment a portent. +But I will confess that all of a sudden, pointing out this very well-known +record upon the brass let into the stone in Westminster Hall, I suddenly felt +the presence of the thing. Here all that business was done: they were alive; +they were in the Present as we are. Here sat that tender-faced, courageous man, +with his pointed beard and his luminous eyes; here he was a living man holding +his walking-stick with the great jewel in the handle of it; here was spoken in +the very tones of his voice (and how a human voice perishes!—how we forget the +accents of the most loved and the most familiar voices within a few days of +their disappearance!); here the small gestures, and all the things that make up +a personality, marked out Charles Stuart. When the soul is seized with such +sudden and positive conviction of the substantial past it is overwhelmed; and +Europe is full of such ghosts. +</p> + +<p> +As you take the road to Paradise, about halfway there you come to an inn, which +even as inns go is admirable. You go into the garden of it, and see the great +trees and the wall of Box Hill shrouding you all around. It is beautiful enough +(in all conscience) to arrest one without the need of history or any admixture +of the pride of race; but as you sit there on a seat in that garden you are +sitting where Nelson sat when he said goodbye to his Emma, and if you will move +a yard or two you will be sitting where Keats sat biting his pen and thinking +out some new line of his poem. +</p> + +<p> +What has happened? These two men with their keen, feminine faces, these two +great heroes of a great time in the great story of a great people of this +world, are not there. They are nowhere. But the site remains. +</p> + +<p> +Philosophers can put in formulæ the crowd of suggestions that rush into the +mind when one’s soul contemplates the perpetual march and passage of mortality. +But they can do no more than give us formularies: they cannot give us replies. +What are we? What is all this business? Why does the mere space remain and all +the rest dissolve? +</p> + +<p> +There is a lonely place in the woods of Chilham, in the County of Kent, above +the River Stour, where a man comes upon an irregular earthwork still plainly +marked upon the brow of the bluff. Nobody comes near this place. A vague +country lane, or rather track; goes past the wet soil of it, plunges into the +valley beyond, and after serving a windmill joins the high road to Canterbury. +Well, that vague track is the ancient British road, as old as anything in this +Island, that took men from Winchester to the Straits of Dover. That earthwork +is the earthwork (I could prove it, but this is not the place) where the +British stood against the charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding +on their bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the little +men of the South went up in formation; here the Barbarian broke and took his +way, as the opposing General has recorded, through devious woodland paths, +scattering in the pursuit; here began the great history of England. +</p> + +<p> +Is it not an enormous business merely to stand in such a place? I think so. +</p> + +<p> +I know a field to the left of the Chalons Road, some few miles before you get +to Ste. Menehould. There used to be an inn by the roadside called “The Sign of +the Moon.” It has disappeared. There used to be a ramshackle windmill beyond +the field, a mile or so from the road, on an upland swell of land, but that +also has gone, and had been gone for some time before I knew the field of which +I write. It is a bare fold of land with one or two little scrubby spinneys +alongside the plough. And for the rest, just the brown earth and the sky. There +are days on which you will see a man at work somewhere within that mile, others +on which it is completely deserted. Here it is that the French Revolution was +preserved. Here was the Prussian charge. On the deserted, ugly lump of empty +earth beyond you were the three batteries that checked the invaders. It was all +alive and crowded for one intense moment with the fate of Christendom. Here, on +the place in which you are standing and gazing, young Goethe stood and gazed. +That meaningless stretch of coarse grass supported Brunswick and the King of +Prussia, and the brothers of the King of France, as they stood windswept in the +rain, watching the failure of the charge. It is the field of Valmy. Turn on +that height and look back westward and you see the plains rolling out +infinitely; they are the plains upon which Attila was crushed; but there is no +one there. +</p> + +<p> +All men have remarked that night and silence are august, and I think that if +this quality in night and silence be closely examined it will be found to +consist, in part at least, in this: that either of them symbolizes Absence. By +a paradox which I will not attempt to explain, but which all have felt, it is +in silence and in darkness that the Past most vividly returns, and that this +absence of what once was possesses, nay, obtrudes itself upon the mind: it +becomes almost a sensible thing. There is much to be said for those who +pretend, imagine, or perhaps have experienced under such conditions the return +of the dead. The mood of darkness and of silence is a mood crammed with +something that does not remain, as space remains, that is limited by time, and +is a creature of time, and yet something that has an immortal right to remain. +</p> + +<p> +Now, I suppose that in that sentence where I say things mortal have immortal +rights to permanence, the core of the whole business is touched upon. And I +suppose that the great men who could really think and did not merely fire off +fireworks to dazzle their contemporaries—I suppose that Descartes, for +instance, if he were here sitting at my table—could help me to solve that +contradiction; but I sit and think and cannot solve it. +</p> + +<p> +“What,” says the man upon his own land, inherited perhaps and certainly +intended for his posterity—“what! Can you separate me from this? Are not this +and I bound up inextricably?” The answer is “No; you are not so far as any +observer of this world can discover. Space is in no way possessed by man, and +he who may render a site immortal in one of our various ways, the captain who +there conquered, the poet who there established his sequence of words, cannot +himself put forward a claim to permanence within it at all.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a woman of charming vivacity, whose eyes were ever ready for +laughter, and whose tone of address of itself provoked the noblest of replies. +Many loved her; all admired. She passed (I will suppose) by this street or by +that; she sat at table in such and such a house; Gainsborough painted her; and +all that time ago there were men who had the luck to meet her and to answer her +laughter with their own. And the house where she moved is there and the street +in which she walked, and the very furniture she used and touched with her hands +you may touch with your hands. You shall come into the rooms that she +inhabited, and there you shall see her portrait, all light and movement and +grace and beatitude. +</p> + +<p> +She is gone altogether, the voice will never return, the gestures will never be +seen again. She was under a law; she changed, she suffered, she grew old, she +died; and there was her place left empty. The not living things remain; but +what counted, what gave rise to them, what made them all that they are, has +pitifully disappeared, and the greater, the infinitely greater, thing was +subject to a doom perpetually of change and at last of vanishing. The dead +surroundings are not subject to such a doom. Why? +</p> + +<p> +All those boys who held the line of the low ridge or rather swell of land from +Hougoumont through the Belle Alliance have utterly gone. More than dust goes, +more than wind goes; they will never be seen again. Their voices will never be +heard—they are not. But what is the mere soil of the field without them? What +meaning has it save for their presence? +</p> + +<p> +I could wish to understand these things. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12">St. Patrick</a></h2> + +<p> +If there is one thing that people who are not Catholic have gone wrong upon +more than another in the intellectual things of life, it is the conception of a +Personality. They are muddled about it where their own little selves are +concerned, they misappreciate it when they deal with the problems of society, +and they have a very weak hold of it when they consider (if they do consider) +the nature of Almighty God. +</p> + +<p> +Now, personality is everything. It was a Personal Will that made all things, +visible and invisible. Our hope of immortality resides in this, that we are +persons, and half our frailties proceed from a misapprehension of the awful +responsibilities which personality involves or a cowardly ignorance of its +powers of self-government. +</p> + +<p> +The hundred and one errors which this main error leads to include a bad error +on the nature of history. Your modern non-Catholic or anti-Catholic historian +is always misunderstanding, underestimating, or muddling the role played in the +affairs of men by great and individual Personalities. That is why he is so +lamentably weak upon the function of legend; that is why he makes a fetish of +documentary evidence and has no grip upon the value of tradition. For +traditions spring from some personality invariably, and the function of legend, +whether it be a rigidly true legend or one tinged with make-believe, is to +interpret Personality. Legends have vitality and continue, because in their +origin they so exactly serve to explain or illustrate some personal character +in a man which no cold statement could give. +</p> + +<p> +Now St. Patrick, the whole story and effect of him, is a matter of Personality. +There was once—twenty or thirty years ago—a whole school of dunderheads who +wondered whether St. Patrick ever existed, because the mass of legends +surrounding his name troubled them. How on earth (one wonders) do such scholars +consider their fellow-beings! Have they ever seen a crowd cheering a popular +hero, or noticed the expression upon men’s faces when they spoke of some friend +of striking power recently dead? A great growth of legends around a man is the +very best proof you could have not only of his existence but of the fact that +he was an origin and a beginning, and that things sprang from his will or his +vision. There were some who seemed to think it a kind of favour done to the +indestructible body of Irish Catholicism when Mr. Bury wrote his learned +Protestant book upon St. Patrick. It was a critical and very careful bit of +work, and was deservedly praised; but the favour done us I could not see! It is +all to the advantage of non-Catholic history that it should be sane, and that a +great Protestant historian should make true history out of a great historical +figure was a very good sign. It was a long step back towards common sense +compared with the German absurdities which had left their victims doubting +almost all the solid foundation of the European story; but as for us Catholics, +we had no need to be told it. Not only was there a St. Patrick in history, but +there is a St. Patrick on the shores of his eastern sea and throughout all +Ireland to-day. It is a presence that stares you in the face, and physically +almost haunts you. Let a man sail along the Leinster coast on such a day as +renders the Wicklow Mountains clear up-weather behind him, and the Mourne +Mountains perhaps in storm, lifted clearly above the sea down the wind. He is +taking some such course as that on which St. Patrick sailed, and if he will +land from time to time from his little boat at the end of each day’s sailing, +and hear Mass in the morning before he sails further northward, he will know in +what way St. Patrick inhabits the soil which he rendered sacred. +</p> + +<p> +We know that among the marks of holiness is the working of miracles. Ireland is +the greatest miracle any saint ever worked. It is a miracle and a nexus of +miracles. Among other miracles it is a nation raised from the dead. +</p> + +<p> +The preservation of the Faith by the Irish is an historical miracle comparable +to nothing else in Europe. There never was, and please God never can be, so +prolonged and insanely violent a persecution of men by their fellow-men as was +undertaken for centuries against the Faith in Ireland: and it has completely +failed. I know of no example in history of failure following upon such effort. +It had behind it in combination the two most powerful of the evil passions of +men, terror and greed. And so amazing is it that they did not attain their end, +that perpetually as one reads one finds the authors of the dreadful business +now at one period, now at another, assuming with certitude that their success +is achieved. Then, after centuries, it is almost suddenly perceived—and in our +own time—that it has not been achieved and never will be. +</p> + +<p> +What a complexity of strange coincidences combined, coming out of nothing as it +were, advancing like spirits summoned on to the stage, all to effect this end! +Think of the American Colonies; with one little exception they were perhaps the +most completely non-Catholic society of their time. Their successful rebellion +against the mother country meant many things, and led to many prophecies. Who +could have guessed that one of its chief results would be the furnishing of a +free refuge for the Irish? +</p> + +<p> +The famine, all human opinion imagined, and all human judgment was bound to +conclude, was a mortal wound, coming in as the ally of the vile persecution I +have named. It has turned out the very contrary. From it there springs +indirectly the dispersion, and that power which comes from unity in dispersion, +of Irish Catholicism. +</p> + +<p> +Who, looking at the huge financial power that dominated Europe, and England in +particular, during the youth of our own generation, could have dreamt that in +any corner of Europe, least of all in the poorest and most ruined corner of +Christendom, an effective resistance could be raised? +</p> + +<p> +Behind the enemies of Ireland, furnishing them with all their modern strength, +was that base and secret master of modern things, the usurer. He it was far +more than the gentry of the island who demanded toll, and, through the +mortgages on the Irish estates, had determined to drain Ireland as he has +drained and rendered desert so much else. Is it not a miracle that he has +failed? +</p> + +<p> +Ireland is a nation risen from the dead; and to raise one man from the dead is +surely miraculous enough to convince one of the power of a great spirit. This +miracle, as I am prepared to believe, is the last and the greatest of St. +Patrick’s. +</p> + +<p> +When I was last in Ireland, I bought in the town of Wexford a coloured picture +of St. Patrick which greatly pleased me. Most of it was green in colour, and +St. Patrick wore a mitre and had a crosier in his hand. He was turning into the +sea a number of nasty reptiles: snakes and toads and the rest. I bought this +picture because it seemed to me as modern a piece of symbolism as ever I had +seen: and that was why I bought it for my children and for my home. +</p> + +<p> +There was a few pence change, but I did not want it. The person who sold me the +picture said they would spend the change in candles for St. Patrick’s altar. So +St. Patrick is still alive. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13">The Lost Things</a></h2> + +<p> +I never remember an historian yet, nor a topographer either, who could tell me, +or even pretend to explain by a theory, how it was that certain things of the +past utterly and entirely disappear. +</p> + +<p> +It is a commonplace that everything is subject to decay, and a commonplace +which the false philosophy of our time is too apt to forget. Did we remember +that commonplace we should be a little more humble in our guesswork, especially +where it concerns prehistory; and we should not make so readily certain where +the civilization of Europe began, nor limit its immense antiquity. But though +it is a commonplace, and a true one, that all human work is subject to decay, +there seems to be an inexplicable caprice in the method and choice of decay. +</p> + +<p> +Consider what a body of written matter there must have been to instruct and +maintain the technical excellence of Roman work. What a mass of books on +engineering and on ship-building and on road-making; what quantities of tables +and ready-reckoners, all that civilization must have produced and depended +upon. Time has preserved much verse, and not only the best by any means, more +prose, particularly the theological prose of the end of the Roman time. The +technical stuff, which must, in the nature of things, have been indefinitely +larger in amount, has (save in one or two instances and allusions) gone. +</p> + +<p> +Consider, again, all that mass of seven hundred years which was called +Carthage. It was not only seven hundred years of immense wealth, of oligarchic +government, of a vast population, and of what so often goes with commerce and +oligarchy—civil and internal peace. A few stones to prove the magnitude of its +municipal work, a few ornaments, a few graves—all the rest is absolutely gone. +A few days’ marches away there is an example I have quoted so often elsewhere +that I am ashamed of referring to it again, but it does seem to me the most +amazing example of historical loss in the world. It is the site of Hippo +Regius. Here was St. Augustine’s town, one of the greatest and most populous of +a Roman province. It was so large that an army of eighty thousand men could not +contain it, and even with such a host its siege dragged on for a year. There is +not a sign of that great town today. +</p> + +<p> +A suburb, well without the walls—to be more accurate, a neighbouring +village—carries on the name under the form of Bona, and that is all. A vast, +fertile plain of black rich earth, now largely planted with vineyards, stands +where Hippo stood. How can the stones have gone? How can it have been worth +while to cart away the marble columns? Why are there no broken statues on such +a ground, and no relics of the gods? +</p> + +<p> +Nay, the wells are stopped up from which the people drank, and the lining of +the wells is not to be discovered in the earth, and the foundations of the +walls, and even the ornaments of the people and their coins, all these have +been spirited away. +</p> + +<p> +Then there are the roads. Consider that great road which reached from Amiens to +the main port of Gaul, the Portus Itius at Boulogne. It is still in use. It was +in use throughout the Middle Ages. Up that road the French Army marched to +Crécy. It points straight to its goal upon the sea coast. Its whole purpose lay +in reaching the goal. For some extraordinary reason, which I have never seen +explained or even guessed at, there comes a point as it nears the coast where +it suddenly ceases to be. +</p> + +<p> +No sand has blown over it. It runs through no marshes; the land is firm and +fertile. Why should that, the most important section of the great road which +led northward from Rome, have failed, and have failed so recently, in the +history of man? Where this great road crosses streams and might reasonably be +lost, at its <i>pontes</i>, its bridges, it has remained, and is of such +importance as to have given a name to a whole countryside—<i>Ponthieu</i>. But +north of that it is gone. +</p> + +<p> +Nearly every Roman road of Gaul and Britain presents something of the same +puzzle in some parts of its course. It will run clear and followable enough, or +form a modern highway for mile upon mile, and then not at a marsh where one +would expect its disappearance, nor in some desolate place where it might have +fallen out of use, but in the neighbourhood of a great city and at the very +chief of its purpose, it is gone. It is so with the Stane Street that led up +from the garrison of Chichester and linked it with the garrison of London. You +can reconstruct it almost to a yard until you reach Epsom Downs. There you find +it pointing to London Bridge, and remaining as clear as in any other part of +its course: much clearer than in most other sections. But try to follow it on +from Epsom Racecourse, and you entirely fail. The soil is the same; the +conditions of that soil are excellent for its retention; but a year’s work has +taught me that there is no reconstructing it save by hypothesis and guesswork +from this point to the crossing of the Thames. +</p> + +<p> +What happened to all that mass of local documents whereby we ought to be able +to build up the territorial scheme and the landed regime of old France? Much +remains, if you will, in the shape of chance charters and family papers. Even +in the archives of Paris you can get enough to whet your curiosity. But not +even in one narrow district can you obtain enough to reconstruct the whole +truth. There is not a scholar in Europe who can tell you exactly how land was +owned and held, even, let us say, on the estates of Rheims or by the family of +Condé. And men are ready to quarrel as to how many peasants owned and how much +of their present ownership was due to the Revolution, evidence has already +become so wholly imperfect in that tiny stretch of historical time. +</p> + +<p> +But, after all, perhaps one ought not to wonder too much that material things +should thus capriciously vanish. Time, which has secured Timgad so that it +looks like an unroofed city of yesterday, has swept and razed Laimboesis. The +two towns were neighbours—one was taken and the other left—and there is no sort +of reason any man can give for it. Perhaps one ought not too much to wonder, +for a greater wonder still is the sudden evaporation and loss of the great +movements of the human soul. That what our ancestors passionately believed or +passionately disputed should, by their descendants in one generation or in two, +become meaningless, absurd, or false—this is the greatest marvel and the +greatest tragedy of all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14">On the Reading of History</a></h2> + +<p> +Let me at the beginning of this short article present two facts to the reader. +Neither can be disputed, and that is why I call them facts and put them in the +forefront before I begin upon my theories. +</p> + +<p> +The first fact is that the record of what men have done in the past and how +they have done it is the chief positive guide to present action. The second +fact is that most men must now receive the impression of the past through +reading. +</p> + +<p> +Put these two facts together and you get the fundamental truth that upon the +right reading of history the right use of citizenship in England today will +depend. It will of course depend upon other things as well: chiefly upon the +human conscience; for if you were to pack off to an island a hundred families +as ignorant as any human families can be of tradition, and wholly ignorant of +positive history, those families would yet be able to create a human society +and the voice of God within them would give just limits to their actions. +</p> + +<p> +Still, of those factors in civic action amenable to civic direction, conscious +and positively effective, there is nothing to compare with the right teaching +and the right reading of history. Now teaching is today ruined. The old +machinery by which the whole nation could be got to know all essential human +things, has been destroyed, and the teaching of history in particular has been +not only ruined but rendered ridiculous. There is no historical school properly +so-called in modern England; that is, there is no organization framed with the +sole object of extending and co-ordinating historical knowledge and of choosing +men for their capacity to discover upon the one hand and to teach upon the +other. There is nothing approaching to it in the two ancient universities, +because the choice of teachers there depends upon a multitude of considerations +quite separate from those mentioned, and the capacity to discover, to know, and +to teach history, though it <i>may</i> be present in a tutor, will only be +accidentally so present: while as for co-ordination of knowledge, there is no +attempt at it. Even where very hard work is done, and, when it concerns local +history, very useful work, history as a general study is not grasped because +the universities have not grasped it. +</p> + +<p> +History is to be had by the modern Englishman from his own reading only; and I +am here concerned with the question how he shall read history with profit. +</p> + +<p> +To read history with profit, history must be true, or at any rate the reader +must have a power of discerning what is true in the midst of much that may be +false. I will bargain, for instance, that in the summer of 1899 the great mass +of men, and especially the great mass of men who had passed through the +universities, were under the impression that armies had left England for the +purpose of conquest in distant countries with invariable success: that that +success had been unique, unsupported and always decisive, and that the wealth +of the country after each success had increased, not diminished. In other +words, had history been studied even by the tiny minority who have education +today in England, Sir William Butler would have counted more than the Joels, +and the late Mr. Barnato (as he called himself); the South African War would +not have taken place in a society which knew its past. +</p> + +<p> +Again, you may pick almost any phrase referring to the Middle Ages out of any +newspaper—if you are a man read in the Middle Ages—and you will find in it not +only a definite historical falsehood with regard to the fact referred to, or +the analogy drawn, but also a false philosophy. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, the other day I read this phrase with regard to the burial of a +certain gentleman of my neighbourhood in Sussex: “We are surely past the phase +of mediaeval thought in which it was imagined that a few words spoken over the +lifeless clay would determine the fate of the soul for all eternity.” Just +notice the myriad falsehoods of a phrase like that! I will not discuss what is +connoted by the words “past the phase of mediaeval thought”—it connotes of +course that the human mind changes fundamentally with the centuries, and +therefore that whatever we think is probably wrong, and that what we are sure +of we cannot be sure of, an absurd conclusion. I will only note the historical +falsehoods. When on earth did the “Middle Ages” lay down that a “few words over +lifeless clay determined the fate of the soul for all eternity”? On the +contrary, the Middle Ages laid it down—it was their peculiar doctrine—that it +was impossible to determine the fate of the soul; that no one could tell the +fate of any one individual soul; that it was a grievous sin, among the most +grievous of sins, to affirm positive knowledge that any individual had lost his +soul. More than this, the Middle Ages were peculiar in their insistence upon +the doctrine that a man might have been very bad and might have had all the +appearance of having lost his soul so far as human judgment went, and yet was +liable to a midway place between salvation and damnation, and they affirmed +that this midway place did not lead to either fate but necessarily to salvation +and to salvation only. +</p> + +<p> +Again, whatever could help the human soul to salvation was by the most rigorous +theological definition of the Middle Ages applicable only before death. After +death the fate of the soul was sealed, and the man once dead, the “lifeless +clay” (as the journalist put it—and the Middle Ages was the only source from +which he got the idea of clay at all), whether it were that of a Pope or of +some random highwayman, had no effect whatsoever upon the fate of the soul. The +greatest saint might have offered the most solemn sacrifice on its behalf for +years, and if the soul were damned his sacrifice would have been of no avail. +</p> + +<p> +I have taken this example absolutely at random. But the modern reader, apart +from sentences as clearly provocative of criticism as this, is perpetually +coming across references, allusions, and parallels which take a certain course +of human European and English history for granted. How is he to distinguish +when that course is rightly drawn from when it is wrongly drawn? +</p> + +<p> +Thus in some newspaper article written by an able man, and dealing, let us say, +with the territorial army, one might come across a sentence like this: +“Napoleon himself used troops so raw that they were actually drilled on the +march to the battlefield.” That would be a perfectly true statement. Any amount +of criticism of it lies in connexion with Mr. Haldane’s scheme, but still it is +a true piece of history. Napoleon did get raw recruits into his battalions just +before any one of his famous marches began, and drill them on the way to +victory. In the next column of the newspaper the reader may be presented with a +sentence like this: “The captures of English by privateers in the Revolutionary +War should teach us what foreign cruisers can do.” +</p> + +<p> +There were plenty of captures by privateers in the Revolutionary Wars; if I +remember rightly, many many hundreds, all discreetly hidden from the common or +garden reader until party politics necessitated their resurrection a hundred +years after the event, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with modern +circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +Both statements are true then, and yet one can be truthfully applied today, +while the other cannot. +</p> + +<p> +How is the plain reader to distinguish between two historical truths, one of +which is a useful modern analogy, the other of which is a ludicrously +misleading one? +</p> + +<p> +The reader, it would seem, has no criterion by which to distinguish what has +been withheld from him and what has been emphasized; he may, from his knowledge +of the historian’s character or bias, stand upon his guard, but he can do +little more. +</p> + +<p> +There is another difficulty. It is less subtle and less common, but it exists. +I mean brute lying. You do not often get the lie direct in official history; it +would be too dangerous a game to play in the face of the critics, though some +historians, and notably the French historian Taine, have played it boldly +enough, and have stated dogmatically, as historical happenings, things that +never happened and that they knew never happened. But the plain or brute +historical lie is more commonly found in the pages of ephemeral journalism. +Thus the other day, with regard to the Budget, I saw some financial operation +alluded to as comparable with “the pulling out of Jews’ teeth for money in the +Middle Ages.” When did anyone in the Middle Ages pull out a Jew’s teeth for +money? There is just one very doubtful story told about King John, and that +story is told without proof by one of John’s worst enemies, in a mass of other +accusations many of which can be proved to be false. +</p> + +<p> +Again, I turn to an Oxford History of the French Revolution, and I find the +remark that the massacres of September were organized by the men from +Marseilles. They were not organized by the men from Marseilles. The men from +Marseilles had nothing to do with them, and the fact has been public property +since the publication of Pollio and Marcel’s monograph twenty years ago. +</p> + +<p> +What criterion can the ordinary reader choose when he is confronted by +difficulties of this sort? I will suggest to him one which seems to me by far +the most valuable. It is the reading of firsthand authorities. It is all a +matter of habit. When the original authorities upon which history is based were +difficult to get at, when few of those in foreign tongues had been translated, +and when those that had been published were published in the most expensive +form, the ordinary reader had to depend upon an historian who would summarize +for him the reading of another. The ordinary reader was compelled to read +secondary history or none. Now secondary history is among the most valuable of +literary efforts; where evidence is slight, the judgment of an historian who +knows from other reading the general character of the period, is most valuable. +Where evidence is abundant, and therefore confusing, the historian used to the +selection and weighing of it performs a most valuable function. Still, the +reader who is not acquainted with original authorities does not really know +history and is at the mercy of whatever myth or tradition may be handed to him +in print. +</p> + +<p> +We should remember that today, even in England, original authorities are quite +easy to get at. Two little books, for instance, occur to me out of hundreds: +Mr. Rait’s book on Mary Stuart and Mr. Archer’s on the Third Crusade. In each +of these the reader gets in a cheap form, in modern and readable English, the +kind of evidence upon which historians base their history, and he can use that +evidence in the light of his own knowledge of human nature and his own judgment +of human life. +</p> + +<p> +Or again, if he wants to know what the Romans really knew or said they knew +about the German tribes who, as pirates, so greatly influenced the history of +England, let him get Mr. Rouse’s edition of Grenewey’s translation of the +Germania in Blackie’s series of English texts; it will only cost sixpence, and +for that money he will get a bit of Caesar’s Gallic War and the Agricola as +well. But the list nowadays is a very long one, luckily, and the lay reader has +only to choose what period he would like to read up, and he will find for +nearly every one first-hand evidence ready, cheap and published in a readable +modern form. That he should take such first-hand evidence is the very best +advice that any honest historian can give. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15">The Victory</a></h2> + +<p> +The study of history, like the exploration, the thorough exploration, of any +other field, leads one to perpetual novelties, miracles, and unexpected things; +and I, in the study of the revolutionary wars, came across the story of a +battle which completely possessed my spirit. +</p> + +<p> +It would not be to my purpose here to give its name. It is not among the most +famous; it is not Waterloo, nor Leipsic, nor Austerlitz, nor even Jemappes. The +more I read into the night the more I perceived that upon the issue of that +struggle depended the fate of the modern world. So completely did the notes of +Carnot and a few private letters that had been put before me absorb my +attention that I will swear the bugle-calls of those two days (for it was a +two-days’ struggle) sounded more clearly in my ears than the rumble of the +London streets, and, as this died out with the advance of the night and the +approach of morning, I was living entirely upon that ridge in Flanders, +watching, as a man watches an arena, whether the new things or the old should +be victorious. It was the new that conquered. +</p> + +<p> +From that evening I was determined to visit this place of which so far I had +but read, and to see how far it might agree with the vision I had had of it, +and to people actual fields with the ghosts of dead soldiers. And for the +better appreciation of the drama I chose the season and the days on which the +fight had been driven across that rolling land, and I came there, as the +Republicans had come, a little before the dawn. +</p> + +<p> +The hillside was silent and deserted, more even than are commonly such places, +though silence and desertion seem the common atmosphere of all the fields on +which such fates have been decided. A man looking over Carthage Bay, especially +a man looking at those sodden pools that were the sound harbours of Carthage, +might be in an uninhabited world; and the loop of the Trebbia is the same, and +the edge of Fontenoy; and even here in England that hillside looking south up +which the Normans charged at Battle is a quiet and a drowsy sort of place.... +So it was here in Flanders. +</p> + +<p> +For two miles as I ascended by the little sunken lane which the extreme right +wing had followed in the last attack I saw neither man nor beast, but only the +same stubble of the same autumn fields, and the same colder sun shining upon +the empty uplands until I reached the crest where the Hungarian and the Croat +had met the charge, and had disputed the little village for two hours—a dispute +upon which hung your fate and mine and that of Europe. +</p> + +<p> +It was a tiny little village, seven or eight houses together and no more, with +a crazy little wooden steeple to its church all twisted awry, large barns, and +comfortable hedgerows of the Northern kind; and from it one looked out +westwards over an infinity of country, following low crest after low crest, +down on to the French plains. I went into the inn of the place to drink, and +found the cobbler there complaining that wealth disturbed the natural equality +of men. Then I wandered out, pacing this point and that which I knew accurately +from my maps, and thinking of the noise of the war. Behind the little church, +upon a ramshackle green not large enough to pitch the stumps for single-wicket, +was the modest monument, a cock in bronze, crowing, and the word “Victory” +stamped into the granite of the pedestal; the whole thing, I suppose, not ten +feet high. The bronze was very well done; it savoured strongly of Paris and +looked odd in this abandoned little place. But every time my eyes sank from the +bronze, to look at some other point in the landscape to identify the +emplacement of such and such a battery or the gully that had concealed the +advance of such and such a troop, my glance perpetually returned to that word +“VICTORY,” sculptured by itself upon the stone. It was indeed a victory; it was +a victory which, for its huge unexpectedness, for the noise of it, for the +length of time during which it was in doubt, for its final success, there is no +parallel, and yet it is by no means among the famous battles of the world. And +though the French count it one among the thousand of their battles, I doubt +whether even in Paris most men would recognize it for the hammer-blow it was. +The men of the time hardly knew it, though Carnot guessed at it, and now to-day +in Sorbonne I think that regal fight is taking its true place. +</p> + +<p> +So I went down the eight miles of front northward along the ridge; for even +that battle, a hundred and more years ago, had an extended front of this kind. +I recognized the tall majestic fringe of beeches from which had issued the last +of the Royalist regiments bearing for the last time upon a European field the +white flag of the Bourbon Monarchy; I came beyond it to the combe fringed with +its semicircle of underbrush in which Coburg had massed his guns in the last +effort to break the French centre when his flank was turned. I came to the main +highway, very broad, straight, and paved, which cuts this battlefield in two, +and then beyond it to the central position whose capture had made the final +manoeuvre possible. +</p> + +<p> +All Wednesday the Grenadiers, German, tall, padded, smart, and stout, had held +their ground. It was not until Thursday, and by noon, that they were slowly +driven up the hill by the ragged lads, the Gauls, shoeless, some not in uniform +at all, half-mutinous, drunk with pain and glory. And I remembered, as the +scene returned to me, that this battle, like so many of the Revolution, had +been a battle of men against boys; how grey and veteran and trained in arms +were the Austrians and the Prussians, their allies, how strict in orders, how +calm: and what children the Terror had called up by force from the exhausted +fields of remote French provinces, to break them here against the frontier, +like water against a wall...! +</p> + +<p> +There was a little chap, twelve years old, a drummer; he had crept and crawled +by hedgerows till he found himself behind the line of those volleying +Grenadiers. There, “before his side,” and breaking all rules, he had sounded +the roll of the charge. They cut him down and killed him, and the roll of his +drum ceased hard. A generation or more later, digging for foundations at this +spot, the builders of the Peace came upon his bones, the little bones of a +child heaped pell-mell with skeletons of the fallen giants round him. +</p> + +<p> +I went back into the town in whose defence the battle had been waged, and there +I saw again in bronze this little lad, head high and mouth open, a-beating of +his drum, and again the word “VICTORY.” +</p> + +<p> +All that effort was undertaken, all those young men and children killed, for +something that was to happen for the salvation of the world; it has not come. +All that iron resistance of the German line had been forged and organized till +it almost conquered, till it almost thwarted, the Republic, and it also had +been organized for the defence, and, as some thought, for the salvation, of the +world. Some great good was to have come by the storming of that hill, or some +great good by the defeat of the impetuous charge. Well, the hill was stormed, +and (if you will) at Leipsic the effort which had stormed it was rolled back. +What has happened to the High Goddess whom that youth followed, and worshipped +as they say, and what to the Gods whom their enemies defended? The ridge is +exactly the same. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16">Reality</a></h2> + +<p> +A couple of generations ago there was a sort of man going mournfully about who +complained of the spread of education. He had an ill-ease in his mind. He +feared that book learning would bring us no good, and he was called a fool for +his pains. Not undeservedly—for his thoughts were muddled, and if his heart was +good it was far better than his head. He argued badly or he merely affirmed, +but he had strong allies (Ruskin was one of them), and, like every man who is +sincere, there was something in what he said; like every type which is +numerous, there was a human feeling behind him: and he was very numerous. +</p> + +<p> +Now that he is pretty well extinct we are beginning to understand what he meant +and what there was to be said for him. The greatest of the French +Revolutionists was right—“After bread, the most crying need of the populace is +knowledge.” But what knowledge? +</p> + +<p> +The truth is that secondary impressions, impressions gathered from books and +from maps, are valuable as adjuncts to primary impressions (that is, +impressions gathered through the channel of our senses), or, what is always +almost as good and sometimes better, the interpreting voice of the living man. +For you must allow me the paradox that in some mysterious way the voice and +gesture of a living witness always convey something of the real impression he +has had, and sometimes convey more than we should have received ourselves from +our own sight and hearing of the thing related. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I say, these secondary impressions are valuable as adjuncts to primary +impressions. But when they stand absolute and have hardly any reference to +primary impressions, then they may deceive. When they stand not only absolute +but clothed with authority, and when they pretend to convince us even against +our own experience, they are positively undoing the work which education was +meant to do. When we receive them merely as an enlargement of what we know and +make of the unseen things of which we read, things in the image of the seen, +then they quite distort our appreciation of the world. +</p> + +<p> +Consider so simple a thing as a river. A child learns its map and knows, or +thinks it knows, that such and such rivers characterize such and such nations +and their territories. Paris stands upon the River Seine, Rome upon the River +Tiber, New Orleans on the Mississippi, Toledo upon the River Tagus, and so +forth. That child will know one river, the river near his home. And he will +think of all those other rivers in its image. He will think of the Tagus and +the Tiber and the Seine and the Mississippi—and they will all be the river near +his home. Then let him travel, and what will he come across? The Seine, if he +is from these islands, may not disappoint him or astonish him with a sense of +novelty and of ignorance. It will indeed look grander and more majestic, seen +from the enormous forest heights above its lower course, than what, perhaps, he +had thought possible in a river, but still it will be a river of water out of +which a man can drink, with clear-cut banks and with bridges over it, and with +boats that ply up and down. But let him see the Tagus at Toledo, and what he +finds is brown rolling mud, pouring solid after the rains, or sluggish and +hardly a river after long drought. Let him go down the Tiber, down the Valley +of the Tiber, on foot, and he will retain until the last miles an impression of +nothing but a turbid mountain torrent, mixed with the friable soil in its bed. +Let him approach the Mississippi in the most part of its long course and the +novelty will be more striking still. It will not seem to him a river at all (if +he be from Northern Europe); it will seem a chance flood. He will come to it +through marshes and through swamps, crossing a deserted backwater, finding firm +land beyond, then coming to further shallow patches of wet, out of which the +tree-stumps stand, and beyond which again mud-heaps and banks and groups of +reeds leave undetermined, for one hundred yards after another, the limits of +the vast stream. At last, if he has a boat with him, he may make some place +where he has a clear view right across to low trees, tiny from their distance, +similarly half swamped upon a further shore, and behind them a low escarpment +of bare earth. That is the Mississippi nine times out of ten, and to an +Englishman who had expected to find from his early reading or his maps a larger +Thames it seems for all the world like a stretch of East Anglian flood, save +that it is so much more desolate. +</p> + +<p> +The maps are coloured to express the claims of Governments. What do they tell +you of the social truth? Go on foot or bicycling through the more populated +upland belt of Algiers and discover the curious mixture of security and war +which no map can tell you of and which none of the geographies make you +understand. The excellent roads, trodden by men that cannot make a road; the +walls as ready loopholed for fighting; the Christian church and the mosque in +one town; the necessity for and the hatred of the European; the indescribable +difference of the sun, which here, even in winter, has something malignant +about it, and strikes as well as warms; the mountains odd, unlike our +mountains; the forests, which stand as it were by hardihood, and seem at war +against the influence of dryness and the desert winds, with their trees far +apart, and between them no grass, but bare earth alone. +</p> + +<p> +So it is with the reality of arms and with the reality of the sea. Too much +reading of battles has ever unfitted men for war; too much talk of the sea is a +poison in these great town populations of ours which know nothing of the sea. +Who that knows anything of the sea will claim certitude in connexion with it? +And yet there is a school which has by this time turned its mechanical system +almost into a commonplace upon our lips, and talks of that most perilous thing, +the fortunes of a fleet, as though it were a merely numerical and calculable +thing! The greatest of Armadas may set out and not return. +</p> + +<p> +There is one experience of travel and of the physical realities of the world +which has been so widely repeated, and which men have so constantly verified, +that I could mention it as a last example of my thesis without fear of +misunderstanding. I mean the quality of a great mountain. +</p> + +<p> +To one that has never seen a mountain it may seem a full and a fine piece of +knowledge to be acquainted with its height in feet exactly, its situation; nay, +many would think themselves learned if they know no more than its conventional +name. But the thing itself! The curious sense of its isolation from the common +world, of its being the habitation of awe, perhaps the brooding-place of a god! +</p> + +<p> +I had seen many mountains, I had travelled in many places, and I had read many +particular details in the books—and so well noted them upon the maps that I +could have re-drawn the maps—concerning the Cerdagne. None the less the sight +of that wall of the Cerdagne, when first it struck me, coming down the pass +from Tourcarol, was as novel as though all my life had been spent upon empty +plains. By the map it was 9000 feet. It might have been 90,000! The wonderment +as to what lay beyond, the sense that it was a limit to known things, its +savage intangibility, its sheer silence! Nothing but the eye seeing could give +one all those things. +</p> + +<p> +The old complain that the young will not take advice. But the wisest will tell +them that, save blindly and upon authority, the young cannot take it. For most +of human and social experience is words to the young, and the reality can come +only with years. The wise complain of the jingo in every country; and properly, +for he upsets the plans of statesmen, miscalculates the value of national +forces, and may, if he is powerful enough, destroy the true spirit of armies. +But the wise would be wiser still if, while they blamed the extravagance of +this sort of man, they would recognize that it came from that half-knowledge of +mere names and lists which excludes reality. It is maps and newspapers that +turn an honest fool into a jingo. +</p> + +<p> +It is so again with distance, and it is so with time. Men will not grasp +distance unless they have traversed it, or unless it be represented to them +vividly by the comparison of great landscapes. Men will not grasp historical +time unless the historian shall be at the pains to give them what historians so +rarely give, the measure of a period in terms of a human life. It is from +secondary impressions divorced from reality that a contempt for the past +arises, and that the fatal illusion of some gradual process of betterment of +“progress” vulgarizes the minds of men and wastes their effort. It is from +secondary impressions divorced from reality that a society imagines itself +diseased when it is healthy, or healthy when it is diseased. And it is from +secondary impressions divorced from reality that springs the amazing power of +the little second-rate public man in those modern machines that think +themselves democracies. This last is a power which, luckily, cannot be greatly +abused, for the men upon whom it is thrust are not capable even of abuse upon a +great scale. It is none the less marvellous in its falsehood. +</p> + +<p> +Now you will say at the end of this, Since you blame so much the power for +distortion and for ill residing in our great towns, in our system of primary +education and in our papers and in our books, what remedy can you propose? Why, +none, either immediate or mechanical. The best and the greatest remedy is a +true philosophy, which shall lead men always to ask themselves what they really +know and in what order of certitude they know it; where authority actually +resides and where it is usurped. But, apart from the advent, or rather the +recapture, of a true philosophy by a European society, two forces are at work +which will always bring reality back, though less swiftly and less whole. The +first is the poet, and the second is Time. +</p> + +<p> +Sooner or later Time brings the empty phrase and the false conclusion up +against what is; the empty imaginary looks reality in the face and the truth at +once conquers. In war a nation learns whether it is strong or no, and how it is +strong and how weak; it learns it as well in defeat as in victory. In the long +processes of human lives, in the succession of generations, the real +necessities and nature of a human society destroy any false formula upon which +it was attempted to conduct it. Time must always ultimately teach. +</p> + +<p> +The poet, in some way it is difficult to understand (unless we admit that he is +a seer), is also very powerful as the ally of such an influence. He brings out +the inner part of things and presents them to men in such a way that they +cannot refuse but must accept it. But how the mere choice and rhythm of words +should produce so magical an effect no one has yet been able to comprehend, and +least of all the poets themselves. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17">On the Decline of the Book: [And Especially of the +Historical Book]</a></h2> + +<p> +It is an interesting speculation by what means the Book lost its old position +in this country. This is not only an interesting speculation, but one which +nearly concerns a vital matter. For if men fall into the habit of neglecting +true books in an old and traditional civilization, the inaccuracy of their +judgments and the illusions to which they will be subject, must increase. +</p> + +<p> +To take but one example: history. The less the true historical book is read and +the more men depend upon ephemeral statement, the more will legend crystallize, +the harder will it be to destroy in the general mind some comforting lie, and +the great object-lesson of politics (which is an accurate knowledge of how men +have acted in the past) will become at last unknown. +</p> + +<p> +There are many, especially among younger men, who would contest the premiss +upon which all this is founded. They may point out, for instance, that the +actual number of bound books bought in a given time at present is much larger +than ever it was before. They may point out again, and with justice, that the +proportion of the population which reads books of any sort, though perhaps not +larger than it was three hundred years ago, is very much larger than it was one +hundred years ago. And it may further be affirmed with truth that the range of +subjects now covered by books produced and sold is much wider than ever it was +before. +</p> + +<p> +All this is true; and yet it is also true that the Book as a factor in our +civilization has not only declined but has almost disappeared. Were many more +dogs to be possessed in England than are now possessed, but were they to be all +mongrels, among which none could be found capable of retrieving, or of +following a fox or a hare with any discipline, one would have a right to say +that the dog as a factor of our civilization had declined. Were many more men +in England able to ride horses more or less, but were the number of those who +rode constantly and for pleasure enormously to diminish, and were the new +millions who could just manage to keep on horseback to prefer animals without +spirit on which they would feel safe, one would have a right to say that the +horse was declining as a factor in our civilization; and this is exactly what +has happened with the Book. +</p> + +<p> +The excellence of a book and its value as a book depend upon two factors, which +are usually, though not always, united in varied proportions: first, that it +should put something of value to the reader, whether of value as a discovery +and an enlargement of wisdom or of value as a new emphasis laid upon old and +sound morals; secondly, that this thing added or renewed in human life should +be presented in such a manner as to give permanent aesthetic pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +That is not a first-rate book which, while it is admirably written, teaches +something false or something evil; nor is that a first-rate book which, though +it discover a completely new thing, or emphasize the most valuable department +of morals, is so constructed as to be unreadable. Now it will not be denied +that as far as these two factors are concerned—and I repeat they are almost +always found in combination—the position of the Book has dwindled almost to +nothingness. One could give examples of almost every kind: one could show how +poetry, no matter how appreciated or praised, no longer sells. One could +show—and this is one of the worst signs of all—how men will buy by the hundred +thousand anything at all which has the hall mark of an established reputation, +quite careless as to their love of it or their appetite for it. One could +further show how more than one book of permanent value in English life has been +discovered in our generation outside England, and has been as it were thrust +upon the English public by foreign opinion. +</p> + +<p> +But for my purpose it will be sufficient to take one very important branch +which I can claim to have watched with some care, and that is the branch of +History. +</p> + +<p> +It may be said with truth that in our generation no single first-rate piece of +history has enjoyed an appreciable sale. That is not true of France, it is not +true of the United States, it is not even true of Germany in her intellectual +decline, but it is true of England. +</p> + +<p> +History is an excellent test. No man will read history, at least history of an +instructive sort, unless he is a man who can read a book, and desires to +possess one. To read History involves not only some permanent interest in +things not immediately sensible, but also some permanent brain-work in the +reader; for as one reads history one cannot, if one is an intelligent being, +forbear perpetually to contrast the lessons it teaches with the received +opinions of our time. Again, History is valuable as an example in the general +thesis I am maintaining, because no good history can be written without a great +measure of hard work. To make a history at once accurate, readable, useful, and +new, is probably the hardest of all literary efforts; a man writing such +history is driving more horses abreast in his team than a man writing any other +kind of literary matter. He must keep his imagination active; his style must be +not only lucid, but also must arrest the reader; he must exercise perpetually a +power of selection which plays over innumerable details; he must, in the midst +of such occupations, preserve unity of design, as much as must the novelist or +the playwright; and yet with all this there is not a verb, an adjective or a +substantive which, if it does not repose upon established evidence, will not +mar the particular type of work on which he is engaged. +</p> + +<p> +As an example of what I mean, consider two sentences: The first is taken from +the 432nd page of that exceedingly unequal publication, the <i>Cambridge +History of the French Revolution</i>; the second I have made up on the spur of +the moment; both deal with the Battle of Wattignies. The “Cambridge History” +version runs as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +On October 15 the relieving force, 50,000 strong, attacked the Austrian +covering force at Wattignies; the battle raged all that day and was most +furious on the right, in front of the village of Wattignies, which was taken +and lost three times; on the 17th the French expected another general +engagement but the enemy had drawn off. +</p> + +<p> +There are here five great positive errors in six lines. The French were not +50,000 strong, the attack on the 15th was not on Wattignies, but on Dourlers; +Wattignies was not taken and lost three times; the fight of the 15th was +<i>least</i> pressed on the right (harder on the left and hardest in the +centre) and no one—not the least recruit—expected Coburg to come <i>back</i> on +the 17th. Why, he had crossed the Sambre at every point the day before! As for +negative errors, or errors of omission, they are capital, and the chief is that +the victory was won on the second day, the 16th, of which no mention is made. +</p> + +<p> +Now contrast such a sentence with the following:— +</p> + +<p> +On October 15th the relieving force, 42,000 strong, attacked the Austrian +centre at Dourlers, and made demonstrations upon its wings; the attack upon +Dourlers (which village had been taken and lost three times) having failed, +upon the following day, October 16th, the extreme left of the enemy’s position +at Wattignies was attacked and carried; the enemy thus outflanked was compelled +to retreat, and Maubeuge was relieved the same evening. +</p> + +<p> +In the first sentence (which bears the hall mark of the University) every error +that could possibly be made in so few lines has been made. The numbers are +wrong; the nature of the fighting is misstated; the village in the centre is +confused with that on the extreme right; the critical second day is altogether +omitted, and every portion of the sentence, verb, adjective, and substantive, +is either directly inaccurate or indirectly conveys an inaccurate impression. +The second sentence, bald in style and uninteresting in presentation as the +first, has the merit of telling the truth. But—and here is the point—it would +be impossible to criticize the first sentence unless someone had read up the +battle, and to read up that battle one has to depend on five or six documents, +some unpublished (like much of Jourdan’s Memoirs), some of them involving a +visit to Maubeuge itself, some, like Pierrat’s book, very difficult to obtain +(for it is neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian) some few the +writings of contemporary eyewitnesses, and yet themselves demonstrably +inaccurate. All these must be read and collated, and if possible the actual +ground of the battle visited, before the first simple inaccurate sentence can +be properly criticized or the second bald but accurate sentence framed. None of +these authorities can have been so much as heard of by the official historian I +have quoted. +</p> + +<p> +It would be redundant to press the point. Most readers know well enough what +labour the just writing of history involves, and how excellent a type it is of +that “making of a book” which art is, as I have said, imperilled by apathy at +the present day. +</p> + +<p> +Consider for a moment who were those that purchased historical works in this +country in the past. There were, first of all, the landed gentry. In almost +every great country-house you will find a good old library, and that good old +library you will discover to be, as a rule, most valuable and most complete in +what concerns the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth +centuries. A very large proportion of history, and history of the best sort, is +to be found upon those shelves. The standard dwindles, though it is fairly well +maintained during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Then—as a +rule—it abruptly comes to an end. One may take as a sort of bourne, the two +great books Macaulay’s <i>History</i> and Kinglake’s, for an earlier and a +later limit. Most of these libraries contain Macaulay; some few Kinglake; +hardly one possesses later works of value. +</p> + +<p> +It may be urged in defence of the buyer that no later works of value exist. Put +so broadly, the statement is erroneous; but the truth which it contains is in +itself dependent upon the lack of public support for good historical work. When +there is a fortune for the man who writes in accordance with whatever form of +self-appreciation happens for the moment to be popular, while a steady view and +an accurate presentation of the past can find no sale, then that steady view +and that accurate presentation cannot be pursued save by men who are wealthy, +or by men who are endowed, but even wealthy men will hesitate to write what +they know will not be read, and for history no one is endowed. +</p> + +<p> +Our Universities were framed for many purposes, of which the cultivation of +learning was but one; in that one field, however, a particular form of learning +was taken very seriously, and was pursued with admirable industry; I mean an +acquaintance with and an imitation of the Latin and Greek Classics. +</p> + +<p> +It was a particular character of this form of learning that proficiency in it +would lead to undisputed honours. The scholar recognized the superior scholar; +the field of inquiry was by convention highly limited; it had been thoroughly +explored; discussion upon such results as were doubtful did not involve a +difference in general philosophy. +</p> + +<p> +With history it is otherwise. Whether such things have or have not happened, +and, above all, if they have happened, the <i>way</i> in which they have +happened, is to our general judgment of contemporary men what evidence is to a +criminal trial. Facts won’t give way. If, therefore, there are vested +interests, moral or material, to be maintained, history is, of all the sciences +or arts, that one most likely to suffer at the hands of those connected with +such interests. Even where the truth will be of advantage to those interests, +they are afraid of it, because the thorough discussion of it will involve the +presentation of views disadvantageous to privilege. +</p> + +<p> +Where, as is much more commonly the case (for vested interests, moral or +material, are unreasoning and selfish things), the truth would certainly offend +them, they are the more determined to prevent its appearance. +</p> + +<p> +But of all vested interests none deal with such assured incomes, none are so +immune by influence and tradition as the Universities. +</p> + +<p> +Now, if the rich man has no temptation by way of popular fame, and the poor man +no opportunity for endowment, in any branch of letters, there remains but a +third form of support, and that is the support of the buying public. And the +public will not buy. +</p> + +<p> +I will suppose the case of a popular novelist, who in a few months shall write, +not an historical novel, but a piece of so-called history. He shall call it, +for instance, “England’s Heroes.” Before you tell me his name, or what he has +written, I can tell you here and now what he will write on any number of +points. He will call Hastings Senlac. In the Battle of Hastings he will make +out Harold to be the head of a highly patriotic nation called the +“Anglo-Saxons”; they shall be desperately defending themselves against certain +French-speaking Scandinavians called Normans. He will deplore the defeat, but +will say it was all for the best. Magna Charta he will have signed at +Runnymede—probably he will have it drawn up there as well. He will translate +the most famous clause by the modern words “Judgment of his peers” and “law of +the land.” He will represent the Barons as having behind them the voice of the +whole nation—and so forth. When he comes to Crécy he will make Edward III speak +English. When he comes to Agincourt he will leave his readers as ignorant as +himself upon the boundaries, numbers and power of the Burgundian faction. In +the Civil War Oliver Cromwell will be an honest and not very rich gentleman of +the middle-classes. The Parliamentary force will be that of the mass of the +people against a few gallant but wicked aristocrats who follow the perfidious +Charles. He will make no mention of the pay of the Ironsides. James II will be +driven out by a popular uprising, in which the great Churchill will play an +honourable and chivalric part. The loss of the American Colonies will be +deplored, and will be ascribed to the folly of attempting to tax men of +“Anglo-Saxon” blood, unless you grant them representation. The Continental +troops will be treated as the descendants of Englishmen! The guns at Saratoga +will be Colonial guns; the incapacity of the Fleet will not be touched upon. +Here again, as in the case of the Battle of Hastings, all will be for the best, +and there will be a few touching words upon the passionate affection now felt +for Great Britain by the inhabitants of the United States. The defensive genius +of Wellington will be represented as that of a general particularly great in +the offensive. Talavera will be a victory. The Spanish Auxiliaries in the +Peninsula will be contemptible. No guns will be abandoned before Coruña, but +what are left at Coruña will be mentioned and re-embarked. The character of +Nelson will receive a curious sort of glutinous praise; Emma Hamilton, not +Naples, will be the stain upon his name; the Battle of Trafalgar will prevent +the invasion of England. +</p> + +<p> +This is a lengthy but not unjust description of what this gentleman would +write; it is rubbish from beginning to end. It would sell, because every word +of it would foster in the reader the illusion that the community of which he is +a member is invincible under all circumstances, that effort and self-denial and +suffering are spared him alone out of all mankind, and that a little +pleasurable excitement, preferably that to be obtained from his favourite game, +is the chief factor in military success. +</p> + +<p> +I have omitted Alfred. Alfred in such a book will be the “teller of truth”—but +he will not go to Mass. +</p> + +<p> +Given that the name is sufficiently well known, there is hardly any limit to +the sale of a book modelled upon these lines. Contrast with its fate the fate +of a book, written no matter how powerfully, that should insist upon truths, no +matter how valuable to the English people at the present moment. These truths +need by no means be unpleasant, though at the present moment an unpleasant +truth is undoubtedly more valuable than a pleasant one. They could make as much +or more for the glory of the country; they could be at any rate of infinitely +greater service, but they would not be received, simply because they would +compel close attention and brain-work in the reader as well as in the writer of +them. An established groove would have to be abandoned; to use a strong +metaphor, the reader would have to get out of bed, and that is what the modern +reader will not do. Tell him that the men who fought on either side at +Hastings’ plain cared nothing for national but everything for feudal +allegiance; that <i>lex terrae</i> means the local custom of ordeal and not the +“law of the land”; tell him that <i>judicium parium</i> means the right of a +noble to be judged by nobles, and has nothing to do with the jury system; tell +him that Magna Charta was certainly drawn up before the meeting at Runnymede; +that not until the Lancastrians did English kings speak English; that Oliver +Cromwell owed his position to the enormous wealth of the Williamses, of whom +had he not been a cadet, he would never have been known; tell him that the +whole force of the Parliament resided in the squires and that the Civil Wars +turned England into an oligarchy; tell him the exact truth about the infamy of +Churchill; tell him what proportion of Englishmen during the American War were +taxed without being represented; tell him what proportion of Washington’s +troops were of English blood; tell him any one illuminating and true thing +about the history of his country, and the novelty will so offend him that a +direct insult would have pleased him better. +</p> + +<p> +What is true of history is true of nearly all the rest, and the upshot of the +whole matter is that there is not, either in private patronage or in popular +demand, a chance for history in modern England. +</p> + +<p> +You can have excellent literature in journalism, and it will be widely read. I +would say more—I would say that the better literature a newspaper admits, the +more widely will that paper be read, or at any rate the greater will its +influence be on modern Englishmen. But when it comes to the kneaded and wrought +matter of the true Book, neither the public nor the centres of learning will +have any of it, and the last medium which might make it possible, patronage, +has equally disappeared, because the modern patron does not work in the +daylight in the full view of the nation and with its full approbation, and he +is no longer a public man (though he is richer than ever he was before). His +patronage, therefore, though it is still considerable, is expended in +satisfying his private demand. Private architects build him doubtful castles, +private collectors get him manuscripts and jewels, but Letters, which are a +public thing, he can no longer command. +</p> + +<p> +It might be asked, by way of conclusion, whether there is any remedy for this +state of things. There is none. Its prime cause resides in a certain attitude +of the national mind, and this kind of broadly held philosophy is not changed +save by slow preaching or external shock. As long as modern England remains +what we know it, and follows the lines of change which we see it following, the +Book will necessarily decline more and more, and we must make up our minds to +it. +</p> + +<p> +Of other evil tendencies of our time, one can say of some that they are +obviously mending, of others that such and such an applicable remedy would mend +them. Our public architecture is certainly getting better; so is our painting. +Our gross and increasing contempt of self-government (to take quite another +sphere) is curable by one or two simple reforms in procedure, registration, the +expenses of election, and voting at the polls, which would restore the House of +Commons to life, and give it power to express English will. But a regard for, a +cultivation of, above all a sinking of wealth upon, English Letters is past +praying for. We must wait until the tide changes; we can do nothing, and the +waiting will be long. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18">José Maria de Heredia</a></h2> + +<p> +The French have a phrase “la beauté du verbe” by which they would express a +something in the sound and in the arrangement of words which supplements +whatever mere thought those words were intended to express. It is evident that +no definition of this beauty can be given, but it is also evident that without +it letters would not exist. How it arises we cannot explain, yet the process is +familiar to us in everything we do when we are attempting to fulfil an impulse +towards whatever is good. An integration not of many small things but of an +infinite series of infinitely small things build up the perfect gesture, the +perfect line, the perfect intonation, and the perfect phrase. So indeed are all +things significant built up: every tone of the voice, every arrangement of +landscape or of notes in music which awake us and reveal the things beyond. But +when one says that this is especially true of perfect expression one means that +sometimes, rarely, the integration achieves a steadfast and sufficient formula. +The mind is satisfied rather than replete. It asks no more; and if it desires +to enjoy further the pleasure such completion has given it, it does not attempt +to prolong or to develop the pleasure under which it has leapt; it is content +to wait a while and to return, knowing well that it has here a treasure laid up +for ever. +</p> + +<p> +All this may be expressed in two words: the Classical Spirit. That is Classic +of which it is true that the enjoyment is sufficient when it is terminated and +that in the enjoyment of it an entity is revealed. +</p> + +<p> +When men propose to bequeath to their fellows work of so supreme a kind it is +to be noticed that they choose by instinct a certain material. +</p> + +<p> +It has been said that the material in which he works affects the achievement of +the artist: it is truer to say that it helps him. A man designing a sculpture +in marble knows very well what he is about to do. A man attempting the exact +and restrained rendering of tragedy upon the stage does not choose the stage as +one among many methods, he is drawn to it: he needs it; the audience, the +light, the evening, the very slope of the boards, all minister to his efforts. +And so a man determined to produce the greatest things in verse takes up by +nature exact and thoughtful words and finds that their rhythm, their +combination, and their sound turn under his hand to something greater than he +himself at first intended; he becomes a creator, and his name is linked with +the name of a masterpiece. The material in which he has worked is hard; the +price he has paid is an exceeding effect; the reward he has earned is +permanence. +</p> + +<p> +José de Heredia was an artist of this kind. The mass of the verse he produced, +or rather published, was small. It might have been very large. It is not (as a +foolish modern affectation will sometimes pretend) necessary to the endurance +or even the excellence of work that it should be the product of exceptional +moments; nor is it even true (as the wise Ancients believed) that great length +of time must always mature it. But the small volume of Heredia’s legacy to +European letters does argue this at least in the poet, that he passionately +loved perfection and that, finding himself able to achieve it (for perfection +can be achieved) but now and then, he chose only to be remembered by the +contentment which, now and then, his own genius had given him. +</p> + +<p> +He worked upon verse as men work upon the harder metals; all that he did was +chiselled very finely, then sawn to an exact configuration and at last inlaid, +for when he published his completed volume it is true to say that every piece +fitted in with the sound of one before and of one after. He was careful in the +heroic degree. +</p> + +<p> +His blood and descent are worthy of notice. He was a Spaniard, inheriting from +the first Conquerors of the New World, nor was it remarkable to those who have +received a proper enthusiasm for the classical spirit that the energy and even +the violence natural to such a lineage should express themselves in the coldest +and the most exalted form when, for the second time, a member of the family +attempted verse. It is in the essence of that spirit that it alone can dare to +be disciplined. It never doubts the motive power that will impel it; it is +afraid, if anything, of an excess of power, and consciously imposes upon itself +the limits which give it form. +</p> + +<p> +Heredia in his person expressed the activity which impelled him, for he was +strong, brown, erect, a rapid walker, and a man whose voice was perpetually +modulated in resonant and powerful tones. In his last years during his +administration of the Library at the Arsenal this vitality of his took on an +aspect of good nature very charming and very fruitful. His organization of the +place was thorough, his knowledge of the readers intimate. He refused the +manuscripts of none, he advised, laughed, and consoled. His criticism was sure. +Several, notably Marcel Prevost, were launched by his authority. The same deep +security of literary judgment which had permitted him to chastise and to +perfect his impeccable sonnets into their final form permitted him also to hold +up before his eyes, grasp, and judge the work of every other man. +</p> + +<p> +His frailty, as must always be the frailty of such men, was fastidiousness. The +same sensitive consciousness which is said to have all but lost us the Aeneid, +and which certainly all but lost us the Apologia, dominated his otherwise +vigorous soul. It is more than forty years since his first verse, written just +upon achieving his majority, appeared in the old <i>Revue de Paris</i> and in +the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>. It was not till 1893 that he collected in one +volume the scattered sonnets of his youth and middle age: the collection won +him somewhat tardily his chair in the Academy. There is irony in the +reminiscence that the man he defeated in that election was Zola. +</p> + +<p> +All the great men who saluted his advent are dead. Théophile Gautier, who first +established his fame; Hugo, who addressed to him, perhaps, that vigorous appeal +in which strict labour is deified, and the medal and the marble bust are shown +to outlive the greatest glories, are sometimes quoted as the last among the +great French writers. +</p> + +<p> +The immediate future will show that the stream of French excellence in this +department, as in any other of human activity, is full, deep, and steady. The +work of Heredia will help to prove it. He was a Spaniard, and a Colonial +Spaniard. No other nation, perhaps, except the modern French, so inherit the +romantic appetite of the later Roman Empire as to be able to mould and absorb +every exterior element of excellence. It is remarkable that at the same moment +Paris contemplated the funeral of the Italian de Brazza and the death of the +Cuban Heredia. It is probable that those of us who are still young will live to +see either name at the head of a new tradition. Heredia proved it possible not +so much to imitate as to recapture the secure tradition of an older time. +Perhaps the truest generalization that can be made with regard to the French +people is to say that they especially in Western Europe (whose quality it is +ever to transform itself but never to die) discover new springs of vitality +after every period of defeat and aridity which they are compelled to cross. +Heredia will prove in the near future a capital example of this power. He will +increase silently in reputation until we, in old age, shall be surprised to +find our sons and grandsons taking him for granted and speaking of him as one +speaks of the Majores, of the permanent lights of poetry. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19">Normandy and the Normans</a></h2> + +<p> +There is no understanding a country unless one gets to know the nature of its +sub-units. In some way not easy to comprehend, impossible to define, and yet +very manifest, each of the great national organisms of which Christendom is +built up is itself a body of many regions whose differences and interaction +endow it with a corporate life. No one could understand the past of England who +did not grasp the local genius of the counties—Lancashire, cut off eastward by +the Pennines, southward by the belt of marsh, with no natural entry save by the +gate of Stockport; Sussex, which was and is a bishopric and a kingdom; Kent, +Devon, the East Anglian meres. No one could (or does) understand modern England +who does not see its sub-units to have become by now the great industrial +towns, or who fails to seize the spirit of each group of such towns—with London +lying isolated in the south, a negative to the rest. +</p> + +<p> +France is built of such sub-units: it is the peculiarity of French development +that these are not small territories mainly of an average extent with +government answerable in a long day’s ride to one centre, such as most English +counties are; nor city States such as form the piles upon which the structure +of Italy has been raised; nor kingdoms such as coalesced to reform the Spanish +people; but <i>provinces</i>, differing greatly in area, from little plains +enclosed, like the Rousillon, to great stretches of landscape succeeding +landscape like the Bourbonnais or the Périgord. +</p> + +<p> +The real continuity with an immemorial past which inspires all Gallic things is +discoverable in this arrangement of Gaul. At the first glance one might imagine +a French province to be a chance growth of the feudal ties and of the Middle +Ages. A further effort of scholarship will prove it essentially Roman. An +intimate acquaintance with its customs and with the site of its strongholds, +coupled with a comparison of the most recent and most fruitful hypotheses of +historians, will convince you that it is earlier than the Roman conquest; it is +tribal, or the home of a group of cognate tribes, and its roots are lost in +prehistory. So it is with Normandy. +</p> + +<p> +This vast territory—larger (I think) than all North England from the Humber to +Cheviot and from Chester to the Solway—has never formed a nation. It is typical +of the national idea in France that Normandy should have “held” of the +political centre of the country, probably since the first Gallic confederations +were formed, certainly since the organization of the Empire. It is equally +typical of the local life of a French province that, thus dependent, Normandy +should have strictly preserved its manner and its spirit, and should have +readily made war upon the Crown and resisted, as it still resists and will +perhaps for ever, the centralizing forces of the national temper. +</p> + +<p> +If you will travel day after day, and afoot, westward across the length of +Normandy, you will have, if you are a good walker, a fortnight’s task ahead of +you; even if you are walking for a wager, a week’s. It is the best way in which +to possess a knowledge of that great land, and my advice would be to come in +from the Picards over the bridge of Aumale across the little River Bresle +(which is the boundary of Normandy to the east), and to go out by way of +Pontorson, there crossing into Brittany over the little River Couesnon, which +is the boundary of Normandy upon the west and beyond which lie the Bretons. In +this way will you be best acquainted with the sharp differentiation of the +French provinces passing into Normandy from Picardy, brick-built, +horse-breeding, and slow, passing out of Normandy into the desolation and +dreams of Brittany, and having known between the one and the other the chalk +streams, the day-long beechen forests, the valley pastures, and the flamboyant +churches of the Normans. You will do well to go by Neufchâtel, where the cheese +is made, and by Rouen, then by Lisieux to Falaise, where the Conqueror was +born, and thence by Vive to Avranches and so to the Breton border, taking care +to choose the forests between one town and another for your road, since these +many and deep woods—much wider than any we know in England—are in great part +the soul of the country. +</p> + +<p> +By this itinerary you will not have taken all you should into view; you will +not have touched the coast nor seen how Normandy is based upon the sea, and you +will not have known the Cotentin, which is a little State of its own and is the +quadrilateral which Normandy thrusts forth into the Channel. If you have the +leisure, therefore, return by the north. Pass through Coutances and Valognes to +Cherbourg, thence through Caen and Bayeux to the crossing of Seine at Honfleur, +and then on by the chalk uplands and edges of the cliffs till you reach Eu upon +the Bresle again. In such a double journey the character of the whole will be +revealed, and if you have studied the past of the place before starting you +will find your journey full. Avranches, Coutances, Lisieux, Bayeux, Rouen are +not chance sites. Their great churches mark the bishoprics; the bishoprics in +turn were the administrative centres of Rome, and Rome chose them because they +were the strongholds or the sacred cities each of a Gallic tribe. The wealth of +the valleys permitted everywhere that astonishing richness of detail which +marks the stonework in village after village; the connexion with England, +especially the last connexion under Henry V, explains the innumerable churches, +splendid even in hamlets as are our own. The Bresle and the Couesnon, those +little streams, are boundaries not of these last few centuries, but of a time +beyond view; the Romans found them so. Diocletian made them the limits of the +“Second Lyonesse,” “Lugdunensis Secunda,” which was the last Roman name of the +province. +</p> + +<p> +Here and there, near the west especially, you will discover names which recall +the chief adventure of Normandy, the accident which baptized it with its +Christian name, the landing of the Scandinavian pirates, the thousandth +anniversary of which is now being celebrated. They came—we cannot tell in what +numbers, some thousands—and harried the land. The old policy of the Empire, the +policy already seven hundred years old, was had recourse to; the barbarians +were granted settlement, inheritance, marriage, and partnership with the Lords +of the Villae; their chief was permitted to hold local government, to tax and +to levy men as the administrator of the whole province; but there followed +something which wherever else the experiment had been tried had not followed: +something of a new race arose. In Burgundy, in the northeast, in Visigothic +Aquitaine the slight admixture of foreign blood had not changed the people, it +was absorbed; the slight admixture of Scandinavian blood, coming so much later, +in a time so degraded in government and therefore so open to natural influence, +did change the Gallo-Romans of the Second Lyonesse. Few as the newcomers may +have been in number, the new element transformed the mass, and when a century +had permitted the union to work and settle, the great soldiers who founded us +appeared. The Norman lords ordered, surveyed, codified, and ruled. They let +Europe into England, they organized Sicily, they confirmed the New Papacy, they +were the framework of the Crusades. +</p> + +<p> +The phenomenon was brief. It lasted little more than a hundred years, but it +transformed Europe and launched the Middle Ages. When it had passed, Normandy +stood confirmed for centuries (and is still confirmed) in a character of its +own. No longer adventurous but mercantile, apt, of a resisting courage, sober +in thought, leaning upon tradition, not imperially but domestically strong: the +country of Corneille and of Malesherbes, a reflection of that spirit in +letters; the conservative body of to-day—for in our generation that is the mark +of Normandy—and, in arms, the recruitment to which Napoleon addressed his short +and famous order that “the Normans that day should do their duty.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20">The Old Things</a></h2> + +<p> +Those who travel about England for their pleasure, or, for that matter, about +any part of Western Europe, rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of +history; for history adds to a man, giving him, as it were, a great memory of +things—like a human memory, but stretched over a far longer space than that of +one human life. It makes him, I do not say wise and great, but certainly in +communion with wisdom and greatness. +</p> + +<p> +It adds also to the soil he treads, for to this it adds meaning. How good it is +when you come out of Tewkesbury by the Cheltenham road to look upon those +fields to the left and know that they are not only pleasant meadows, but also +the place in which a great battle of the mediaeval monarchy was decided, or as +you stand by that ferry, which is not known enough to Englishmen (for it is one +of the most beautiful things in England), and look back and see Tewkesbury +tower, framed between tall trees over the level of the Severn, to see also the +Abbey buildings in your eye of the mind—a great mass of similar stone with +solid Norman walls, stretching on hugely to the right of the Minster. +</p> + +<p> +All this historical sense and the desire to marry History with Travel is very +fruitful and nourishing, but there is another interest, allied to it, which is +very nearly neglected, and which is yet in a way more fascinating and more full +of meaning. This interest is the interest in such things as lie behind recorded +history, and have survived into our own times. For underneath the general life +of Europe, with its splendid epic of great Rome turned Christian, crusading, +discovering, furnishing the springs of the Renaissance, and flowering at last +materially into this stupendous knowledge of today, the knowledge of all the +Arts, the power to construct and to do—underneath all that is the foundation on +which Europe is built, the stem from which Europe springs; and that stem is +far, far older than any recorded history, and far, far more vital than any of +the phenomena which recorded history presents. +</p> + +<p> +Recorded history for this island and for Northern France and for the Rhine +Valley is a matter of two thousand years; for the Western Mediterranean of +three; but the things of which I speak are to be reckoned in tens of thousands +of years. Their interest does not lie only nor even chiefly in things that have +disappeared. It is indeed a great pleasure to rummage in the earth and find +polished stones wrought by men who came so many centuries before us, and of +whose blood we certainly are; and it is a great pleasure to find, or to guess +that we find, under Canterbury the piles of a lake or marsh dwelling, proving +that Canterbury has been there from all time; and that the apparently +defenceless Valley City was once chosen as an impregnable site, when the +water-meadows of the Stour were impassable as marsh, or with difficulty +passable as a shallow lagoon. And it is delightful to stand on the earthwork a +few miles west and to say to oneself (as one can say with a fair certitude), +“Here was the British camp defending the south-east; here the tenth legion +charged.” All these are pleasant, but more pleasant, I think, to follow the +thing where it actually survives. +</p> + +<p> +Consider the track-ways, for instance. How rich is England in these! No other +part of Europe will afford the traveller so permanent and so fascinating a +problem. Elsewhere Rome hardened and straightened every barbaric trail until +the original line and level disappeared; but in this distant province of +Britain she could only afford just so much energy as made them a foothold for +her soldiery; and all over England you can go, if you choose, foot by foot, +along the ancient roads that were made by the men of your blood before they had +heard of brick or of stone or of iron or of written laws. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder that more men do not set out to follow, let us say, the Fosse-Way. +There it runs right across Western England from the south-west to the +north-east in a line direct yet sinuous, characters which are the very essence +of a savage trail. It is a modern road for many miles, and you are tramping, +let us say, along the Cotswold on a hard metalled modern English highway, with +milestones and notices from the County Council telling you that the culverts +will not bear a steam-engine, if so be you were to travel on one. Then suddenly +this road comes up against a cross-road and apparently ceases, making what map +draughtsmen call a “T”; but right in the same line you see a gate, and beyond +it a farm lane, and so you follow. You come to a spinney where a ride has been +cut through by the woodreeve, and it is all in the same line. The Fosse-Way +turns into a little path, but you are still on it; it curves over a marshy +brook-valley, picking out the firm land, and as you go you see old stones put +there heaven knows how many (or how few) generations ago—or perhaps yesterday, +for the tradition remains, and the country-folk strengthen their wet lands as +they have strengthened them all these thousands of years; you climb up out of +that depression, you get you over a stile, and there you are again upon a lane. +You follow that lane, and once more it stops dead. This time there is a field +before you. No right of way, no trace of a path, nothing but grass rounded into +those parallel ridges which mark the modern decay of the corn lands and +pasture—alas!—taking the place of ploughing. Now your pleasure comes in casting +about for the trail; you look back along the line of the Way; you look forward +in the same line till you find some indication, a boundary between two +parishes, perhaps upon your map, or two or three quarries set together, or some +other sign, and very soon you have picked up the line again. +</p> + +<p> +So you go on mile after mile, and as you tread that line you have in the +horizons that you see, in the very nature and feel of the soil beneath your +feet, in the skies of England above you, the ancient purpose and soul of this +Kingdom. Up this same line went the Clans marching when they were called +Northward to the host; and up this went slow, creaking wagons with the lead of +the Mendips or the tin of Cornwall or the gold of Wales. +</p> + +<p> +And it is still there; it is still used from place to place as a high road, it +still lives in modern England. There are some of its peers, as for instance the +Ermine Street, far more continuous, and affording problems more rarely; others +like the ridgeway of the Berkshire Downs, which Rome hardly touched, and of +which the last two thousand years has, therefore, made hardly anything; you may +spend a delightful day piecing out exactly where it crossed the Thames, making +your guess at it, and wondering as you sit there by Streatley Vicarage whether +those islands did not form a natural weir below which lay the ford. +</p> + +<p> +The roads are the most obvious things. There are many more; for instance, +thatch. The same laying of the straw in the same manner, with the same art, has +continued, we may be certain, from a time long before the beginning of history. +See how in the Fen Land they thatch with reeds, and how upon the Chalk Downs +with straw from the Lowlands. I remember once being told of a record in a +manor, which held of the Church and which lay upon the southern slope of the +Downs, that so much was entered for “straw from the Lowlands”: then, years +afterwards, when I had to thatch a Bethlehem in an orchard underneath tall +elms—a pleasant place to write in, with the noise of bees in the air—the man +who came to thatch said to me: “We must have straw from the Lowlands; this +upland straw is no good for thatching.” Immediately when I heard him say this +there was added to me ten thousand years. And I know another place in England, +far distant from this, where a man said to me that if I wished to cross in a +winter mist, as I had determined to do, Cross-Fell, that great summit of the +Pennines, I must watch the drift of the snow, for there was no other guide to +one’s direction in such weather. And I remember another man in a little boat in +the North Sea, as we came towards the Foreland, talking to me of the two tides, +and telling me how if one caught the tide all the way up to Long Nose and then +went round it on the end of the flood, one caught a new tide up London river, +and so made two tides in one day. He spoke with the same pleasure that silly +men show when they talk about an accumulation of money. He felt wealthy and +proud from the knowledge, for by this knowledge he had two tides in one day. +Now knowledge of this sort is older than ten thousand years; and so is the +knowledge of how birds fly, and of how they call, and of how the weather +changes with the moon. +</p> + +<p> +Very many things a man might add to the list that I am making. Dew-pans are +older than the language or the religion; and the finding of water with a stick; +and the catching of that smooth animal, the mole; and the building of flints +into mortar, which if one does it in the old way (as you may see at Pevensey) +the work lasts for ever, but if you do it in any new way it does not last ten +years; then there is the knowledge of planting during the crescent part of the +month, but not before the new moon shows; and there is the influence of the +moon on cider, and to a less extent upon the brewing of ale; and talking of +ale, the knowledge of how ale should be drawn from the brewing just when a man +can see his face without mist upon the surface of the hot brew. And there is +the knowledge of how to bank rivers, which is called “throwing the rives” in +the South, but in the Fen Land by some other name; and how to bank them so that +they do not silt, but scour themselves. There are these things and a thousand +others. All are immemorial. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21">The Battle of Hastings. Related in the Manner of Oxford +and Dedicated to that University</a></h2> + +<p> +So careless were the French commanders (or more properly the French commander, +for the rest were cowed by the bullying swagger of William) that the night, +which should have been devoted to some sort of reconnaissance, if not of a +preparation of the ground, was devoted to nothing more practical than the +religious exercises peculiar to foreigners. +</p> + +<p> +Their army, as we have seen, was not drawn from any one land, but it was in the +majority composed of Normans and Bretons; we can therefore understand the +extravagant superstition which must bear the blame for what followed. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, upon the heights above, the English host calmly prepared for battle. +Fires were lit each in its appointed place, and at these meat was cooked under +the stern but kindly eyes of the sergeant-majors. These also distributed at an +appointed price liquor, of which the British soldier is never willing to be +deprived, and as the hours advanced towards morning, the songs in which our +adventurous race has ever delighted rose from the heights above the Brede. +</p> + +<p> +The morning was misty, as is often the case over damp and marshy lands in the +month of October, but the inclemency of the weather, or, to speak more +accurately, the superfluous moisture precipitated from an already saturated +atmosphere, was of no effect upon those silent and tenacious troops of Harold. +It was far other with the so-called “Norman” host, who were full of +forebodings—only too amply to be justified—of the fate that lay before them +upon the morrow. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious to contrast the quiet skill and sagacity which marked the +disposition of Harold with the almost childish simplicity of William’s plan—if +plan it may be called. +</p> + +<p> +The Saxon hosts were drawn along the ridge in a position chosen with masterly +skill. It afforded (as may still be seen) no dead ground for an attacking force +and little cover.<a href="#fn1" name="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> Their left was +arranged <i>en potence</i>, their right was drawn up in echelon. The centre +followed the plan usual at that time, reposing upon the wings to its right and +left and extended. The reserves were, of course, posted behind. Cavalry, as at +Omdurman, played but a slight role in this typically national action and such +mounted troops as were present seem to have been intermixed with the line in +the fashion later known, in the jargon of the service, as “The Beggar’s +Quadrille.” The Brigade of Guards is not mentioned in any record that I can +discover, but was probably set by reversed companies in a square perpendicular +to the main ravine and a little in front of the salient angle which appears +upon the map at the point marked A. +</p> + +<p> +The terrain can be clearly determined at the present day in spite of the +changes that have taken place in the intervening years. It is a fairly steep +slope of hemispherical contour interspersed with low bushes; the summit (upon +which now stands our lovely English village of Battle and the residence of one +of those cultured and leisured men who form the framework of our commonwealth) +was then but a wild heath. +</p> + +<p> +Harold himself could be distinguished in the centre of the line by his handsome +features, restrained deportment, and unfailing gentlemanly good sense as he +spoke to staff officer, orderly, and even groom with indefatigable skill. +</p> + +<p> +In spite of the determination observable from a great distance upon the faces +of the tall Saxon line, William with characteristic lack of balance opened the +action by ordering a charge uphill with cavalry alone; it was a piece of +tactics absurdly incongruous and one even he would never have attempted had he +understood the foe that was before him, or the fate to which that foe had +doomed him. +</p> + +<p> +The lesson dealt him was as immediate as it was severe. The foreigners were +thrust headlong down the hill, and a private letter tells us how the Men of +Kent in particular buffeted the Normans about “as though they were boys.” But +even in the heat of this initial success Harold had the self-command to order +the retirement upon the main position: and with troops such as his the order +was equivalent to its execution. +</p> + +<p> +This rude blow would have sufficed for any commander less vain than William, +but he seems to have lost all judgment in a fit of personal vanity and to have +ordered a second charge which could not but prove as futile as the first, +delivered as it was up a perfect glacis strengthened by epaulements, reverses +and countersunk galvon work and one whose natural strength was heightened by +the stockade which the indomitable energy of Harold’s troops had perfected in +the early hours of the morning. Many of the stakes in this, the reader may note +with pardonable pride, were of English oak—sharpened at the tip. +</p> + +<p> +William’s plan (if plan it may be called) was, as we have seen, necessarily +futile and was foredoomed to failure. But Harold had no intention to let the +action bear no more fruit than a tactical victory upon this particular field. +The brain that had designed the exact synchrony of Stamford Bridge and the +famous march southward from the Humber was of that sort which is only found +once in many centuries of the history of war and which is (it may be said +without boasting) peculiar to this island. +</p> + +<p> +Another general would have awaited the second charge with its useless butchery +and still more useless contest for the barren name of victory. Not so Harold. +Those commanding, cold grey eyes of his swept the line in a comprehensive +glance, and though no written record of the detail remains, he must know little +of the character of the man who does not understand that from Harold certainly +proceeded the order for what followed. +</p> + +<p> +The forces at the centre, which he commanded in person, deftly withdrew before +the futile gallop of William’s cavalry, leaving, with that coolness which has +ever distinguished our troops, the laggards to their fate. At the same moment, +and with marvellous precision, the left and right were withdrawn from the +plateau rapidly and as by magic, and the old-fashioned tactics of mere impact +(which William of Normandy seems seriously to have relied on!) were spent and +wasted upon the now evacuated summit of the hill. +</p> + +<p> +What followed is famous in history. +</p> + +<p> +The cohesion of the Saxon force and the exactitude and coolness with which its +great operation was performed is of good augury for the future of our country. +Though it was now thick night, by no set road and with no cumbersome machinery +of train and rear-guard, the whole of the vast assembly masked itself behind +the woodlands of the Weald. +</p> + +<p> +The Norman horsemen, bewildered and fatigued, gazed on the many that had fallen +in defence of the masking position and wondered whether such novel happenings +were victory or no, but the army whose concentration upon the Thames it was +William’s whole object to prevent, was already miles northward, each unit +proceeding by exactly co-ordinated routes towards London. +</p> + +<p> +There is perhaps no more difficult task set before soldiers than the quiet +execution of such a manoeuvre after the heat of a heavy action, and none have +performed it more magnificently than the veteran troop of Harold. +</p> + +<p> +When (luckily) all the orders had been finally distributed a great tragedy +marred the completeness of the day. +</p> + +<p> +Just before the execution of this masterpiece of strategy, and as the autumn +sun was sinking, the inevitable price which war demands of all its darlings was +paid. +</p> + +<p> +Harold himself, the artist of the great victory, fell. But we have no reason to +believe that his loss retarded the retrograding movement in any degree. Men who +create as Harold created have not their creations spoilt by death. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The shameful history of the close of the campaign is familiar to every +schoolboy, and the military historian must be pardoned if he deals with a +purely civilian blunder in a few brief words. +</p> + +<p> +Parliament interfered—as it always does—with what should have been a matter for +soldiers alone. Intrigues, bribery, or worse (with which the military historian +has no concern) ruined what had been, in the field, one of the principal +achievements of the Saxon arms. And William, who could not count to hold his +own against regular forces and who was astonished to find himself free to +retreat precipitately on Dover, was still more astonished to find himself +accepted a few weeks later after an aimless march to the west and north by the +politicians—or worse—at Berkhampstead. He and England were equally astounded to +find that a broken and defeated invader could actually be accepted by the +intriguers at Westminster and crowned King of England as the price of a secret +bargain. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the fruit of as great and successful an effort as ever Saxon soldier +made: the Battle of Senlac: for such—as I am now free to reveal—was the true +name of the field of action. +</p> + +<p> +The ineptitude or avarice of politicians had undone the work of soldiers, and +it is no wonder that the last of Harold’s veterans, who retired in disgust to +impregnable fortresses in Ely, Arthur’s Seat, and Pudsey, are recorded to have +gnashed their teeth and shed tears of indignation at the dispatches from the +metropolis. At Crécy they were to be avenged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22">The Roman Roads in Picardy</a></h2> + +<p> +If a man were asked where he would find upon the map the sharpest impress of +Rome and of the memories of Rome, and where he would most easily discover in a +few days on foot the foundations upon which our civilization still rests, he +might, in proportion to his knowledge of history and of Europe, be puzzled to +reply. He might say that a week along the wall from Tyne to Solway would be the +answer; or a week in the great Roman cities of Provence with their triumphal +arches and their vast arenas and their Roman stone cropping out everywhere: in +old quays, in ruined bridges, in the very pavement of the streets they use +to-day, and in the columns of their living churches. +</p> + +<p> +Now I was surprised to find myself after many years of dabbling in such things, +furnishing myself the answer in quite a different place. It was in Picardy +during the late manoeuvres of the French Army that, in the intervals of +watching those great buzzing flies, the aeroplanes, and in the intervals of +long tramps after the regiments or of watching the massed guns, the necessity +for perpetually consulting the map brought home to me for the first time this +truth—that Picardy is the province—or to be more accurate, Picardy with its +marches in the Île de France, the edge of Normandy and the edge of +Flanders—which retains to-day the most vivid impress of Rome. For though the +great buildings are lacking, and the Roman work, which must here have been +mainly of brick, has crumbled, and though I can remember nothing upstanding and +patently of the Empire between the gate of Rheims and the frontier of Artois, +yet one feature—the Roman road—is here so evident, so multiple, and so enduring +that it makes up for all the rest. +</p> + +<p> +One discovers the old roads upon the map, one after the other, with a sort of +surprise. The scheme develops before one as one looks, and always when one +thinks one has completed the web another and yet another straight arrow of a +line reveals itself across the page. +</p> + +<p> +The map is a sort of palimpsest. A mass of fine modern roads, a whole red blur +of lanes and local ways, the big, rare black lines of the railway—these are the +recent writing, as it were; but underneath the whole, more and more apparent +and in greater and greater numbers as one learns to discover them, are the +strict, taut lines which Rome stretched over all those plains. +</p> + +<p> +There is something most fascinating in noting them, and discovering them one +after the other. +</p> + +<p> +For they need discovering. No one of them is still in complete use. The greater +part must be pieced together from lengths of lanes which turn into broad roads, +and then suddenly sink again into footpaths, rights of way, or green forest +rides. +</p> + +<p> +Often, as with our rarer Roman roads in England, all trace of the thing +disappears under the plough or in the soft crossings of the river valleys; one +marks them by the straightness of their alignment, by the place names which lie +upon them (the repeated name Estrée, for instance, which is like the place name +“street” upon the Roman roads of England); by the recovery of them after a gap; +by the discoveries which local archaeology has made. +</p> + +<p> +Different men have different pastimes, and I dare say that most of those who +read this will wonder that such a search should be a pastime for any man, but I +confess it is a pastime for me. To discover these things, to recreate them, to +dig out on foot the base upon which two thousand years of history repose, is +the most fascinating kind of travel. +</p> + +<p> +And then, the number of them! You may take an oblong of country with Maubeuge +at one corner, Pontoise at another, Yvetot and some frontier town such as Fumes +for the other two corners, and in that stretch of country a hundred and fifty +miles by perhaps two hundred, you can build up a scheme of Roman ways almost as +complete as the scheme of the great roads to-day. +</p> + +<p> +That one which most immediately strikes the eye is the great line which darts +upon Rouen from Paris. +</p> + +<p> +Twice broken at the crossing of the river valleys, and lost altogether in the +last twelve miles before the capital of Normandy, it still stands on the modern +map a great modern road with every aspect of purpose and of intention in its +going. +</p> + +<p> +From Amiens again they radiate out, these roads, some, like the way to Cambray, +in use every mile; some, like the old marching road to the sea, to the Portus +Itius, to Boulogne, a mere lane often wholly lost and never used as a great +modern road. This was the way along which the French feudal cavalry trailed to +the disaster of Crécy, and just beyond Crécy it goes and loses itself in that +exasperating but fascinating manner which is the whole charm of Roman roads +wherever the hunter finds them. You may lay a ruler along this old forgotten +track, all the way past Domqueur, Novelle (which is called Novelle-en-Chaussée, +that is Novelle on the paved road), on past Estrée (where from the height you +overlook the battlefield of Crécy), and that ruler so lying on your map points +right at Boulogne Harbour, thirty odd miles away—and in all those thirty odd +remaining miles I could not find another yard of it. But what an interest! What +a hobby to develop! There is nothing like it in all the kinds of hunting that +have ever been invented for filling up the whole of the mind. True, you will +get no sauce of danger, but, on the other hand, you will hunt for weeks and +weeks, and you will come back year after year and go on with your hunting, and +sometimes you actually find—which is more than can be said for hunting some +animals in the Weald. +</p> + +<p> +How was it lost, this great main road of Europe, this marching road of the +legions, linking up Gaul and Britain, the way that Hadrian went, and the way +down which the usurper Constantine III must have come during that short +adventure of his which lends such a romance to the end of the Empire? One +cannot conceive why it should have disappeared. It is a sunken way down the +hillside across the light railway which serves Crécy, it gets vaguer and +vaguer, for all the world like those ridges upon the chalk that mark the Roman +roads in England, and then it is gone. It leaves you pointing, I say, at that +distant harbour, thirty odd miles off, but over all those miles it has +vanished. The ghost of the legends cannot march along it any more. In one place +you find a few yards of it about three miles south and east of Montreuil. It +may be that the little lane leading into Estrée shows where it crossed the +valley of the Cauche, but it is all guesswork, and therefore very proper to the +huntsman. +</p> + +<p> +Then there is that unbroken line by which St. Martin came, I think, when he +rode into Amiens, and at the gate of the town cut his cloak in two to cover the +beggar. It drives across country for Roye and on to Noyon, the old centre of +the Kings. It is a great modern road all the way, and it stretches before you +mile after mile after mile, until suddenly, without explanation and for no +reason, it ends sharply, like the life of a man. It ends on the slopes of the +hill called Choisy, at the edge of the wood which is there. And seek as you +will, you will never find it again. +</p> + +<p> +From that road also, near Amiens, branches out another, whose object was St. +Quentin, first as a great high road, lost in the valley of the Somme, a lesser +road again, still in one strict alignment, it reaches on to within a mile of +Vermand, and there it stops dead. I do not think that between Vermand and St. +Quentin you will find it. Go out north-westward from Vermand and walk perhaps +five miles, or seven: there is no trace of a road, only the rare country lanes +winding in and out, and the open plough of the rolling land. But continue by +your compass so and you will come (suddenly again and with no apparent reason +for its abrupt origin) upon the dead straight line that ran from the capital of +the Nervii, three days’ march and more, and pointing all the time straight at +Vermand. +</p> + +<p> +And so it is throughout the province and its neighbourhood. Here and there, as +at Bavai, a great capital has decayed. Here and there (but more rarely), a town +wholly new has sprung up since the Romans, but the plan of the country is the +same as that which they laid down, and the roads as you discover them, mark it +out and establish it. The armies that you see marching to-day in their +manoeuvres follow for half a morning the line which was taken by the Legions. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23">The Reward of Letters</a></h2> + +<p> +It has often been remarked that while all countries in the world possess some +sort of literature, as Iceland her Sagas, England her daily papers, France her +prose writers and dramatists, and even Prussia her railway guides, one nation +and one alone, the Empire of Monomotopa, is utterly innocent of this +embellishment or frill. +</p> + +<p> +No traveller records the existence of any Monomotopan quill-driver; no modern +visitor to that delightful island has come across a <i>littérateur</i> whether +in the worse or in the best hotels; and such reading as the inhabitants enjoy +is entirely confined to works imported by large steamers from the neighbouring +Antarctic Continent. +</p> + +<p> +The causes of this singular and happy state of affairs were unknown (since the +common histories did not mention them) until the recent discovery by Mr. Paley, +the chief authority upon Monomotopan hieratic script, of a very ancient +inscription which clearly sets forth the whole business. +</p> + +<p> +It seems that an Emperor of Monomotopa, whose date can be accurately fixed by +internal evidence to lie after the universal deluge and before the building of +the Pyramid of Cheops, was, upon his accession to the throne, particularly +concerned with the just repartition of taxes among his beloved subjects. +</p> + +<p> +It would seem (if we are to trust the inscription) that in a past still more +remote the taxes were so light that even the richest men would meet them +promptly and without complaining, but this was at a period when the enemies of +Monomotopa were at once distant and actively engaged in quarrelling among +themselves. With sickening treachery these distant rival nations had determined +to produce wealth and to live in amity, so that it was incumbent upon the +Monomotopans not only to build ships, but actually to provide an army, and at +last (what broke the camel’s back) to establish fortifications of a very +useless but expensive sort upon a dozen points of their Imperial coast. +</p> + +<p> +Under the increasing strain the old fiscal system broke down. The poor were +clearly embarrassed, as might be seen in their emaciated visages and from the +terrible condition of their boots. The rich had reached the point after which +it was inconvenient to them to pay any more. The middle classes were spending +the greater part of their time in devising methods by which the exorbitant and +intempestive demands of the collectors could be either evaded or, more rarely, +complied with. In a word, a new and juster system of taxation was an imperative +need, and the Emperor, who had just ascended the throne at the age of eighteen, +and whom a sort of greenness had preserved from the iniquities of this world, +was determined to effect the great reform. +</p> + +<p> +With the advice of his Ministers (all of whom had had considerable experience +in the handling of money), the Emperor at last determined that each man and +woman should pay to the State one-tenth and no more of the wealth which he or +she produced; those who produced nothing it was but common justice and reason +to exempt, and the effect of this tardy act of justice upon the very rich was +observed in the sudden increase of the death-rate from all those diseases that +are the peculiar product of luxury and evil living. Paupers also, the +unemployed, cripples, imbeciles, deaf mutes, and the clergy escaped under this +beneficent and equable statute, and we may sum up the whole policy by saying +that never was a law acclaimed with so much happy bewilderment nor subject to +less expressed criticism than this. +</p> + +<p> +It was, moreover, easy to estimate in this new fashion the total revenue of the +State, since its produce had been accurately set down by statisticians of the +utmost eminence, and one of these diverse documents had been taken for the +basis of the new fiscal regime. +</p> + +<p> +In practice also the collection was easy. Overseers would attend the harvest +with large carts, prong the tenth turnip, hoick up the tenth sheaf of wheat, +bucket out the tenth gallon of ale, and so forth. In the markets every tenth +animal was removed by Imperial officers, every tenth newspaper was impounded as +it left the press, and every tenth drink about to be consumed in the hostelries +of the Empire was, after a simulacrum of proffering it, suddenly removed by the +waiter and poured into a receptacle, the keys of which were very jealously +guarded. +</p> + +<p> +It was the same with the liberal professions: of the fee received by a +barrister in the Criminal Courts a tenth was regularly demanded at the door +when the verdict had been given and the prisoner whom he had defended passed +out to execution. The tenth knock-out in the prize ring received by the +professional pugilist was followed by the immediate sequestration of his fee +for that particular encounter, and the tenth aria vibrating from the lips of a +prima donna was either compounded for at a certain rate or taken in kind by the +official who attended at every performance of grand opera. +</p> + +<p> +One form of wealth alone puzzled the beneficent monarch and his Napoleonic +advisers, and this was the production (for it then existed) of literary matter. +</p> + +<p> +At first this seemed as simple to tax as any one of the other numerous +activities upon which the Emperor’s loyal and loving subjects were engaged. A +brief examination of the customs of the trade, conducted by an army of +officials who penetrated into the very dens and attics in which Letters are +evolved, reported that the method of payment was by the measurement of a number +of words. +</p> + +<p> +“It is, your Majesty,” wrote the permanent official of the department in his +minute, “the practice of those who charitably employ this sort of person to pay +them in classes by the thousand words; thus one man gets one sequin a thousand, +another two byzants, a third as much as a ducat, while some who have singularly +attracted the notice of the public can command ten, twenty, nay forty +scutcheons, and in some very exceptional cases a thousand words command one of +those beautiful pieces of stiff paper which your Majesty in his bountiful +provision tenders to his dutiful subjects for acceptance as metal under diverse +penalties. The just taxation of these fellows can therefore be easily achieved +if your Majesty, in the exercise of his almost superhuman wisdom, will but add +a schedule to the Finance Act in which there shall be set down fifteen or +twenty classes of writers, with their price per thousand words, and a +compulsory registration of each class, enforced by the rude hand of the +police.” +</p> + +<p> +The Emperor of Monomotopa immediately nominated a Royal Commission (unpaid), +among whose sons, nephews, and private friends the salaried posts connected +with the work were distributed. This Commission reported by a majority of one +ere two years had elapsed. The schedule was designed, and such +<i>littérateurs</i> as had not in the interval fled the country were +registered, while a further enactment strictly forbidding their employers to +make payment upon any other system completed the scheme. +</p> + +<p> +But, alas! so full of low cunning and dirty dodges is this kind of man (I mean +what we call authors) that very soon after the promulgation of the new law a +marked deterioration in the quality of Monomotopan letters was apparent upon +every side! +</p> + +<p> +The citizen opening his morning paper would be astonished to find the leading +article consist of nothing more original than a portion of the sacred +Scriptures. A novel bought to ease the tedium of a journey would consist of +long catalogues for the most part, and when it came to descriptions of scenery +would fall into the most minute and detailed category of every conceivable +feature of the landscape. Some even took advantage of the new regulation so far +as to repeat one single word an interminable number of times, while it was +remarked with shame by the Ministers of Religion that the morals of their +literary friends permitted them only to use words of one syllable, and those of +the shortest kind. And this they said was the only true and original +Monomotopan dialect. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the public inconvenience that next year a sharper and much more +drastic law was passed, by which it was laid down that every literary +composition should make sense within the meaning of the Act, and should be +original so far as the reading of the judge appointed for the trial of the case +extended. But though after the first few executions this law was generally +observed, the nasty fellows affected by it managed to evade it in spirit, for +by the use of obscure terms, of words drawn from dead languages, and of bold +metaphor transferred from one art to another, they would deliberately invite +prosecution, and then in the witness-box make fools of those plain men, the +judge and jury, by showing that this apparently meaningless claptrap could, +with sufficient ingenuity, be made to yield some sort of sense, and during this +period no art critic was put to death. +</p> + +<p> +Driven to desperation, the Emperor changed the whole basis of the Remuneration +of Literary Labour, and ordered that it should be by the length of the prose or +poetry measured in inches. +</p> + +<p> +This reform, however, did but add to the confusion, for while the men of the +pen wrote their works entirely in short dialogue, asterisks, and blanks, the +publishers, who were now thoroughly organized, printed the same in smaller and +smaller type, in order to avoid the consequences of the law. +</p> + +<p> +At this last piece of insolence the Emperor’s mind was quickly decided. +Arresting one night not only all those who had ever written, but all those who +had even boasted of letters, or who were so much as suspected by their +relatives of secretly indulging in them, he turned the whole two million into a +large but enclosed area, and (desiring to kill two birds with one stone) +offered the ensuing spectacle as an amusement to the more sober and respectable +sections of the community. +</p> + +<p> +It is well known that the profession of letters breeds in its followers an +undying hatred of each against his fellows. The public were therefore +entertained for a whole day with the pleasing sight of a violent but quite +disordered battle, in which each of the wretched prisoners seemed animated by +no desire but the destruction of as many as possible of his hated rivals, until +at last every soul of these detestable creatures had left its puny body and the +State was rid of all. +</p> + +<p> +A law which carried to the universities the rule of the primary schools—to wit, +that men should be taught to read but not to write—completed the good work. And +there was peace. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24">The Eye-Openers</a></h2> + +<p> +Without any doubt whatsoever, the one characteristic of the towns is the lack +of reality in the impressions of the many: now we live in towns: and posterity +will be astounded at us! It isn’t only that we get our impressions for the most +part as imaginary pictures called up by printer’s ink—that would be bad enough; +but by some curious perversion of the modern mind, printer’s ink ends by +actually preventing one from seeing things that are there; and sometimes, when +one says to another who has not travelled, “Travel!” one wonders whether, after +all, if he does travel, he will see the things before his eyes? If he does, he +will find a new world; and there is more to be discovered in this fashion +to-day than ever there was. +</p> + +<p> +I have sometimes wished that every Anglo-Saxon who from these shores has sailed +and seen for the first time the other Anglo-Saxons in New York or Melbourne, +would write in quite a short letter what he really felt. Ninety-nine times out +of a hundred men only write what they have read before they started, just as +Rousseau in an eighteenth-century village believed that every English yokel +could vote and that his vote conveyed a high initiative, making and unmaking +the policy of the State; or just as people, hearing that the birth-rate of +France is low, travel in that country and say they can see no children—though +they would hardly say it about Sussex or Cumberland where the birth-rate is +lower still. +</p> + +<p> +What travel does in the way of pleasure (the providing of new and fresh +sensations, and the expansion of experience), that it ought to do in the way of +knowledge. It ought to and it does, with the wise, provide a complete course of +unlearning the wretched tags with which the sham culture of our great towns has +filled us. For instance, of Barbary—the lions do not live in deserts; they live +in woods. The peasants of Barbary are not Semitic in appearance or in +character; Barbary is full to the eye, not of Arab and Oriental buildings—they +are not striking—but of great Roman monuments: they are altogether the most +important things in the place. Barbary is not hot, as a whole: most of Barbary +is extremely cold between November and March. The inhabitants of Barbary do not +like a wild life, they are extremely fond of what civilization can give them, +such as <i>crème de menthe</i>, rifles, good waterworks, maps, and railways: +only they would like to have these things without the bother of strict laws and +of the police, and so forth. Travel in Barbary with seeing eyes and you find +out all this new truth. +</p> + +<p> +Now it took the French forty years and more before each of these plain facts +(and I have only cited half a dozen out of as many hundred) got into their +letters and their print: they have not yet got into the letters and the print +of other nations. But an honest man travelling in Barbary on his own account +would pick up every one of these truths in two or three days, except the one +about the lions; to pick up that truth you must go to the very edge of the +country, for the lion is a shy beast and withdraws from men. +</p> + +<p> +The wise man who really wants to see things as they are and to understand them, +does not say: “Here I am on the burning soil of Africa.” He says: “Here I am +stuck in a snowdrift and the train twelve hours late”—as it was (with me in it) +near Sétif in January, 1905. He does not say as he looks on the peasant at his +plough outside Batna: “Observe yon Semite!” He says: “That man’s face is +exactly like the face of a dark Sussex peasant, only a little leaner.” He does +not say: “See those wild sons of the desert! How they must hate the new +artificial world around them!” Contrariwise, he says: “See those four +Mohammedans playing cards with a French pack of cards and drinking liqueurs in +the café! See, they have ordered more liqueurs!” He does not say: “How strange +and terrible a thing the railway must be to them!” He says: “I wish I was rich +enough to travel first, for the natives pouring in and out of this third-class +carriage, jabbering like monkeys, and treading on my feet, disturb my +tranquillity. Some hundreds must have got in and out during the last fifty +miles!” +</p> + +<p> +In other words, the wise man has permitted eye-openers to rain upon him their +full, beneficent, and sacramental influence. And if a man in travelling will +always maintain his mind ready for what he really sees and hears, he will +become a whole nest of Columbuses discovering a perfectly interminable series +of new worlds. +</p> + +<p> +A man can only talk of what he himself knows. Let me give further examples. I +had always heard until I visited the Pyrenees how French civilization +(especially in the matter of roads, motors, and things like that) went up to +the “Spanish” frontier and then stopped dead. It doesn’t. The change is at the +Aragonese frontier. On the Basque third of the frontier the people are just as +active and fond of wealth, and of scraping of stone and of cleanliness, and of +drawing straight lines, to the north as to the south of it. They are all one +people, as industrious, as thrifty, and as prosperous as the Scots. So are the +Catalans one people, and you get much the same sort of advantages and +disadvantages (apart from the effect of government) with the Catalans to the +north as with the Catalans to the south of the border. +</p> + +<p> +So with religion. I had thought to find the Spanish churches crowded. I found +just the contrary. It was the French churches that were crowded, not the +Spanish; and the difference between the truth—what one really sees and +hears—and the printed legend happens to be very subtly illustrated in this case +of religion. The French have inherited (and are by this time used to, and have, +perhaps grown fond of) a big religious debate. Those who side with the national +religion and tradition emphasize their opinion in every possible way—so do +their opponents. You pick up two newspapers from Toulouse, for instance, and it +is quite on the cards that the leading article of each will be a disquisition +upon the philosophy of religion, the one, the “Depêche” of Toulouse, +militantly, and often solently atheist; the other as militantly Catholic. +</p> + +<p> +You don’t get that in Pamplona, and you don’t get it in Saragossa. What you get +there is a profound dislike of being interfered with, ancient and lazy customs, +wealth retained by the chapters, the monasteries, and the colleges, and with +all this a curious, all-pervading indifference. +</p> + +<p> +One might end this little train of thought by considering a converse test of +what the eye-opener is in travel; and that test is to talk to foreigners when +they first come to England and see how they tend to discover in England what +they have read of at home instead of what they really see. There have been very +few fogs in London of late, but your foreigner nearly always finds London +foggy. Kent does not show along its main railway line the evidence of +agricultural depression: it is like a garden. Yet, in a very careful and +thorough French book just published by a French traveller, his bird’s-eye view +of the country as he went through Kent just after landing would make you think +the place a desert; he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural +decay. The same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and +an aristocratic one in the House of Lords, though he shall have heard but four +speeches in each, and though every one of the eight speeches shall have been +delivered by members of one family group closely intermarried, wealthy, titled, +and perhaps (who knows?) of some lineage as well. +</p> + +<p> +The moral is that one should tell the truth to oneself, and look out for it +outside one. It is quite as novel and as entertaining as the discovery of the +North Pole—or, in case that has come off (as some believe), the discovery of +the South Pole. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25">The Public</a></h2> + +<p> +I notice a very curious thing in the actions particularly of business men +to-day, and of other men also, which is the projection outward from their own +inward minds of something which is called “The Public”—and which is not there. +</p> + +<p> +I do not mean that a business man is wrong when he says that “the public will +demand” such and such an article, and on producing the article finds it sells +widely; he is obviously and demonstrably right in his use of the word “public” +in such a connexion. Nor is a man wrong or subject to illusion when he says, +“The public have taken to cinematograph shows,” or “The public were greatly +moved when the Hull fishermen were shot at by the Russian fleet in the North +Sea.” What I mean is “The Public” as an excuse or scapegoat; the Public as a +menace; the Public as a butt. That Public simply does not exist. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, the publisher will say, as though he were talking of some +monster, “The Public will not buy Jinks’s work. It is first-class work, so it +is too good for the Public.” He is quite right in his statement of fact. Of the +very small proportion of our people who read only a fraction buy books, and of +the fraction that buy books very few indeed buy Jinks’s. Jinks has a very +pleasant up-and-down style. He loves to use funny words dragged from the tomb, +and he has delicate little emotions. Yet hardly anybody will buy him—so the +publisher is quite right in one sense when he says, “The Public” won’t buy +Jinks. But where he is quite wrong and suffering from a gross illusion is in +the motive and the manner of his saying it. He talks of “The Public” as +something gravely to blame and yet irredeemably stupid. He talks of it as +something quite external to himself, almost as something which he has never +personally come across. He talks of it as though it were a Mammoth or an +Eskimo. Now, if that publisher would wander for a moment into the world of +realities he would perceive his illusion. Modern men do not like realities, and +do not usually know the way to come in contact with them. I will tell the +publisher how to do so in this case. +</p> + +<p> +Let him consider what books he buys himself, what books his wife buys; what +books his eldest son, his grandmother, his Aunt Jane, his old father, his +butler (if he runs to one), his most intimate friend, and his curate buy. He +will find that not one of these people buys Jinks. Most of them will talk +Jinks, and if Jinks writes a play, however dull, they will probably go and see +it once; but they draw the line at buying Jinks’s books—and I don’t blame them. +</p> + +<p> +The moral is very simple. You yourselves are “The Public,” and if you will +watch your own habits you will find that the economic explanation of a hundred +things becomes quite clear. +</p> + +<p> +I have seen the same thing in the offices of a newspaper. Some simple truth of +commanding interest to this country, involving no attack upon any rich man, and +therefore not dangerous under our laws, comes up for printing. It is discussed +in the editor’s room. The editor says, “Yes, of course, we know it is true, and +of course it is important, but the Public would not stand it.” +</p> + +<p> +I remember one newspaper office of my youth in which the Public was visualized +as a long file of people streaming into a Wesleyan chapel, and another in which +the Public was supposed to be made up without exception of retired officers and +maiden ladies, every one of whom was a communicant of the English Established +Church, every one of good birth, and yet every one devoid of culture. +</p> + +<p> +Without the least doubt each of these absurd symbols haunted the brain of each +of the editors in question. The editor of the first paper would print at +wearisome length accounts of obscure Catholic clerical scandals on the +Continent, and would sweat with alarm if his sub-editors had admitted a +telegram concerning the trial of some fraudulent Protestant missionary or other +in China. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile his rather dull paper was being bought by you and me, and bank clerks +and foreign tourists, and doctors, and publicans, and brokers, Catholics, +Protestants, atheists, “peculiar people,” and every kind of man for many +reasons—because it had the best social statistics, because it had a very good +dramatic critic, because they had got into the habit and couldn’t stop, because +it came nearest to hand on the bookstall. Of a hundred readers, ninety-nine +skipped the clerical scandal and either chuckled over the fraudulent missionary +or were bored by him and went on to the gambling news from the Stock Exchange. +But the type for whom all that paper was produced, the menacing god or demon +who was supposed to forbid publication of certain news in it, did not exist. +</p> + +<p> +So it was with the second paper, but with this difference, that the editor was +right about the social position of those who read his sheet, but quite wrong +about the opinions and emotions of people in that social position. +</p> + +<p> +It was all the more astonishing from the fact that the editor was born in that +very class himself and perpetually mixed with it. No one perhaps read “The +Stodge” (for under this device would I veil the true name of the organ) more +carefully than those retired officers of either service who are to be found in +what are called our “residential” towns. The editor was himself the son of a +colonel of guns who had settled down in a Midland watering-place. He ought to +have known that world, and he did know that world, but he kept his illusion of +his Public quite apart from his experience of realities. +</p> + +<p> +Your retired officer (to take his particular section of this particular paper’s +audience) is nearly always a man with a hobby, and usually a good scientific or +literary hobby at that. He writes many of our best books demanding research. He +takes an active part in public work which requires statistical study. He is +always a travelled man, and nearly always a well-read man. The broadest and the +most complete questioning and turning and returning of the most fundamental +subjects—religion, foreign policy, and domestic economics—are quite familiar to +him. But the editor was not selecting news for that real man; he was selecting +news for an imaginary retired officer of inconceivable stupidity and ignorance, +redeemed by a childlike simplicity. If a book came in, for instance, on +biology, and there was a chance of having it reviewed by one of the first +biologists of the day, he would say: “Oh, our Public won’t stand evolution,” +and he would trot out his imaginary retired officer as though he were a mule. +</p> + +<p> +Artists, by which I mean painters, and more especially art critics, sin in this +respect. They say: “The public wants a picture to tell a story,” and they say +it with a sneer. Well, the public does want a picture to tell a story, because +you and I want a picture to tell a story. Sorry. But so it is. The art critic +himself wants it to tell a story, and so does the artist. Each would rather die +than admit it, but if you set either walking, with no one to watch him, down a +row of pictures you would see him looking at one picture after another with +that expression of interest which only comes on a human face when it is +following a human relation. A mere splash of colour would bore him; still more +a mere medley of black and white. The story may have a very simple plot; it may +be no more than an old woman sitting on a chair, or a landscape, but a picture, +if a man can look at it all, tells a story right enough. It must interest men, +and the less of a story it tells the less it will interest men. A good +landscape tells so vivid a story that children (who are unspoilt) actually +transfer themselves into such a landscape, walk about in it, and have +adventures in it. +</p> + +<p> +They make another complaint against the public, that it desires painting to be +lifelike. Of course it does! The statement is accurate, but the complaint is +based on an illusion. It is you and I and all the world that want painting to +imitate its object. There is a wonderful picture in the Glasgow Art Gallery, +painted by someone a long time ago, in which a man is represented in a steel +cuirass with a fur tippet over it, and the whole point of that picture is that +the fur looks like fur and the steel looks like steel. I never met a critic yet +who was so bold as to say that picture was a bad picture. It is one of the best +pictures in the world; but its whole point is the liveliness of the steel and +of the fur. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, there is one proper test to prove that all this jargon about “The +Public” is nonsense, which is that it is altogether modern. Who quarrelled with +the Public in the old days when men lived a healthy corporate life, and +painted, wrote, or sang for the applause of their fellows? +</p> + +<p> +If you still suffer from the illusion after reading these magisterial lines of +mine, why, there is a drastic way to cure yourself, which is to go for a +soldier; take the shilling and live in a barracks for a year; then buy yourself +out. You will never despise the public again. And perhaps a better way still is +to go round the Horn before the mast. But take care that your friends shall +send you enough money to Valparaiso for your return journey to be made in some +comfort; I would not wish my worst enemy to go back the way he came. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26">On Entries</a></h2> + +<p> +I am always planning in my mind new kinds of guide books. Or, rather, new +features in guide books. +</p> + +<p> +One such new feature which I am sure would be very useful would be an +indication to the traveller of how he should approach a place. +</p> + +<p> +I would first presuppose him quite free and able to come by rail or by water or +by road or on foot across the fields, and then I would describe how the many +places I have seen stand quite differently in the mind according to the way in +which one approaches them. +</p> + +<p> +The value of travel, to the eye at least, lies in its presentation of clear and +permanent impressions, and these I think (though some would quarrel with me for +saying it) are usually instantaneous. It is the first sharp vision of an +unknown town, the first immediate vision of a range of hills, that remains for +ever and is fruitful of joy within the mind, or, at least, that is one and +perhaps the chief of the fruits of travel. +</p> + +<p> +I remember once, for instance, waking from a dead sleep in a train (for I was +very tired) and finding it to be evening. What woke me was the sudden stopping +of the train. It was in Italy. A man in the carriage said to me that there was +some sort of accident and that we should be waiting a while. The people got out +and walked about by the side of the track. I also got out of the carriage and +took the air, and when I so stepped out into the cool of that summer evening I +was amazed at the loneliness and tragedy of the place. +</p> + +<p> +There were no houses about me that I could see save one little place built for +the railway men. There was no cultivation either. +</p> + +<p> +Close before me began a sort of swamp with reeds which hardly moved to the air, +and this gradually merged into a sheet of water above and beyond which were +hills, barren and not very high, which took the last of the daylight, for they +looked both southward and to the west. The more I watched the extraordinary and +absolute scene the less I heard of the low voices about me, and indeed a sort +of positive silence seemed to clothe the darkening landscape. It was full of +something quite gone down, and one had the impression that it would never be +disturbed. +</p> + +<p> +As the light lessened, the hills darkened, the sky took on one broad and tender +colour, the sheet of water gleamed quite white, and the reeds stood up like +solid shadows against it. I wish I could express in words the impression of +recollection and of savage mourning which all that landscape imposed, but from +that impression I was recalled and startled by the guard, who came along +telling us that things were righted and that the train would start again; soon +we were in our places and the rapid movement isolated for me the memory of a +singularly vivid scene. I thought the place must have a name, and I asked a +neighbour in the carriage what it was called; he told me it was called Lake +Trasimene. +</p> + +<p> +Now I do not say that this tragic site is to be visited thus. It was but an +accident, though an accident for which I am most grateful to my fate. But what +I have said here illustrates my meaning that the manner of one’s approach to +any place in travel makes all the difference. +</p> + +<p> +Thus one may note how very different is Europe seen from the water than seen +from any other opportunity for travel. So many of the great cathedrals were +built to dominate men who should watch them from the wharves of the mediaeval +towns, but I think it is almost a rule if you have leisure and can take your +choice to choose this kind of entry to them. Amiens is quite a different thing +seen from the river below it to the north and east from what it is seen by a +gradual approach along the street of a modern town. The roofs climb up at it, +and it stands enthroned. So Chartres seen from the little Eure; but the Eure is +so small a river that he would be a bold man who would travel up it all this +way. Nevertheless it is a good piece of travel, and anyone who will undertake +it will see Louviers and will pass Anet, where the greatest work of the +Renaissance once stood, and will go through lonely but rich pastures until at +last he gets to Chartres by the right gate. Thence he will see something +astonishing for so flat a region as the Beauce. The great church seems +mountainous upon a mountain. Its apse completes the unclimbable steepness of +the hill and its buttresses follow the lines of the fall of it. But if you do +not come in by the river, at least come in by the Orleans road. I suppose that +nine people out of ten, even to-day when the roads are in proper use again, +come into Chartres by that northern railway entry, which is for all the world +like coming into a great house by a big, neglected backyard. +</p> + +<p> +Then if ever you have business that takes you to Bayonne, come in by river and +from the sea, and how well you will understand the little town and its lovely +northern Gothic! +</p> + +<p> +Some of the great churches all the world knows must be seen from the water, and +most of the world so sees them. Ely is one, Cologne is another, but how many +people have looked right up at Durham as at a cliff from that gorge below, or +how many have seen the height of Albi from the Tarn? +</p> + +<p> +As for famous cities with their walls, there is no doubt that a man should +approach them by the chief high road, which once linked them with their +capital, or with their nearest port, or with Rome—and that although this kind +of entry is nowadays often marred by ugly suburbs. You will get much your +finest sight of Segovia as you come in by the road from the Guadarama and from +Madrid. It is from that point that you were meant to see the town, and you will +get much your best grip on Carcassonne, old Carcassonne, if you come in by the +road from Toulouse at morning as you were meant to come, and so Coucy should be +approached by that royal road from Soissons and from the south, while as for +Laon (the most famous of the hill towns), come to it from the east, for it +looks eastward, and its lords were Eastern lords. +</p> + +<p> +Ranges of hills, I think, are never best first seen from railways. Indeed, I +can remember no great sight of hills so seen, not even the Alps. A railway must +of necessity follow the floor of the valley and tunnel and creep round the +shoulders of the bulwarks. There is perhaps one exception to this rule, which +is the sight of the Pyrenees from the train as one comes into Tarbes. It is a +wise thing if you are visiting those hills to come into Tarbes by night and +sleep there, and then next morning the train upon its way to Pau unfolds you +all the wall of the mountains. But this is an accident. It is because the +railway runs upon a sort of high platform that you see the mountains so. With +all other hills that I remember it is best to have them burst suddenly upon you +from the top of some pass lifted high above the level and coming, let us say, +to a height half their own. Certainly the Bernese Oberland is more wonderful +caught in one moment from the Jura than introduced in any other way, and the +snows on Atlas over the desert seem like part of the sky when they come upon +one after climbing the red rocks of the high plateaux and you see them shining +over the salt marshes. The Vosges you cannot thus see from a half-height; there +is no platform, and that is perhaps why the Vosges have not impressed +travellers as they should. But you can so watch the grand chain of old +volcanoes which are the rampart of Auvergne. You can stand upon the high wooden +ridge of Foreze and see them take the morning across the mists and the flat of +the Limagne, where the Gauls fought Caesar. Further south from the high table +of the Velay you can see the steep backward escarpment of the Cevennes, inky +blue, desperately blue, blue like nothing else on earth except the mountains in +those painters of North Italy, of the parts north and east of Venice, the name +of whose school escapes me—or, rather, I never knew it. +</p> + +<p> +Now, as for towns that live in a hollow, it is great fun to come upon them from +above. They are not used to being thus taken at a disadvantage and they are +both surprised and surprising. There are many towns in holes and trenches of +Europe which you can thus play “peep-bo” with if you will come at them walking. +By train they will mean nothing to you. You will probably come upon them out of +a long, shrieking tunnel, and by the high road they mean little more, for the +high road will follow the vale. But if you come upon them from over their +guardian cliffs and scars you catch them unawares, and this is a good way of +approaching them, for you master them, as it were, and spy them out before you +enter in. You can act thus with Grenoble and with many a town on the Meuse, and +particularly with Aubusson, which lies in the depths of so dreadful a trench +that I could wonder how man ever dreamt of living and building there. +</p> + +<p> +The most difficult of all places on which to advise, I think, would be the very +great cities, the capitals. They seem to have to-day no noble entries and no +proper approach. Perhaps we shall only deal with them justly when we can circle +down to them through the air and see their vast activity splashed over the +plain. Anyhow, there is no proper way of entering them now that I know of. +Berlin is not worth entering at all. Rome (a man told me once) could be entered +by some particular road over the Janiculum, I think—which also, if I remember +right, was the way that Shelley came—but I despair of Paris, and certainly of +London. I cannot even recall an entry for Brussels, though Brussels is a +monumental city with great rewards for those who love the combination of +building and hills. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps, after all, the happiest entries of all and the most easy are those of +our many market towns, small and not swollen in Britain and in Northern Gaul +and in the Netherlands and in the Valley of the Rhine. These hardly ever fail +us, and we come upon them in our travels as they desire that we should come, +and we know them properly as things should properly be known—that is, from the +beginning. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27">Companions of Travel</a></h2> + +<p> +I write of travelling companions in general, and not in particular, making of +them a composite photograph, as it were, and finding what they have in common +and what is their type; and in the first place I find them to be chance men. +For there are some people who cannot travel without a set companion who goes +with them from Charing Cross all over the world and back to Charing Cross +again. And there is a pathos in this: as Balzac said of marriage, “What a +commentary on human life, that human beings must associate to endure it.” So it +is with many who cannot endure to travel alone: and some will positively +advertise for another to go with them. +</p> + +<p> +In a glade of the Sierra Nevada, which, for awful and, as it were, permanent +beauty seemed not to be of this world, I came upon a man slowly driving along +the trail a ramshackle cart, in which were a few chairs and tables and bedding. +He had a long grey beard and wild eyes; he was old, and very small like a +gnome, but he had not the gnome’s good-humour. I asked him where he was going, +and I slowed down, so as to keep pace with his ridiculous horse. For some time +he would not answer me, and then he said, “Out of this.” He added, “I am tired +of it.” And when I asked him, “Of what?” his only answer was an old-fashioned +oath. But from further complaints which he made I gathered that what he was +tired of was clearing forests, digging ground, paying debts, and in general +living upon this unhappy earth. He did not like me very much, and though I +would willingly have learned more, he would tell me nothing further, so when we +got to a place where there was a little stream I went on and left him. +</p> + +<p> +I have never forgotten the sadness of this man. Where he was going, and what he +expected to do, or what opportunities he had, I have never understood. Though +some years after, in quite another place—namely, Steyning, in Sussex—I came +upon just such another, whose quarrel was with the English climate, the rich +and the poor, and the whole constitution of God’s earth. These are the +advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never +meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind. +</p> + +<p> +Thus in a village called Encamps, in the depths of Andorra, where no man has +ever killed another, I found a man with a blue face, who was a fossil, the kind +of man you would never find in the swelling life of Western Europe. He was +emancipated, he had studied in Perpignan, over and beyond the great hills. He +could not see why he should pay taxes to support a priest. “The priests” he +assured me, “say the most ridiculous things. They narrate the most impossible +fables. They affirm what cannot possibly be true. All that they say is in +opposition to science. If I am ill, can a priest cure me? No. Can a priest tell +me how to build, or how to light my house? He is unable to do so. He is a +useless and a lying mouth, why should I feed him?” +</p> + +<p> +I questioned this man very closely, and discovered that in his view the world +slowly changed from worse to better, and to accelerate this process +enlightenment alone was needed. “But what do these brutes,” he said, alluding +to his fellow-countrymen, “know of enlightenment? They do not even make roads, +because the priests forbid them.” +</p> + +<p> +I could write at length upon this man. He was not a Sceptic as you may imagine, +nor had he adopted the Lucretian form of Epicureanism. Not a bit of it. He was +a hearty Atheist, with Positivist leanings. I further found that he had married +a woman older, wealthier, and if possible uglier than himself. She kept the +inn, and was very kind to him. His life would have been quite happy had he not +been tortured by the monstrous superstitions of others. +</p> + +<p> +Then, again, in the town of Marseilles, only two years ago, I met a man who +looked well fed, and had a stalwart, square French face, and whose +politico-economic ideal, though it was not mine, greatly moved me. It was just +past midnight, and I was throwing little stones into the old Greek harbour, the +stench and the glory of which are nearly three thousand years old; I was to be +off at dawn upon a tramp steamer, and I had so determined to pass the few hours +of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +I was throwing pebbles into the water, I say, and thinking about Ulysses, when +this man came slouching up, with his hands in the pockets of his enormous +corduroy trousers, and, looking at me with some contempt from above (for he was +standing, I was sitting), he began to converse with me. We talked first of +ships, then of heat and cold, and so on to wealth and poverty; and thus it was +I came upon his views, which were that there should be a sort of break up, and +houses ought to be burned, and things smashed, and people killed; and over and +above this, it should be made plain that no one had a right to govern: not the +people, because they were always being bamboozled; obviously not the rich; +least of all, the politicians, to whom he justly applied the most derogatory +epithets. He waved his arm out in the darkness at the Phoceans, at the +half-million of Marseilles, and said, “All that should disappear.” The +constructive side of his politico-economic scheme was negative. He was a +practical man. None of your fine theories for him. One step at a time. Let +there be a Chambardement—that is, a noisy collapse, and he would think about +what to do afterwards. +</p> + +<p> +His was not the narrow, deductive mind. He was objective and concrete. Believe +me or not, he was paid an excellent wage by the municipality to prevent people +like me, who sit up at night, from doing mischief in the harbour. When I had +come to an end of his politico-economic scheme—the main lines of which were so +clear and simple that a child could understand them—we fell to talking of the +tides, and I told him that in my country the sea went up and down. He was no +rustic, and would have no such commonplace truths. He was well acquainted with +the Phenomenon of the Tides; it was due to the combined attraction of the sun +and of the moon. But when I told him I knew places where the tides fell thirty +or forty feet, we would have had a violent quarrel had I not prudently admitted +that that was romantic exaggeration, and that five or six was the most that one +ever saw it move. I avoided the quarrel, but the little incident broke up our +friendship, and he shuffled away. He did not like having his leg pulled. +</p> + +<p> +There are many others I remember. Those I have written about elsewhere I am +ashamed to recall, as the man at Jedburgh, who first expounded to me how one +knew all about the fate of the individual soul, and then objected to personal +questions about his own; the German officer man at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had +hair the colour of tow, and gave me minute details of the method by which +England was to be destroyed; a man I met upon the Appian Way, who told the most +abominable lies; and another man who met me outside Oxford station during the +Vac. and offered to show me the sights of the town for a consideration, which +he did, but I would not pay him because he was inaccurate, as I easily proved +by a few searching questions upon the exact site of Bocardo (of which he had +never heard), and the negative evidence against a Roman origin for the site of +the city. Moreover, he said that Trinity was St. John’s, which was rubbish. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was another man who travelled with me from Birmingham, pressed +certain tracts upon me, and wanted to charge me sixpence each at Paddington. +But if I were to speak of even these few I should exceed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28">On the Sources of Rivers</a></h2> + +<p> +There are certain customs in man the permanence of which gives infinite +pleasure. When the mood of the schools is against them these customs lie in +wait beneath the floors of society, but they never die, and when a decay in +pedantry or in despotism or in any other evil and inhuman influence permits +them to reappear they reappear. +</p> + +<p> +One of these customs is the religious attachment of man to isolated high +places, peaks, and single striking hills. On these he must build shrines, and +though he is a little furtive about it nowadays, yet the instinct is there, +strong as ever. I have not often come to the top of a high hill with another +man but I have seen him put a few stones together when he got there, or, if he +had not the moral courage so to satisfy his soul, he would never fail on such +an occasion to say something ritual and quasi-religious, even if it were only +about the view; and another instinct of the same sort is the worship of the +sources of rivers. +</p> + +<p> +The Iconoclast and the people whose pride it is that their senses are dead will +see in a river nothing more than so much moisture gathered in a narrow place +and falling as the mystery of gravitation inclines it. Their mood is the mood +of that gentleman who despaired and wrote: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +A cloud’s a lot of vapour,<br/> + The sky’s a lot of air,<br/> +And the sea’s a lot of water<br/> + That happens to be there. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot get further down than that. When you have got as far down as that +all is over. Luckily God still keeps his mysteries going for you, and you can’t +get rid, even in that mood, of the certitude that you yourself exist and that +things outside of you are outside of you. But when you get into that modern +mood you do lose the personality of everything else, and you forget the +sanctity of river heads. +</p> + +<p> +You have lost a great deal when you have forgotten that, and it behoves you to +recover what you have lost as quickly as possible, which is to be done in this +way: Visit the source of some famous stream and think about it. There was a +Scotchman once who discovered the sources of the Nile, to the lasting advantage +of mankind and the permanent glory of his native land. He thought the source of +the Nile looked rather like the sources of the Till or the Tweed or some such +river of Thule. He has been ridiculed for saying this, but he was mystically +very right. The source of the greatest of rivers, since it was sacred to him, +reminded him of the sacred things of his home. +</p> + +<p> +When I consider the sources of rivers which I have seen, there is not one, I +think, which I do not remember to have had about it an influence of awe. Not +only because one could in imaginings see the kingdoms of the cities which it +was to visit and the way in which it would bind them all together in one +province and one story, but also simply because it was an origin. +</p> + +<p> +The sources of the Rhone are famous: the Rhone comes out of a glacier through a +sort of ice cave, and if it were not for an enormous hotel quite four-square it +would be as lonely a place as there is in Europe, and as remarkable a beginning +for a great river as could anywhere be found. Nor, when you come to think of +it, does any European river have such varied fortunes as the Rhone. It feeds +such different religions and looks on such diverse landscapes. It makes Geneva +and it makes Avignon; it changes in colour and in the nature of its going as it +goes. It sees new products appearing continually on its journey until it comes +to olives, and it flows past the beginning of human cities, when it reflects +the huddle of old Arles. +</p> + +<p> +The sources of the Garonne are well known. The Garonne rises by itself in a +valley from which there is no issue, like the fabled valleys shut in by hills +on every side. And if it were anything but the Garonne it would not be able to +escape: it would lie imprisoned there for ever. Being the Garonne it tunnels a +way for itself right under the High Pyrenees and comes out again on the French +side. There are some that doubt this, but then there are people who would doubt +anything. +</p> + +<p> +The sources of the River Arun are not so famous as these two last, and it is a +good thing, for they are to be found in one of the loneliest places within an +hour of London that any man can imagine, and if you were put down there upon a +windy day you would think yourself upon the moors. There is nothing whatsoever +near you at the beginnings of the little sacred stream. +</p> + +<p> +Thames had a source once which was very famous. The water came out plainly at a +fountain under a bleak wood just west of the Fosse Way, under which it ran by a +culvert, a culvert at least as old as the Romans. But when about a hundred +years ago people began to improve the world in those parts, they put up a +pumping station and they pumped Thames dry—since which time its gods have +deserted the river. +</p> + +<p> +The sources of the Ribble are in a lonely place up in a corner of the hills +where everything has strange shapes and where the rocks make one think of +trolls. The great frozen Whernside stands up above it, and Ingleborough Hill, +which is like no other hill in England, but like the flat-topped Mesas which +you have in America, or (as those who have visited it tell me) like the flat +hills of South Africa; and a little way off on the other side is Pen-y-ghent, +or words to that effect. The little River Ribble rises under such enormous +guardianship. It rises quite clean and single in the shape of a little spring +upon the hillside, and too few people know it. The other river that flows east +while the Ribble flows west is the River Ayr. It rises in a curious way, for it +imitates the Garonne, and finding itself blocked by limestone burrows +underneath at a place called Malham Tarn, after which it has no more trouble. +</p> + +<p> +The River Severn, the River Wye, and a third unimportant river, or at least +important only for its beauty (and who would insist on that?) rise all close +together on the skirts of Plinlimmon, and the smallest of them has the most +wonderful rising, for it falls through the gorge of Llygnant, which looks like, +and perhaps is, the deepest cleft in this island, or, at any rate, the most +unexpected. And a fourth source on the mountain, a tarn below its summit, is +the source of Rheidol, which has a short but adventurous life like Achilles. +</p> + +<p> +There is one source in Europe that is properly dealt with, and where the +religion due to the sources of rivers has free play, and this is the source of +the Seine. It comes out upon the northern side of the hills which the French +call the Hills of Gold, in a country of pasturage and forest, very high up +above the world and thinly peopled. The River Seine appears there in a sort of +miraculous manner, pouring out of a grotto, and over this grotto the Parisians +have built a votive statue; and there is yet another of the hundred thousand +things that nobody knows. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29">On Error</a></h2> + +<p> +There is an elusive idea that has floated through the minds of most of us as we +grew older and learnt more and more things. It is an idea extremely difficult +to get into set terms. It is an idea very difficult to put so that we shall not +seem nonsensical; and yet it is a very useful idea, and if it could be realized +its realization would be of very practical value. It is the idea of a +Dictionary of Ignorance and Error. +</p> + +<p> +On the face of it a definition of the work is impossible. Strictly speaking it +would be infinite, for human knowledge, however far extended, must always be +infinitely small compared with all possible knowledge, just as any given finite +space is infinitely small compared with all space. +</p> + +<p> +But that is not the idea which we entertain when we consider this possible +Dictionary of Ignorance and Error. What we really mean is a Dictionary of the +sort of Ignorance and the sort of Error which we know ourselves to have been +guilty of, which we have escaped by special experience or learning as time went +on, and against which we would warn our fellows. +</p> + +<p> +Flaubert, I think, first put it down in words, and said that such an +encyclopaedia was very urgently needed. +</p> + +<p> +It will never exist, but we all know that it ought to exist. Bits of it appear +from time to time piecemeal and here and there, as for instance in the +annotations which modern scholarship attaches to the great text, in the printed +criticisms to which sundry accepted doctrines are subjected by the younger men +to-day, in the detailed restatement of historical events which we get from +modern research as our fathers could never have them—but the work itself, the +complete Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Ignorance and Error, will never be +printed. It is a great pity. +</p> + +<p> +Incidentally one may remark that the process by which a particular error is +propagated is as interesting to watch as the way in which a plant grows. +</p> + +<p> +The first step seems to be the establishing of an authority and the giving of +that authority a name which comes to connote doctrinal infallibility. A very +good example of this is the title “Science.” Mere physical research, its +achievements, its certitudes, even its conflicting and self-contradictory +hypotheses, having got lumped together in many minds under this one title +Science, the title is now sacred. It is used as a priestly title, as an +immediate estopper to doubt or criticism. +</p> + +<p> +The next step is a very interesting one for the student of psychical pathology +to note. It seems to be a disease as native and universal to the human mind as +is the decay of the teeth to the human body. It seems as though we all must +suffer somewhat from it, and most of us suffer a great deal from it, though in +a cool aspect we easily perceive it to be a lesion of thought. And this second +step is as follows: +</p> + +<p> +The whole lump having been given its sacred title and erected into an +infallible authority, which you are to accept as directly superior to yourself +and all personal sources of information, there is attributed to this idol a +number of attributes. We give it a soul, and a habit and manners which do not +attach to its stuff at all. The projection of this imagined living character in +our authority is comparable to what we also do with mountains, statues, towns, +and so forth. Our living individuality lends individuality to them. I might +here digress to discuss whether this habit of the mind were not a distorted +reflection of some truth, and whether, indeed, there be not such beings as +demons or the souls of things. But, to leave that, we take our authority—this +thing “Science,” for instance—we clothe it with a creed and appetites and a +will, and all the other human attributes. +</p> + +<p> +This done, we set out in the third step in our progress towards fixed error. We +make the idol speak. Of course, being only an idol, it talks nonsense. But by +the previous steps just referred to we must believe that nonsense, and believe +it we do. Thus it is, I think, that fixed error is most generally established. +</p> + +<p> +I have already given one example in the hierarchic title “Science.” +</p> + +<p> +It was but the other day that I picked up a weekly paper in which a gentleman +was discussing ghosts—that is, the supposed apparition of the living and the +dead: of the dead though dead, and of the living though absent. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing has been more keenly discussed since the beginning of human +discussions. Are these phenomena (which undoubtedly happen) what modern people +call subjective, or are they what modern people call objective? In +old-fashioned English, Are the ghosts really there or are they not? The most +elementary use of the human reason persuades us that the matter is not +susceptible of positive proof. The criterion of certitude in any matter of +perception is an inner sense in the perceiver that the thing he perceives is +external to himself. He is the only witness; no one can corroborate or dispute +him. The seer may be right or he may be wrong, but we have no proof—and only +according to our temperament, our fancy, our experience, our mood, do we decide +with one or the other of the two great schools. +</p> + +<p> +Well, the gentleman of whom I am speaking wrote and had printed in plain +English this phrase (read it carefully):—“Science teaches us that these +phenomena are purely subjective.” +</p> + +<p> +Now I am quite sure that of the thousands who read that phrase all but a +handful read it in the spirit in which one hears the oracle of a god. Some read +it with regret, some with pleasure, but all with acquiescence. +</p> + +<p> +That physical science was not competent in the matter one way or the other each +of those readers would probably have discovered, if even so simple a corrective +as the use of the term “physical research” instead of the sacred term “science” +had been applied; the hierarchic title “Science” did the trick. +</p> + +<p> +I might take another example out of many hundreds to show what I mean. You have +an authority which is called, where documents are concerned, “The Best Modern +Criticism.” “The Best Modern Criticism” decides that “Tam o’ Shanter” was +written by a committee of permanent officials of the Board of Trade, or that +Napoleon Bonaparte never existed. As a matter of fact, the tomfoolery does not +usually venture upon ground so near home, but it talks rubbish just as +monstrous about a poem a few hundred or a few thousand years old, or a great +personality a few hundred or a few thousand years old. +</p> + +<p> +Now if you will look at that phrase “The Best Modern Criticism” you will see at +once that it simply teems with assumption and tautology. But it does more and +worse: it presupposes that an infallible authority must of its own nature be +perpetually wrong. +</p> + +<p> +Even supposing that I have the most “modern” (that is, merely the latest) +criticism to hand, and even supposing that by some omniscience of mine I can +tell which is “the best” (that is, which part of it has really proved most +ample, most painstaking, most general, and most sincere), even then the phrase +fatally condemns me. It is to say that Wednesday is always infallible as +compared with Tuesday, and Thursday as compared with Wednesday, which is +absurd. +</p> + +<p> +The B.M.C. tells me in 1875 that the Song of Roland could have no origins +anterior to the year 1030. But the B.M.C. of 1885 (being a B.M.C. and nothing +more valuable) has a changed opinion. It must change its opinion, that is the +law of its being, since an integral factor in its value is its modernity. In +1885 B.M.C. tells me that the Song of Roland can be traced to origins far +earlier, let us say to 912. +</p> + +<p> +In 1895 B.M.C. has come to other conclusions—the Song of Roland is certainly as +late as 1115 ... and so forth. +</p> + +<p> +Now you would say that an idol of that absurdity could have no effect upon sane +men. Change the terms and give it another name, and you would laugh at the idea +of its having an effect upon any men. But we know as a matter of fact that it +commands the thoughts of nearly all men to-day and makes cowards of the most +learned. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps you will ask me at the end of so long a criticism in what way error may +be corrected, since there is this sort of tendency in us to accept it, to which +I answer that things correct it, or as the philosophers call things, “Reality.” +Error does not wash. +</p> + +<p> +To go back to that example of ghosts. If ever you see a ghost (my poor reader), +I shall ask you afterwards whether he seemed subjective or no. I think you will +find the word “subjective” an astonishingly thin one—if, at least, I catch you +early after the experience. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30">The Great Sight</a></h2> + +<p> +All night we had slept on straw in a high barn. The wood of its beams was very +old, and the tiles upon the roof were green with age; but there hung from beam +to beam, fantastically, a wire caught by nails, and here and there from this +wire hung an electric-light bulb. It was a symbol of the time, and the place, +and the people. There was no local by-law to forbid such a thing, or if there +was, no one dreamt of obeying it. +</p> + +<p> +Just in the first dawn of that September day we went out, my companion and I, +at guesswork to hunt in the most amusing kind of hunting, which is the hunting +of an army. The lane led through one of those lovely ravines of Picardy which +travellers never know (for they only see the plains), and in a little while we +thought it wise to strike up the steep bank from the valley on to the bare +plateau above, but it was all at random and all guesswork, only we wisely +thought that we were nearing the beginning of things, and that on the bare +fields of the high flat we should have a greater horizon and a better chance of +catching any indications of men or arms. +</p> + +<p> +When we had reached the height the sun had long risen, but it as yet gave no +shining and there were no shadows, for a delicate mist hung all about the +landscape, though immediately above us the sky was faintly blue. +</p> + +<p> +It was the weirdest of sensations to go for mile after mile over that vast +plain, to know that it was cut in regular series by parallel ravines which in +all that extended view we could not guess at; to see up to the limits of the +plateau the spires of villages and the groups of trees about them, and to know +that somewhere in all this there lay concealed a <i>corps d’armée</i>—and not +to see or hear a soul. The only human being that we saw was a man driving a +heavy farm cart very slowly up a side-way just as we came into the great road +which has shot dead across this country in one line ever since the Romans built +it. As we went along that road, leaving the fields, we passed by many men +indeed, and many houses, all in movement with the early morning; and the +chalked numbers on the doors, and here and there an empty tin of +polishing-paste or an order scrawled on paper and tacked to a wall betrayed the +passage of soldiers. But of the army there was nothing at all. Scouting on foot +(for that was what it was) is a desperate business, and that especially if you +have nothing to tell you whether you will get in touch in five, or ten, or +twenty miles. +</p> + +<p> +It was nine o’clock before a clatter of horse-hoofs came up the road behind us. +At first my companion and I wondered whether it were the first riders of the +Dragoons or Cuirassiers. In that case the advance was from behind us. But very +soon, as the sound grew clearer, we heard how few they were, and then there +came into view, trotting rapidly, a small escort and two officers with the +umpires’ badges, so there was nothing doing; but when, half a mile ahead of us +on the road, they turned off to the left over plough, we knew that that was the +way we must follow too. Before we came to the turning-place, before we left the +road to take the fields on the left, there came from far off and on our right +the sound of a gun. +</p> + +<p> +It was my companion who heard it first. We strained to hear it again; twice we +thought we had caught it, and then again twice we doubted. It is not so easily +recognizable a sound as you might think in those great plains cut by islands of +high trees and steading walls. The little “75” gun lying low makes a different +sound altogether at a distance from the old piece of “90.” At any rate there +was here no doubt that there were guns to the right and in front of us, and the +umpire had gone to the left. We were getting towards the thick, and we had only +to go straight on to find out where the front was. +</p> + +<p> +Just as we had so decided and were still pursuing the high road, there came, +not half a mile away and again to our right, in a valley below us, that curious +sound which is like nothing at all unless it be dumping of flints out of a +cart: rifle fire. It cracked and tore in stretches. Then there were little gaps +of silence like the gaps in signalling, and then it cracked and tore in +stretches again; and then, fitfully, one individual shot and then another would +be heard; and, much further off, with little sounds like snaps, the replies +began from the hillside beyond the stream. So far so good. Here was contact in +the valley below us, and the guns, some way behind and far off northwards, had +opened. So we got the hang of it instantly—the front was a sort of a crescent +lying roughly north and south, and roughly parallel to the great road, and the +real or feigned mass of the advance was on the extreme left of that front. We +were in it now, and that anxious and wearing business in all hunting, finding, +was over; but we had been on foot six mortal hours before coming across our +luck, and more than half the soldiers’ day was over. These men had been afoot +since three, and certain units on the left had already marched over twenty +miles. +</p> + +<p> +After that coming in touch with our business, not only did everything become +plain, but the numbers we met, and what I have called “the thick of things,” +fed us with interest. We passed half the 38th, going down the road singing, to +extend the line, and in a large village we came to the other half, slouching +about in the traditional fashion of the Service; they had been waiting for an +hour. With them, and lined up all along the village street, was one battery, +with the drivers dismounted, and all that body were at ease. There were men +sitting on the doorsteps of the houses and men trotting to the canteen-wagon or +to the village shops to buy food; and there were men reading papers which a +pedlar had brought round. Mud and dust had splashed them all; upon some there +was a look of great fatigue; they were of all shapes and sizes, and altogether +it was the sort of sight you would not see in any other service in the world. +It was the sort of sight which so disgusted the Emperor Joseph when he made his +little tour to spy out the land before the Revolutionary Wars. It was the sort +of sight which made Massenbach before Grandpré marvel whether the French forces +were soldiers at all, and the sort of sight which made Valmy inexplicable to +the King of Prussia and his staff. It was the sort of sight which eighteen +months later still convinced Mack in Tournai that the Duke of York’s plan was a +plan “of annihilation.” It is a trap for judgment is the French service. +</p> + +<p> +So they lounged about and bought bread, and shifted their packs, and so the +drivers stood by their horses, and so they all waited and slouched; until there +came, not a man with a bugle nor anything with the slightest savour of drama +but a little fellow running along thumping in his loose leather leggings, who +went up to a Major of Artillery and saluted, and immediately afterwards the +Major put his hand up, and then down a village street, from a point which we +could not see came a whistle, and the whole of that mass of men began to swarm. +The grey-blue coats of the line swung round the corner of the village street; +they had yet a few miles before them. Anything more rapid or less in step it +would be difficult to conceive. The guns were off at a right angle down the +main road, making a prodigious clatter, and at the same time appeared two +parties, one of which it was easy to understand, the other not. They were both +parties of sappers. The one party had a great roll of wire on a drum, and as +quick as you could think they were unreeling it, and as they unreeled it +fastening it to eaves, overhanging branches, and to corners of walls, +stretching it out forward. It was the field-telephone. The other party came +along carrying great beams upon their shoulders, but what they were to do with +these beams we did not know. +</p> + +<p> +We followed the tail of the line down into the valley, and all that morning +long and past the food time at midday, and so till the sun declined in the +afternoon, we went with the 38th in its gradual success from crest to crest. +And still the 38th slouched by companies, and mile after mile with checks and +halts, and it never seemed to get either less or more tired. The men had had +twelve hours of it when they came at last, and we after them, on to the +critical position. They had carried (together with all the line to left and to +the right of them) a string of villages which crowned the crest of a further +plateau, and over this further plateau they were advancing against the main +body of the resistance—the other army corps which was set up against ours, to +simulate an enemy. +</p> + +<p> +A railway line ran here across the rolling hedgeless fields, and just at the +point where my companion and I struck it there was a dip in the land and a high +embankment which hid the plain beyond; but from that plain beyond one heard the +separate fire of the advancing line in its scattered order. We climbed the +embankment, and from its ridge we saw over two miles or more of stubble, the +little creeping bunches of the attack. What was resisting, or where it lay, one +could only guess. Some hundreds of yards before us to the east, with the +sloping sun full on it, a line of thicket, one scattered wood and then another, +an imperceptible lifting of the earth here and there marked the opposing firing +line. Two pompoms could be spotted exactly, for the flashes were clear through +the underwood. And still the tide of the advance continued to flow, and the +little groups came up and fed it, one after another and another, in the centre +where we were, and far away to the north and right away to the south the +countryside was alive with it. The action was beginning to take on something of +that final movement and decision which makes the climax of manoeuvres look so +great a game. But in a little while that general creeping forward was checked: +there were orders coming from the umpires, and a sort of lull fell over each +position held. My companion said to me: +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go forward now over the intervening zone and in among Picquart’s men, +and get well behind their line, and see whether there is a rally or whether +before the end of this day they begin to fall back again.” +</p> + +<p> +So we did, walking a mile or so until we had long passed their outposts and +were behind their forward lines. And standing there, upon a little eminence +near a wood, we turned and looked over what we had come, westward towards the +sun which was now not far from its setting. Then it was that we saw the last of +the Great Sight. +</p> + +<p> +The level light, mellow and already reddening, illumined all that plain +strangely, and with the absolute stillness of the air contrasted the opening of +the guns which had been brought up to support the renewal of the attack. We saw +the isolated woods standing up like islands with low steep cliffs, dotted in a +sea of stubble for miles and miles, and first from the cover of one and then +from another the advance perpetually, piercing and deploying. As we so watched +there buzzed high above us, like a great hornet, a biplane, circling well +within our lines, beyond attack from the advance, but overlooking all they +concealed behind it. In a few minutes a great Bleriot monoplane like a hawk +followed, yet further inwards. The two great birds shot round in an arc, +parallel to the firing line, and well behind it, and in a few minutes, that +seemed seconds, they were dots to the south and then lost in the air. And +perpetually, as the sun declined, Picquart’s men were falling back north and +south of us and before us, and the advance continued. Group by group we saw it +piercing this hedge, that woodland, now occupying a nearer and a nearer roll of +land. It was the greatest thing imaginable: this enormous sweep of men, the +dead silence of the air, and the comparatively slight contrast of the ceaseless +pattering rifle fire and the slight intermittent accompaniment of the advancing +batteries; until the sun set and all this human business slackened. Then for +the first time one heard bugles, which were a command to cease the game. +</p> + +<p> +I would not have missed that day nor lose the memories of it for anything in +the world. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31">The Decline of a State</a></h2> + +<p> +The decline of a State is not equivalent to a mortal sickness therein. States +are organisms subject to diseases and to decay as are the organisms of men’s +bodies; but they are not subject to a rhythmic rise and fall as is the body of +a man. A State in its decline is never a State doomed or a State dying. States +perish slowly or by violence, but never without remedy and rarely without +violence. +</p> + +<p> +The decline of a State differs with the texture of it. A democratic State will +decline from a lowering of its potential, that is of its ever-ready energy to +act in a crisis, to correct and to control its servants in common times, to +watch them narrowly and suspect them at all times. A despotic State will +decline when the despot is not in point of fact the true depository of despotic +power, but some other acting in his name, of whom the people know little and +cannot judge; or when the despot, though fully in view and recognized, lacks +will; or when (which is rare) he is so inhuman as to miss the general sense of +his subjects. An oligarchic State, or aristocracy as it is called, will decline +principally through two agencies which are, first, illusion, and secondly, lack +of civic aptitude. For an oligarchic State tends very readily to illusion, +being conducted by men who live at leisure, satisfy their passions, are immune +from the laws, and prefer to shield themselves from reality. Their capacity or +appetite for illusion will rapidly pervade those below them, for in an +aristocracy the rulers are subjected to a sort of worship from the rest of the +community, and thus it comes about that aristocracies in their decline accept +fantastic histories of their own past, conceive victory possible without +armies, wealth to be an indication of ability, and national security to be a +natural gift rather than a product of the will. Such communities further fail +from the lack of civic aptitude, as was said above, which means that they +deliberately elect to leave the mass of citizens incompetent and irresponsible +for generations, so that, when any more strain is upon them, they look at once +for some men other than themselves to relieve them, and are incapable of +corporate action upon their own account. +</p> + +<p> +The decline of a State differs also according to whether it be a great State or +a small one, for in the first indifference, in the latter faction, are a peril, +and in the first ignorance, in the latter private spite. +</p> + +<p> +Then again, the decline of a State will differ according to whether its +strength is rooted originally in commerce, in arms, or in production; and if in +production, then whether in the production of the artisan or in that of the +peasant. If arms be the basis of the State, then that the army should become +professional and apart is a symptom of decline and a cause of it; if commerce, +the substitution of hazards and imaginaries for the transport of real goods and +the search after real demand; if production, the discontent or apathy of the +producer; as with peasants an ill system in the taxation of the land or in the +things necessary for its tillage, such as a misgovernment of its irrigation in +a dry country; the permission of private exactions and tolls in a fertile one; +the toleration of thieves and forestallers, and so forth. Artisans, upon the +other hand, may well flourish, though the State be corrupt in such matters, but +they must be secured in a high wage and be given a vast liberty of protest, for +if they sink to be slaves in fact, they will from the nature of their toil grow +both weak and foolish. Yet is not the State endangered by the artisan’s +throwing off a refuse of ill-paid and starving men who are either too many for +the work or unskilful at it? Such an excretion would poison a peasantry, +remaining in their body as it were, but artisans are purged thereby. This +refuse it is for the State to decide upon. It may in an artisan State be used +for soldiery (since such States commonly maintain but small armies and are +commonly indifferent to military glory), or it may be set to useful labour, or +again, destroyed; but this last use is repugnant to humanity, and so in the +long run hurtful to the State. +</p> + +<p> +In the decline of a State, of whatever nature that State be, two vices will +immediately appear and grow: these are Avarice and Fear; and men will more +readily accept the imputation of Avarice than of Fear, for Avarice is the less +despicable of the two—yet in fact Fear will be by far the strongest passion of +the time. +</p> + +<p> +Avarice will show itself not indeed in a mere greed of gain (for this is common +to all societies whether flourishing or failing), but rather in a sort of +taking for granted and permeation of the mere love of money, so that history +will be explained by it, wars judged by their booty or begun in order to enrich +a few, love between men and women wholly subordinated to it, especially among +the rich: wealth made a test for responsibility and great salaries invented and +paid to those who serve the State. This vice will also be apparent in the easy +acquaintance of all who are possessed of wealth and their segregation from the +less fortunate, for avarice cleaves society flatways, keeping the scum of it +quite clear of the middle, the middle of it quite clear of the dregs, and so +forth. It is a further mark of avarice in its last stages that the rich are +surrounded with lies in which they themselves believe. Thus, in the last phase, +there are no parasites but only friends, no gifts but only loans, which are +more esteemed favours than gifts once were. No one vicious but only tedious, +and no one a poltroon but only slack. +</p> + +<p> +Of Fear in the decline of a State it may be said that it is so much the master +passion of such decline as to eat up all others. Coming by travel from a +healthy State to one diseased, Fear is the first point you take. Men dare not +print or say what they feel of the judges, the public governors, the action of +the police, the controllers of fortunes and of news. This Fear will have about +it something comic, providing infinite joy to the foreigner, and modifying with +laughter the lament of the patriot. A miserable hack that never had a will of +his own, but ran to do what he was told for twenty years at the bidding of his +masters, being raised to the Bench will be praised for an impartial virtue more +than human. A drunken fellow, the son of a drunkard, having stolen control over +some half-dozen sheets, must be named under the breath or not at all. A +powerful minister may be accused with sturdy courage of something which he did +not do and no one would mind his doing, but under the influence of Fear, to +tell the least little truth about him will put a whole assembly into a sort of +blankness. +</p> + +<p> +This vice has for its most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of +phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to +the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of +print, a whispered accusation. Bankruptcy, though they be possessed of nothing, +and even the ill-will of women. Moneylenders under this influence have the +greatest power, next after them, blackmailers of all kinds, and next after +these eccentrics who may blurt or break out. Those who have least power in the +decline of a State, are priests, soldiers, the mothers of many children, the +lovers of one woman, and saints. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap32">On Past Greatness</a></h2> + +<p> +There lies in the North-East of France, close against the Belgian frontier and +within cannon shot of the famous battlefield of Malplaquet, a little town +called Bavai—I have written of it elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +Coming into this little town you seem to be entering no more than a decent, +unimportant market borough, a larger village meant for country folk, perhaps +without a history and certainly without fame. +</p> + +<p> +As you come to look about you one thing after another enlivens your curiosity +and suggests something at once enormous and remote in the destinies of the +place. +</p> + +<p> +In the first place, seven great roads go out like the seven rays of a star, +plumb straight, darting along the line, across the vast, bare fields of +Flanders, past and along the many isolated woods of the provinces, and making +to great capitals far off—to Cologne, to Paris, to Treves, and to the ports of +the sea. +</p> + +<p> +These roads are deserted in great part. Some of them are metalled in certain +sections, and again in other sections are no more than lanes, and again no more +than footpaths, as you proceed along their miles of way; but their exact design +awfully impresses the mind. You know, as you follow such strict alignment, that +you are fulfilling the majestic purpose of Imperial Rome. It was the Romans +that made these things. +</p> + +<p> +Then, intrigued and excited by such remains of greatness, you read what you can +of the place.... And you find nothing but a dust of legend. You find a story +that once here a king, filled with ambition and worshipping strange gods, +thrust out these great roads to the ends of the earth; desired his capital to +be a hub and navel for the world. He put them under the protection of the seven +planets and of the deities of those stars. Three he paved with black marble and +four with white marble, and where they met upon the market place he put up a +golden terminal. There the legend ends. +</p> + +<p> +It is only legend—a true product of the Dark Ages, when all that Rome had done +rose like a huge dream in the mind of Europe and took on gorgeous and fantastic +colouring. You learn (for the rest) very little—that ornaments and money have +been found dating from two thousand years, that once great walls surrounded the +place. It must have had noble buildings and solemn courts. In strict history +all you will discover is that it was the capital of that tribe, the Nervii, +against whom Caesar fought, and whose territory was early conquered for the +Empire. You will find nothing more. There is no living tradition, there is no +voice; the little town is dumb. +</p> + +<p> +The place is a figure, and a striking one, of greatness long dead, and a man +visiting its small domestic interests to-day, and noting its comfort, its +humility, and its sleep, is reminded of many things attaching to human fame. It +would seem as though the ambitions of men, and that exalted appetite for glory +which has produced the chief things of this world, suffer the effect of time +somewhat as the body of an animal slain will suffer that. +</p> + +<p> +One part of the organism and then another decays and mixes back with nature. +The effect of will has vanished. The thing is a prey to all that environment +which, once alive, it combated, conquered, and transformed to its own use. One +portion after another is lost, until at last only the most resisting stands—the +skeleton and hard framework, the least expressive, the least personal part of +the whole. This also decays and perishes. Then there remains no more but a +score of hardened fragments that linger in their place, and what has passed +away is fortunate if even the slightest or most fantastic legend of itself +survives. +</p> + +<p> +The great dead are first forgotten in their physical habit; we lose the nature +of their voices, we forget their sympathies and their affections. Bit by bit +all that they intended to be eternal slips back into the common thing around. A +blurred image, growing fainter and fainter, lingers. At last the person +vanishes, and in its place some public raising material things—a monument, a +tomb, an ornament, or weapon of enduring metal—is all that remains. +</p> + +<p> +If it were possible for the spring of appetite and quest to be dried up in man, +such a spectacle would dry up that spring. +</p> + +<p> +It is not possible, for it is providentially in the nature of man to cherish +these illusions of an immortal memory and of a life bestowed upon the shade or +the mere name of his living greatness. Those various forms of fame which are +young men’s goals, and to which the eager creative power of early manhood so +properly directs itself, seem each in turn or each for its varying temperament +to promise the desired reward; and one imagines that his love, another that his +discoveries, another that his victories in the field or his conspicuous acts of +courage will remain permanently with his fellows long after he has left their +feast. +</p> + +<p> +As though to give some substance to the flattering cheat, there is one kind of +fame which men have been permitted to attain, and which does give them a sort +of fixed tenure—if not for ever, yet for generations upon generations—in the +human city. This sort of fame is the fame of the great poets. There is nothing +more enduring. It has for some who were most blessed outlasted, you may say, +all material things which they handled or they knew—all fabrics, all +instruments, all habitations. It is comparable in its endurance to the years, +and a man reads the “Song of Roland” and can still look on that same unchanged +Cleft of Roncesvalles, or a man reads the Iliad and can look to-day westward +from the shores to Tenedos. But wait a moment. Are they indeed blessed in this, +the great poets? Ronsard debated it. He decided that they were, and put into +the mouth of the muses the great lines:—— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Mais un tel accident n’arrive point a l’âme,<br/> +Qui sans matière vist immortelle là haut. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="poem"> +Vela saigement dit, Ceux dont la fantaisie<br/> + Sera religieuse et devote envers Dieu<br/> +Tousjours acheveront quelque grand poésie,<br/> + Et dessus leur renom la Parque n’aura lieu. +</p> + +<p> +But the matter is still undecided. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap33">Mr. The Duke: The Man of Malplaquet</a></h2> + +<p> +On the field of Malplaquet, that battlefield, I met a man. +</p> + +<p> +He was pointed out to me as a man who drove travellers to Bavai. His name was +Mr. The Duke, and he was very poor. +</p> + +<p> +If he comes across these lines (which is exceedingly unlikely) I offer him my +apologies. Anyhow, I can write about him freely, for he is not rich, and, what +is more, the laws of his country permit the telling of the truth about our +fellow-men, even when they are rich. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. The Duke was of some years, and his colour was that of cedar wood. I met +him in his farmyard, and I said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“Is it you, sir, that drive travellers to Bavai?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +Accustomed by many years of travel to this type of response, I continued: +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you charge?” +</p> + +<p> +“Two francs fifty,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“I will give you three francs,” I said, and when I had said this he shook his +head and replied: +</p> + +<p> +“You fall at an evil moment; I was about to milk the cows.” Having said this he +went to harness the horse. +</p> + +<p> +When the horse was harnessed to his little cart (it was an extremely small +horse, full of little bones and white in colour, with one eye stronger than the +other) he gave it to his little daughter to hold, and himself sat down to +table, proposing a meal. +</p> + +<p> +“It is but humble fare,” he said, “for we are poor.” +</p> + +<p> +This sounded familiar to me; I had both read and heard it before. The meal was +of bread and butter, pasty and beer, for Malplaquet is a country of beer and +not of wine. +</p> + +<p> +As he sat at table the old man pointed out to me that contraband across the +Belgian frontier, which is close by, was no longer profitable. +</p> + +<p> +“The Fraud,” he said, “is no longer a living for anyone.” +</p> + +<p> +Upon that frontier contraband is called “The Fraud”; it holds an honourable +place as a career. +</p> + +<p> +“The Fraud,” he continued, “has gone long ago; it has burst. It is no longer to +be pursued. There is not even any duty upon apples.... But there is a duty upon +pears. Had I a son I would not put him into The Fraud.... Sometimes there is +just a chance here and there.... One can pick up an occasion. But take it all +in all (and here he wagged his head solemnly) there is nothing in it any more.” +</p> + +<p> +I said that I had no experience of contraband professionally, but that I knew a +very honest man who lived by it in the country of Andorra, and that according +to my morals a man had a perfect right to run the risk and take his chance, for +there was no contract between him and the power he was trying to get round. +This announcement pleased the old gentleman, but it did not grip his mind. He +was of your practical sort. He was almost a Pragmatist. Abstractions wearied +him. He put no faith in the reality of ideas. I think he was a Nominalist like +Abelard: and whatever excuse you may make for him, Abelard was a Nominalist +right enough, for it was the intellectual thing to be at the time, though St. +Bernard utterly confuted him in arguments of enormous length and incalculable +boredom. +</p> + +<p> +The old man, then, I say, would have nothing to do with first principles, and +he reasserted his position that, in the concrete, in the existent world, The +Fraud no longer paid. +</p> + +<p> +This said for the sixth or seventh time, he drank some brandy to put heart into +him and climbed up into his little cart, I by his side. He hit the white horse +with a stick, making at the same time an extraordinary shrill noise with his +mouth, like a siren, and the horse began to slop and sludge very dolefully +towards Bavai. +</p> + +<p> +“This horse,” said Mr. The Duke, “is a wonderfully good horse. He goes like the +wind. He is of Arab extraction, and comes from Africa.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words he gave the horse another huge blow with his stick, and once +more emitted his piercing cry. The horse went neither faster nor slower than +before, and seemed very indifferent to the whole performance. +</p> + +<p> +“He is from Africa,” said Mr. The Duke again, meditatively. “Do you know +Africa?” +</p> + +<p> +Africa with the French populace means Algiers. I answered that I knew it, and +that in particular I knew the road southward from Constantine. At this he +looked very pleased, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I was a soldier in Africa. I deserted seven times.” +</p> + +<p> +To this I made no answer. I did not know how he wanted me to take it, so I +waited until he should speak again, which he soon did, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“The last time I deserted I was free for a year and a half. I used to conduct +beasts; that was my trade. When they caught me I was to have been shot. I was +saved by the tears of a woman!” +</p> + +<p> +Having said this the old man pulled out a very small pipe and filled it with +exceedingly black tobacco. He lit it, then he began talking again rather more +excitedly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a terrible thing and an unhappy thing none the less,” he went on, “that +a man should be taken out to be shot and should be saved by the tears of a +woman.” Then he added, “Of what use are wars? How foolish it is that men should +kill each other! If there were a war I would not fight. Would you?” +</p> + +<p> +I said I thought I would; but whether I should like to or not would depend upon +the war. +</p> + +<p> +He was eager to contradict and to tell me that war was wrong and stupid. Having +behind him the logical training of fifteen Christian centuries he was in no way +muddle-headed upon the matter. He saw very well that his doctrine meant that it +was wrong to have a country, and wrong to love it, and that patriotism was all +bosh, and that no ideal was worth physical pain or trouble. To such conclusions +had he come at the end of his life. +</p> + +<p> +The white horse meanwhile slouched; Bavai grew somewhat nearer as we sat in +silence after his last sentence. He was turning many things over in his mind. +He veered off on to political economy. +</p> + +<p> +“When the rich man at the Manufactory here, the place where they sell +phosphates for the land, when he stands beer to all the workmen and to the +countryside, I always say, ‘Fools! All this will be put on to the cost of the +phosphates; they will cost you more!’” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. The Duke did not accept John Stuart Mill’s proposition upon the cost of +production nor the general theories of Ricardo upon which Mill’s propositions +were based. In his opinion rent was a factor in the cost of production, for he +told me that butter had gone up because the price of land was rising near the +towns. In what he next said I found out that he was not a Collectivist, for he +said a man should own enough to live upon, but he said that this was impossible +if rich people were allowed to live. I asked him what the politics of the +countryside were and how people voted. He said: +</p> + +<p> +“The politicians trick the people. They are a heap of worthlessness.” +</p> + +<p> +I asked him if he voted, and he said “yes.” He said there was only one way to +vote, but I did not understand what this meant. +</p> + +<p> +Had time served I should have asked him further questions—upon the nature of +the soul, its ultimate fate, the origin of man and his destiny, whether mortal +or immortal; the proper constitution of the State, the choice of the +legislator, the prince, and the magistrate; the function of art, whether it is +subsidiary or primary in human life; the family; marriage. Upon the State he +had already informed me, and also upon the institution of property, and upon +his view of armies. Upon all those other things he would equally have given me +a clear reply, for he was a man that knew his own mind, and that is more than +most people can say. +</p> + +<p> +But we were now in Bavai, and I had no time to discover more. We drank together +before we parted, and I was very pleased to see the honest look in his face. +With more leisure and born to greater opportunities he would have been talked +about, this Man of Malplaquet. He had come to his odd conclusions as the funny +people do in Scandinavia and in Russia, and among the rich intellectuals and +usurers in London and Berlin; but he was a jollier man than they are, for he +could drive a horse and lie about it, and he could also milk a cow. As we +parted he used a phrase that wounded me, and which I had only heard once before +in my life. He said: +</p> + +<p> +“We shall never see each other again!” +</p> + +<p> +Another man had once said this thing to me before. This man was a farmer in the +Northumbrian hills, who walked with me a little way in the days when I was +going over Carter Fell to find the Scots people, many, many years ago. He also +said: “We shall never meet again!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap34">The Game of Cards</a></h2> + +<p> +A youth of no more than twenty-three years entered a first-class carriage at +the famous station of Swindon in the county of Wiltshire, proposing to travel +to the uttermost parts of the West and to enjoy a comfortable loneliness while +he ruminated upon all things human and divine; when he was sufficiently annoyed +to discover that in the further corner of the carriage was sitting an old +gentleman of benevolent appearance, or at any rate a gentleman of benevolent +appearance who appeared in his youthful eyes to be old. +</p> + +<p> +For though the old gentleman was, as a fact, but sixty, yet his virile beard +had long gone white and the fringes of hair attaching to his ostrich egg of a +head confirmed his venerable appearance. +</p> + +<p> +When the train had started the young man proceeded in no very good temper and +with great solemnity to fill a pipe. He turned to his senior, who was watching +him in a very paternal and happy manner, and said formally: +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you do not mind my smoking, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said the old boy; “it is a habit I have long grown accustomed to +in others.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man bowed in a somewhat absurd fashion and felt for his matches. He +discovered to his no small mortification that he had none. He was so used to +his pipe after a meal that he really could not forgo it. He came off his perch +by at least three steps and asked the old man very gently whether he had any +matches. +</p> + +<p> +The older man produced a box and at the same time brought out with it a little +notebook and a playing card which happened to be in his pocket. The young man +took the matches and lit his pipe, surveying the old man the while with a more +complacent eye. +</p> + +<p> +“It is very kind of you, sir,” he said a little less stiffly. He handed back +the matches, wrapped his rug round his legs, sat down in his place, and knowing +that one should prolong the conversation for a moment or two after a favour, +said: “I see that you play cards.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” said the old man simply; “would you like a game?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind,” said the young man, who had always heard that it was unmanly +and ridiculous to refuse a game of cards in a railway carriage. +</p> + +<p> +The elder man laughed merrily in his strong beard as he saw his junior begin to +spread somewhat awkwardly a copy of a newspaper upon his knees. “I’ll show you +a trick worth two of that,” he said, and taking one of the first-class +cushions, which alone of railway cushions are movable from its place, he came +over to the corner opposite the young man and made a table of the cushion +between them. “Now,” said he genially, “what’s it to be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the young man like one who expounds new mysteries, “do you know +piquet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said his companion with another happy little laugh of contentment +with the world. “I’ll take you on. What shall it be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Pennies if you like,” said the young man nonchalantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, and double for the Rubicon.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” said the young man, puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“You will see,” said the old man, and they began to play. +</p> + +<p> +The game was singularly absorbing. At first the young man won a few pounds; +then he lost rather heavily, then he won again, but not quite enough to recoup. +Then in the fourth game he won, so that he was a little ahead, and meanwhile +the old man chatted merrily during the discarding or the shuffling: during the +shuffling especially. He looked out towards the downs with something of a sigh +at one moment, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a happy world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered the younger man with the proper lugubriousness of youth, “but +it all comes to an end.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t its coming to an end,” said the elder man, declaring a point of six, +“that’s not the tragedy; it’s the little bits coming to an end meanwhile, +before the whole comes to an end: that’s the tragedy....” But he added with +another of his jolly laughs: “We must play. Piquet takes up all one’s grey +matter.” +</p> + +<p> +They played and the young man lost again, but by a very narrow margin: it was +quite an absorbing game. As they shuffled again the young man said: +</p> + +<p> +“What did you mean by the little bits stopping, or whatever it was?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said the old man as though he couldn’t remember, and then he added: “Oh, +yes, I mean you’ll find, as you grow older, people die and affections change, +and, though it seems silly to mention it in company with higher things, there’s +what Shelley called the ‘contagion of the world’s slow stain.’” +</p> + +<p> +Then their conversation was interrupted by the ardour of the game; but as they +played the young man was ruminating, and he had come to the conclusion that his +senior was imperfectly educated and was probably of the middle classes, whereas +he himself was destined to be a naval architect, and with that object had +recently left the university for an office in the city. The young man thought +that a man properly educated would never quote a tag: he was wrong there. As he +had allowed his thoughts to wander somewhat the young man lost that game rather +heavily, and at the end of it he was altogether about ten shillings to the bad. +It was his turn to shuffle. The older man was at leisure to speak, and did so +rather dreamily as he gazed at the landscape again. +</p> + +<p> +“Things change, you know,” he said, “and there is the contagion of the world’s +slow stain. One gets preoccupied: especially about money. When men marry they +get very much preoccupied upon that point. It’s bad for them, but it can’t be +helped.” +</p> + +<p> +“You cut,” said the young man. +</p> + +<p> +His elder cut and they played again. This time as they played their game the +old man broke his rule of silence and continued his observations interruptedly: +</p> + +<p> +“Four kings,” he said.... “It isn’t that a man gets to think money +all-important, it is that he has to think of it all the time.... No, three +queens are no good. I said four kings.... four knaves.... The little losses of +money don’t affect one, but perpetual trouble about it does, and” (closing up +the majority of tricks which he had just gained) “many a man goes on making +more year after year and yet feels himself in peril.... <i>And</i> the last +trick.” He took up the cards to shuffle them. “Towards the very end of life,” +he continued, “it gets less, I suppose, but you’ll feel the burden of it.” He +put the pack over for the younger man to cut. When that was done he dealt them +out slowly. As he dealt he said: “One feels the loss of little material things: +objects to which one was attached, a walking-stick, or a ring, or a watch which +one has carried for years. Your declare.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man declared, and that game was played in silence. I regret to say +that the young man was Rubiconed, and was thirty shillings in the elder’s debt. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll stop if you like” said the elder man kindly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no,” said the youth with nonchalance, “I’ll pay you now if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all, I didn’t mean that,” said the older man with a sudden prick of +honour. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but I will, and we’ll start fair again,” said the young man. Whereupon he +handed over his combined losses in gold, the older man gave him change, they +shuffled again, and they went on with their play. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” said the older man, musing as he confessed to a point of no more +than five, “it’s all in the day’s work.... It’s just a day’s work,” he repeated +with a saddened look in his eyes, “it’s a game that one plays like this game, +and then when it’s over it’s over. It’s the little losses that count.” +</p> + +<p> +That game again was unfortunate for the young man, and he had to shell out +fifteen and six. But the brakes were applied, Bristol was reached, the train +came to a standstill, and the young man, looking up a little confused and +hurried, said: “Hello, Bristol! I get out here.” +</p> + +<p> +“So do I,” said the older man. They both stood up together, and the jolt of the +train as it stopped dead threw them into each other’s arms. +</p> + +<p> +“I am really very sorry,” said the youth. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my fault,” said the old chap like a good fellow, “I ought to have caught +hold. You get out and I’ll hand you your bag.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very kind of you,” said the young man. He was really flattered by so much +attention, but he knew himself what a good companion he was and he could +understand it; besides which they had made friends during that little journey. +He always liked a man to whom he had lost some money in an honest game. +</p> + +<p> +There was a heavy crowd upon the platform, and two men barging up out of it +saluted the old man boisterously by the name of Jack. He twinkled at them with +his eyes as he began moving the luggage about, and stood for a moment in the +doorway with his own bag in his right hand and the young man’s bag in his left. +The young man so saw it for an instant, a fine upstanding figure—he saw his bag +handed by some mistake to the second of the old man’s friends, a porter came by +at the moment pushing through the crowd with a trolley, an old lady made a +scene, the porter apologized, the crowd took sides, some for the porter, some +for the old lady; the young man, with the deference of his age, politely asked +several people to make way, but when he had emerged from the struggle his +companion, his companion’s friends, and his own bag could not be found; or at +any rate he could not make out where they were in the great mass that pushed +and surged upon the platform. +</p> + +<p> +He made himself a little conspicuous by asking too many questions and by losing +his temper twice with people who had done him no harm, when, just as his +excitement was growing more than querulous, a very heavy, stupid-looking man in +regulation boots tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Follow me.” He was +prepared with an oath by way of reply, but another gentleman of equal weight, +wearing boots of the same pattern, linked his arm in his and between them they +marched him away, to a little private closet opening out of the stationmaster’s +room. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, sir,” said he who had first tapped him on the shoulder, “be good enough +to explain your movements.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you mean,” said the young man. +</p> + +<p> +“You were in the company,” said the older man severely, “of an old man, bald, +with a white beard and a blue sailor suit. He had come from London; you joined +him at Swindon. We have evidence that he was to be met at this station and it +will be to your advantage if you make a clean breast of it.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man was violent and he was borne away. +</p> + +<p> +But he had friends at Bristol. He gave his references and he was released. To +this day he believes that he suffered not from folly, but from injustice. He +did not see his bag again, but after all it contained no more than his evening +clothes, for which he had paid or rather owed six guineas, four shirts, as many +collars and dress ties, a silver-mounted set of brushes and combs, and useless +cut-glass bottles, a patented razor, a stick of shaving soap, and two very, +very confidential letters which he treasured. His watch, of course, was gone, +but not, I am glad to say, his chain, which hung dangling, though in his flurry +he had not noticed it. It made him look a trifle ridiculous. As he wore no +tie-pin he had not lost that, and beyond his temper he had indeed lost nothing +further save, possibly, a textbook upon Thermodynamics. This book he +<i>thought</i> he remembered having put into the bag, and if he had it belonged +to his library, but he could not quite remember this point, and when the +Library claimed it he stoutly disputed their claim. +</p> + +<p> +In this dispute he was successful, but it was the only profit he made out of +that journey, unless we are to count his experience, and experience, as all the +world knows, is a thing that men must buy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap35">“King Lear”</a></h2> + +<p> +The great unity which was built up two thousand years ago and was called +Christendom in its final development split and broke in pieces. The various +civilizations of its various provinces drifted apart, and it will be for the +future historian to say at what moment the isolation of each from all was +farthest pushed. It is certain that that point is passed. +</p> + +<p> +In the task of reuniting what was broken—it is the noblest work a modern man +can do—the very first mechanical act must be to explain one national soul to +another. That act is not final. The nations of Europe, now so divided, still +have more in common than those things by which they differ, and it is certain +that when they have at last revealed to them their common origin they will +return to it. They will return to it, perhaps, under the pressure of war waged +by some not Christian civilization, but they will return. In the meanwhile, of +those acts not final, yet of immediate necessity in the task of establishing +unity, is the act of introducing one national soul to another. +</p> + +<p> +Now this is best accomplished in a certain way which I will describe. You will +take that part in the letters of a nation which you maturely judge most or best +to reflect the full national soul, with its qualities, careless of whether +these be great or little; you will take such a work as reproduces for you as +you read it, not only in its sentiment, but in its very rhythm, the stuff and +colour of the nation; this you will present to the foreigner, who cannot +understand. His efforts must be laborious, very often unfruitful, but where it +is fruitful it will be of a decisive effect. +</p> + +<p> +Thus let anyone take some one of the immortal things that Racine wrote and show +them to an Englishman. He will hardly ever be able to make anything of it at +first. Here and there some violently emotional passage may faintly touch him, +but the mass of the verse will seem to him dead. Now, if by constant reading, +by association with those who know what Racine is, he at last sees him—and +these changes in the mind come very suddenly—he will see into the soul of Gaul. +For the converse task, to-day not equally difficult but once almost impossible, +of presenting England to the French intelligence—or, indeed, to any other alien +intelligence—you may choose the play “King Lear.” +</p> + +<p> +That play has every quality which does reflect the soul of the community in +which and for which it was written. Note a few in their order. +</p> + +<p> +First, it is not designed to its end; at least it is not designed accurately to +its end; it is written as a play and it is meant to be acted as a play, and it +is the uniform opinion of those versed in plays and in acting that in its full +form it could hardly be presented, while in any form it is the hardest even of +Shakespeare’s plays to perform. Here you have a parallel with a thousand mighty +English things to which you can turn. Is there not institution after +institution to decide on, so lacking a complete fitness to its end, larger in a +way than the end it is to serve, and having, as it were, a life of its own +which proceeds apart from its effect? This quality which makes so many English +things growths rather than instruments is most evident in the great play. +</p> + +<p> +Again, it has that quality which Voltaire noted, which he thought abnormal in +Shakespeare, but which is the most national characteristic in him, that a sort +of formlessness, if it mars the framework of the thing and spoils it, yet also +permits the exercise of an immeasurable vitality. When a man has read “King +Lear” and lays down the book he is like one who has been out in one of those +empty English uplands in a storm by night. It is written as though the pen bred +thoughts. It is possible to conjecture as one reads, and especially in the +diatribes, that the pen itself was rapid and the brain too rapid for the pen. +One feels the rush of the air. Now, this quality is to be discovered in the +literature of many nations, but never with the fullness which it has in the +literature of England. And note that in those phases of the national life when +foreign models have constrained this instinct of expansion in English verse, +they never have restrained it for long, and that even through the bonds +established by those models the instinct of expansion breaks. You see it in the +exuberance of Dryden and in the occasional running rhetoric of Pope, until it +utterly loosens itself with the end of the eighteenth century. +</p> + +<p> +The play is national, again, in that permanent curiosity upon knowable +things—nay, that mysterious half-knowledge of unknowable things—which, in its +last forms, produced the mystic, and which is throughout history so plainly +characteristic of these Northern Atlantic islands. Every play of Shakespeare +builds with that material, and no writer, even of the English turn, has sent +out points further into the region of what is not known than Shakespeare has in +sudden flashes of phrase. But “King Lear,” though it contains a lesser number +of lines of this mystical and half-religious effect than, say, “Hamlet,” yet as +a general impression is the more mystical of the two plays. The element of +madness, which in “Hamlet” hangs in the background like a storm-cloud ready to +break, in “King Lear” rages; and it is the use of this which lends its amazing +psychical power to the play. It has been said (with no great profundity of +criticism) that English fiction is chiefly remarkable for its power of +particularization of character, and that where French work, for instance, will +present ideas, English will present persons. The judgment is grossly +insufficient, and therefore false, but it is based upon a proof which is very +salient in English letters, which is that, say, in quite short and modern work +the sense of complete unity deadens the English mind. The same nerve which +revolts at a straight road and at a code of law revolts against one tone of +thought, and the sharp contrast of emotional character, not the dual contrast +which is common to all literatures, but the multiple contrast, runs through +“King Lear” and gives the work such a tone that one seems as one reads it to be +moving in a cloud. +</p> + +<p> +The conclusion is perhaps Shakespearean rather than English, and in a fashion +escapes from any national labelling. But the note of silence which Shakespeare +suddenly brings in upon the turmoil, and with which he is so fond of completing +what he has done, would not be possible were not that spirit of expansion and +of a kind of literary adventurousness present in all that went before. +</p> + +<p> +It is indeed this that makes the play so memorable. And it may not be fantastic +to repeat and expand what has been said above in other words, namely, that King +Lear has something about him which seems to be a product of English landscape +and of English weather, and if its general movement is a storm its element is +one of those sudden silences that come sometimes with such magical rapidity +after the booming of the wind. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap36">The Excursion</a></h2> + +<p> +It is so old a theme that I really hesitate to touch it; and yet it is so true +and so useful that I will. It is true all the time, and it is particularly +useful at this season of the year to men in cities: to all repetitive men: to +the men that read these words. What is more, true as it is and useful as it is, +no amount of hammering at people seems to get this theme into their practice; +though it has long ago entered into their convictions they will not act upon it +in their summers. And this true and useful theme is the theme of little +freedoms and discoveries, the value of getting loose and away by a small trick +when you want to get your glimpse of Fairyland. +</p> + +<p> +Now how does one get loose and away? +</p> + +<p> +When a man says to himself that he must have a holiday he means that he must +see quite new things that are also old: he desires to open that door which +stood wide like a window in childhood and is now shut fast. But where are the +new things that are also the old? Paradoxical fellows who deserve drowning tell +one that they are at our very doors. Well, that is true of the eager mind, but +the mind is no longer eager when it is in need of a holiday. And you can get at +the new things that are also the old by way of drugs, but drugs are a poor sort +of holiday fabric. If you have stored up your memory well with much experience +you can get these things from your memory—but only in a pale sort of way. +</p> + +<p> +I think the best avenue to recreation by the magical impressions of the world +upon the mind is this: To go to some place to which the common road leads you +and then to get just off the common road. You will be astonished to find how +strange the world becomes in the first mile—and how strange it remains till the +common road is reached again. +</p> + +<p> +It always sounds like a mockery for a man who has travelled to a great many +places, as I have, to advise his fellows to travel abroad; they are most of +them hard tied. Yet it is really a much easier thing than men bound to the desk +and the workshop understand. Britain is but one great port, and its inward seas +are narrow—and the fares are ridiculously low. If you are a young man you can +go almost anywhere for almost anything, sitting up by night on deck, and not +expecting too much courtesy. But, of course, if you shirk the sea you are a +prisoner. +</p> + +<p> +Well, then, supposing you abroad, or even in some other part of this highly +varied kingdom in which you live, and supposing you to have reached some chosen +place by some common road—what I desire to dilate upon here is the truth which +every little excursion of business or of leisure (and precious few of leisure) +makes me more certain of every day: That just a little way off the road is +fairyland. +</p> + +<p> +It was exactly three days ago that I had occasion to go down the railway line +that is the most frequented in Europe: I was on business, not leisure, but in +the business I had two days’ leisure, and I did what I would advise all other +men to do in such a circumstance. +</p> + +<p> +I took a train to nowhere, fixing my starting-point thus:— +</p> + +<p> +I first looked at the map and saw where nearest to me was a quadrilateral bare +of railways. This formula, to look for a quadrilateral bare of railways, is a +very useful formula for the man who is seeking another world. Then I fixed at +random upon one little roadside station upon the main line; I determined to get +out there and to walk aimlessly and westward until I should strike the other +side of the quadrilateral. I made no plan, not even of the hours of the day. +</p> + +<p> +I came into my roadside station at half-past eight of the long summer night, +broad daylight that is, but with night advancing. I got out and began my +westward march. At once there crowded upon me any number of unexpected and +entertaining things! +</p> + +<p> +The first thing I found was a street which was used by horses as well as by +men, and yet was made up of broad steps. It was a sort of stair-case going up a +hill. At the top of it I found a woman leading a child by the hand. I asked her +the name of the steps. She told me they were called “The Steps of St. John.” +</p> + +<p> +A quarter of a mile further down the narrow lane I saw to my astonishment an +enormous castle, ruined and open to the sky. There are many such ruins famous +in Europe, but of this one I had never even heard. I went lonely under the +evening and looked at its main gate and saw on it a moulded escutcheon, carved, +and the motto in French, “Henceforward,” which word made me think a great deal, +but resolved no problem in my mind. +</p> + +<p> +I went on again westward as the darkness fell and saw what I had not seen +before, though my reading had told me of its existence, a long line of trees +marking a ridge on the horizon, which line was the border of that ancient road +the Roman soldiers built leading from the west into Amiens. “Along that road,” +thought I, “St. Martin rode before he became a monk, and while he was yet a +soldier and was serving under Julian the Apostate. Along that road he came to +the west gate of Amiens and there cut his cloak in two and gave the half of it +to a beggar.” +</p> + +<p> +The memory of St. Martin’s deed entertained me for some miles of my way, and I +remembered how, when I was a child, it had seemed to me ridiculous to cut your +coat in two whether for a beggar or for anybody else. Not that I thought +charity ridiculous—God forbid!—but that a coat seemed to me a thing you could +not cut in two with any profit to the user of either half. You might cut it in +latitude and turn it into an Eton jacket and a kilt, neither of much use to a +Gallo-Roman beggar. Or you might cut it in meridian and leave but one sleeve: +mere folly. +</p> + +<p> +Considering these things, I went on over the rolling plateau. I saw a great owl +flying before me against the sky, different from the owls of home. I saw +Jupiter shining above a cloud and Venus shining below one. The long light +lingered in the north above the English sea. At last I came quite unexpectedly +upon that delight and plaything of the French: a light railway, or steam tram +such as that people build in great profusion to link up their villages and +their streams. The road where I came upon it made a level crossing, and there +was a hut there, and a woman living in it who kept the level crossing and +warned the passers-by. She told me no more trains, or rather little trams, +would pass that night, but that three miles further on I should come to a place +called “The Mills of the Vidame.” +</p> + +<p> +Now the name “Vidame” reminded me that a “Vidame” was the lay protector of a +Cathedral Chapter in feudal times, so the name gave me a renewed pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +But it was now near midnight, and when I came to this village I remembered how +in similar night walks I had sometimes been refused lodging. When I got among +the few houses all was dark. I found, however, in the darkness two young men, +each bearing an enormous curled trumpet of the kind which the French call +<i>cors de chasse</i>, that is, hunting horns, so I asked them where the inn +was. They took me to it and woke up the hostess, who received us with oaths. +This she did lest the young men with hunting horns should demand a commission. +Her heart, however, was better than her mouth, and she put me up, but she +charged me tenpence for my room, counting coffee in the morning, which was, I +am sure, more than her usual rate. +</p> + +<p> +Next day I took the little steam tram away from the place and went on vaguely +whither it should please God to take me, until the plateau changed and the +light railway fell into a charming valley, and, seeing a town rooted therein, I +got out and paid my fare and visited the town. In this town I went to church, +as it was early morning (you must excuse the foible), and, coming out of +church, I had an argument with a working man upon the matter of religion, in +which argument, as I believe, I was the victor. I then went on north out of +this town and came into a wood of enormous size. It was miles and miles across, +and the trees were higher than anything I have seen outside of California. It +was an enchanted wood. The sun shone down through a hundred feet of silence by +little rounds between the leaves, and there was silence everywhere. In this +wood I sojourned all day long, making slowly westward, till, in the very midst +of it, I found a troubled man. He was a man of middle age, short, intelligent, +fat, and weary. He said to me: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you noticed any special mark upon the trees? A white mark of the number +90?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said I. “Are there any wild boars in this forest?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered, “a few, but not of use. I am looking for trees marked in +white with the number 90. I have paid a price for them, and I cannot find +them.” +</p> + +<p> +I saluted him and went on my way. At last I came to an open clearing, where +there was a town, and in the town I found a very delightful inn, where they +would cook anything one felt inclined for, within reason, and charged one very +moderately indeed. I have retained its name. +</p> + +<p> +By this time I was completely lost, and in the heart of Fairyland, when +suddenly I remembered that everyone that strikes root in Fairyland loses +something, at the least his love and at the worst his soul, and that it is a +perilous business to linger there, so I asked them in that hotel how they +worked it when they wanted to go west into the great towns. They put me into an +omnibus, which charged me fourpence for a journey of some two miles. It took +me, as Heaven ordained, to a common great railway, and that common great +railway took me through the night to the town of Dieppe, which I have known +since I could speak and before, and which was about as much of Fairyland to me +as Piccadilly or Monday morning. +</p> + +<p> +Thus ended those two days, in which I had touched again the unknown places—and +all that heaven was but two days, and cost me not fifty shillings. +</p> + +<p> +Excuse the folly of this. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap37">The Tide</a></h2> + +<p> +I wish I had been one of those men who first sailed beyond the Pillars of +Hercules and first saw, as they edged northward along a barbarian shore, the +slow swinging of the sea. How much, I wonder, did they think themselves +enlarged? How much did they know that all the civilization behind them, the +very ancient world of the Mediterranean, was something protected and enclosed +from which they had escaped into an outer world? And how much did they feel +that here they were now physically caught by the moving tides that bore them in +the whole movement of things? +</p> + +<p> +For the tide is of that kind; and the movement of the sea four times daily back +and forth is a consequence, a reflection, and a part of the ceaseless pulse and +rhythm which animates all things made and which links what seems not living to +what certainly lives and feels and has power over all movement of its own. The +circuits of the planets stretch and then recede. Their ellipses elongate and +flatten again to the semblance of circles. The Poles slowly nod once every many +thousand years, there is a libration to the moon; and in all this vast +harmonious process of come and go the units of it twirl and spin, and, as they +spin, run more gravely in ordered procession round their central star: that +star moves also to a beat, and all the stars of heaven move each in times of +its own as well, and their movement is one thing altogether. Whoever should +receive the mighty business moving in one ear would get the music of it in a +perfect series of chords, superimposed the one upon the other, but not a +tremble of them out of tune. +</p> + +<p> +The great scheme is not infinite, for were it infinite such rhythms could not +be. It was made, and it moves in order to the scheme of its making without +caprice, not wayward anywhere, but in and out and back and forth as to a figure +set for it. It must be so, or these exact arrangements could not be. +</p> + +<p> +Now with this regulated breathing and expiration, playing itself out in a +million ways and co-extensive with the universe of things, the tides keep time, +and they alone of earthly things bring its actual force to our physical +perception, to our daily life. We see the sea in movement and power before us +heaving up whatever it may bear, and we feel in an immediate way its strong +backward sagging when the rocks appear above it as it falls. We have our hand +on the throb of the current turning in a salting river inland between green +hills; we are borne upon it bodily as we sail, its movement kicks the tiller in +our grasp, and the strength beneath us and around us, the rush and the +compulsion of the stream, its silence and as it were its purpose, all represent +to us, immediately and here, that immeasurable to and fro which rules the +skies. +</p> + +<p> +When the Roman soldiers came marching northward with Caesar and first saw the +shores of ocean: when, after that occupation of Gaul which has changed the +world, they first mounted guard upon the quays of the Itian port under +Gris-Nez, or the rocky inlets of the Veneti by St. Malo and the Breton reefs, +they were appalled to see what for centuries chance traders and the few curious +travellers, the men of Marseilles and of the islands, had seen before them. +They saw in numbers and in a corporate way what hitherto individuals alone had +seen; they saw the sea like a living thing, advancing and retreating in an +ordered dance, alive with deep sighs and intakes, and ceaselessly proceeding +about a work and a doing which seemed to be the very visible action of an +unchanging will still pleased with calculated change. It was the presence of +the Roman army upon the shores of the Channel which brought the Tide into the +general conscience of Europe, and that experience, I think, was among the +greatest, perhaps the greatest, of those new things which rushed upon the mind +of the Empire when it launched itself by the occupation of Gaul. +</p> + +<p> +The tide, when it is mentioned in brief historical records of times long since, +suddenly strikes one with vividness and with familiarity, so that the past is +introduced at once, presented to us physically, and obtruded against our modern +senses alive. I know of no other physical thing mentioned in this fashion, in +chronicle or biography, which has so powerful an effect to restore the reality +of a dead century. +</p> + +<p> +The Venerable Bede is speaking in one place of Southampton Water, in his +ecclesiastical history, or, rather, of the Isle of Wight, whence those two +Princes were baptized and died under Cadwalla. As the historian speaks of the +place he says: +</p> + +<p> +“In this sea” (which is the Solent) “comes a double tide out of the seas which +spring from the infinite ocean of the Arctic surrounding all Britain.” +</p> + +<p> +And he tells us how these double tides rush together and fight together, +sweeping as they do round either side of the island by the Needles and by +Spithead into the land-locked sheet within. +</p> + +<p> +Now that passage in Bede’s fourth book is more real to me than anything in all +his chronicle, for in Southampton Water to-day the living thing which we still +note as we sail is the double tide. You take a falling tide at the head of the +water, near Southampton Town, and if you are not quick with your business it is +checked in two hours and you meet a strange flood, the second flood, before you +have rounded Calshott Castle. +</p> + +<p> +Then there is a Charter of Newcastle. Or, rather, the inviolable Customs of +that town, very old, drawn up nearly eight hundred years ago, but beginning +from far earlier; and in these customs you find written: +</p> + +<p> +“If a plea shall arise between a burgess and a merchant it must be determined +before the third flowing of the sea”—that is, within three tides; a wise +provision! For thus the merchant would not miss the last tide of the day after +the quarrel. How living it is, a phrase of that sort coming in the midst of +those other phrases! +</p> + +<p> +All the rest, worse luck, has gone. Burgage-tenure, and the economic +independence of the humble, and the busy, healthy life of men working to enrich +themselves, not others, and that corporate association which was the blood of +the Middle Ages, and the power of popular opinion, and, in general, freedom. +But out of all these things that have perished, the tide remains, and in the +eighteen clauses of the Customs, the tidal clause alone stands fresh and still +has meaning. The capital, great clinching clause by which men owned their own +land within the town has gone utterly and altogether. The modern workman on the +Tyne would not understand you perhaps, to whom in that very place you should +say, “Many centuries ago the men that came before you here, your fathers, were +not working precariously at a wage, or paying rent to others, but living under +their own roofs and working for themselves.” There is only one passage in the +document that all could understand in Newcastle to-day—the very few rich who +are hardly secure, the myriads of poor who are not secure at all—and that +passage is the passage which talks of the third tide; for even to-day there is +some good we have left undestroyed and the sea still ebbs and flows. +</p> + +<p> +This little note of the Newcastle men, and of the flowing and the ebbing of +their sea, is to be found, you say, in the archives of England? Not at all! It +is to be found in the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland—at least, so my book +assures me, but why I do not know. Perhaps of the times when between Tyne and +Tees, men looked northward and of the times when they looked southward (for +they alternately did one and the other during many hundreds of years) those +times when they looked northward seemed the more natural to them. Anyhow, the +reference is to the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, and that is the end of +it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap38">On a Great Wind</a></h2> + +<p> +It is an old dispute among men, or rather a dispute as old as mankind, whether +Will be a cause of things or no; nor is there anything novel in those moderns +who affirm that Will is nothing to the matter, save their ignorant belief that +their affirmation is new. +</p> + +<p> +The intelligent process whereby I know that Will not seems but is, and can +alone be truly and ultimately a cause, is fed with stuff and strengthens +sacramentally as it were, whenever I meet, and am made the companion of, a +great wind. +</p> + +<p> +It is not that this lively creature of God is indeed perfected with a soul; +this it would be superstition to believe. It has no more a person than any +other of its material fellows, but in its vagary of way, in the largeness of +its apparent freedom, in its rush of purpose, it seems to mirror the action of +mighty spirit. When a great wind comes roaring over the eastern flats towards +the North Sea, driving over the Fens and the Wringland, it is like something of +this island that must go out and wrestle with the water, or play with it in a +game or a battle; and when, upon the western shores, the clouds come bowling up +from the horizon, messengers, outriders, or comrades of a gale, it is something +of the sea determined to possess the land. The rising and falling of such +power, its hesitations, its renewed violence, its fatigue and final repose—all +these are symbols of a mind; but more than all the rest, its exultation! It is +the shouting and the hurrahing of the wind that suits a man. +</p> + +<p> +Note you, we have not many friends. The older we grow and the better we can +sift mankind, the fewer friends we count, although man lives by friendship. But +a great wind is every man’s friend, and its strength is the strength of +good-fellowship; and even doing battle with it is something worthy and well +chosen. If there is cruelty in the sea, and terror in high places, and malice +lurking in profound darkness, there is no one of these qualities in the wind, +but only power. Here is strength too full for such negations as cruelty, as +malice, or as fear; and that strength in a solemn manner proves and tests +health in our own souls. For with terror (of the sort I mean—terror of the +abyss or panic at remembered pain, and in general, a losing grip of the +succours of the mind), and with malice, and with cruelty, and with all the +forms of that Evil which lies in wait for men, there is the savour of disease. +It is an error to think of such things as power set up in equality against +justice and right living. We were not made for them, but rather for influences +large and soundly poised; we are not subject to them but to other powers that +can always enliven and relieve. It is health in us, I say, to be full of +heartiness and of the joy of the world, and of whether we have such health our +comfort in a great wind is a good test indeed. No man spends his day upon the +mountains when the wind is out, riding against it or pushing forward on foot +through the gale, but at the end of his day feels that he has had a great host +about him. It is as though he had experienced armies. The days of high winds +are days of innumerable sounds, innumerable in variation of tone and of +intensity, playing upon and awakening innumerable powers in man. And the days +of high wind are days in which a physical compulsion has been about us and we +have met pressure and blows, resisted and turned them; it enlivens us with the +simulacrum of war by which nations live, and in the just pursuit of which men +in companionship are at their noblest. +</p> + +<p> +It is pretended sometimes (less often perhaps now than a dozen years ago) that +certain ancient pursuits congenial to man will be lost to him under his new +necessities; thus men sometimes talk foolishly of horses being no longer +ridden, houses no longer built of wholesome wood and stone, but of metal; meat +no more roasted, but only baked; and even of stomachs grown too weak for wine. +There is a fashion of saying these things, and much other nastiness. Such talk +is (thank God!) mere folly; for man will always at last tend to his end, which +is happiness, and he will remember again to do all those things which serve +that end. So it is with the uses of the wind, and especially the using of the +wind with sails. +</p> + +<p> +No man has known the wind by any of its names who has not sailed his own boat +and felt life in the tiller. Then it is that a man has most to do with the +wind, plays with it, coaxes or refuses it, is wary of it all along; yields when +he must yield, but comes up and pits himself again against its violence; trains +it, harnesses it, calls it if it fails him, denounces it if it will try to be +too strong, and in every manner conceivable handles this glorious playmate. +</p> + +<p> +As for those who say that men did but use the wind as an instrument for +crossing the sea, and that sails were mere machines to them, either they have +never sailed or they were quite unworthy of sailing. It is not an accident that +the tall ships of every age of varying fashions so arrested human sight and +seemed so splendid. The whole of man went into their creation, and they +expressed him very well; his cunning, and his mastery, and his adventurous +heart. For the wind is in nothing more capitally our friend than in this, that +it has been, since men were men, their ally in the seeking of the unknown and +in their divine thirst for travel which, in its several aspects—pilgrimage, +conquest, discovery, and, in general, enlargement—is one prime way whereby man +fills himself with being. +</p> + +<p> +I love to think of those Norwegian men who set out eagerly before the +north-east wind when it came down from their mountains in the month of March +like a god of great stature to impel them to the West. They pushed their Long +Keels out upon the rollers, grinding the shingle of the beach at the +fjord-head. They ran down the calm narrows, they breasted and they met the open +sea. Then for days and days they drove under this master of theirs and high +friend, having the wind for a sort of captain, and looking always out to the +sea line to find what they could find. It was the springtime; and men feel the +spring upon the sea even more surely than they feel it upon the land. They were +men whose eyes, pale with the foam, watched for a landfall, that unmistakable +good sight which the wind brings us to, the cloud that does not change and that +comes after the long emptiness of sea days like a vision after the sameness of +our common lives. To them the land they so discovered was wholly new. +</p> + +<p> +We have no cause to regret the youth of the world, if indeed the world were +ever young. When we imagine in our cities that the wind no longer calls us to +such things, it is only our reading that blinds us, and the picture of satiety +which our reading breeds is wholly false. Any man to-day may go out and take +his pleasure with the wind upon the high seas. He also will make his landfalls +to-day, or in a thousand years; and the sight is always the same, and the +appetite for such discoveries is wholly satisfied even though he be only +sailing, as I have sailed, over seas that he has known from childhood, and come +upon an island far away, mapped and well known, and visited for the hundredth +time. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap39">The Letter</a></h2> + +<p> +If you ask me why it is now three weeks since I received your letter and why it +is only today that I answer it, I must tell you the truth lest further things I +may have to tell you should not be worthy of your dignity or of mine. It was +because at first I dared not, then later I reasoned with myself, and so bred +delay, and at last took refuge in more delay. I will offer no excuse: I will +not tell you that I suffered illness, or that some accident of war had taken me +away from this old house, or that I have but just returned from a journey to my +hill and my view over the Plain and the great River. +</p> + +<p> +Your messenger I have kept, and I have entertained him well. I looked at him a +little narrowly at his first coming, thinking perhaps he might be a gentleman +of yours, but I soon found that he was not such, and that he bore no disguise, +but was a plain rider of your household. I put him in good quarters by the +Hunting Stables. He has had nothing to do but to await my resolution, which is +now at last taken, and which you receive in this. +</p> + +<p> +But how shall I begin, or how express to you what not distance but a slow and +bitter conclusion of the mind has done? +</p> + +<p> +I shall not return to Meudon. I shall not see the woods, the summer woods +turning to autumn, nor follow the hunt, nor take pleasure again in what is +still the best of Europe at Versailles. And now that I have said it, you must +read it so; for I am unalterably determined. Believe me, it is something much +more deep than courtesy which compels me to give you my reasons for this final +and irrevocable doom. +</p> + +<p> +We were children together. Though we leant so lightly in our conversations of +this spring upon all we knew in common, I know your age and all your strong +early experience—and you know mine. Your mother will recall that day’s riding +when I came back from my first leave and you were home, not, I think, for good, +from the convent. A fixed domestic habit blinded her, so that she could then +still see in us no more than two children; yet I was proud of my sword, and had +it on, and you that day were proud of a beauty which could no longer be hidden +even from yourself; I would then have sacrificed, and would now, all I had or +was or had or am to have made that beauty immortal. +</p> + +<p> +I say, you remember that day’s riding, and how after it the world was changed +for you and me, and how that same evening the elders saw that it was changed. +</p> + +<p> +You will remember that for two years we were not allowed to meet again. When +the two years were passed we met indeed by a mere accident of that rich and +tedious life wherein we were both now engaged. I was returned from leave before +Tournay; you had heard, I think, a false report that I had been wounded in the +dreadful business at Fontenoy (which to remember even now horrifies me a +little). I had heard and knew which of the great names you now bore by +marriage. The next day it was your husband who rode with me to Marly. I liked +him well enough. I have grown to like him better. He is an honest man, though I +confess his philosophers weary me. When I say “an honest man” I am giving the +highest praise I know. +</p> + +<p> +My dear, that was sixteen years ago. +</p> + +<p> +You may not even now understand, so engrossing is the toilsome and excited +ritual of that rich world at Versailles, how blest you are: your children are +growing round you: your daughters are beginning to reveal your own beauty, and +your sons will show in these next years immediately before us that temper which +in you was a spirit and a height of being, and in them, men, will show as plain +courage. During that long space of years your house has remained well ordered +(it was your husband’s doing). His great fortune and yours have jointly +increased: if I may tell you so, it is a pleasure to all who understand fitness +to know that this is so, and that your lineage and his will hold so great a +place in the State. +</p> + +<p> +As you review those sixteen years you may, if you will—I trust you will +not—recall those occasions when I saw the woods of Meudon and mixed by chance +with your world, and when we renewed the rides which had ended our childhood. +As for me I have not to recall those things. They are, alas, myself, and beyond +them there is nothing that I can call a memory or a being at all. Nevertheless, +as I have told you, I shall not come to Meudon: I shall not hear again the +delightful voices of those many friends (now in mid-life as am I) who are my +equals at Versailles. I shall not see your face. +</p> + +<p> +I did not take service with the Empire from any pique or folly, but from a +necessity for adventure and for the refounding of my house. It might have +chanced that I should marry: the land demanded an heir. My impoverishment +weighed upon me like an ill deed, for all this belt of land is dependent upon +the old house, which I can with such difficulty retain and from which I write +to-day. I spent all those years in the service of the Empire (and even of +Russia) from no uncertain temper and from no imaginary quarrel. It is so common +or so necessary for men and women to misjudge each other that I believe you +thought me wayward, or at least unstable. If you did so you did me a wrong. +Those two good seasons when we met again, and this last of but a month ago, +were not accidents or fitful recoveries. They were all I possessed in my life +and all that will perish with me when I die. +</p> + +<p> +But now, to tell you the very core of my decision, it is this: The years that +pass carry with them an increasing weight at once sombre and majestic. There +are things belonging to youth which habit continues strangely longer than the +season to which they properly belong: if, when we discover them to be too +prolonged as cling to their survival, why, then, we eat dust. So long as we +possess the illusion and so long as the dearest things of youth maintain +unchanged, in one chamber of our life at least, our twentieth year, so long all +is well. But there is a cold river which we must pass in our advance towards +nothingness and age. In the passage of that stream we change: and you and I +have passed it. There is no more endurance in that young mood of ours than in +any other human thing. One always wakes from it at last. One sees what it is. +The soul sees and counts with hard eyes the price at which a continuance of +such high dreams must be purchased, and the heart has a prevision of the evil +that the happy cheat will work as maturity is reached by each of us, and as +each of us fully takes on the burden of the world. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore I must not return. +</p> + +<p> +Foolishly and without thinking of real things, acting as though indeed that +life of dream and of illusion were still possible to me, I yesterday cut with +great care a rose, one from the many that have now grown almost wild upon the +great wall overlooking the Danube. Then ... I could not but smile to myself +when I remembered how by the time that rose should have reached you every petal +would be wasted and fallen in the long week’s ride. There is a fixed term of +life for roses also as for men. I do not cite this to you by way of parable. I +have no heart for tricks of the pen to-night; but the two images came together, +and you will understand. If I do not return, it is for the same reason that I +could not send the rose. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap40">The Regret</a></h2> + +<p> +Everybody knows, I suppose, that kind of landscape in which hills seem to lie +in a regular manner, fold on fold, one range behind the other, until, at last, +behind them all some higher and grander range dominates and frames the whole. +</p> + +<p> +The infinite variety of light and air and accident of soil provide all men save +those who live in the great plains with examples of this sort. The traveller in +the dry air of California or of Spain, watching great distances from the +heights, will recollect such landscapes all his life. They were the reward of +his long ascents and the visions which attended his effort as he climbed up to +the ridge of his horizon. Such a landscape does a man see from the Western +edges of the Guadarrama, looking eastward and south toward the very distant +hills that guard Toledo and the Gulf of the Tagus. Such a landscape does a man +see at sunrise from the highest of the Cevennes looking right eastward to the +dawn as it comes up in the pure and cold air beyond the Alps, and shows you the +falling of the foothills to the Rhone. And by such a landscape is a man +gladdened when upon the escarpments of the Tuolumne he turns back and looks +westward over the plain towards the vast range. +</p> + +<p> +The experience of such a sight is one peculiar in travel, or, for that matter, +if a man is lucky enough to enjoy it at home, insistent and reiterated upon the +mind of the home-dwelling man. Such a landscape, for instance, makes a man +praise God if his house is upon the height of Mendip, and he can look over +falling hills right over the Vale of Severn toward the ridge above ridge of the +Welsh solemnities beyond, until the straight line and high of the Black +Mountains ends his view. +</p> + +<p> +It is the character of these landscapes to suggest at once a vastness, +diversity, and seclusion. When a man comes upon them unexpectedly he can forget +the perpetual toil of men and imagine that those who dwell below in the near +side before him are exempt from the necessities of this world. When such a +landscape is part of a man’s dwelling-place, though he well knows that the +painful life of men within those hills is the same hard business that it is +throughout the world, yet his knowledge is modified and comforted by the +permanent glory of the thing he sees. +</p> + +<p> +The distant and high range that bounds his view makes a sort of veiling, +cutting it off and guarding it from whatever may be beyond. The succession of +lower ranges suggests secluded valleys, and the reiterated woods, distant and +more distant, convey an impression of fertility more powerful than that of corn +in harvest upon the lowlands. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes it is a whole province that is thus grasped by the eye, sometimes in +the summer haze but a few miles; always this scenery inspires the onlooker with +a sense of completion and of repose, and at the same time, I think, with +worship and with awe. +</p> + +<p> +Now one such group of valleys there was, hill above hill, forest above forest, +and beyond it a great noble range, unwooded and high against heaven, guarding +it, which I for my part knew when first I knew anything of this world. There is +a high place under fir trees, a place of sand and bracken, in South England +whence such a view was always present to eye in childhood and “There,” said I +to myself (even in childhood) “a man should make his habitation.” In those +valleys is the proper off-set for man. +</p> + +<p> +And so there was. +</p> + +<p> +It was a little place which had grown up as my county grows. The house throwing +out arms and layers. One room was panelled in the oak of the seventeenth +century—but that had been a novelty in its time, for the walls upon which the +panels stood were of the late fifteenth, oak and brick intermingled. Another +room was large and light built in the manner of one hundred and fifty years +ago, which people call Georgian. It had been thrown out south (which is quite +against our older custom, for our older houses looked east and west to take all +the sun and to present a corner to the south-west and the storms. So they stand +still). It had round it a solid cornice which the modern men of the towns would +have called ugly, but there was ancestry in it. Then, further on this house had +modern roominess stretching in one new wing after another; and it had a great +steading and there was a copse and some six acres of land. Over a deep ravine +looked the little town that was the mother of the place, and altogether it was +enclosed, silent, and secure. +</p> + +<p> +“The fish that misses the hook regrets the worm.” If this is not a Chinese +proverb it ought to be. That little farm and steading and those six acres, that +ravine, those trees, that aspect of the little mothering town; the wooded hills +fold above fold, the noble range beyond, will not be mine. +</p> + +<p> +For all I know, some man quite unacquainted with that land took them grumbling +for a debt; or again, for all I know, they may have been bought by a blind man +who could not see the hills, or by some man who, seeing them, perpetually +regretted the flat marshes of the fens. One day, up high on Egdean Side, not +thinking of such things, through a gap in the trees I saw again after so many +years, set one behind the other, the forests wave upon wave, the summer heat, +the high, bare range guarding all, and in the midst of that landscape, set like +a toy, the little Sabine Farm. +</p> + +<p> +Then I said to it, “Continue. Go and serve whom you will, my little Sabine +Farm. You were not mine because you would not be, and you are not mine at all +to-day. You will regret it perhaps, and perhaps you will not. There was verse +in you, perhaps, or prose, or—infinitely more!—contentment for a man (for all I +know). But you refused. You lost your chance. Goodbye.” And with that I went on +into the wood and beyond the gap, and saw the sight no more. +</p> + +<p> +It was ten years since I had seen it last. It may be ten years before I see it +again, or it may be for ever. But as I went through the woods saying to myself: +</p> + +<p> +“You lost your chance, my little Sabine Farm, you lost your chance!” another +part of me at once replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! And so did <i>you</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +Then, by way of riposte, I answered in my mind: +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all, for the chance I never had, but what I lost was my desire.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not your desire,” said the voice to me within, “but the fulfilment of it, +in which you would have lost your desire.” And when that reply came I naturally +turned as all men do on hearing such interior replies, to a general +consideration of regret, and was prepared, if any honest publisher should have +come whistling through that wood, with an offer proper to the occasion, namely, +to produce no less than five volumes on the Nature of Regret, its mortal sting, +its bitter-sweetness, its power to keep alive in man the pure passions of the +soul, its hints at immortality, its memory of Heaven. But the wood was empty of +publishers. The offer did not come. The moment was lost. The five volumes will +hardly now be written. In place of them I offer poor this, which you may take +or leave. But I beg leave before I end to cite certain words very nobly +attached to that great inn “The Griffin,” which has its foundation set far off +in another place, in the town of March, in the Fen Land: +</p> + +<p> +“England my desire, what have you not refused?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap41">The End Of The World</a></h2> + +<p> +One day I met a man who was sitting quite silent near Whitney, in the Thames +Valley, in a very large, long, low inn that stands in those parts, or at least +stood then, for whether it stands now or not depends upon the Fussyites, whose +business it is to Fuss, and in their Fussing to disturb mankind. +</p> + +<p> +He had nothing to say for himself at all, and he looked not gloomy but sad. He +was tall and thin, with high cheekbones. His face was the colour of leather +that has been some time in the weather, and he despised us altogether: he would +not say a word to us, until one of the company said, rising from his meat and +drink: “Very well, there’s a thing we shall never know till the end of the +world” (he was talking about some discussion or other which the young men had +been holding together). “There’s a thing we shall never know till the end of +the world—and about that nobody knows!” +</p> + +<p> +“You will pardon me,” said the tall, thin, and elderly man with a face like +leather that has been exposed to the weather, “I know about the End of the +World, for I have been there.” +</p> + +<p> +This was so interesting that we all sat down again to listen. +</p> + +<p> +“I wasn’t talking of place, but of time,” murmured the young man whom the +stranger had answered. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot help that,” said the stranger decisively; “the End of the World is +the End of the World, and whether you are talking of space or of time it does +not matter, for when you have got to the end you have got to the end, as may be +proved in several ways.” +</p> + +<p> +“How did you get to it?” said one of our companions. +</p> + +<p> +“That is very simply answered,” said the elder man; “you get to it by walking +straight in front of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anyone could do that,” said the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Anyone could,” said the elder man, “but nobody does. I did.... When I was +quite a boy in my father’s parsonage (for my father was a parson), having heard +so much about the End of the World and seeing that people’s descriptions of it +differed so much and that everybody was quite sure of his own, I used to take +my father’s friends and guests aside privately, for I was afraid to take my +father himself, and I used to ask them how they knew what the End of the World +was really like, and whether they had seen it. Some laughed, others were +silent, and others were angry; but no one gave me any information. At last I +decided (and it was very wise of me) that the only way to find out a thing of +that sort was to find it out for one’s self, and not to go by hearsay, so I +determined to go straight on without stopping until I got to the End of the +World.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which way did you walk?” said yet another of my companions. +</p> + +<p> +“Young man,” said the stranger, with solemnity, “I walked westward toward the +setting sun ... I walked and I walked and I walked, day after day and year +after year. Whenever I came to the seacoast I would take work on board a +ship—and remember it is always easy to get work if you will take the wages that +are offered, and always difficult to get it if you will not. Well, then, I went +in this way through all known lands and over all known seas, until at last I +came to the shore of a sea beyond which (so the people told me who lived there) +there was no further shore. ‘I cannot help that,’ said I; ‘I have not yet come +to the End of the World, and it is common sense that such a lot of water must +have something at the back of it to hold it up; besides which there is a strong +wind blowing out of the gates of the west and from the sunset. Now that wind +must rise somewhere, and I am going on to see where it rises.’ One of them was +kind enough to lend me a boat with oars; I thanked him prettily, and then I set +out to row toward the End of the World, taking with me two or three days’ +provisions. +</p> + +<p> +“When I had rowed a long time I went asleep, and when I woke up next morning I +rowed again all day until the second night I went to sleep. On the third day I +rowed again: a little before sunset on the third day I saw before me high +hills, all in peaks like a great saw. On the very highest of the peaks there +were streaks of snow, and at about six o’clock in the afternoon I grounded my +boat upon that gravelly shore and pulled it up upon the shingle, though it was +evident either that the tide was high or that there was no tide in these silent +places. +</p> + +<p> +“I offered up a prayer to the genius of the land, and tied the painter of the +boat to two great stones, so that no wave reaching it might move it, and then I +went on inland. When I had gone a little way I saw a signpost on which was +written, ‘To the End of the World One Mile’ and there was a rough track along +which it pointed. I went along this track. Everything was completely silent. +There were no birds, there was no wind, there was nothing in the sky. But one +thing I did notice, which was that the sun was much larger than it used to be, +and that as I went along this last mile or so it seemed to get larger still—but +that may have been my imagination, for I must tell you my imagination is pretty +strong. +</p> + +<p> +“Well then, gentlemen, when I had gone a mile or so I saw another signpost, on +which there was a large board marked ‘Danger,’ and a hundred yards beyond the +track went between two great dark rocks—and there I was! The road had stopped +short; it was broken off, jagged, just like a torn bit of paper ... and there +was the End of the World.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” said one of the younger men in an awed tone. +</p> + +<p> +“What I say,” said the stranger decidedly. “I had come to the end; there was +nothing beyond. You looked down over a precipice where there was moss and steep +grass, and on the ledges trees far below, and then more precipice, and then—oh, +miles below—a few more trees or so clinging to the steep, then more precipice, +and then darkness; and far away before me was the whole expanse of sky; and in +the midst of it I saw the broad red sun setting into the brume; it was not yet +dark enough to see the stars, and there was no moon in the sky. +</p> + +<p> +“I assure you it was a very wonderful sight, and I was awed though I was not +afraid. And how glad I was to find that the world had an edge to it, and that +all that talk about its being round was nonsense! +</p> + +<p> +“When the sun was set it grew dark, and I returned to find my boat; but I must +have missed my way, for the track became broader and better, and at last I came +to a gate of a human sort, with an initial on it, which showed that it had been +put up by some landlord. It was an open gate, and after I had entered it I came +upon a broad highway, beautifully metalled, and when I had gone along this for +less than half a mile I came to this inn where I am now sitting. That was a +week ago, and I have been here ever since. They took me in kindly enough, but +they would not believe what I had to tell them about the End of the World. It +is a great pity, gentlemen, for that wonderful sight is to be discovered +somewhere hereabouts, and a mere accident of my losing my way in the darkness +makes it difficult for me to find it by daylight.” +</p> + +<p> +Having said all this, the stranger was silent. +</p> + +<p> +One of my companions whispered to me that the old man must be mad. The stranger +overheard him, and said with a thin smile: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know all about that; several have suggested it already; but it is no +answer, for if I did not come from the End of the World, where did I come from? +No one has seen me hereabouts during the last few days until I came to this +inn. And all the first part of my journey I can very easily explain, for I have +notes of it, and it lasted for years. It is only this last part which seems to +me so difficult.... I tell you I lost my way, and when a man has lost his way +at night he can never find it again in the daytime.” +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke he took a little piece of folded paper, rather dirty, out of his +inner pocket, on which a rough sketch-map was drawn, and he began touching it +with a stump of pencil that he held in his hand. His eyes seemed to grow dimmer +as he did so, and he leaned his head upon his hand. “I think I have got hold of +it, gentlemen,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +We did not get up or go too near him, for we thought he might be dangerous. +</p> + +<p> +“I think, gentlemen,” he repeated in a more mumbling and lower and less certain +voice, “I think I have got hold of it. I go backwards again through the gate to +the right, just as then I went to the left, and after that it cannot be very +far, for I see those two rocks in front of me. Besides which,” he muttered less +and less coherently, “I ought to have remembered of course those very high and +silent hills with nothing living upon them....” And he added, half asleep, as +his head dropped upon his hand, “It was westward.... I had forgotten that.” +</p> + +<p> +Having so spoken, he seemed to fall asleep altogether, and his head fell back +upon the corner of the wainscoting behind the bench where he sat. He made no +noise in breathing as he slept. +</p> + +<p> +It was the first time that any of us young men had come across this fairly +common sight of a man who took things within for things without; some of us +were frightened, and all of us wished to be rid of the place and to get away. +As we went out we told the landlord nothing either of the old fellow’s vagaries +or of his sleep, but we went out and reached the town of Whitney, and when we +had stayed there a couple of hours or so we went out southward to the station +and waited there for the train which should take us back to Oxford. +</p> + +<p> +While we were waiting there in the station two farmers were talking together. +One said to the other: +</p> + +<p> +“Ar, if he’d paid them they wouldn’t have minded so much.” +</p> + +<p> +To which the other answered: +</p> + +<p> +“Ar, ’tisn’t only the paying: it’s always an awkward thing when a man dies in +your house, specially if it’s licensed. My wife’s brother was caught that way.” +</p> + +<p> +Then as they went on talking we found that they were talking of the man in the +inn, who it seems had not slept very long, but was dead, and had died in that +same room. It was a shocking thing to hear. The first farmer said to the second +in the railway carriage when we had all got in: +</p> + +<p> +“Where’d he come from?” +</p> + +<p> +The other, who was an old man, grinned and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Where we all come from, I suppose, and where we all go to.” He touched his +forehead with his hand. “He said he’d come from the End of the World.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ar,” said the other gloomily in answer, “like enough!” And after that they +talked no more about the matter. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn1"></a> <a href="#fnref1">[1]</a> +The Rhododendrons on the great lawn are modern. +</p> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIRST AND LAST ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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